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NeonTurtle posted:So the rumors of an expanded scene where Bib Fortuna goes home to find Wookies dancing in his parlor are true?
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Apr 7, 2011 17:27
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Ben Stiller to Play Bumbling Guard in "Night in the Jedi Library", BluRay Home Release in July
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Apr 7, 2011 17:38
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You know, now that I think about it, only Tal'dira was programmed with a trigger phrase that had a recognizable variable. "Wedge Antilles hops on one transparisteel leg" obviously has "Wedge Antilles" as the variable. So replacing "Wedge Antilles" with, say, "Corran Horn" would have changed the target. So, does that mean that "Ewoks" were code for Coruscant? Or that "Wookies" was code for Admiral Akbar? Those seem a bit off the mark for a variable phrase. I could understand if it was "Those Mon Calamari are dancing in the parlor again," because then it could be taken to read "Assassinate the highest ranking Mon Calamari you can get at." I can't help but wonder if the other two trigger phrases were hard-coded for a single target, and did not have a variable.
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Apr 7, 2011 17:41
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NeonTurtle posted:So the rumors of an expanded scene where Bib Fortuna goes home to find Wookies dancing in his parlor are true? It's long been debated whether or not it was actually filmed, but I believe an adaptation of the scene does appear in one of the really obscure old 80s novels, The Rise of the Dark Falls.
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Apr 7, 2011 17:42
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NeonTurtle posted:You know, now that I think about it, only Tal'dira was programmed with a trigger phrase that had a recognizable variable. "Wedge Antilles hops on one transparisteel leg" obviously has "Wedge Antilles" as the variable. So replacing "Wedge Antilles" with, say, "Corran Horn" would have changed the target. So, does that mean that "Ewoks" were code for Coruscant? Or that "Wookies" was code for Admiral Akbar? Those seem a bit off the mark for a variable phrase. I could understand if it was "Those Mon Calamari are dancing in the parlor again," because then it could be taken to read "Assassinate the highest ranking Mon Calamari you can get at." I can't help but wonder if the other two trigger phrases were hard-coded for a single target, and did not have a variable. I think the other two were just "programmed" to do one specific thing with no variable needed. Two agents were used in that attack, one for Han and one for Wedge, so possibly the handler was supposed to just assign them targets that way.
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Apr 7, 2011 17:46
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Some sad news: http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=2327 I have to say that I actually don't own all of them, although I see them all the time at local used booksales, so next time around I think I will definitely be sure to pick up the ones I don't yet have while I still can. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, are these the first Star Wars books to go out of print? I mean, I know some of the 90s comics are out of print (although even those I think were all re-released as omnibuses eventually), but I don't think I've ever heard of any of the books doing so. Chairman Capone fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Apr 8, 2011 |
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Apr 8, 2011 04:02
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Chairman Capone posted:Actually, if I'm not mistaken, are these the first Star Wars books to go out of print? I mean, I know some of the 90s comics are out of print (although even those I think were all re-released as omnibuses eventually), but I don't think I've ever heard of any of the books doing so.
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Apr 8, 2011 04:39
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Chairman Capone posted:Some sad news: Dammit. I need to hunt down replacements for some of my old battered copies then. I really wish I could find those older books as ebooks, but if the old bantam books novels can be found anywhere in that form, well uh...I haven't seen it.
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Apr 8, 2011 05:42
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Sucks that they're out of print but I find Stackpole's histrionics and self-congratulation more than a little amusing. Corran Horn, I mean, Mike Stackpole posted:When folks only look at the numbers, when they only see people as vehicles for transporting credit cards to stores, they lose sight of humanity and the importance of story to all of us. We need story to help us cope. I remember a young man writing about the fact that he was away at college and had a steady girlfriend back home, but on campus a girl was coming on to him. He said he was really tempted to go with the girl on campus, but then he remembered what Corran Horn did in I, Jedi. Because of that, because of Corran’s example, he remained faithful. I certainly never expected something like that to happen when I was writing I, Jedi, but that it did points to the power of stories that some folks only see as numbers in a spread sheet.
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Apr 8, 2011 10:37
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I wish more people were as not boring as he is. He knows he's the bees knees and he says so.
