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The Secret History of Star Wars
lennier writes "How exactly did George Lucas develop the script for the first Star Wars? Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good? Did he really have a masterplan for six, nine, or even twelve episodes, and why did the official Lucasfilm position keep changing? And just how big an influence were the films of Akira Kurosawa on the whole saga? Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition is a free, thoroughly unauthorized, e-book that brings together a huge amount of literary detective work to sort fact from legend and reveal how the story really evolved. Download it or have your nerd credentials revoked."
"Download it or have your nerd credentials revoked."
I like programming in my spare time, when I'm not programming at work. But I hate Star Wars. I guess I'm just not nerdy enough.
I will have to hand write some PostScript to print my own nerd credentials and post them on my cubical wall.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's just a movie.
Way... too... long.
I'm sure there's some interesting stuff buried in there, but damn... 533 pages?
I couldn't stand episodes 1, 2 and 3, and I sure as shit don't want to read about how / why George Lucas decided to make them suck so bad. Viewing them once apiece was painful enough.
I saw the original Star Wars at the theater when I was six. I saw the next two, Empire and Return, on the big screen when they appeared as well. Seeing these majestic space operas as a child had a profound impact on me. These movies set the stage, along with other contemporary "childrens" novels and sci-fi of the late-70s/early 80's, of a life-long love of science fiction and fantasy fictions. More importantly, this gestalt provided a novel framework for a belief in a limitless future, a need to challenge authority and an implicit belief in the use of technology to create a better future. (Not to sound too grandiose.)
/Can't say the same for the prequels though...
Seeing Star Wars as a child has had a lifelong effect upon me and my worldview.
"The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition is a free"...
Finally, the long awaited 3rd edition. The first two just weren't doing it anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress
and you have the two bumbling fools, the noble princess, and the hero trekking across hostile territory, doing various good deeds and engaging in various skirmishes. the scope of the movie and the plot are completely different, but you can immediately understand why this movie was the jumping off point for the picaresque characters of C3PO and R2D2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picaresque_novel
C3PO and R2D2, using their point of view, is really the most risky and rewarding aspect of star wars. now, i don't think lucas would ever admit it, but i think he was trying to conjure up the same sort of picaresque magic twice... with the character jar jar binks
except that character was a terrible failure, while C3PO and R2D2 are universally loved. i don't claim to understand why one worked and the other didn't, but clearly jar jar falls flat as a humours bumbling low life antidote to the otherwise deadly serious proceedings, while the two robots rocked in the same sort of role
which brings me to a final thought: movie magic isn't easy. i think a lot of fanboys need to cut lucas a break. he gave us star wars. did you forget that? ok, he fumbled with the final 3 movies. but holding him in scorn for that, while completely forgetting the first 3, is totally unfair of you. if, in your mind, you can't rise above your own frustrated expectations of the latter 3 movies to still cherish the guy for the first 3, you really are taking star wars way too seriously
oops
did i just suggest someone might take star wars too seriously? yikes, gotta run and hide now, i just awoke the rabid partisan fanboy beasts...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I enjoyed the original and Empire (though Empire felt like it had been cut short). I didn't think much of Ewok-ladden strikes back. The prequels got progressively worse. I was downright disappointed at how lousy the story was given that with the potential it had it should have been powerful and epic. I've even read a couple of novels.
What I don't get is the obsession with how ti was made. Clearly for the first couple of films the right people were in the right place at the right time. I don't think it was all Lucas by any stretch of the imagination and it's only those 2 films that I'd call good at all, so this idea of Lucas as genius with grand plans and grand vision just doesn't appeal to me. In fact unless you're in the movie business I fail to see how it can hold more than a passing interest. I'd rather watch paint dry than read this ebook cover to cover. I just don't care. I accept that Lucas is a hack who had a miracle year (or two).
Likewise with the actors. I don't mind Harrison Ford (even if he's getting worse not better as he gets older...Airforce One? What was he thinking!?) but Mark Hammil and Carrie Fisher weren't exactly any good.
