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I can't remember if "When your father left, he didn't know your mother was pregnant" (or some semblance) was actually left in the movie version of RotJ, it's been a while since I've seen the movie. But I remember the rest of the quote comes from the novelization, which, while it may be based on an early draft of the script, isn't strictly canon (I hope saying that doesn't open up a can of worms here).

The novelizations of the original trilogy had extra scenes and dialog not in the movies, like more of Luke's training on Dagobah in ESB and Kenobi telling Luke in ANH that even a duck has to learn how to swim. I can't remember if Han's confrontation with Jabba in Mos Eisley was in the book. I haven't read it, but I heard the book for the Phantom Menace also had some extra scenes that weren't in the movie, like a dream Anakin had about he and Padme leading opposing armies into battle.

One thing I did learn from the novelizations was the Emperor's name was Palpatine.

what the hell? first of all, the quotation is from yoda, from star wars . second, the character from star trek is named mr. spock; dr. spock was a noted pediatrician. thirdly, following on from the first two points, the "stardate" you have there is presumably just made up and meaningless. again, i ask: what the hell?

now, i figure nobody could be that wrong; i figure you must already know all this. but if so, what's the point? is it supposed to be funny? is it just a troll, to get people like me wondering what's the matter with you? what's the point? what the hell?

That was Yoda, not Spock.

Please forgive me if you were trying for humor. It was lost on me. (I had a long day.)

Man, I'm sorry, but I think in order to have a competent educational system we have to asssume (gasp) kids don't want to be there, and would rather be doing something else and work from there. If you've ever gotten a kid to eat (and as a result like) something he at first refused to touch, you know it's possible to do.

An interesting thing I found recently is the George Lucas Educational Foundation (yes, that George Lucas). He started it because he wasn't happy with his school experience and so it's mission is to find innovative ways to help kids want to learn and teachers want to teach.

They have a magazine called Edutopia , which you can read online or subscribe to the print version. I think they have RSS feeds, too.

The cover article this month is about the sham that is the textbook publishing industry and offers some suggestions to make it better. It's an interesting read. (This article is actually how I found out about the foundation.)

Half. I think it may well be intended to be an allusion by Lucas; I don't think it's intended to be taken as an overly profound one. Ask me again after the movie comes out, when evidence will exist as to whether it's more than a literary Rorschach blot.

Why is 'grievous' capitalized in your quote?

Emphasis, nothing more. Slashdot is full of folk who need a big brick. =)

It's a quite common word.

Moderately common in the Bard's work, yes-- poetic forms like iambic pentameter tend to lend frequency to the use of certain words. However, while you are easily able to cite half a dozen uses, none are anywhere nigh as famous-- only "If lost, why then a grievous labour won" even approaches. Hamlet's "To be, or not to be", the bloody Scot's "Sleep" soliloquy, and "The quality of mercy" from The Merchant of Venice are the only ones that spring to mind of comparable stature. Of course, I'm not an English major, nor hardly as scholar of the Bard.

It's also worth noting that the Shakespeare play 'Julius Caesar' isn't 'the story of the fall of the republic and rise of the empire' at all.

You are correct, it's would be closer to say that the Fall of the Republic and Rise of the Empire is the setting and context, rather than substance, of the play. The substance is more of the nature of fate, ambition, and the conflicts between public and private morality. All of this also parallels on the one hand, and on the other I wasn't trying for an English paper.

I'd wouldn't want to try holding it up for a doctoral defense without a documented confession from GL, but I bet I could get a fun English paper out of it after all were I in that business-- and had I read Anthony and Cleopatra as well in the last decade. As a light allusion, this reference seems about the right literary height I'd expect from Lucas.

Hmmmm.... I'm going to be modded down as flamebait or a troll, but heres my opinion anyway.

Google is beginning to remind me of Anakin Skywalker, the cute and powerful little tyke whom everyone loves, and everyone thinks is great. But slowly, Anakin becomes a power hungry murdering black mass. For a while now, I've been hearing the Imperial March when I think of Google.

Anyway, my 0.02

As possibly the only offense against creativity more dire than naming a bad character "General Grievous" is naming one "Elan Sleazebaggano".

Here's the character profile of General Grievous.

I think the "Art of Revenge" caption at the top refers to Lucas exacting revenge on Star Wars fans.

You forgot the See Amidala's hotness part.

I, for one, welcome our beautiful Harvard-attending Queen- & Senator-playing overlord.

No... no.... they done FAR worse already in Episode II.

Crawler Text in case of /.ing (Score:2, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28, @11:33AM (#11504355)

Episode III
REVENGE OF THE SITH

War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by
the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are
heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.

