Revenge of the Sith Easter Eggs

Ant writes "Via TheForce.Net, a StarWars.com article with a great list of Easter Eggs from the third prequel movie, Revenge of the Sith. There were many cameos and hidden images." From the article: " It's tiny, but visible enough to send a warm fuzzy through the hearts of original trilogy fans. In the establishing shot of the expansive Senate docking bays, there's a tiny Millennium Falcon easing into frame. And it's not just a non-descript Corellian freighter; it's on good authority -- namely George Lucas -- that this is the infamous hunk-of-junk before it came into the ownership of either Lando Calrissian or Han Solo."

Comments

Homage to ET?

[bbzzdd]

**Minor Spoiler**

Did anyone else feel the scene where Yoda leaves Kashyyyk was entirely reminiscent of the last scene in ET? Even Yoda's little pod looked a lot like ET's ship to me. I could even swear I heard the ET theme playing in the background.

C3PO

[Umbral Blot]

Does anyone know how C3P0 lost his right leg, which is silver in the original films instead of gold. I expected him to lose it in episode 3.

Re:huh?

[sveiki_neliels]

You know, I've never really understood that line... I thought a parsec was a distance. ~3.26 l.y. specifically. Wouldn't you measure the speed of a ship by the time it takes to go a set distance?

What's Wrong with New "Star Wars" Trilogy?

[reporter]

I do not understand the fixation with the Millenium Falcon and other trivial "Easter Eggs" in the "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith".

Other issues are more important. Although I generally consider the new movie to be excellent, I wish that Lucas would have un-did a major thematic flaw in the first 2 stories in this new trilogy. I am referring to the comment, in "Star Wars I", about the force being transferred from person to person via mitochondria (which is labeled "mito chlorians" by one of the characters.)

Note that in the original trilogy, episodes IV-VI of "Star Wars" (SW), Lucas alludes that anyone can be part of the force. Your participation depends solely on your commitment to open-mindedness and the good side of the force. With this force, you can transcend the difficulties that you currently face. That message is a wonderfully uplifting message for kids of past and present generations.

Then, in SW I, Lucas trashes that egalitarian view and says that Jedis are born, not created. Namely, you cannot be part of the good side of the force by your own choice. Jedis are some sort of elite, snobby group whose membership is determined by blood. Such a message, in my opinion, is atrocious and runs counter to the fundamental egalitarianism of Western society.

Was anyone bothered by this fundamental change in one of the themes of SW?

Re:What's Wrong with New "Star Wars" Trilogy?

[sg3000]

> Note that in the original trilogy, episodes IV-VI of "Star
> Wars" (SW), Lucas alludes that anyone can be part of the force.
> Your participation depends solely on your commitment to
> open- mindedness and the good side of the force. With this
> force, you can transcend the difficulties that you currently
> face. That message is a wonderfully uplifting message for kids
> of past and present generations.

I think this illustrates the problem with many fans of the original trilogy with regards the new movies. Lucas never said what you described above, and the concept that you describe is not one of his themes. You may have drawn this conclusion as a theme after watching Episodes IV-VI, and it may appeal to you, but it's not part of Lucas's story.

You have to think of Episodes I - VI as as a single movie, and due to the way Lucas made the movies, you walked into the middle of "the film". You drew some conclusions based on incomplete information, and unfortunately your conclusion was wrong.

It's kind of like if you walked into the last half of -- oh I don't know, let's say "Star Trek: First Contact" and you missed the whole part about Picard having been captured and made into a Borg in the first scene. Without this information, you had to create your own "beginning" to make sense of it. So maybe you drew a conclusion that Picard had initially created the Borg initially. Maybe you thought that the movie had a theme similar to Frankenstein, where it was about science dabbling into things that should be left alone. You're happy with the theme, but some years later, you get the opportunity to go back and see the first half of the movie. You see the events you missed, and that new information kills the theme you thought existed.

Episodes IV-VI are like that. Lucas themes existed throughout the movies, but they may not match whatever back story that some fans have created in their own minds once they see all six films. The issue is probably compounded by the fact that Star Wars sprouted a host of ancillary novels and other paraphernalia, to which Lucas does not feel constrained to tie his story.

The midichlorians are important for two reasons. First, they help with a theme of when the Republic degenerates into a dictatorship, science makes way for religion and superstition. In Episode I, it is clear that the Jedi understand the science behind The Force. For example, they actually could measure someone's potential related to the Force by their midichlorians count. By the time Episode IV came around, no one even knew the science behind the Force, and people dismissed it as a "hokey religion." Asimov did a similar theme with his Foundation series of stories.

Second the midichlorians provide an important explanation of why Darth Vader had lost much of his power and why Darth Sideous wanted Luke to be his replacement. Anakin had the highest midichlorian count of any Jedi, including Yoda, and he was destined to be the most powerful Jedi of all. However, when he lost his arms and legs, he lost nearly half his body mass and thus his midichlorian count fell by half. Thus he went from being more powerful than Darth Sideous to being maybe 80% as powerful. Still strong, but not exactly as powerful as Sideous would like. Thus, Sideous sought a replacement in Luke.

As for whether midichlorian counts are contrary to egalitarianism, I don't agree. If you want to be a fighter pilot, you have to have good eyesight. If you're born blind, you could learn to fly a plane (with the audio equivalent of instruments), but it would be surprisingly if that blind pilot flew anywhere nearly as well as the pilot with perfect vision. And perfect vision is often related to genetics. In Lucas's story, Force ability is related to genetics via midichlorians. This was foreshadowed in Episode VI, when Obi-Wan said that Luke and Leia had to be hidden because if the Emperor discovered Anakin had any offspring, they would be a threat to him. In other words, Anakin would pass his genetically high midichlorian count on to his children.

