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Star Wars Virgin Takes the Plunge
Entertainment Weekly is running a short account of one Star Wars virgin who recently sat down to watch all six Star Wars movies in their originally intended order while recording his thoughts. From the article: "So after watching the sun set on all six of the Star Wars (or sun rise, in my case), what do these movies mean to me? I have to be careful where I tread here, because people's love of these movies is passionate to say the least. (Personal note: My friends had a Star Wars-themed wedding.) The cynical and tired side of me wants to say that George wanted Episode I to be shown first because after watching 14 straight hours of Star Wars, my memories of young Anakin and Jar Jar are almost long forgotten. I've tossed them aside along with my package of caffeine pills and bottle of Coke."
Anyone who would watch 6 consecutive Star Wars movies should be considered a virgin by default.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
So what was worse, Star Wars or the Cremaster series?
Is there any other kind of Star Wars fan?
Star Wars? Virgin? Why, those are 3 words that have never before been seen anywhere near each other!
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
it was not some great intention or design. If he wanted to do 1 first, he would have.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The force is strong in this one...
isn't the Virgin Joke been done to death?
Gah, I am a SW fan, and it never stopped me from getting laid.
I've been having sex regularly since about 1980.
Of course, I don't have an attitude and somehow think I am great and all powerfull because I know more trivia about SW then the next fan...which I do, btw.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I thought we were talking about a literal man-virgin who was going to re-watch all 6 episodes of star wars and render a great opinion, based largely on his virginness.
Please, slashdot, make titles more descriptive >_
Ha ha this experiment reminds me of DOCTOR CLAYTON FORRESTER of TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000!
He would do experiments where he made a dude watch bad movies and record his thoughts and reactions! The dude got lonely so he made some robot pals with common household items such as a bowling pin, a gumball machine, tupperware parts and a hot glue gun! The dude excaped in a excape pod hidden in a box of hamdingers. But then he was replaced with another dude pretty quickly.
Ha ha my vword: merits
Ha ha it is IRONIC because Star Wars doesn't have any merits!!!!
HA HA!
Whoever said it was inteded to be watched I-VI and not IV-VI+I-III? I'm quite happy I grew up with IV-VI and later saw I-III as they came out.
Lucas is a fallen hero at best.
When can I get the unfudged up version of THX-1138?
An almost scene-for-scene rip off of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials.
Next 2 items on EW website: ranking of best/worst Bond girls.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This guy needed caffeine pills and a bottle of Coke to get through them? Time to toughen up. Sure, by the end of my Star Wars marathon I was about to gouge my eyes out, but the run time isn't more than 13 or 14 hours. That's hardly worth a snickers bar, much less caffeine pills and coke.
At least he's not an actual virgin.
what sig?
Star Wars Virgin Takes the Plunge
The headline made it sound like a Star Wars-loving virgin who had actually gotten laid was going to tell us what it was like to finally score.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
So, was his friend the bitch, or the butch?
...to the Dark Side!
I'm showing them to my young kids gradually in the order of 4, 5, flashback to 1, 2, 3, then 6.
and yet he didn't ever think to watch the films? As someone who saw episode 1 first(then 4, 5, 6) I was talked into it by my friends, and they didn't even have a star wars themed wedding.
I thought I was going to read an article about a Star Wars fan getting his cherry popped. This is a total let-down. I feel flaccid over the whole thing.
Namely, the Clone Wars series. I think they were one of the best parts of SW.
Seriously. That was the first thing that came to my mind. If only I could have been there to pause the movie, and explain "that's not really how it was".
Anyone who sees the movies "as George Lucas intended" is missing out.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
My wife and I are both Star Wars fans, and we joked about telling just one guest that our wedding would be Star Wars themed and asking him to come in costume. We're not that cruel, but I can't help but regret that our wedding album lacks a picture of a bunch of guys in formal wear standing around with a guy in a cheap Chewbacca costume.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I'll probably get modded for OT, but I thought this was a news worthy SW related story:
Star Wars: The Best of PC Deal
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/746/746254p1.html
November 15, 2006 - LucasArts announced a killer bundle of games called Star Wars: The Best of PC:
LucasArts today announced that, for the first time ever, five of the greatest Star Wars® games for the personal computer, plus a free 14-day trial of Star Wars Galaxies, will be packaged together in Star Wars: The Best of PC. This exciting new compilation will be released this month, and will be available only for the holiday 2006 season for a suggested price of $39.99.
Star Wars: The Best of PC features titles from some of the most popular videogame franchises ever released. Combined, the games have sold millions of copies worldwide and, for the first time, are available in one box. Included in Star Wars: The Best of PC are: Star Wars®: Empire at War(TM), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic®, Star Wars Battlefront(TM), Star Wars Jedi Knight® II: Jedi Outcast(TM), and Star Wars Republic Commando(TM). In addition, a 14-day trial of the popular online experience, Star Wars Galaxies®, is included in the package.
"Hundreds of hours of Star Wars gameplay, spanning many different genres, can be found in Star Wars: The Best of PC, making it the perfect holiday gift for any Star Wars fan, or any PC gamer," said Nancy MacIntyre, vice president of global sales and marketing for LucasArts. "Every kind of gameplay is available in The Best of PC, from fast-paced action, to tactical, real-time strategy, to engaging role-playing. It's all here, it's all PC, and it's all Star Wars."