As for continuity? Please! One minute Luke and Leia are about to get hot and heavy, and the next we're told they're brother and sister. Vader as Luke's father was unlikely though plausible, that is until the pathetic explanation that was Episode 3.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
why on earth jar-jar was allowed more than 3 seconds of screen time?
No, I still haven't gotten over the wanton abuse of my childhood memories.
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good?
... shall I go on? you know them.
because those prequels are actually sequels. You know, they were actually made *after* the originals. Like all sequels, they are attempts to milk the cash cow created by the original franchise, i.e. ensure money will be made on the sequels just by vertue of the movie's name. And in many cases, the moviemaker thinks the name alone is enough, and forgets to make the sequel original or exciting because he has cold feets he didn't have when he made the first incarnation.
Examples of good movies with bad sequels:
Matrix
Rambo
Rocky
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Don't confuse OUT OF PRINT with secrets... ehehhe
its all in a book series, but we read them all to death and nobody will reprint them
"Shaped the course of history"? Gimme a break. It IS just a movie. And yes, it has great cultural significance. But at the end of the day, has it influenced foreign policy? Have real life people been killed because of it? Are people willing to give their life, or alter their concept of what life is about in the most sacred way, because of it? Have nations altered their behavior because of it?
Star Wars is just a movie and a successful business franchise. Influential, yes, and I'm sure some souls out there fit under some category I've mentioned above, but to say that it has "shaped the course of human history" is a bit over the top.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
This is a huge compilation of information here. There are many quality books that would run you $10-50 in the Star Wars world that don't even touch the depth of this content. Congrats to Michael Kaminski offering up his time, bandwidth, and his love of the series for other fans to enjoy with no cost. I will definitely take the time to read through this, even though being a SW nut myself, I probably know over half of it. If only I could print it out for toilet reading... I don't think I have that much paper laying around. :)
Insert something witty here...
Joseph Campbell has drawn similarities among the mythic images from diverse cultures - a quest with a lot at stake, adventures during the quest, a final showdown between good and evil, etc...and he was consulted when the seeds of the original StarWars trilogy were being planted by Lucas.
I never can contuse my mind to, for example, compare these films as Star Wars 1, Stars Wars prequel 1, etc. When my gf starts rolling her eyes, trying to construct this marketroid/Lucas neologism I stop her, saying: You mean Star Wars 1, and Star Wars 6? When did nerds, or the plain rebellious start being spoon fed, led by the nose on something so plainly crass.
Unlike those plastic action figures that emerged to commercialize the world forever, 'Star Wars' was an organically fallible piece much more in common with 'American Graffiti' than the blockbuster c--- that has dominated the last 30 years. I was a kid in the seats in 1977 and what captured my heart at the time was the gritty broken chaotic mess of the first film. Droids break, spaceships fragment, bizzare languages permeate every scene, plans go spectacularly awry. Even a kid could see that this was life. Spielberg used to capture this spirit in those wonderful scenes where everybody is talking at once; dialog that doesn't translate to the international export market. We all know, the true sequel of Star Wars is 'Firefly.' ---537
By the time the prequels were made, Lucas could afford good Crack and Weed.
(How else does one explain Jar Jar? "Meesa so high...")
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
But was anyone able to get past the introduction without the whole thing starting to narrate in ones head with the Simpson's Comic Book guy voice?
Ice Cream has no bones.
I think Star Wars is only dorky if you dress up for it. But perhaps that is my unfair prejudice against cosplay. To the "don't knock it until you've tried it crowd" -- no thanks!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Considering my raw hatred of D&D, role playing, cosplay, and various other nerd behaviors, I burned by nerd card around the time I decided that academic performance was for suckers and was also eating into my coding time.
As long as I keep my geek card with its C endorsement for coding, I could care less about Star Wars. Although, Lando is still awesome -- he has a cloud city! How fucking cool is that?
Let me know when you have a secret history of Firefly. I might be able to feign interest in that, what with the significantly hotter chicks in it.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I found Episode III very reminiscent of Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (by the same Japanese director that made The Hidden Fortress.)