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Apr 8, 2011 10:56
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yronic heroism posted:Sucks that they're out of print but I find Stackpole's histrionics and self-congratulation more than a little amusing. Yeah but compared to the more recent EU the better Bantam books just really did nail the uplifting hopeychangey message of the OT. Del Rey and Dark Horse and Lucasfilms Licensing drove that into the ground, and while I can put up with boring and terrible authors for long stretches of time (see also: the bad/worst Bantam Star Wars books) I can't abide the new direction of the franchise.
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Apr 8, 2011 16:01
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I largely consider the Dark Next to be the tipping point. I can tolerate the NJO because in between a bunch of crap, there's some good gems inside it. The Dark Nest trilogy is irredeemably bad and the LotF and FotJ are just awful.
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Apr 8, 2011 16:10
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 I dunno, this made me laugh.
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Apr 8, 2011 18:21
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I watched Star Wars last night for the first time in a long time, and my wife asked why the Death Star didn't just use its tractor beam to pull in all the rebel fighters at the end of the movie. This had never occurred to me. So, uh, why didn't they? (Other than "because rebels all dying ignominiously is a terrible way to end a space opera", obviously.) Surely there's a spergy explanation as well.
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Apr 8, 2011 20:17
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Imperial arrogance. Look at Tarkin deride those snubfighters!
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Apr 8, 2011 20:27
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I'd be arrogant too over such a stupid term. Snubfighters?
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Apr 8, 2011 20:36
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Captain von Trapp posted:I watched Star Wars last night for the first time in a long time, and my wife asked why the Death Star didn't just use its tractor beam to pull in all the rebel fighters at the end of the movie. This had never occurred to me. Because they had a terrible IT department and couldn't figure out that an old man had flipped a couple of switches.
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Apr 8, 2011 20:41
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Easy. The snubfighters weren't going to be able to hurt the mighty Death Star, so why not let them throw themselves at the Death Star like flies at a windshield in a futile attempt to stop it from blowing up their last hope? Sure, they could have just tractored the fighters and blown them out of the sky, but that wouldn't have caused anywhere near the despair and hopelessness that trying and failing to stop the Death Star would have caused. Presumably they would have let a few fighters escape after the Death Star blew up Yavin IV to spread the word among the Rebellion, sowing fear and panic. In other words, Tarkin wasn't thinking like a guy trying to win a fight, he was thinking like a guy who had already won the fight and was looking for a way to be as big of a douchebag as possible to the losers.
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Apr 8, 2011 21:28
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VaultAggie posted:I largely consider the Dark Next to be the tipping point. I can tolerate the NJO because in between a bunch of crap, there's some good gems inside it. The Dark Nest trilogy is irredeemably bad and the LotF and FotJ are just awful. I totally agree. I used to read Star Wars books all the time but the first Dark Nest book was so bad that I haven't picked one up since.
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Apr 8, 2011 21:55
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NeonTurtle posted:Easy. The snubfighters weren't going to be able to hurt the mighty Death Star, so why not let them throw themselves at the Death Star like flies at a windshield in a futile attempt to stop it from blowing up their last hope? Sure, they could have just tractored the fighters and blown them out of the sky, but that wouldn't have caused anywhere near the despair and hopelessness that trying and failing to stop the Death Star would have caused. Presumably they would have let a few fighters escape after the Death Star blew up Yavin IV to spread the word among the Rebellion, sowing fear and panic. No, else Vader would not have scrambled fighters and personally launched against them.
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Apr 8, 2011 23:13
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TheBigBad posted:No, else Vader would not have scrambled fighters and personally launched against them. No, Vader was clearly doing that on his own, Tarkin didn't give a poo poo.
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Apr 8, 2011 23:18
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Well, a tractor beam is just that. A beam. It's one thing to catch a freighter when it's not even aware it needs to be maneuvering. It's a much different, and much harder, thing to catch thirty smaller, more agile fighters that are aware of what they're facing and actively trying not to be hit. It's exactly the same question as "why didn't the Death Star just shoot them all with its surface weaponry", except they probably had more of that than they had tractor beams.
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Apr 8, 2011 23:21
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Didn't they try to catch Luke with a tractor beam in one of the Zahn-novels?
