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Somebody should ask Aaron Allston what went wrong, i.e. Centerpoint-Anakin Solo, Darth Vectivus, whatshisface the Anakin Solo look-alike, etc.
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Aug 31, 2010 06:20
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"Aaron, I know you are a silly guy but...Darth Vectivus, that Anakin robot thing which controls Centerpoint...that was a little too silly"
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Aug 31, 2010 06:26
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I prefer to think some Lucasbooks (or Del Ray, or whoever is in charge now) exec was all "Okay, Aaron, now you have to write about Jedis and poo poo. No more Wedge." And Allston was like "Fine, but I'm gonna write about stupid loving Jedi stuff and see how you like it." But the EU's so rear end backwards now that the exec was like "This stuff is gold! Now I want you to work with Karen and Troy!" and it all just kinda snowballed. Except with poo poo. It shitballed.
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Aug 31, 2010 06:42
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Crowetron posted:I prefer to think some Lucasbooks (or Del Ray, or whoever is in charge now) exec was all "Okay, Aaron, now you have to write about Jedis and poo poo. No more Wedge." If I had to work with anybody named "Troy" I'd probably shoot myself.
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Aug 31, 2010 08:15
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His first name had better be "Helen of"...  I actually have several thoughts about the Anakin/Palpatine/Mace confrontation. Obviously it marks the "turning point" for Anakin and the galaxy, so it's the flawed dramatic heart of prequels. And there's just a lot going on there. Much of which is not so good (though still better than most of AotC), but it's at least interesting to watch. For starters, Ian McDiarmid hamming it up awesomely, augmented by whatever they did with his voice when he's all "GOOOOOOOOD!" And the creepy organ music. Finally we see Samuel L. Jackson somewhat pissed off and yelling, his character arguably flirting with the dark side himself. And of course there's dumb poo poo like Palpatine going Super Saiyan and cutting down three Jedi just standing there. And Lucas obviously lost track of what Anakin knows, and what the Jedi don't know (like that Dooku is even a Sith at all, or that the whole war is engineered). But some of that at least lends itself to interesting reinterpretations, and occasionally some competent EU stories to retcon inconsistencies. For example, when Palpatine declares "Every single Jedi, including Kenobi, is now an enemy of the Republic," logically Anakin has to know that's untrue, because he just exposed Palpatine to the Council because he presumably thought that was in the best interests of the Republic (and by George Lucas logic they all know that because Palpatine's a Sith he must have been in league with Dooku, as Obi-Wan tells Padme later on, in which case there's no way that isn't treasonous behavior for an elected leader under any legal definition). Then Palps claims the Jedi will attack the Senate, which is just dumb. I doubt even Lucas could believe that's really the case, and Anakin knows the Jedi well enough to know next time they'll just send forty Jedi to So Palpatine and Anakin both know it's a lie, why bother when it's just the two of them? Maybe we can call this kind of thing Imperial Doublethink, but I see it as a couple of coconspirators rehearsing the story they'll tell the Senate and the John Q. Spacepublic. And Palpatine is also making clear that when he says go to the temple and kill everybody he means everybody, you are now Darth Vader, a new man, so that means no mercy for Obi-Wan or anyone else (no matter how young and how "cute" his stale line delivery is). And, to unpack those implications a little more, it's to reinforce to Anakin that he's now a badguy, and he'll have to do badguy stuff for an evil empire. (Probably more academically this would be labeled "violent socialization.") One of the Allston books, Starfighters of Adumar I think, has Wedge theorize that the Empire chose a bunch of mustache-twirly names for its Star Destroyers to make their crews used to the idea that they're cogs in a giant murder-machine. So that's a nice parallel. Though, to re-iterate, I don't think George put nearly this level of thought into this scene. Though he did have Anakin say the exact same line ("I will do whatever you ask.") to Palps as he did to BDSM-outfit Padme in AotC, so maybe there's more going on behind that stupid loving beard and glasses than we like to think. (This is probably the strongest observation that can be made in support of the claim that the man knows exactly how homoerotic parts of his films can be.) Naturally, the novelization is better, mostly because it gives us more back-and-forth between Mace and Palpatine. The best part is when Palpatine (playing dumb for a secret recording that was apparently planned as part of the film itself because Jorge has a Boomer mad-on for Richard Nixon) asks why he's being arrested. Mace says flatly "You're a Sith Lord." Then Palps is all like (paraphrasing) "You can't prove that, and even if you could we have rules against religious discrimination. It's in something I like to call the constitution" :smugsith: . Novelization also has Anakin offer Obi-Wan a chance to leave before their duel, which I thought was really a good storytelling instinct, though we could argue the film kind of does the same thing, at least implicitly. Anakin seems to make some effort (as far as arch, terrible Lucas dialogue will let him) to persuade Obi-Wan that the Sith are in the right, and suggests that it's possible Obi-Wan could be "with me" instead of "my enemy." And it's Obi-Wan who ultimately insists that they fight and draws his saber first. ... So, that's about my quota of spergin for now. But I'll add that I didn't see the Force lightning thing as all that strange. Just because you can defend against it doesn't mean you can't be overpowered. Even without reading the novel it always seemed like Palpatine was just trying to blast his way past whatever combination of discipline, Force power, and lightsaber-holding Mace used to block. In this case it just didn't work out. (There's also a long and very stupid debate about whether or not Palpatine took a dive in the fight and whether his face physically melted from the lightning or he lost control over some illusion/Force facelift power he always had in place. But I'm not getting into all that. Check the monthly discussions about these topics on theforce.net or wookieepedia if you really loving care.) yronic heroism fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Aug 31, 2010 |
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Aug 31, 2010 10:28
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About the prequels, nothing in the plot if you distill it to essentials is actually bad: Politician creates a separatist movement to gain power. Same dude seduces a rising military star to join him to eliminate internal opposition. So far, so good. But Lucas cant write anything that's internally coherent. Stuff happens because it needs to happen. Consider how the plot goes in ANH and ESB: it's easy to get what's going on. By the time of ROTJ, Lucas can do whatever the gently caress he likes. The result is that Luke's story by the time poo poo goes down on Endor, nothing he does has any effect on the rest of the plot. The Rebellion would have won anyway. The Emperor's trap failed before Luke even started fighting Vader. Wedge and Lando blow up the Death Star anyway. The net result is that Vader and Palpatine die about fifteen minutes earlier. And the prequels are even worse in this regard. We get stupid B-movie poo poo like exposition about the cloning stuff without actually seeing anything about the creation of the clones before they already exist. General Grievous turns up in ROTS with no explanation what the gently caress he is and why we should care about him.
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Aug 31, 2010 10:56
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 : No because you see the Emperor was really using this technique call Battle Meditation (TM) the whole time he was talking to Luke, just you can't see it unless you know what to look forraaahghaghahhaha
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Aug 31, 2010 15:10
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Is the AT-AT the most inefficient war machine of all time?
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Aug 31, 2010 15:18
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end of the world posted:Is the AT-AT the most inefficient war machine of all time? I'm fairly sure there's a Star Destroyer with a secret weapon that turns space (like, outer space) into ice, so no.
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Aug 31, 2010 15:37
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Slantedfloors posted:I'm fairly sure there's a Star Destroyer with a secret weapon that turns space (like, outer space) into ice, so no. But space has nothing to FREEZE into ice!
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Aug 31, 2010 15:56
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Gutcruncher posted:But space has nothing to FREEZE into ice! And the Gorax violates cube-square law. It's Star Wars, get used to it.
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Aug 31, 2010 16:00
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end of the world posted:Is the AT-AT the most inefficient war machine of all time? Also, I direct you to My Tank Is Fight.
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Aug 31, 2010 16:18
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If your opponents (the Rebels in this instance) have no effective way of fighting your massive armoured walker, then it's not inefficient at all. AT-ATs, like the Death Star, are a terror weapon--not a weapon that the super strategy minded Generals would build if they had their way.
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Aug 31, 2010 16:41
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Angry Midwesterner posted:
You could argue that if Vader wasn't on the Death Star trying to turn Luke, he'd be on his Star Destroyer leading the battle. Or even on his TIE chasing Wedge down the shaft.
