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The Return of Chewbacca
BrunoC writes "It's official! Peter Mayhew is going to play everyone's favorite wookie once again: Chewbacca is returning in Episode III, currently in pre-production phase. Peter says (quoted from StarWars.com) "I'm delighted to return as Chewbacca, I think his re-appearance in this film is a fitting way to tie the whole saga together, especially for Wookiee fans." Woa! Just for the records: Artoo and C-3PO will be there too! You can read the official annoucement here, at StarWars.com."
I was excited before Episode I came out. Excited for probably the worst movie I've seen in the past 10 years (except for maybe D&D).
You remember what Scotty used to say, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me".
I should have known, because I was fooled a second time with Episode II.
I'm not even going to bother with Episode III. Lucas has so discraced the legacy of Star Wars I can't even watch the origonal trilogy anymore.
[offtopic rant star trek vs. star wars]
Star Trek would obviously win. All they have to do is beam the Jedi through the transporter and all the midichlorians get stuck in the Enterprise's biofilter and you've got Chief O'Brien saying "Ok, Darth, who's your daddy?"
[offtopic rant - star trek vs. star wars]
It's not a minor spoiler, either. I mean, I hardly obsess over this sort of thing, but given that Chewey is one of the most beloved characters in all of Star Wars, I really think this would have gone over better as a surprise.
c) Hey. Don't complain. Could have been Ewoks...
:-)
:-)
The Ewoks were supposed to be Wookies originally. But then some genius thought they would sell more dolls if they were all small and cute and annoying. So there you go, they just had to flip the name... ee-wok... wok-ee...
With a little bit of mental exercise you can ignore what your eyes see and imagine it's the planet of the Wookies all right.
Use the force, wook.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Lucas' new "vision."
Vision? There's a vision? I was pretty certain that crap like ep 1, 2, and prolly 3, COULDN'T possibly be planned. I was under the impression Lucas was making this shit up as he went along. And, IMHO, even though special effects have come a long way, most of what they're not so good yet they can make crap look good. I watched Empire the other day, and couldn't help but think how timeless it was, and how much better a movie it was than ep 1 & 2 rolled together.
Spread the RC luvin'
Hmm... this seems to me to be the second time they've used Chewbacca to "spice up" the series, so to speak. The first time was in the book Vector Prime, where Chewbacca became the first/only one of the surviving heroes from Episodes 4-6 to be killed off. Now, they're putting him in Episode III... *shrug*
I'd ask why, but I already know the answer. Money. *sigh* More and more I'm inclined to agree that Lucas SHOULD have allowed Spielberg to direct Episode III...
Just my $.02...
The implications for it are pretty chilling, if you really get down to think about it as David Brin did in this article. George Lucas seems to think that those 26 people are destined to control the fate of the galaxy, and all us peons, with our "free will", don't matter one whit. Just one more reason why Star Trek kicks the hell out of Star Wars.
One of the things about Epic stories is in how besides the cast-away hero model (Luke in Star Wars) and connection to the inside politics and power struggles you can have perfectly normal Joe Somebody make a drastic difference in the world (galaxy). By twisting and tying of these characters into one little package of former acquantances you weaken the power of the tale. Would you be for a LOTR prequel that showed a younger Gimli playing with a baby Aragorn? How about Legolas adventuring with Bilbo's great grandfather long ago? No, because that would weaken the story and the plot.
BTW, another childish coincidence could be for Star Trek : Enterprise to have a Lunar vacation result in the meeting of an Iowa farm couple, a Russian couple and a Vulcan child that seems to have an affinity for human girls. See where this is going? It is cheesy and demeaning of the story and of those who read/watch it.
"How does everyone keep running into eachother? This galaxy of Lucas' is pretty tiny. Is Wedge going to run around in Episode III and introduce himself to everyone? "
The theory I came up with is that the galaxy in Star Wars is VERY tiny, as "The Galaxy is on Orion's Belt" tiny. Not only does this explain why going from system to system is like going down to the store for a beer, it also explains how the Millineum Falcon can travel around various star systems with it's light-speed drive down.
