Chefelf.com Night Life: Star_Wars_Kid - Viewing Profile

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Oh, for the love of... ... "D'oh!"

In my defense, I missed a lot of the connections between the Prequel and the Original at that age, because I didn't watch the Original Trilogy all that much. But even then, I smelt the distinct smell of cheese in Episode II. Episode III... well, I was one of those dolts who got wowed by the effects. I know better now, though.

Hm... my math was wrong. I have a cold, so my brain isn't working as well as it should... I'm actually 17, which means I thought the movies were cool when I was 7. Now I don't feel so stupid for liking the movies.

I'm rereading the EpIII nitpicks now, having finished all the others again. I love how I can mentally replay every embarrassing scene thanks to Lucas' 'subtlety'.

Hey, everyone. I registered this nick several years ago, meant to post something and forgot to.

First of all, I absolutely love the Star Wars nitpicks. I am a fan of Star Wars, but I think Lucas has gone absolutely nuts with his movies. Or, sane. As someone once said:

"Art comes from angst. If the artist is lucky, the angst will go away with time. If the audience is lucky, it won't.

He goes on to describe how some movie directors lost their edge after a while, and started producing bad movies. But the reason I'm posting here is that I noticed something while reading the nitpicks for Episode I (by far my least favorite of the Prequels). I came across this:

The Chance Cube
At one point Watto makes a bet with Qui-Gon and takes out a "chance cube" to settle it. A chance cube looks just like any die that you'd get with a Milton Bradley game. The only thing is instead of numbers it has two colors, red and blue. My question is if you have a 50% chance of getting red and a 50% chance of getting blue then why the hell do you need something with six sides? Why not just use a coin? They don't roll a die at the beginning of a football game. Do they? I don't know, I don't watch football. The point is that I'm sure they can find something on Tatooine with two sides rather than six.

For some reason, I feel compelled to point out something I noticed even the first time I saw the movie (I think I was about 11). If you watch Watto closely, he twists the cube in a certain way. The kind that people use when they're being tricky. So, when we got the DVD (ugh!) I satisfied my curiosity and frame-by-framed the sequence at that point, and the actual toss.

Watto's cheating.

The die is actually not 3 red, 3 blue. It's 5 red, 1 blue. Watto tried to twist the cube so it looked fair, but really wasn't. So, chefelf, that would be why watto used a cube, and not a coin. He was drastically improving his odds of keeping the boy, who'd be more useful to him as he matured, because a 5/6 chance of red means his odds of tossing blue is 17.6666666% instead of 50%. (Except that Qui-Gon interfered and all that.)

I know, this is a tiny nitpick and it proves I have too much time on my hands. But I thought it was actually a bit of inspired plot because, for once, it was actually subtle compared to the rest of the movie. But then, if an 11-year old can catch it... *shrugs*

Cheers (and keep up the good work on the site ),
Tim