I know I'm going to pick it up! Sweet deal and the last SW game I bought for Dark Forces, so it'll be a great way to spend a few hours during the holidays!
Regards,
Sporadic
These days, Star Wars seems to be more nerdy than Trek. 10 years ago, Trekkies were considered hopeless nerds, obsessed with detail and continuity, and who never get dates, and Star Wars was considered cool and retro. These days, Trekkies are still considered hopeless nerds, but in a much more affectionate way, whereas the Star Wars fans are now nerdier, even more obsessed with detail and continuity, and even less likely to get a date.
I recently watched all the Star Wars movies with my 7 year-old son. I wouldn't let him see Episode III in the theater, because I felt the violence was too intense and the intrigue too slow. It's a bit better at home, because we can skip parts or take a break as necessary. (My wife and I, being mature adults, went to see it at midnight when it opened. Irony intended.)
He'd seen some of the orginal trilogy before, but I don't think the story stuck with him. Anyway, we watched I-III, the Clone War Cartoons, and then IV-VI over about two weeks. When Anakin died in Return of the Jedi, he cried. It was a much different experience in chronological order.
-Dave
--Chag
Have to agree...about it being more interesting.
Mind you, I cannot agree with some of their best/worst Bond girls...
[UID-HeinzIntel]
So, is it pretty much accepted that the only way to watch Star Wars is in the order of 1-6? You know, the only logical way, as Lucas intended?
I argued this point for about 2 hours in a pub once, almost got kicked out. A stupid, stupid friend of ours was trying to get my girlfriend (a Star Wars virgin as well), to watch them in release order (4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3).
I nearly slit his throat, corrupting my girlfriend with wrong thinking like that. It still upsets me.
...these aren't my real teeth.
LOL. He nailed it.
Think back for a second if you *wouldn't* have seen Ep I, II, and III, and how much more untainted your view of Star Wars would be... imagine if you had only seen the first Matrix. I am now willing to wait to see movies to get an idea if they are worth my time. I have no desire to see them as soon as possible, I just don't see what the benefit of that is.
Same thing goes for games... I recently just went through another round of playing single-player mods for Half-Life. yes, the first one. Now if I want, I can afford a video card that can play HL2, and I am sure there are many mods out for it as well. And when I do play it, I am sure it will still be extremely fun!
I'll stop now before going further down this rant-hole. :)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
That visual effects don't automaticly add up to the movie. Looking at the first three movies (IV - VI) you'll see that with a minimum of resources Lucas managed to create the maximum experience. Computer generated effects maybe nice, they'll never be as good as the power of suggestion which has been used in movies throughout the centuries.
Even though its hard to compare the "new" and "old" movies I still think that when comparing the "Star Wars babes" Leia still takes the biscuit. Not only does she manage to present a gorgeous looking helpless, yet defiant, princess in 'Jedi' she also managed to give the character some depth even though thats not really what the movies were about. But still; when comparing the "love scene" in 'Sith' between Anakin and Padme and compare that with the dialog between Luke and Leia (or even Leia and Han) there really was a major difference in acting.
What!? Thanks for ruining it for me, jerk!
I have to sit through that uncomfortable kiss between Luke and Leia knowing that they are indeed brother and sister.
At this precise moment during the '97 special edition release of Star Wars, in a packed house (the Uptown Theater in Washington DC, 840 seats), some guy down in front yelled,
INNNN-CEST!!!!
The whole place cracked up. I wish I could say it was me, but alas, it wasn't.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
When Anakin died in Return of the Jedi, he cried. It was a much different experience in chronological order.
Not that I cried, but I felt like that was a pretty emotional scene regardless of the order you watched the movies in. I thought it was pretty clear by that time that Darth V was totally conflicted and deserved some sympathy.
but I actually enjoyed the commentary and to think about watching the movies from beginning to end, as originally intended, with little to no prejudice, just friends who have seen it, loved it and quoted it...
Still, it would be an awesome experience...
to blindly go where one has not gone before... to experience such a dramatic and exciting story, not from the point where you are saying, "There is no way in hell Darth Vader is Luke's father" to knowing it all along because of following the story line.. (And ya know, I thought I was the only one who hated Jar Jar)
I will admit, the cynic in me says that a lot of this was BS cuz he knew a lot of star wars fans would be reading it, but at least some of it could (and probably is real).
I enjoyed the article.. and I especially enjoyed the thought of seeing it beginning to end without ever seeing a single one before...
Perhaps that will be how my grandchildren will experience it (okay, so my son is 6 but.. hey, someday there may be grandchildren!!)
Remember when Windows were washed, mice were trapped and UNIX guarded the harem?
The original trilogy (IV-VI) would have been drastically ruined for me if I had seen the prequilogy(I-III) first. The biggest intreague to the original trilogy was the shrowd of mystery over the great darth vader, and the insestual love between Luke and Leia. However, at the end of Return of the Jedi, you finally see the humanity of darth and have one question on your mind, how did this man become the power behind the mask? it was not, what happens next, but rather, how did this happen? as a producer, Lucas knows how to draw people into a world, not just a story. he released the original trilogy prior to the prequilogy for two distinct reasons.