In a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader,
General Grievous, has swept into the Republic
capital and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine,
leader of the Galactic Senate.

As the Separatist Droid Army attempts to flee
the besieged capital with their turgid hostage,
two Jedi Knights and a brave but clumsy Gungan
warrior lead a desperate mission to rescue the
captive Chancellor....

As the Separatist Droid Army attempts to flee
the besieged capital with their valuable hostage,
two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to rescue the
captive Chancellor....

From the Star Wars Databank:

"General Grievous was developed for Episode III as a powerful new villain on the side of the Confederacy. The initial instructions that Director George Lucas gave the Art Department were very open-ended: "a droid general." From that vague direction, the artists developed a lot of explorations, some purely mechanical, some not, for the look of General Grievous."

He can be seen here engaged in heated battle with Earthworm Jim.

From the Star Wars Databank:

"General Grievous was developed for Episode III as a powerful new villain on the side of the Confederacy. The initial instructions that Director George Lucas gave the Art Department were very open-ended: "a droid general." From that vague direction, the artists developed a lot of explorations, some purely mechanical, some not, for the look of General Grievous."

He can be seen here engaged in heated battle with Earthworm Jim.

I hate pointing this out, but....

That's actually based on Jabba's sail barge from Return of the Jedi. It looks like this

To be a sandcrawler, it would have to look a little something like this

No actually, I love pointing this out :)

I hate pointing this out, but....

That's actually based on Jabba's sail barge from Return of the Jedi. It looks like this

To be a sandcrawler, it would have to look a little something like this

No actually, I love pointing this out :)

"The Z-95 has changed throughout the years, eventually evolving into the T-65 Incom X-wing starfighter."

"The Z-95 has changed throughout the years, eventually evolving into the T-65 Incom X-wing starfighter."

1. Yes, that "robot thing" is General Grievous and he is the one that was in the Clone Wars cartoons.

2. Don't know what the details are yet. The name of the Emperor from ROTJ is Palpatine. I wouldn't be surprised if one is a clone of the other or vice versa.

Actually, they ARE Z-95s. If you read the description of the Z-95 on the Star Wars Databank http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/z95headh unter/eu.html you will see:

Later in the production run, the Z-95-AF4 (Assault Fighter 4) featured twin engine clusters that split into a total of four engine thrusters, much like the modern X-wing. These later Headhunters also had the capability of splitting the foils into attack position, widening the coverage area of the wing-mounted weapons.

I used to play loads of X-Wing and Tie Fighter, and so I'm also interested in seeing some of the game's fighters included in these movies :)

Now, which classification do those Star Destroyers fit into?

Z-95

Not sure what these are but I seem to recall hearing about a tri fighter somewhere.

"A twisted melding of flesh and metal, General Grievous' body is a deadly weapon forged by the cutting edge developers of the Confederacy. Within the hardened carapace beats the heart of a remorseless killer. Grievous hunted Jedi for sport and proudly displayed his victims' lightsabers around his belt as trophies of his conquests. His unorthodox fighting form and mechanical enhancements gave him an edge in close-quarters combat, and his strategic ingenuity and flawless cunning rendered him almost invincible against the Jedi."

"A twisted melding of flesh and metal, General Grievous' body is a deadly weapon forged by the cutting edge developers of the Confederacy. Within the hardened carapace beats the heart of a remorseless killer. Grievous hunted Jedi for sport and proudly displayed his victims' lightsabers around his belt as trophies of his conquests. His unorthodox fighting form and mechanical enhancements gave him an edge in close-quarters combat, and his strategic ingenuity and flawless cunning rendered him almost invincible against the Jedi."

See them on Star Wars's Web site. I also never heard of this as well.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/general grievous/

Now, that's a bad guy with an attitude !

I don't understand the fat Palpatine either. Maybe it'll be explained with midichorians or something.

As for Darth Maul's appearance, the character deliberately made himself up like that -- tattooing himself and adding horns -- to look scaaary: So complete was his devotion that he even endured the agony of having intricate Sith tattoos applied to his entire body.

This plot been done before, in fact apparently 1000 times before: Hero With A Thousand Faces

And I think someone has already done a science fiction version of it.

Sidenote (spoiler): Palpatine is Anakin's father. See first link above.

That's not mace. Here's Mace.

(Okay, but it was funny when I imagined Wil on the street reaching behind him as he's facing down an army of Hell's Angels grannies.
Bonus: when they get tired, he can ask them if they're feeling Windu'd, yet.)

Who does that make W?

I hate to waste one of my two "terrible Karma" posts on this...
(and I don't get the mod system, really.. I just went negative one day.. but I digress. Sorry).