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Aug 31, 2010 16:58
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Directorman posted:If your opponents (the Rebels in this instance) have no effective way of fighting your massive armoured walker, then it's not inefficient at all. The fellow at stardestroyer.net has an interesting take on them in his "star trek vs star wars vs real life" spergfest. Basically, sum up their weaknesses - poor concealment, high center of gravity, poor close-in combat abilities, high resource requirement, and high ground pressure due to their huge size - and then think about the role they're being used in - frontal assault against heavily defended positions. In that case, poor concealment doesn't matter and is in fact an asset - terror weapon, like you said. The high center of gravity ties in with that, and lets them be used as an artillery weapon...lasers fly straight, but their height means you can still hit things at artillery-like ranges (such as a rebel shield generator 17.28 kilometers away...) Most armored vehicles have poor close-in combat capability, which is why modern battle tanks are supported by infantry and APCs and why (as we see in the movie) the AT-AT's are supported by ground troops and AT-STs. The Empire gives no gently caress about the high resource requirement because lets face it, they're the Empire. Finally, the immense weight provides a high degree of stability, which is valuable, even necessary, when serving as a long-range bombardment platform.
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Aug 31, 2010 17:29
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Kemper Boyd posted:By the time of ROTJ, Lucas can do whatever the gently caress he likes. The result is that Luke's story by the time poo poo goes down on Endor, nothing he does has any effect on the rest of the plot. The Rebellion would have won anyway. The Emperor's trap failed before Luke even started fighting Vader. Wedge and Lando blow up the Death Star anyway. The net result is that Vader and Palpatine die about fifteen minutes earlier. Really this isn't so bad though. It would be pretty sad if after all these years the Rebellion still can't win a battle without Luke. By that point the Luke/Vader/Emperor subplot is more of a personal journey anyway. It's also possible to interpret Luke's actions as affecting the exterior action even without invoking Battle Meditation(tm) sperging. Military forces do have a pronounced historical tendancy to fall apart when they hear news of a commander's death, and I suppose news of the Emperor's death would have spread pretty quickly. The timing doesn't work well though, since Wedge & co. start their trench run pretty much the second Palpatine bites it. There's not much time for the news to have any effect.
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Aug 31, 2010 17:55
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Captain von Trapp posted:Really this isn't so bad though. It would be pretty sad if after all these years the Rebellion still can't win a battle without Luke. By that point the Luke/Vader/Emperor subplot is more of a personal journey anyway. I thought the gist of Luke's plan was just to seek redemption for his father. He had hoped Vader would side with him, team up versus Emperor, and be out before the fleet swooped in. Vader didn't turn, so plan B- keep the Emperor on the station so at least he's destroyed in the fireball. Things just kept twisting from there. Luke and the fleet battle were never really related in anything but timing and spirit.
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Aug 31, 2010 18:23
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I think firstly it's a personal struggle. Not everything is about huge battles in Star Wars; it's interesting to see Luke face his inner demons and Vader face his conscience, even if it wouldn't have any impact on the battle outside. Secondly, even once the Death Star started to blow, Luke had time to escape. Had he failed to redeem his father, then Palpatine and Vader would still have had plenty of time to escape, and the empire would survive. Destroying the Death Star without cutting off the head of the empire was not the victory the rebels were looking for.
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Aug 31, 2010 18:48
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Directorman posted:If your opponents (the Rebels in this instance) have no effective way of fighting your massive armoured walker, then it's not inefficient at all. It's a rather unstable beast though and easily tripped. Perhaps a tail would improve overall stability of the AT-AT?
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Aug 31, 2010 19:16
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WhyteRyce posted:Or even on his TIE chasing Wedge down the shaft.  Wedge is awesome.
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Aug 31, 2010 19:59
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end of the world posted:It's a rather unstable beast though and easily tripped. Perhaps a tail would improve overall stability of the AT-AT? Or just a downward-facing camera and anti-personnell turret. Begin speculation about how Luke would have had the guy on the bottom gun shoot off the legs even though rebel guns couldn't scratch them.
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Aug 31, 2010 20:16
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This is the most hilarious thing from the EU I have ever seen. I just love that they had to work in Vader personally giving the order to kill his stepbrother.