1) the trilogy is an epic in and of itself, it stands alone. had george finished his career in 1990, he still would have been considered one of the greatests writers/directors/producers of all time. had his name been only attached to the prequilogy, it would have not been accepted as forthwrite by the public.
2) the technolgy to have pod races and full on realistic battles against non-human enemies was not available in the 1980's.
To truely appreciate every aspect of the story, the order is IV-VI,I-III, Clone wars... There is little entertainment in having questions asked (who is darth vader, why is there this connection between luke and leia, who is obi-wan kanobi, who is this great yoda, why is he the only one left?) after their stories and answers have been told.
You're still a virgin until you've watched the "Pink 5" series. And "Chad Vader". As well as several other fan films. And become rather immersed in the Star Wars version of Wikipedia, Wookipedia.
einstein
http://anarchy-tv.com/
Best reply today! Kudos!
Let's do the time warp agaaaaaainnn!!!
Oh, wait...
Circumcision is child abuse.
I did that as soon as the Episode III DVD came out. And I have to say it was a really fun experience. The kid wasn't even a star wars fan if he needed caffeine to get through it. I would recommend it to any star wars fan in fact: get a group of like-minded friends together, with lots of snacks, and just sit through all 6 movies. It's really a good time. I watched from I-VI but I might do it again watching them IV-VI+I-III to see how the experience differs. I thought the experience was pretty decent watching I-VI, you got a feel that it's a full story from beginning to end, rather than being disjointed by the chronological releases. I did the same thing with the Star Trek movies too, which shows that SW and ST fans aren't mutually exclusive.
Emu Anyone?
Who cares? Star Trek TNG and Firefly are both better than Star Wars. Not that the original trilogy wasn't awesome.
honestly. i kid you not. i do not know why, either, but i suspect it has something to do with an untraceable form of meningitis.
it would take me a whole bottle of cocaine to get through all 6 movies as well.
Who says that's the order Lucas intended? Plus, there were supposed to be nine movies in all; a trilogy of trilogies. AFAIK, the order that the movies were released _was_ the intended order.
Dear God! Take another look at the credits. The best movies in the series are the ones where Lucas didn't write the screenplay.
They need to do a follow-up article where the reviewer watches the theatrical releases and compares them to the re-releases. I swear, that musical number they added in ROTJ makes my ears bleed.
...that the correct order to watch them, if you haven't seen them before, is IV, V, VI, I, II, III, IV, V, VI.
Whatever Lucas' intentions were, I, II and III were made to be shown to millions of people who had seen IV, V and VI. The first time you see the original trilogy, it's about Luke. The second time, it's about Anakin.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
...is that the author of TFA describes how "wondrous" SW is, while at the same time commenting on how bad the prequel scripts are/were.
I've noticed this paradox in just about every SW review I've ever read; the idea that while the general, overarching "vision," is wonderful, that Lucas' abilities with regards to some of the sub-disciplines associated with directing are somewhat less consistent.
Is it just me, or has that been a consistent message in reviews in other people's minds as well?
Star Wars virgin takes a plunger
Let me guess: You think Han shooting first makes him "badass", don't you? Greedo was awake, facing him, and armed. He also announced his intentions. Shooting Greedo at that point makes him about as badass as a chicken in a tin can that doesn't screech "EX-TER-MI-NATE!". The only change Greedo shooting first makes is establishing the blaster as a weapon that kills your accuracy(consistent with what we've already seen with Stormtroopers--at least SG-1 explains the crappiness of staff cannons by saying that they're not meant to be efficient anyways) and slightly decreasing Han's reaction time. If you want "badass", go see Mal Reynolds. In Serenity alone he shoots two unarmed men, three if you count the one about to be taken away by Reavers. He's not afraid of throwing a guy into his engines.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I was born after the original trilogy was finished, and managed to go without seeing the entire series until earlier this year. My friends were shocked to find out that I had never seen any of the movies.
No disrespect intended (I certainly love movies that others find pretty bad) but I didn't really think that they were all that great. I'm a bit of a movie buff, but I don't think I'm too pretentious to enjoy a nice good vs. evil epic story every once in a while. There was just so much preventing me from liking them. I already knew the major plot twists simply because the movies are referenced so much in pop culture. I didn't connect much with any of the characters. The effects were dated and they were made even worse by the stupid edits by Lucas. The dialogue was pretty corny. I did watch the original trilogy first, and I'm sure I share many others' opinions that the new trilogy was just awful.
It really gave me the same feeling as watching a movie you loved as a child only to discover that it is just mediocre. Certainly I lack the perspective of what the movies were like when they first came out, but I don't really understand why they hold such a special place in pop culture and in so many people's hearts. Perhaps someone can elaborate for me?
Randal: Which did you like better? "Jedi" or "The Empire Strikes Back"?
Dante: "Empire".
Randal: Blasphemy.
Dante: "Empire" had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All "Jedi" had was a bunch of Muppets.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
It's interesting that because slashdot tends to stay in a single age group, most of today's slashdot readers weren't alive when the first trilogy came out. The lightsaber swinging, cape wearing, watergate babies that grew up watching Starwars are now really old, carrying around babies, wearing suits to the office, and couldn't care less.
