QUOTE (Mike Mac from NYU @ Apr 22 2004, 04:44 PM)
4. Remember in the original screenplay for ANH and in the SE's Han meets Jabba on Tatooine. I don't think Jabba would go to another planet just to bargain with Han Solo. I think his flunkies like Greedo would, but no, Jabba would only do it i it was convenient.
Your other points I disagree with, some more than others, but this one I take exception to. the origninal screenplay? The Special Editions? Remember, while you're at it, that in the original treatment Of THE JOURNAL OF THE WHILLS, there was a fundamentally different story, a frame narrative, and a character named "Mace Windy."
I wan't talking about what best fit STAR WARS canon, but what would have made for the best movie. And I certainly wasn't talking about the as-yet nonexistent scene in Mos Eisley spaceport where Han talked to Jabba. The character arc you refer to doesn't exist without the scene you mention that apparently got cut. So all we have is a film crew out in the LA desert hoping noone's gonna notice it's all matte-painted backgrounds and not Tunisia at all.
Anyway, the original point is that Ben was wearing a robe, to make him like Gandalf in Fangorn forest, all disguised and of secret power. When Luke showed up wearing a hoodie in JEDI, suddenly STAR WARS was rewritten so that was the Jedi uniform. That, plus going back to Tatooine, serves the purpose of makingthe story smaller through repetition. This is along with all the other stuff about limited numbers of bad Jedi, Leia rather anyone else being the "other," a new death Star, and eventually - it's coming, stories stolen directly from the book of Exodus. How do I think this makes the story "smaller?" Well, it informs us right away that we won't be seeing anything new here, and frankly we don't. There is nothing new in JEDI, from Luke's look to the locations to the final conflict. It is 100% retread, well-shot and scored though it may be. To make it relevant and not so repetitive, Lucas decided to fill it with comedy instead of any new storylines. It's DIE HARD II: so-so, but nothing to hang your hat on.
Everything about the Emperor I'll answer under that other topic heading, and later.
PS: Osama bin Laden? They won't find him until they want to, man. Either he got his ass bombed out or he was never actually in Afghanistan in the first place. It's not like the Saudis would turn him in, and it's not like Bush would ask. OBL was a ruse, anyway. The longer he's actually "alive" the more the US can pretend Hussein, or anyone else he decides to attack, was secretly allied with him. Captured or declared dead he can't be used as a pretext for conflict. OBL is to Goldstein as Bush is to Big Brother.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).