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Apr 8, 2011 23:54
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Admiral Goodenough posted:Didn't they try to catch Luke with a tractor beam in one of the Zahn-novels?
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Apr 9, 2011 00:05
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ZeeToo posted:Well, a tractor beam is just that. A beam. Why didn't they just blow Yavin up, then either let the gravity well handle Yavin IV or fire again at the moon?
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Apr 9, 2011 05:13
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TheBigBad posted:Why didn't they just blow Yavin up, then either let the gravity well handle Yavin IV or fire again at the moon? I really don't think of it as much of a stretch to say that a planet destroying death ray takes a while to recharge and it's quicker to fly around a huge obstacle than it is to blow it away. And they didn't even think they were in that much of a rush.
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Apr 9, 2011 06:29
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yronic heroism posted:I really don't think of it as much of a stretch to say that a planet destroying death ray takes a while to recharge and it's quicker to fly around a huge obstacle than it is to blow it away. And they didn't even think they were in that much of a rush. Oh gawd the Empire can't win... too slow to Yavin, too fast to Hoth.... frick.
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Apr 9, 2011 06:44
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Destroying the Rebellion can wait until after
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Apr 9, 2011 06:45
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Admiral Goodenough posted:Didn't they try to catch Luke with a tractor beam in one of the Zahn-novels? yeah and it failed. Although it did result in us seeing Thrawn at his most magnificent chess mastery brilliance. Also I agree with the guys above I was another one who stopped reading at the end of the NJO. I tried reading the Dark Nest Trilogy but it was just so awfully bad I could not get through it and abandoned the EU. Also nothing I have heard about the rest of the current EU seems likely to lure me back Mandolorian wanking,Darth Jacen and space Cthulu do not sound great.
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Apr 9, 2011 11:17
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TheBigBad posted:Why didn't they just blow Yavin up, then either let the gravity well handle Yavin IV or fire again at the moon? Isn't Yavin a pure gas giant? Maybe the superlaser needs to hit rocks to make a planet blow up.
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Apr 9, 2011 11:21
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TheBigBad posted:Why didn't they just blow Yavin up, then either let the gravity well handle Yavin IV or fire again at the moon? That's a major theme of one of the first How It Should Have Ended videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzoeEdW-EDQ
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Apr 9, 2011 17:39
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Powered Descent posted:That's a major theme of one of the first How It Should Have Ended videos: Those How It Should videos are always so awkwardly unfunny.
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Apr 9, 2011 17:41
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Ugh, watching Episode IV on Spike and when did they add Boba Fett into the scene with Han and Jabba? He was so poorly matted in there.
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Apr 10, 2011 00:18
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muscles like this? posted:Ugh, watching Episode IV on Spike and when did they add Boba Fett into the scene with Han and Jabba? He was so poorly matted in there. I remember him being there in the first Special Edition.
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Apr 10, 2011 00:42
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muscles like this? posted:Ugh, watching Episode IV on Spike and when did they add Boba Fett into the scene with Han and Jabba? He was so poorly matted in there. When they added the scene with Jabba.
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Apr 10, 2011 08:39
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Torael_7 posted:Dammit. I need to hunt down replacements for some of my old battered copies then. So are Star Wars books really not available as eBooks? Do publishers not want to make money?
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Apr 11, 2011 14:15
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Duckman2008 posted:So are Star Wars books really not available as eBooks? Do publishers not want to make money? You can level a lot of complaints and criticisms against anyone who holds the Star Wars license, but I don't think "doesn't like money" can be one of them.
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Apr 11, 2011 14:20
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Chaos Hippy posted:When they added the scene with Jabba. I thought he was in the original footage, I didn't know he was matted in later.
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Apr 11, 2011 14:42
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Jerk McJerkface posted:I thought he was in the original footage, I didn't know he was matted in later.
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Apr 11, 2011 14:52
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Jerk McJerkface posted:I thought he was in the original footage, I didn't know he was matted in later. He's been there since the Special Edition, but yeah, he wasn't in the scene with Jabba back when they filmed it in the 70's with Harrison Ford. That was a graphic artist named Mark Austin playing Fett, and they filmed that part in 97.
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Apr 11, 2011 14:59
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