I remember sitting (painfully) through this one when someone at the front, obviously having had enough, shouted "How the hell did the humans lose the first time? These guys are IDIOTS"
Sci-fi fans are fantastic hecklers.
...I thought the story was about a Star Wars fan who finally got laid. Now THAT would be news.
You were marked down as flamebait, but I kinda suspect that this whole grand 9-movie epic notion was in fact totally untrue. In fact, I seem to recall reading that-- at the time-- Lucas was just hoping this first space-themed serial of his wouldn't lose money. All the "this is really a 9-part epic" stuff came after the movie was a hit.
Why am I so cynical? Maybe because a lot of other things he said about the Campbellian "mythology" and "grand vision" for star wars was a load of crap.
Incidentally, I was so heartbroken by the betrayal of Episode I, I have *still* not been able to bring myself to see II or III.
"story does matter" indeed.
This poor bastard watched Episodes 1-3 first, and still wanted to watch 4-6? Yikes. If I had never seen Episodes 4-6, I don't think I would've watched any of them after seeing Episode 1. More power to the guy. Always good to end on a high note, right?
Star Wars was more than just 6 movies for me. I was too young to watch Ep4 when it came out on the big screen, my dad bought it for me on Betamax, I was too young understand but I remember I was terrified of the sandpeople, and the jawas were creepy. My entire family loved it though and we even got the starwars christmas carols on cassette. I remember "what would you get a wookie for christmass..if he already owns a comb..?" was like a zen moment... ...what Im saying is, StarWars were landmarks of my life. I grew up with it, and I dont think watching the entire 6 movies in any order will give you the same ride that it gave me. Yes, I think the prequels were crappy, but I still enjoyed it... except all the scenes with jarjar in em.
To George: please dont try to fix it. dont change anything anymore, improving and cleaning up is good, but dont change, so what if Han shot first, he is a pirate isnt he?
anyway, thanks for letting me visit this universe you've created, the one Im living in tends to be to tedious sometimes.
Your post reminded me of some musings I've indulged in myself sometimes. Though I'm not at the stage in my life where I'm even considering having kids, I'd given some casual musings to how I would intriduce them to certain things, like Star Wars. After giving it much thought, I came up with what I would think is the ideal order for introducing someone to Star Wars.
Start with Episode IV, for many reasons. It was the first film released, thus the first taste anyone got of Star Wars. It's also the most self-contained. It has all the elements that make the rest of the films impressive, but its scope is tighter and much more limited, thus it's more impressive without seeing it in the context of the much more broad visions of the other films. (Plus, as after watching the entire saga one can claim Palpatine is the true arch villain of the entire series, it's strange that he is only briefly referenced once in dialogue early in the film and never actually appears, when viewed in context of his dramatic turn in Episode III.) Move on to Episode V, so you get the huge shocker about Vader, and end on the cliffhanger about Han. Remember, audiances had to wait years for the resolution of that cliffhanger in the original release cycle.
So after Episode V, with Han carted off by Boba, Yoda mentioning "another" hope, Luke smarting after getting his ass kicked by his sociopathic dad, and with the viewer begining to see some depth to the Vader character (and without having had a real introduction to the Emperor beyond a brief hologram) we let those elements hang and linger, and go back to the prequel saga. We see Anakin grow and his backstory fills in some of the depth to Vader's character we only started to see in Episode V. Not having seen Episode VI, the viewer doesn't immediately identify Senator/Chancellor Palpatine as the Emperor/Darth Sideus, and when the little robot obsetrician announces that Amidala has twins and one gets named Leia, that's a genuine surprise to the viewer. (On a side note, that one scene where they name the twins explicitly always struck me as very very stupid fro ma story point of view if they were actually intended to be viewed chronologically. The author of the article makes a great point about how, despite Lucas's claims, the films are actually less satisfying dramatically if watched in 'chronological' order.)
Now that the backstory is filled in for the viewer, and we can see the Emperor as the true puppetmaster and Darth Vader as a manipulated, confliced tool of evil, and we can understand and empathize with Luke's desire to reason with, rather than kill, Vader; we move on to Episode VI. So the cliffhanger regarding Han finally gets sorted out (phew! More of a relief of tension watching 3 films to see that, rather than immediately seeing it resolved, even though it's one of the dumbest rescue plans ever...) and Boba Fett, with whom we have added empathy after seeing his dad raise hell in Episode II (though the vengeful undertones present in the shot where he's seen lifting Jango's severed head/helmet are never really realized, unless you count him briefly fighting Luke as some kind of anti-Jedi vengeance) meets his comically undramatic end, we move to the final set-piece. We've seen Yoda introduced as the unassuming little green guy, then saw him in his heyday, now we see him die. We saw Obi Wan as kindly Uncle Ben, then young kickass Jedi / flawed mentor, now we see him offer final advice to Luke. And when Vader meets his end and redemption, it's the culmination of it all.
