[Mnesymone]

ANH: Infinite.
ESB: Likewise.
ROTJ: Same again.

TPM: Cinema 1, TV 2 times.
AOTC: Cinema 2 (strangely).
ROTS: Cinema 1-2.

[Just another wretched fan]

TPM: 1 theater, 1 VHS, pieces every now and then.
AOTC: 1 theater, 1.5 DVD (i couldn't get through it the first time, lol)

after finding this forum in february i wanted them both again to refresh my memory, FYI.

[Magee]

Luke: but ben, you said vader killed anakin.
Ben: well, anakin fell to the darkside, so its true from my point of view.
L: but ben, you said anakin was a pilot.
B: well, a pod is a flying vehicle, so its true from my point of view.
L: but ben, you said yoda trained you.
B: well, yoda helped me after qui-gon died, so its true from my point of view.
L: but ben, it sounds like you're full of shit.
B: you'll find that most nebulous phrases are based largely on bullshit and that one character's few lines of exposition should not be upheld as a solid basis for three other movies. remeber, no one mentioned you had a sister in ANH but that doesnt mean we wont see her in other movies. heck, ben isnt even my real name!

if you take the events of PT as fact, ben's statements become consistently vague.

DING! DING! DING! That is exactly the problem. I think most of us were expecting to have the prequels NOT make the narrator out to be consistently vague. I also think that it would have been cooler had Anakin actually been a pilot rather than a podracer. The fact that he is a podracer instead and thereby makes OB1 look like a fool or a liar is just gravy on the I HATE GL train.

The mere fact that by twisting old characters senility and creating elaborate explanations it is POSSIBLE to reconcile the two trilogies, does not mean that it is good.

I dont dislike the PT because they are IMPOSSIBLE to reconcile. I dislike them because in order to reconcile them it ruins alot of the characters and my expectations of the PT. Therefore your ABILITY to reconcile them is wholly irrelevant.

[xenduck]

uh, anakin piloted a naboo starfighter, btw. granted there was dumb-luck involved, it still took a lot of skill to fly unscathed through the hangar and back out again.

[xenduck]

plus, the point im trying to make here is that ben and yoda were always vague. their explanations are very short. people accuse gushers of reading into things when we come up with these kinds of reconciliations, but bashers are reading into things also, they assume they know exactly what ben meant. other than this pilot issue, what in the PT contradicts ben's statements?

This post has been edited by xenduck: 07 May 2005 - 04:12 PM

[Magee]

I agree. I have absolutely read things into what Ben said. And my point is that I think my reading "That Anakin was a great starfighter pilot like Luke was at Yavin," is better than what Lucas gave us that he was a podracer and said things like "oops" and "what does this button do?" while piloting his ships. And you are right that the vagueness of what Ben said allows for both of these interpretations. And the reason I dont like the PT is that I think the interpretation represented there just plain SUCKS.

[Magee]

And as far as your question about inconsistencies go, I will let you answer your own question.

"Luke: but ben, you said vader killed anakin.
Ben: well, anakin fell to the darkside, so its true from my point of view.
L: but ben, you said anakin was a pilot.
B: well, a pod is a flying vehicle, so its true from my point of view.
L: but ben, you said yoda trained you.
B: well, yoda helped me after qui-gon died, so its true from my point of view.
L: but ben, it sounds like you're full of shit.
B: you'll find that most nebulous phrases are based largely on bullshit and that one character's few lines of exposition should not be upheld as a solid basis for three other movies. remeber, no one mentioned you had a sister in ANH but that doesnt mean we wont see her in other movies. heck, ben isnt even my real name!"

[xenduck]

but i dont see any inconsistency, just interprutation. and for what its worth, i apologise if i made it seem as though i thought ben was 'full of shit'. that was supposed to be funny. so with everyone's permission id like to change the line "L: but ben, it sounds like you're full of shit." to "L: but ben, it sounds like there's more history than you have time to tell me about."

[CowboyCurtis]

You know, defense lawyers would love to have jurors like gushers....

[Magee]

Xenduck. Of course the vagueness of the OT leads to possible interpretations of what the PT can be. It is the author's job to make choices of those interpretations. My point is that Lucas' choices suck. Therefore your classification of whether the choices are interpretations or inconsistencies is totally irrelevant.

[xenduck]

there is no accounting for taste.

[Magee]

I do not understand what that means, Xenduck.

[civilian_number_two]

"Vader murdered your father" cannot in any reasonable way be called the truth when in fact Vader IS Luke's father. Vader is not some entity that rose up and killed the good man Anikin, by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. Find a real person in the real world using that argument to explain away say, Charles Manson or OJ Simpson or George Lucas, and I will show you a nutbag.

Don't worry Xenduck; I am talking about the OT here, since that nonsense comes up in JEDI. This is where the rot of revisionist Lucas set in, accompanied by the incredible lies about how he'd based his works on Jospeh Campbell and that he'd had nine fims planned from the beginning.

Yes, there is no accounting for taste. People will disagree on matters of personal opinion. But it's not even a matter of opinion that the backstory of Anikin in the OT does not match the stuff shown in the PT. They're two different stories, and it will be impossible now to watch them in order and to maintain any illusion of a continuous thread. I understand you won't accept this, so just try it when they are all out on DVD. Watch them in order and see the difference. Not just in the effects; God knows with a consistent storyline fans would not have minded retro effects, even. The difference is in the story, where Vader goes from main character to background menace.

Lucas's current insistence that the series has always been about Anikin, his rise, fall and redemption will stand out as the dumbest statement of all. It'd be like saying that Lord of the Rings was always supposed to be about the Balrog.

[xenduck]

i am sympathetic towards your opinion, civilian, i really am. i intened to watch epI and II then go see epIII, and then watch IV-VI. then i will decide if the story truely 'matches-up'. one thing that i dont understand though, is if you are saying that vader was a background character in the OT...because i dont think he was.

magee, what i mean is that the OT is subjective. open to extrapolation. most people were content to come up with their own ideas about the backstory of the OT and thus were upset when their ideas didnt match lucas'. others, especially those (not including me) who werent exposed to the OT until the PT came out, wont notice the problems the aforementioned are facing. so in my humble opinion, liking the 'complete' saga comes down to various tastes; and who knows where different people get their different tastes.

[civilian_number_two]

What I mean, Xenduck, is that Anikin is a minor character in TPM, an important character in AotC, and the central character of RotS. In STAR WARS he's just the villain, and even there Tarkin gets most of the lines. He's more prominent in EMPIRE and JEDI, but we still get no indication that he was so important in films that came before. He never rises past the level of "bad guy," which makes him about as important as a James Bond villain. And frankly, very few James Bond villains are more than background characters to motivate the action scenes.