Both movies feature a chivalrous order that has outlived its time, and is defeated by opponents more willing to apply ruthless methods. In Seven Samurai, none of the Samurai die by the sword -- all are shot. In Revenge of the Sith, the same happens to the Jedi: they are defeated not by the Sith as dark counterparts of the Jedi, but are shot down mercilessly.
Given the strong influence Kurosawa had on Lucus, I think one would find many similar themes echoed throughout all six episodes of Star Wars.
C3PO has a high, whiny, irritating voice. He appears to be based on an incredibly offensive stereotype. He looks goofy at best. He's clumsy -- he may try to help, but if he actually does any good, it's only because of pure dumb luck.
I guess the problem is they didn't pair him up with a mute midget... or was that Anakin? No, I suppose he talked too much.
It was because he never had a moment of dignity. He was the comic relief in every one of his scenes. Even in battle he was just a clutz, even as he was being promoted and rewarded.
If you are going to make a cutesy character work, you have to give them a kick-arse moment at some point.
Jedi is the majority religion of entire solarsystem ;)
©God
I think the original, first Star Wars movie, shown in 1977, was the longest running movie in theater history.
In the city where I lived, at the largest theater in town, with 1100 seats, this movie had every showtime sold out for 4 months, and lasted for more than a year (56 weeks), at the same theater.
I have never heard of any other film doing that before, or since.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
I thought this was covered in Geroge Lucas in Love.
... is whot bwings os tugevza tsuzay.
The first ten pages are just repetetive self-advertising waffle. I gave up at that point: life's too short to read crap.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
"The Secret History of Web Design"
That site looks like shite.
I haven't read the whole thing. But so far it doesn't really seem to have many qualities of a real 'book'. It feels more like a really long usenet post that was broken up into chapters and then converted into PDF. Reading the foreword and introduction makes me realize what professional editors get paid for. Obviously no editing was performed on this 'book' because it's far too verbose and also has simple grammatical errors that any editor or proofreader would have found.
Not to say that it's not worth reading, or that the author shouldn't be commended for his efforts. I'm just saying that it doesn't quite live up to the hype of being called a 'book', which makes it sound like quite a bit more than it really is.
It's not a book, it's a usenet post (or 'blog post' for the youngsters around here) in book form.
George Lucas in love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfthCXJnTyE
We'll probably never know that. It's influence wasn't just in its moral precepts (which may or may not have actually have had any influence on the people that mattered), or stuff like the Crusades.
But without the Franks converting to Christianity, for example, we wouldn't have had the Holy Roman Empire. (Which wasn't holy, roman, nor had more than a forgery as a claim to call itself an empire, but there we go.) Nor stuff like the investiture controversy later, which did decentralize that big of a chunk of Europe. We wouldn't have had the Byzantine conflicts with Armenia or with the Syriac churches, which conflict ultimately put it border to border with the Seljuk Turks and thus the disastrous war at Manzikert against Alp Arslan. (The resulting internal conflict is widely recognized as the beginning of the end for the Byzantines.) The Armenians knew how to deal with the turkish troops, Byzantium had no clue. Etc, etc, etc.
It might have also had more subtle implications for the Roman empire, and its eventual demise, as it was an anti-Empire religion of the oppressed. The crucifix as a symbol wasn't just about Christ. It was a symbol of roman oppression, recognizable by everyone. It was an execution reserved only for non-citizens in occupied territories. Eventually the Empire _had_ to adopt this new religion, or be weakened from within by it. There also was at least an internal war in the Roman Empire, east against west, based on it.
The changes and influences are too many and too far reaching, to make that kind of pronouncement.
Would history have been better without the HRE and everything? We don't really know. That one religion pretty much sent the whole history of a continent, down an entirely different trouser leg of history. So different, that we can't even guess what was ahead down the other trouser leg.
Would we have still had slavery, for example, if the Roman empire continued as it was? The transition to feudalism was largely caused by the collapse of trade, order, and the centralized state, as Rome was no longer able to control its provinces. Even in Italy itself, Justinian's disastrous war of reconquest and the plague it brought, ensured the almost total collapse and made it easy prey for a tribe as primitive as the Lombards.
Was Christianity the worst religion possible, in the long run?