This I think gives a great balance to the two approaches to the trilogy. On the one hand, all the best plot twists are preserved for the viewer, and the most limited film is seen first. On the other hand, Episode VI is truely the culmination for the viewer, and despite all the prequels' flaws, Anakin showing up as a blue force ghost in Jedi rock and roll heaven is actually more satisfying after having seen them.
Yup...
There is one universal message in SW #4, #5, and #6. The message is that life is full of dangers, disappointments, and loss. Yet, somehow, in the end, you will find sanctuary by avoiding being suckered into evil doing. Stay true to all that is good, and the goodness shall be the force that ultimately triumphs. This path to the light is available to everyone.
Fast forward 20+ years and $1 billion.
Lucas destroys that egalitarian message in SW #1. He changes the story to say that you can triumph only if you are born with the right midi chlorians (e.g., mitochondria). Lucas, in one fell swoop, transforms egalitarianism into a snobby sort of class warfare.
SW #1 sucked. SW #2 sucked even worse. SW #3 was somewhat improved, but the acting was wooden.
Wow. What sort of parent is so over-protective that they won't let their kid watch all of Star Wars? Seriously, kids aren't that fragile unless you really isolate them from the world around them - in which case they do a ton of drugs and get 9 venereal diseases as soon as they turn 15.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
That's not a "fantastic" heckle. Here's a fantastic heckle...
If you recall, the bad dudes in Battlefield Earth wore these huge platform boots to make them look taller and more menacing. Watching the movie with my brother, the part came where Forrest Whitaker was pleading for his life, saying "please, I have a wife, I have a family..." and my brother adds "...I just took out a mortgage on a new pair of shoes..."
Now that is a heckle.Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I and a friend discussed this shortly after Ep. III came out. I suggested the following order: IV, V, I, II, III, VI. There's nothing that says you have to watch the trilogies together; in this order, the prequels form a sort of extended flashback that explains the Vader-Anakin connection. Watching them in this order, if you've never happened to see them, doesn't ruin the twist in V. The twist about the Luke and Leia is lost in IV, but only because it becomes a twist in III. In fact, several things in the prequel trilogy that would otherwise be expected become twists. The only thing that's really lost in this order is that we already know what the Emperor is capable of when we get to the final confrontation between Luke and Vader.
my pet machine
I want you to think about Episode III a minute.
Obiwan leaves his pupil to burn to death slowly. I thought that might disturb him. Does that really seem kooky to you?
-Dave
why the heck is some dumb kid(die)'s star wars experience slashdot news.
boring retarded shit...
Right. That's what happens in the story. In stories, sometimes stuff that isn't nice happens. That generally makes them more interesting.
Think about it this way: By skipping that scene, what are you teaching your kid? If you don't skip that scene, what are you teaching your kid? If he complains about being disturbed by the scene, what would you then have the opportunity to teach him?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
When I found out my girlfriend from back in my college days hadn't seen any of the movies (or even remembered if she had), I took it upon myself to break her in. She was so bored by Star Wars that it was comical to watch her reactions. To her, the movie was about a guy in a bad ape suit and blue-screened model airplanes. Some people just don't get sci-fi and there's not much point it expecting the franchise to have the same impact on them as it did you. Of course, she got her revenge by forcing me to sit through "Meet Joe Black" :(
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Foo girl just watched all 6 over a few nights. She had never seen any of these movies. The interesting thing was she knew small parts of the story and it all kinda became clear. She did think the acting and direction was overall weak. She did feel that ROTJ epi 6 was the best overall for acting pacing and style, she had little hatred for the Ewoks. In hindsite after the first 3 episodes being so childish she saw no problem with Ewoks. Overall she thought the movies where ok but failed to see the big deal.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Headline: Star Wars......Virgin..
/. and thats far too easy...must_resist. Phew that was close one
This is
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
Your uid seems a little low for someone who's apparently just learned about mitochondria in high school.
I agree. You can ignore Jar Jar as just another annoying character aimed at 4 year olds, like the (admittedly cuter) Ewoks. But midichlorians completely remove both the romance and, in a weird way, the plausibility from arguably *the* central element of the Star Wars universe.
I find it hard to believe that the same person wrote the screenplays in both cases. It's as if there was one writer who didn't understand what the other one was trying to do.
It's almost like Anakin becoming Vader. Lucas' success and power corrupted him, until finally all he was capable of was demonstrating that he was so powerful that he could screw over his fans and get away with it.
Truly, turned to the dark side he has.
Absolutely, then you can people tell to walk out after ep 5 and save them a lot frustration.
Nuff said
I think the best viewing order is 4, 5, 6, the Wikipedia entries on the first three. That way you learn all the important fasts without having to sit through The Little Menace.
Alternatively I recommend 4, 5, 6, Backstroke of the West. BotW arguably is more entertaining than vanilla Episode 3.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Of course the correct verb would be "to riff".
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I guess it's my duty to introduce them to Star Wars? And Lord of the Rings too.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Only six?
All StarWars fans know that the experience would not be complete without this
.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I got the feeling Lucas stole the midichlorians bit from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door, which had intelligent, psychic mitochondria. On the other hand, L'Engle's book didn't have the elitism of saying that some are born with more mitochondria than others.