Re:What's Wrong with New "Star Wars" Trilogy?

[david.given]

...the force being transferred from person to person via mitochondria...

Uh, midichlorians. Nothing to do with mitochondria.

I saw it last night, in a mostly empty cinema. The main thing I had against the film was quite simply that it wasn't much good. Oh, it was pretty, but that's about all I can say for it --- the acting was awful (although Senator Palpatine was fun in a giggling, frothing-at-the-mouth kind of way and Obi-Wan was doing a workmanlike job); the pacing was rubbish (it kept jumping from scene to scene without actually letting anything resolve itself); the choreography was incoherent (the big space combat at the beginning of the film was practically unfollowable; the battle on Kashyyk was largely non-existant); and, most damning of all, it was clumsy.

For example: on (mumble), the volcano planet at the end. Anakin flies in and we get a nice panoramic shot of the facility. Hey, cool, I think, noticing the blue glow around the base of all the structures. Force shields! Fifteen seconds later, during a long, lingering pan past some more of these force shields, I realise that the only reason that Lucas is putting so much emphasis on them is because at some point they're going to fail and the facility is going to fall into the lava. I was right.

Another example: the whole business with Anakin and the Younglings (hey. Sounds like a 60s band name). Yeah, thinks Lucas. Lets show how eeeeevil Anakin has become by letting him slaughter a whole bunch of innocent children! Muhahaha! And just to ram it home, lets have some doe-eyed kid lisp an unconvincing line to tell us just how much they trust him! That's such blatant, clumsy emotional manipulation that it's almost worthy of Spielberg.

Meh. I'm not even going to go into the Fall of Anakin Skywalker. ("Anakin! Be evil!" "No." "Sure?" "Well... all right, then.")

Incidentally, I don't agree with you in what you're reading into Episodes 4-6. The main thing about these films is that they're not SF; they're epic fantasy wrapped up with science and spaceships. (Luke == the unknown prince who grew up on a farm; Leia == the feisty princess; Han == the rogue with a heart of gold; Darth Vader == the Black Knight; the Emperor (who is never referred to by name) == the evil sorceror...) The original Star Wars films have nothing to do with egalitarianism. They're set in a simpler world of fairy tales where kings and queens rule with absolute power, and where hard work means nothing and destiny means everything.

The Force is magic, plain and simple. It's not something learnt, it's innate. Most of the Force-sensitive people in the Empire have been killed; apart from Obi-Wan, Yoda and the Emperor, the only Force-sensitive people we meet are the Skywalker family --- and the fact that they're family is crucial to the plot. Han does not have it, and never learns it. He simply doesn't have the ability.

(Interestingly, it's canon that R2D2 has some Force sensitivity. Not a lot, but he's the only droid ever to feel the Force --- it's not supposed to be possible.)

Re:huh?

[EvanED]

It is. There are sort of two schools of thought about Han meant.

Croddy gives one explanation (the maneuverability test).

The other is that Han was just boasting nonsense deliberately to try to impress Luke and Obi-Wan to see if they were suckers. Had they been impressed, had would have charged them more.

Re:On the bright side

[Snaller]

Remember to watch "Serenity" later this yeah, there you'll have great acting from a cast of unknowns on a small budget.

Re:Senile Yoda

[Squid]

Can somebody explain why Yoda is serious in the Old Republic and playful and infantile / senile in the Empire?

He's trying to test Luke's patience (and Luke fails the test: "I cannot teach him, the boy has no patience.") After that, Yoda is dead serious the rest of the film, and only attempts to be funny once in Return of the Jedi ("when 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not").

And what did he do with his laser?

His lightsaber? I think I saw it get dropped during the battle with Palpatine in the big Senate room. I suppose Yoda could have used the Force to retrieve it, but he was probably in a hurry - or figured, in exile, he would not need it.

Besides, when Luke comes around looking for a "great warrior" the last thing Yoda would have wanted to do was break out the lightsaber and show Luke a few cool moves. Luke was stuck in a mindset of expecting Jedi to just be saber-wielding killing machines, something Yoda probably wanted to correct. Seeing Yoda using a lightsaber would only have convinced Luke that the lightsaber makes the Jedi, and he'd have ignored or misinterpreted all the lessons after that.

Re:What bothered me about Anakin's downfall

[sg3000]

> That's his plan all along. He tells Padme that they can rule the
> galaxy together, and when that falls through he tries to recruit
> Luke for ruling-the-galaxy duty. He just doesn't want to rule
> the galaxy alone.

Interesting.

I also find it fascinating that Anakin is never free.

He starts life off literally as a slave on Tatooine. Then he starts his Jedi training, and he's not free there either. Remember in Episode II when Padme asks him if he's even allowed to love? He's still a slave, but now he's a slave to the Jedi order, in a sense.

Then he joins the Sith to save Padme, and he's now a slave to the dark side. he tells Luke in Episode VI that it's too late for him, he must obey his master. Anakin's situation makes one reinterpret Leia's line in Episode IV, about Tarkin holding Vader's leash.

The only time Anakin is truly free is when he kills Sideous. And he dies minutes after that.

I guess it can go beyond that. If the Jedi are "slaves" to the Jedi order, and the Sith are "slaves" to the dark side, and he's a slave his whole life, then Anakin's line in Episode I is correct about his dream where he freed all the slaves.