Anyway, here is why you're wrong: The R2 Series droid could have any number/letter combination. R2-D2 was just an early model of the D Series, R2 Astromech droid. There concievably would have been R2-D3, R2-X1938401, R2-A511, etc, etc, ad infinitum. However, Artooayfive-eleven just doesn't roll off the tongue all that easily!!!!

Heck, even Obi-Wan had an R4 unit, so R2 was really an old hunk of junk.

But can you imagine how Star Wars would have been different if that R5 Unit was in possesion of a GOOD motivator?!?!

----

For the real truth, check out what really happened in the Mos Eisley Cantina with Han and Greedo.

:-)

I hate to waste one of my two "terrible Karma" posts on this...
(and I don't get the mod system, really.. I just went negative one day.. but I digress. Sorry).

Anyway, here is why you're wrong: The R2 Series droid could have any number/letter combination. R2-D2 was just an early model of the D Series, R2 Astromech droid. There concievably would have been R2-D3, R2-X1938401, R2-A511, etc, etc, ad infinitum. However, Artooayfive-eleven just doesn't roll off the tongue all that easily!!!!

Heck, even Obi-Wan had an R4 unit, so R2 was really an old hunk of junk.

But can you imagine how Star Wars would have been different if that R5 Unit was in possesion of a GOOD motivator?!?!

----

For the real truth, check out what really happened in the Mos Eisley Cantina with Han and Greedo.

:-)

I'm 17, and I'm asking for legos for christmas. That 300 dollar Star Destroyer model would be awesome santa! http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/2002/09/ne ws20020923.html

Maybe this famous father figure

or this popular strongman

Go go go!

http://www.starwars.com/hyperspace/member/episode- iii/release/trailer/teaser.html

(Hyperspace Required)

He may well be...but Chewbacca is from Kashyyk.

The only change made to ANH in the 80s was to add the "Episode IV" text to the opening crawl (references here and here). The rest of the movie was untouched until 1997.

The only change made to ANH in the 80s was to add the "Episode IV" text to the opening crawl (references here and here). The rest of the movie was untouched until 1997.

"AoTC was not shot digitally. It was shot on 35mm film,"

Really?

At the risk of revealing my geekness (though hardly a Jedi Master Geek), that's not the "creature that attacks Luke". It's a Tauntaun. The "creature that attacks Luke" is a Wampa Ice Creature.

At the risk of revealing my geekness (though hardly a Jedi Master Geek), that's not the "creature that attacks Luke". It's a Tauntaun. The "creature that attacks Luke" is a Wampa Ice Creature.

Feh. Jet pack indeed. Kids today...

In my day we had to climb out of the bloody Saarlak ourselves, then walk several kilometers across the desert, naked.

For years, Muftak had no knowledge of his heritage. Muftak's cocoon was accidentally loaded onto an Imperial freighter and deposited on Tatooine. He knew he was different and he never encountered a fellow Talz in his years growing up on the desert world.

Muftak grew up in the streets of Mos Eisley, becoming a friend to the regulars at Chalmun's cantina. His hulking size and incredible strength kept him alive in the often-violent port city, and his friendly disposition earned him many allies.

Muftak lived in the abandoned tunnels beneath Docking Bay 83 with fellow street urchin Kabe. Kabe became a ward of sorts to Muftak, as he felt compelled to watch over the little Chadra-Fan girl. Kabe also provided them with income, as her talents with thievery provided much-needed credits.

Muftak helped Kabe in her bold plan to rob Jabba the Hutt's Mos Eisley townhouse. That in turn led to doing a bit of espionage work for the Rebel Alliance, before Muftak and Kabe took off for Alzoc III to explore his past.

The two ventured to different worlds and experienced a number of adventures. Muftak, who was often regarded as simple on Tatooine, developed eloquence enough to tell his story in an autobiographical novel entitled Sands in the Winter.

Now THAT is depraved.

(Taken from http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/muftak/ ?id=eu)

http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/muftak/

While Captain Solo is known to make boastful claims that seem to defy the basic laws of space-time physics, in this particular case, an understanding of the mechanics of the Kessel Run illuminates this statistic.

The Kessel Run is a contest of speed and endurance for smugglers. Those who undertake it must deliver specified cargos (usually illicit in nature) to a series of divergently moving transport vessels. The smuggler must deliver the cargo before the transports wander out of the free trade lanes into restricted Imperial space.

Solo's record is impressive, since the transport vessels covered less than 12 parsecs of distance during his hurried run between them, a testament to his piloting and the speed of the Millennium Falcon.