At his blog he talks about watching all the Star Wars movies again, and wrote up an article for this week's Geek In Review at Suicide Girls called Han Shoots First
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
You haven't had any kids yet, but have thought about how you would introduce them to star wars already? Something tells me that you won't be "at the stage" in your life where you'll have kids for a while. You need a date first. =P
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
start wars virgin? quick, someone, what's the word for the opposite of any oxymoron, i have something really funny to say.
crap, i just gave it away, didnt i?
The original trilogy is a very black and white "good guys vs bad guys" story. There is no moral ambiguity. We have no question at any point who to root for, and the emotional satisfaction gained from the trilogy is that of the classic triumph of good over evil. You know, that Campbellian stuff Lucas is always going on about.
The prequels, however, are NOTHING BUT shades of grey. There aren't even any clear-cut good guys. Or where there might be, Lucas (intentionally?) screws it up so we can't be entirely sympathetic. Look at the Jedi in the prequels. They LITERALLY reside at the top of an ivory tower, intellectualizing the galaxy's troubles away. A student of Campbell could not be unaware of the symbolism of that. (this is, I believe, why everyone embraced the "Clone Wars" series so much. It was the only prequel material to treat the Jedi like we thought they SHOULD be treated.)
And these approaches are fundamentally incompatible. I can totally respect a decision to make a series of films about the fall of a Republic into fascism as contrasted with one good man's fall into evil. That's a DYNAMITE story. Great stuff. But it's NOT Star Wars. Not as anyone who saw the original trilogy would define it. It might be Babylon 5. It might be Farscape. But it's not Star Wars.
Having seen all three, I now know that from their very inception, the Prequels were *destined* to fail. There was no way to make them mesh with the original trilogy. Ever. And Lucas should have realized this.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I go to one or two scifi conventions a year and still notice lots of storm troopers and princess leahs (or her mother). Not as many trekies except for Klingons.
That was the most useless and undescriptive review I've read in a long time. Was he so worried that he might offend the other virgin masses who HAVE seen the new crap trilogy that he purposely said NOTHING?
Anyone who wanted the real experience of seeing these movies would have been smart enough to watch them IN ORDER OF RELEASE. That way they could appreciate what everyone else "saw" and "experienced". It wouldn't be hard, they played them ALL WEEKEND!
I watched the marathon (or rather, let it play in the background all weekend while I roamed the house) and all he had to do was START with Star Wars (I refuse to call it Ep VI, the new trilogy shouldn't even count).
The original triology (starting in '77) had story and special effects to BACK the story. The "new" ones are the other way around. A marketing wet dream. "Let's put this on screen". "Why?". "So we can sell it."
And no one, but NO one, should ever forgive Lucas for creating Jar Jar and casting Christianson...damed back street boy jedi! What the hell was he thinking? Could sitting on his pile of money he raped us all for have impared his judgement? Nah, it was just STUPID. As was the ENTIRE "new" triology.
The only good part about all this hype...IT'S OVER!
I didn't "just learn about them in high school"- but I suspect many of the people who comlain about the mitichlordians failed to. Some of the rest just prefer magic fantasy worlds instead of SCIENCE fiction- and the rest apparently didn't get the even more subtle destruction of a Katholikos-style religious order being the prime population control tactic of the Republic (Jedi Temple) and replaced with a secret-knowledge Gnostic order (Sith, Yoda as the Last Jedi).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
We tried to watch the latest Sith Star Wars movie last weekend but we couldnt get past the first 30 minutes or so. The movie is so stupid that it does not stand in its own logic. That or we have grown up.
Like the dudes in the elevator. One gets out the ceiling and the other one squarely forgets about him, ordering the elevator to go up while the pther might be in the shaft. And then when the guy comes back in the elevator the other one is surprised as if hes never seen him before.
We had a problem also with Indiana Jones. Looks like it was written wither for retards or very young people trying to let go of the Teletubbies.
If you are counting me as 2 or 3 teenagers, well, yes.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You either have no children and never will, OR, your poor children lie awake all night staring in terror at the ceiling, cringing at the slightest puff of air or faintest of sounds.
Congratulations, you're the worlds Best Parent without a doubt!
No Comment.
"Come to the dark side"
"No"
"Come to the dark side"
"No"
"Come to the dark side"
"Oh, all right."
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Oh please, how do midichlorians make it SCIENCE fiction? That's the exact problem with them: as someone else observed, it's just Star Trek style technobabble, with no real explanatory power. "Watch out Cap'n, the tetrions are going to blow a hole in the dilithium crystal!" That's not science fiction, it's the cheesiest of space opera. Removing midichlorians would only improve the story, and nothing would be lost.
I was about five when i saw the original and what impressed me was like i assigned one color to each movie, like IV -> Yellow (tatooine), V -> White (Hoth), VI -> Green (Endor). Now as i'm a grown up i can see this colors or other colors it the new ones, maybe except for III -> Red (Mustafar). Anyone else with this perception?
There's another possibility: My children aren't over-sensitized to fictional violence because I never made an overly big deal about it. Seriously, if your school-aged would lie awake in terror because of something they saw on TV - especially after you got the opportunity to point out to them that it isn't real - they're seriously maladjusted.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Oh please, how do midichlorians make it SCIENCE fiction?