The movies make a HELL of a lot more sense with this understanding.
"Derp de derp."
Are we to assume that he invented the rest of the stuff in Watto's shop too?
Anyway... back to the topic at hand... I hope the movie deals with how Chewie and Han became partners, and that Chewie has to learn how to put together protocol droids so he'll know how to fix 3PO later. BUT WAIT... NO... that would mean...
=================== Pretty? Feh. Shiny? Feh. A Jedi craves not these things.
And you thought you fetish was fucked up.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
1. Tatooine is important because the story arc's central overall character(s), Anakin / Vader, comes from there, and hence has many connections there. Anakin's mom Shmi was left there when Qui-Gon freed Anakin and took him away to be trained as a Jedi; some moisture farmer (Cliegg Lars) with a son from some prior relationship (Owen) frees her from Watto and marries her, thus joining the Lars and Skywalker families; when the events of Episode III occur and Anakin becomes Vader, Anakin's kids are taken away and one of them (Luke) is placed in the care of his only relatives (Owen and Beru Lars, his aunt and uncle via Shmi's marriage to Cliegg). Obi-Wan goes into hiding on Tatooine, presumably to keep an eye on promising young Force-sensitive Luke; Leia is separated from her brother to keep their enemies from easily getting both of them at the same time, placed in the care of a respected leader on Alderaan who'll ensure that she's brought up to become the kind of person who'll oppose the disturbing political events of the times (the rise of the Empire). Years later, she's active in the rebellion, and seeks Obi-Wan's help, which takes her ship to Tatooine. She can't get to Obi-Wan, but Artoo and Threepio can; they and Luke seek passage off the planet, hiring a smuggler hanging out in a cantina. Said smuggler has connections to a crime boss on the planet, which is what eventually leads to everybody going back to Tatooine one last time to rescue Han from former employer Jabba. All this proceeds naturally enough; the only really remarkable coincidences here are that a) the sandcrawler which picked up Artoo and Threepio wound up selling them to the family connected to the person they were trying to see, instead of some other random moisture farmers, and b) the crime boss who becomes involved in this story later on happened to preside over the race in which Anakin won his freedom. Since even this second coincidence isn't a big deal (both because Jabba, being one of the most powerful and well-connected people on Tatooine, might naturally be asked to lend his presence to various local civic events there, and because his presence at the race doesn't really affect the story one way or another anyway), it all boils down to Artoo and Threepio being lucky enough to fall into the right hands - and since the resourceful Artoo could reasonably be expected to succeed at his mission to find Obi-Wan even if he'd been sold to someone else, I can buy it.
2. See above re: Threepio's return to Tatooine; as the property of Anakin, Threepio naturally winds up in the service of the Naboo Royal Family when Anakin marries into it, which (presumably) leads to his service to that of Alderaan when one of Amidala's children, Leia, is placed in that family's care.
The idea here is that Artoo, Threepio, Anakin / Vader, Amidala, Leia, Obi-Wan, Shmi, Owen, Beru, et al. are already connected to one another in some way by the end of Episode III and/or the beginning of Episode IV. Coincidence only gets really heavy when it starts having other characters with whom they deal with in the prequels, like Jango and Boba Fett, wind up having their own series of connections that branch off in some other direction but then lead back to reconnect them with this core group of heroes a couple decades later. Chewbacca showing up in Episode III is more of that, and I think it's probably too much, but all the stuff concerning Anakin & Padmé, their children, Obi-Wan, the droids, and Tatooine is reasonable.
The basic plotting is good; the real problem is that Lucas's dialogue and humor are increasingly awful, and he doesn't direct actors well. He also adds to the prequels' shortcomings by tossing in minor narrative elements that revise or add-on to the existing lore in ways that seem to fly in the face of what went before (midi-chlorians, Artoo's sudden ability to fly, etc.) and aren't even needed for the storylines.
But presumably they wanted to *hide* Darth Vader's offspring from him... so why would they "hide" Luke right where Darth would expect to find him? On his home planet, with his relatives (by marriage)?
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't