Well, Confucianism in China, for example, may not have had an Inquisition, but ensured almost total stagnation past a point. The imperial examination ensured that everyone who even hoped to have any official or teaching job at any level, had to learn by heart the same norms and precepts. There wasn't much room for trying anything new, and even conquerors like the Yuan dynasty (Mongolians) or Qing dynasty (Manchu), found it easier to just continue the system than try to change it. Sometimes with disastrous results, like the actual technology and military regression during the Qing dynasty.
I'll stick to China as an example for now, just because I can't be arsed to write a tome about every single zone and religion on Earth. Some would maybe make even better examples, but, eh, bear with me.
By contrast, Christianity never had that tight a grip on everything, and had to find some way to accomodate different scientific approaches. E.g., before it could pick on Galileo in the name of the Aristotelian system, it had to accept the Aristotelian system and let universities teach it in the first place, mostly because it couldn't do much about it.
Or we look at the Crusades and other internal wars, and think "OMG, look at all the carnage that Christianity caused." Well, China had for example the Three Kingdoms period, where internal warfare, where they lost something like 70% of the population in war. Not estimate, but actual difference between census numbers. And again, 70% of the total population, _not_ of the army. Mind you, some as a result of famines and other effec
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
For finding various things to nit-pick over, while not addressing the original purpose of the article.
...)
(I know, I do it too
*This is not the post you are willing to moderate*
(slowly waves hand)
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
According the the "what's changed" page relative to the third edition, the update was sometime last year. This is hardly news, other than the poster having newly discovered it.
I don't like the style of the site and the way the site is written, which isn't a great advert for downloading. But just maybe the level of information is good, and it could be edited by someone who is less obsessed with Star Wars and more obsessed with the English language.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Lucas was like Roddenberry, great ideas, but they need to let other more talented writers and such do the polishing of the raw stones into gems. When Gene was heavily involved in the early years of TNG, it was /terrible/, and I say this as a die hard trekkie. When his role was reduced, the show began to shine. all the facets of what Trek could be were able to be explored. And when untalented people got ahold of the franchise (most of Voyager, the first three seasons of Enterprise) it went into the toilet (Season 4 of ENT was genius, Manny Coto is one smart cookie). Same with Star Wars. I'm not a huge SW guy, but I liked the first three, and saw huge problems with the prequel set that a good editor and writer could have fixed very quickly.
Story wise, Episode 1 needed cut down to about 15 minutes of intro for Episode 2, which is now Episode 1. This is a common problem with movies and TV shows, in that too many writers think we need to be introed to our characters at the dawn of time. It's much better when we join the story already at a decent pace and get the background filled in along the way. This lets the viewer/reader get interested in what's happening without having to spend time in school learning about the history of our characters first. If we wanted school, we'd read a textbook. Also, kill the midichlorian crap, excise JarJar Binks. Midichlorians stole the wonder from The force and JarJar wasn't taht great a merchandising tool anyway, as I STILL see Ep1 crap at the local Big Lots.
Episode 3 is now Episode 2, except for the last 15 minutes or so. This should end when Kenobi leaves Whinykin, er, Anakin, truncated on the volcano. Ep3 picks up there and we spend the next 2 hours seeing the creation of Darth Vader and how he builds the Empire and WHY. Only knowing that can we truly appreciate him turning on the emperor in Ep6, and what it means for him to look on his son with is own eyes.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
BAH! World War II with spaceships
What?
The original story was massively influenced by Joseph Campbell's book Hero with a Thousand Faces, which explains cross-cultural mythic structures that all stories share. Star Wars (IV) is an almost perfect example of exploiting these themes. And it created an perfect modern myth. So what happened? Lucas resented the interference of the studios in the creative process. As his power grew, he was able to push the external editorial forces away and take sole command of the property. This explains why the films became increasingly weak. Because everyone, even a genius, needs editing.
I have a theory I call the Marx Brothers Syndrome and it works like this:
The Marx Brothers are old and boring today. A person having never seen them before will sit down in front of one of their classics and know all the jokes and nuances and just walk away.
If they were so great, why is this so?