The difference between fantasy and science fiction is having a scientific explaination (or pseudoscientific explaination) for phenomena shown. Hard Science fiction conforms to the One Big Lie rule- all physics and chemistry in the story is related to only one difference from the reality we know. Soft Science fiction such as Star Wars Ep I-III and Star Trek are a bit loser than that- but still provide some form of pseudo-scientific explaination for things. Pure Fantasy like Lord of The Rings, the use of the force in Star Wars Ep IV-VI, and Anderson's Xanth series are a releated, but separate, genre.
That's the exact problem with them: as someone else observed, it's just Star Trek style technobabble, with no real explanatory power.
In other words, it's Soft Science Fiction, no different than the technobabble in a Heinlien, or worse yet a Bradbury, novel.
"Watch out Cap'n, the tetrions are going to blow a hole in the dilithium crystal!"
Well, actually, that one is in keeping with certain alternative theories of CURRENT physics (if you read the author's guides provided by Paramount, dilithium crystals are just quartz with a fourth-dimensional protrusion on the crystaline structure, and tetrions are a well known theoretical particle indicated by the math in Einstien's E=MC^2, as particles that can go no slower than the speed of light and thus are traveling backwards in time). Just because you don't have the education required to understand the technobabble doesn't make the technobabble into nonsense- it just means you're too ignorant to understand it. It also doesn't make it any more real- but it does make it a different genre than pure fantasy.
That's not science fiction, it's the cheesiest of space opera.
Actually, space operas are a form of science fiction usually, there's nothing magical in their looser interpretation of science fiction. Unlike Fantasy, where the writer is effectively an omnipotent and omnipresent being who can drop in anything he likes.
Removing midichlorians would only improve the story, and nothing would be lost.
Like I said before- what would be lost would be the difference between a large galaxy-wide religion co-existing with science and a small, insular religion that shuns science. The Sith are fundamentalists, the Jedi start out as moderates, but with the fundamentalists killing off the moderates the moderates become more fundamentalist. Kind of like what happened with Christianity 500 years ago with the Council of Trent, or what is happening with Islam today (only a bit more extreme- there are 10 million fundamentalist Islamics out there, instead of just two, but the effect is the same).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
IV, I, V, II, III, VI.
Links the introductions together, preserves the lineage twist, and shows the contrast of Anakin back to back from one spectrum to the next.
You're apparently thinking of tachyons, which rather seems to indicate that you're the one who might not have the education to be having this discussion. In that case, I can understand why midichlorians might make sense to you. There are no tetrions in real-world physics, not even hypothesized ones.
I can't think of a Bradbury or Heinlein story that has quite so lame a device, and I've read quite a bit of both.
Your speculation about what would be lost along with midichlorians doesn't make much sense. The Force is an observable, repeatable phenomenon, unlike anything in any religion on Earth. Associating it with an organelle doesn't add anything to that. In real physics, we happily accept the concept of mass, even though we have little idea what "causes" it - we haven't yet demonstrated the existence of the Higgs boson, and it may not even exist, in which case we really don't understand mass.
The Force is an observable, repeatable phenomenon, unlike anything in any religion on Earth.
Apparently you have never heard of the shaolin- or the practice of tai-chi. There are quite a few religions that have such observable, repeatable phenomenon. And not understanding that authors simply change a few letters around in soft science fiction between the science and the pseudoscience, makes me think you would likely not care anyway- theology is beyond your capabilities.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My point is that the Force is a phenomenon whose existence can be demonstrated even to those who don't have "faith" in it, the classic example being Vader choking Motti without physically touching him. The fact that there's a demonstrable Force that can be used to do this is sufficient: it means that it's not simply the imagined artifact of a non-scientific religion. Adding midichlorians to the picture adds nothing, other than exposing the author for what he is:
Second-rate, lazy authors do this, sure. And that's the point. For Eps 1 through 3, Lucas was a second-rate, lazy author. If you disagree, please point me to the favorable critical reviews of that work.
Apparently critical thinking is beyond yours, so let's call it even.
My point is that the Force is a phenomenon whose existence can be demonstrated even to those who don't have "faith" in it, the classic example being Vader choking Motti without physically touching him. The fact that there's a demonstrable Force that can be used to do this is sufficient: it means that it's not simply the imagined artifact of a non-scientific religion.
Fine- so tell me, how do you scientifically, OBJECTIVELY, prove that a boy untrained in the force, as YOUNG Anakin was, had power in the force to those who could not feel it?
Adding midichlorians to the picture adds nothing, other than exposing the author for what he is
A Agustinian?
Second-rate, lazy authors do this, sure. And that's the point. For Eps 1 through 3, Lucas was a second-rate, lazy author. If you disagree, please point me to the favorable critical reviews of that work.
Now you're believing CRITICS? Point me to a favorable critical review of anything- those people make a living over panning works they could not duplicate.
Apparently critical thinking is beyond yours, so let's call it even.
Critical thinking is an oxymoron. Critics don't think, they merely criticize.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Too true, but then I always wanted to seem like the cool Star Wars enthusiast who could get laid. Then I make Star Wars posts on Slashdot...
Yup...
