Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Revenge of the Sith (6)

Galaxies we have lost


Ben: I guess it was a while back. I was a Jedi Knight, like your father.

Luke: But my father didn't fight in the clone wars. He was no knight. Just a navigator on a space (sic) frieghter.

Ben: Or so your uncle told you. Owen Lars didn't agree with your fathers ideas, opinions or his philosophy of life. He believed your father should have stayed here on Tatooine and not gotten involved in....Well, he thought he should have remained here and minded his farming. Owen was always afraid that your father's adventurous life might influence you and pull you away from Anchorhead. I'm afraid there wasn't much of the farmer in your father. {....} All this reminds me. I have something here for you. When you were old enough, your father wanted you to have this...if I can ever find the blasted device. I tried to give it to you once before, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He believed you might get some crazy idea from it and end up followng old Obi-Wan on some idealistic crusade. You see, Luke that's where your father and your uncle Owen disagreed. Lars is not a man to let ideals interfere with business, whereas you father didn't think the question even worth discussing. His decision on such maters came like his piloting. Instinctively..."

Luke: How did my father die?

Ben: He was betrayed and murdered by a very young Jedi named Darth Vader. A boy I was training. One of my brightest disciples. One of my greatest failiures.

Star Wars
by "George Lucas" (*)


"When your father left, he didn't know your mother was preganant. Your Mother and I knew he would find out eventurally, but we wanted to keep you both as safe as possible, for as long as possible. So I took you to live with my brother Owen on Tatooine, and your mother took Leia to live as the daughter of Senator Organa, on Alderaan."

Return of the Jedi,
by James Kahn.


Aided and abetted by restless, power hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Seantor Palpatine causes himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reuinite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic. Once secure in office, he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon, he was controlled by the very assasstants and boot-lickerts he has appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

Star Wars by George Lucas




(*)Presumably Alan Dean Foster




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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I would have enjoyed this last movie more if it had been shown from the point of view of Obi-Wan. Lucas clearly wants Anakins fall to be viewed as tragic, but by following him around as he gets more and more confused by what to do, about how to remain true to the Jedi and save Padme, he makes Anakin (and therefore Vader) into a kind of sympathetic character. This is distressing since it kind of ruins Episodes 4-6, where we are supposed to see Vader as the supreme embodiment of all things evil rather than as some wayward and love struck soul that made a pretty big mistake.

While it would not solve all of the problems with the new trilogy (Andrew has adeptly listed many), I would have preferred that the character we are asked to sympathize with be Obi Wan. Screw Anakin. I think a writer and director more talented than Lucas could have created an emotional link with the audience during Anakins fall by having us view it through Obi Wan's eyes. There was a bit of it at the end ('you were like my brother'...'I loved you'), but my goodness there could have been a lot more.

By using that perspective, you could use all the terrible things we know Vader is going to do in the next movies to create an even stronger link with Obi Wan (he thinks it's bad, but we know it's going to be even worse than he imagines). Instead, because we sympathize with Vader, it minimizes the horrible things he does later.

Just a thought. Reading it back it doesn't express what I am thinking very well, but maybe someone else will get the idea and restate it better for me.

Parker

Porlock Junior said...

Teh Jedi Council rejects the idea of training him, but Obi Wan's softhearted arrogance causes him to train the boy...out of compassion. (There could be some tragic alternative like knowing that Anakin will go bad or something)

Right. If you let the irreplaceable manuscript get burned up so that you can save the baby, he grows up to be Hitler.

Seriously, it's a good scenario. Beats the carp out of the prequels as they turned out. (Or at least the two that I've seen, the only two I'm likely ever to see.)

Anonymous said...

An Obi-Wan centric prequel trilogy was clearly never on the cards. Lucas has this Whole Big Thing about the good old Hero's Journey, and Anakin was the only candidate.

Essentially Lucas was trying to reinvent the Star Wars series as a six-episode "Story of Anakin Skywalker" rather than as a three-episode "Story of Luke Skywalker". I have a horrible feeling that if he made the originals today, they'd be from Vader's perspective as well...

Interestingly, he is also now denying that there were ever any plans to do three sequel movies to the original trilogy: "It was always the Darth Vader story" he says.

As Andrew observes, Lucas has clearly gone completely insane.

Anonymous said...

Any suggestions for places to find more interesting commentary on these films?

Parker

Andrew Rilstone said...

Assuming that you mean more interesting-commentary, as opposed to more-interesting commentary, then you might wish to suffer your way through my epic dissection of "Clones", which starts at http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/mask-of-god.htm

Anonymous said...

I'll leave my meaning ambiguous and let the reader decide.

Aslan.demon is no stranger to me. I've been working my way through it this past week or so. Especially enjoyed the synopsis of Wagner.

While additional sources of pieces like yours would be great, I am looking for a decent discussion board that can provide more of a dialog. The readers/posters here are terrific, but not active enough to satisfy my jones. IMDB.com is like looking for your wallet in a septic tank. At some point you realize you don't want your wallet that badly.

Parker

Anonymous said...

IMBD reminds me of this quote
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

Colin

Anonymous said...

OK, This one!
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston Churchill

Anonymous said...

You might want to check out Salon's TableTalk forums. They have a segment devoted to films. I haven't lurked there very much so I can't really testify to their quality, but what I've seen has been pretty decent. You can lurk for free but have to pay to participate.

For several years now, I've been a member of the book discussion site Readerville. As the name implies, it's mostly devoted to books, but there is a an active movies thread and we did discuss RotS a little. Registration is free (for now).

I also imagine you could find copious discussion on RotS on Slashdot.

-Abigail