There is more than one way to smuggle spice out of Kessel. According to one tale, Solo left out the middleman and ferried the stolen goods himself, skirting dangerously close to the Maw Cluster, a baffling congregation of black holes. In doing so, he shortened the distance for the run, achieving an impressive record of under 12 parsecs.

Using either methodology allows Solo's claim to stand, but there are many, including the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, who felt that the Corellian captain was just blowing hot air.

Here, beginning of the second paragraph. Says Episode II was the first.

That comic is funny and insightful.

Too bad one must 'bootleg' to get the original 1977/1980/1983 versions of the first 3 STAR WARS films on DVD (via DVD rips of the first laserdisc release of the films). :(

See this article for more information on how and what was used to do the remastering.

Article follows:

John Lowry: Restoring Films to the Galaxy
September 16, 2004

On September 21, when Star Wars fans insert A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on DVD for the first time, they are going to see picture quality no Star Wars audience has ever seen... including those at the first screening of the first day back in May 1977.
The growing popularity of films from all eras on DVD format has helped to illuminate a growing problem with some of the movie industry's greatest treasures -- they exist only on physical film stock, and that film stock is fragile and deteriorating rapidly.

When Lucasfilm began to prepare the trilogy for a digital release, they called upon John Lowry and Lowry Digital Images to step in to save the day. In the past four years, Lowry Digital has been hired to use their patented custom software processes to digitally clean and restore hundreds of films, including high-profile efforts on Snow White, Citizen Kane and last year's acclaimed Indiana Jones Trilogy DVD set.

At the Lowry Digital Images facility, over 600 Macintosh dual-processor G5 computers utilizing over 2400 gigabytes of RAM and 478 terabytes (over 478 million megabytes) of hard drive space processed each of the classic Star Wars films for over 30 break-neck days to create the stunning new versions fans will see in the Star Wars Trilogy DVD set.

"There are three key contributing factors to the degradation of film," Lowry explains. "Dirt, time and chemical damage due to conventional restoration processes."

When creating a duplicate of a scratched original, a wet-gate printer is commonly used. The master copy passes through a special fluid which temporarily fills any scratches or holes in the original. According to Lowry, this process is physically harsh and actually adds more grain and softens the images. Proper storage of the fragile film is also an industry issue. "Storage problems in the past have led to flicker, color damage and color flicker," says Lowry.

But the greatest challenge on the Star Wars trilogy was dirt damage. The more a film is used, the more dirt it accumulates. The unexpected success of A New Hope took a particular toll because each copy of the film ended up being played far more often than is usual, to the point where even Fox Studio's master originals began to wear out keeping up with demand.

"We have never seen anything quite this bad from a dirt perspective," says Lowry. "At some point the dirt becomes part of the picture and very, very hard to get rid of."

Over the years, Lowry Digital's computer algorithms have evolved from automating the removal of hundreds of pieces of dirt in a scene, to handling the 100,000 pieces of dirt in the Indiana Jones trilogy, to taking on the Star Wars trilogy which required automated and manual removal of up to a million pieces of dirt in scenes like R2-D2 and C-3PO's arrival on Tatooine in A New Hope.

The Star Wars restoration process began with a 10-bit RGB high-definition scan of the original negatives. This data was then used by a team at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic to work with George Lucas to do some significant color correction to the movies. This color-timed data was then transferred to Lowry Digital hard drives, to begin the massive clean-up effort.

Most effects in the original trilogy were achieved, at least in part, with the aid of optical printing -- a process in which one piece of film is passed through a printer multiple times, once for each effects element. With each optical effect layer, grain can be introduced and some of the original clarity reduced. "Every time there was a lightsaber in frame, it was exceedingly grainy due to opticals," Lowry recalls.

"Sometimes the scratches were very bad," says Lowry, "at one point in Return of the Jedi there was a literally

According to this (9/20/04 - 12:30 PM PDT), this (9/20/04 - 10:30 PM PDT), and TheForce.Net, there are audio issues in Star Wars Trilogy DVD set.

Lucasfilm denied with this statement, "We are always impressed with how closely fans listen to the many different sound mixes we have made for the Star Wars movies over the years. It is flattering to know that, indeed, the audience is listening. Consequently, each mix comes out differently and any changes that you hear on the all-new Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX tracks on the Star Wars Trilogy DVD set are deliberate creative decisions. We can confirm that there are no technical glitches as reported."

Here's pics for comparison ;-)
old one
new one

you might have to reload the tripod one a couple of times because of anti-hotlinking or whatever

That's PCs running Linux, I presume?

As seen in the Episode III "webdocs" on The Official Site http://www.starwars.com/episode-iii, the concept art and animatics departments are exclusively Mac (mainly PowerBooks). And good to see Photoshop creator and effects supremo John Knoll is still a Mac man!