I'm amused to see that many of the gripes people here have with the prequels are the same as those voiced when another movie was released:
Overuse of unconvincing special effects, particularly the use of anthropomorphic puppets
Lame expositions
Unnecessary plot twists
Awkward romance scenes
Annoying characters that are just there for the kids
That was the initial reaction by a lot of people in 1980 when Empire Strikes Back was released. The general consensus has changed a bit since then, hasn't it?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You might want to look up what "critical thinking" means. Hint: it's not about critics.
Once you've learned what it means, try applying it to Star Wars, and we can have this discussion again. In the meantime, good luck with your studies. I'd suggest focusing on something a little more intellectually challenging than Star Wars, though, because that stuff'll rot your brain.
You are truly suggesting that we should desensitize our children to a point where a young child wouldn't even bat an eye at seeing someone's head blown off?
You're a real piece of work. Have fun raising those little psychopaths of yours.
I'd suggest you read up just a wee little bit on child psychology. I assure you that you are completely and utterly wrong. I wouldn't usually care, but it's not you this affects, it is your children. I truly feel for them.
Aside from the facts and psychology of the matter, in this day and age, WHY would you push children to 'grow up' while they are still children? Let them BE children while they can. If you don't, they're going to end up resenting and/or hating you later in life.
Just because your parents let you stay up watching rocky and terminator when you were 4 doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.
No Comment.
No, I'm suggesting that a good chunk of the sensitivity that children have to anything is learned, and that there's no really good reason to teach children to be over-sensitized to fictional violence. Every time you "protect" your child from some video content you're reinforcing that it's dangerous and can hurt them - which generally isn't true and warps their outlook for the rest of their lives.
Now, I'm not suggesting that a six-year-old be shown the movie Hannibal. They're not going to understand it, they're not going to understand any attempt to explain it, and they're going to be left with mental images - for no benifit - of a guy being disembowled and people eating human brains. When they're 12 or 14, they should definitely be allowed to see it, because at that point they'll be able to follow what's going on enough to make seeing it meaningful.
There's a difference between letting them be children (i.e. making sure they don't have to worry what they're eating and where they're sleeping) and explicitly training them that video content can be dangerous and they'll be hurt if they see stuff. The interesting thing about childhood is how fast children learn, and preventing them from having relatively harmless life experiences just reduces their chance of developing a solid understanding of the world they life in.
Very simply, overprotective parents result in children with less complete mental models of the universe. At the extreme, you end up with children who are completely incapable of coping with the world around them. In moderate cases, you end up with people who think that a leatherman is a dangerous weapon that you should need a license to carry. In lesser cases, you simply get people who are culturally retarded because their parents never let them watch South Park as teenagers. None of these are good things.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Your points are sound, but you've taken your example to the extreme just for the sake of argument. I think you know that though.
We're talking about a set of movies where there's really no blood or explicit gore, tonnes of fuzzy little critters, lots of fantasy...almost entirely appropriate for kids in a way that is for the most part not going to be confused with reality, even by younger children.
And then a child is burned alive.
It disturbed me when I saw it. Seeing someone burned alive is Disturbing. A child might deal with it fine, or a child might be disturbed by that forever. Sure, you can try to explain that it's in a fictional movie so there's nothing to worry about...but other than the setting, everything about that particular event is very real.
People SHOULD be disturbed by seeing something like that. Something is wrong with you if you aren't. Something is REALLY wrong if your child has been desensitized to things like this.
You're taking the overprotection argument WAY beyond what is sane and rational. Unfortunate because your arguments would hold merit if you weren't to undermine them so by coming off as a kook that thinks children SHOULD be exposed to violence of this level.
There will be a time, and it will come at a different age for all children, when the child will be ready to watch things like this and understand them in a rational way, without either being desensitized OR being deeply disturbed. Most 12 year olds will fall in this category. I'd be surprised to find a 6 year old that would fall in this category.
What did your parents do to you when you were a child to make you end up with such overboard views on this particular issue? Were you locked in a rubber room and only allowed to watch Sesame Street until you were 17 or something? I strongly suspect this conversation stems more from some personal history of yours than from the actual merits of the topic at hand.
No Comment.
Go watch Battlestar Galactica. Politics, ethics, religion, the big questions, it's all in there.
My parents never limited what I could read. They didn't intentionally expose me to violent / sexually aspected television / movies before I was 12 or so, but I never remember being told to leave the room because of some content on TV (like I see other parents do with their kids).
I owned a tabletop game store (sold Magic: The Gathering, D&D books, etc) for a couple of years. The number of teenage kids who came in who weren't allowed to watch R rated moves was ridiculous. One day we were holding a LAN party - playing UT2004 - and an 11-year-old kid commented that if his mother saw that we were playing a first person shooter he'd never be allowed to come back to the store.
Basically, from what I've seen, there is a much larger chance of hurting kids through overprotectiveness than underprotectiveness - at least in my area of the USA today - and therefore parents should try to err on the side of permissiveness.
Oh... and my leatherman comment, I'm serious. I got into a conversation with someone about dangerous weapons and they suggested that everyone should need a license for knives. I asked if that would apply to kitchen knives, and they said "Only when they're being carried outside of their packaging". When I asked about a leatherman tool, they were like "people who need something like that can get a license". I was like WTF?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.