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Sep 2, 2010 00:52
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Throb Robinson posted:This is the most hilarious thing from the EU I have ever seen. What is this from?
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Sep 2, 2010 01:54
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Don't know. Saw it on the Owen Lars page on wookieepedia.
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Sep 2, 2010 02:08
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It gives the source as a one-shot magazine about Vader released at Comic-Con. A few more clicks and I discovered that it also included this gem:
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Sep 2, 2010 02:16
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Captain von Trapp posted:It gives the source as a one-shot magazine about Vader released at Comic-Con. A few more clicks and I discovered that it also included this gem: Oh my god
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Sep 2, 2010 02:23
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Captain von Trapp posted:It gives the source as a one-shot magazine about Vader released at Comic-Con. A few more clicks and I discovered that it also included this gem: vader  .jpg
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Sep 2, 2010 02:24
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Captain von Trapp posted:It gives the source as a one-shot magazine about Vader released at Comic-Con. A few more clicks and I discovered that it also included this gem: vadershortlyafterwatchingtheprequels.jpg
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Sep 2, 2010 02:29
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^^ gently caress you buddy  Captain von Trapp posted:It gives the source as a one-shot magazine about Vader released at Comic-Con. A few more clicks and I discovered that it also included this gem: "What the gently caress was Lucas thinking?"
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Sep 2, 2010 02:29
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This has always been my favourite.
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Sep 2, 2010 02:33
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Those are awesome. I remember reading somewhere on the internet that Vader sometimes managed to heal his lungs to some extent temporarily and could walk around without the helmet, but it didn't last. Seems like it would be difficult but possible for an uber-Jedi/Sith. On the other hand, one of the few EU books I read had some newbie Jedi trainee extracting microscopic synthetic virus particles from Mon Mothma's body using the Force. Why the hell couldn't Vader regenerate some pulmonary tissue?
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Sep 2, 2010 02:48
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Derek Dominoe posted:Those are awesome. You've heard of Plot Armor, I assume. He has the opposite, in that regard.
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Sep 2, 2010 02:50
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I don't know, Vader's body was kind of REALLY hosed up. Maybe it was beyond help even in the Star Wars universe.
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Sep 2, 2010 02:52
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Derek Dominoe posted:Those are awesome.
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Sep 2, 2010 02:53
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It's worse than that ... in Shadows of the Empire his deal was that he could use the Dark Side to help revitalize his organs and tissue so that he could breathe without the mask, then he gets happy about it and then loses his hold on the Dark Side. edit: ^^^ ARGGHHHH VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Sep 2, 2010 |
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Sep 2, 2010 02:53
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Slantedfloors posted:This has always been my favourite. I started to translate that from Aurebesh then realized what the gently caress I was doing and stopped
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Sep 2, 2010 03:06
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Greedish posted:I started to translate that from Aurebesh then realized what the gently caress I was doing and stopped Is it actual names?
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Sep 2, 2010 03:13
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arioch posted:It's worse than that ... in Shadows of the Empire his deal was that he could use the Dark Side to help revitalize his organs and tissue so that he could breathe without the mask, then he gets happy about it and then loses his hold on the Dark Side. I actually kind of liked this idea. It's basically that The Force can heal you, and he was just accessing The Force by his anger. But the joy from being healed makes his anger fade. It brought up a lot of interesting questions to me about The Force, and about Darth Vader's character. He can never be fully healed because it would remove the source of his hatred which fuels his Force powers. It's like poetry. In short, Shadows of the Empire is a good novel and anyone who hates it is mean.
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Sep 2, 2010 03:31
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Shadows is awesome with some lovely bits in it. IE Leia rape. Finally my Avatar comes into play.
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Sep 2, 2010 04:04
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^^^Dash Rendar Posting to say I'm probably halfway through the second book, Omen. It's pretty decent stuff, although I feel like some parts are too drawn out. the hidden ones at the end of Outcast in particular. Since I'm listening to this stuff at work, I should probably finish Omen tomorrow and get a good chunk into the third book by friday.
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Sep 2, 2010 04:33
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