It is because the were great, one of the greatest! Everyone in the business learned their tricks, copied their jokes, and expanded and improved on their dialog and themes. Now the Marx Brothers look diminished in comparison to what has developed after.
The same is true for Star Wars. It was great when it came out. It covered new ground. It did things that people had never seen before. In a lot of ways Star Wars was "dreadful." Today, I watch it and think Luke is such a whiner and C3PO shouldn't be an uptight english comic book character.
I think the episodes 1,2, and 3 suffered from the Marx Brothers Syndrome because the story, dialog, and "film making" of "Star Wars" has always been fairly flawed and needs to show us something new to allow us to overlook the weaknesses. Unfortunately, the cutting edge for special effects is irrelevant. Once you crossed over the "miniatures and props methodology" to CGI, improvements are now only incremental.
Star Wars fails because we already know it. We've seen it before in a thousand different ways since 1977. We already know the special effects. We have seen enough space opera, complete with bad dialog and acting, that there is almost nothing that would surprise us.
IMHO, Star Wars was ground breaking, but the space opera is as depleted a genre as the american western.
This made me Laugh Out Loud. Today's mods should LURK MOAR.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Who gives a fuck anyway?
It was a simple tale told well.
The opening credits were a novel and gripping way of getting people into the story. Still uncommon nowadays in movies, though voice-overs are used a bit now.
The scene with the ship being attacked and then the apparently ETERNAL rollover of the Star Destroyer had a massive impact because it gave you a huge immediate impact on what the movie was about.
And being played simply helped a lot. There wasn't much to dig through to get the story. Why do you think one-liners are still so popular as jokes?
FUCKING GOD, get a grip, you pathetic autistic fanboy! No matter how "epic" you think the movies are, there is no excuse for writing in such an obnoxious, superficially-"epic"-sounding tone, you pretentious, pompous twit!
I can live with the fanboyish hyperbole, but when a book lists an urban myth as fact in its introduction, it's in trouble.
In fact, it fails doubly for prohibiting copying text in the pdf, so I can't even cite it here. It uncritically states that pranksters who filled in 'Jedi' on the 2001 UK census led to its official recognition here. Nonsense.
If that's the quality of research that went into this book, best give it a miss.
1. George Lucas is a terrible writer.
2. He wrote tons of different drafts for Star Wars, all universally awful, even the better parts he stole from better stories.
3. George Lucas had enough success to get $10 million to make a movie but he was nowhere close to being the Beard. He says "Fuck you, I'm George Lucas," they say "George who?" So he couldn't do everything his way, he had to listen to the input of others.
4. The genius of the whole Star Wars project is that Lucas served as a catalyst to bring hundreds of talented people together to make good movies. As Harrison Ford told him, "George, you can write lines like this but you sure as hell can't say them!" He hated, absolutely hated the way Empire turned out. But because he didn't have enough money to reshoot the material, he had to accept what he was given. And it was arguably the strongest of the original trilogy.
5. Because he had to listen to others, his best ideas were polished up to be brilliant, his worst ideas discarded, and good ideas from others were welded into the structure that is Star Wars. And it was good.
6. After all that success, the Beard is seen as having made it happen. And for the new trilogy, he felt he could do it on his own. And like the egotistical singer from a rock band who thinks the rest of the act is holding him back, he finds out in his solo career that he really doesn't have the chops to stand on his own. But in this case, the fanbase is so uncritical, so slavish, that he still has massive success even as he's shoveling steaming feces down their throats; they just smack their lips and beg for more.
That's Star Wars in a nutshell.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I gave up my nerd credentials years ago. I choose to retain my "geek" credentials though.
If you don't understand the difference, you really are a nerd.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
"Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good?"
Margarine! Brain matter is fat, on the whole. The body does what is can with what it is given. Margarine has fats not found in nature, so you can imagine that margarine eaters are not entirely rational. All those synapses popping and fizzing randomly: it makes a nice light show, but don't ask what it all means.
I blame margarine for atheism, after all atheists are by definition irrational. And that would explain Lucas's silly reduction of jedi powers down to the level of tiny critters. You really have to be a margarine-head to be that ridiculous.
[In case you are wondering about that atheism thing, the dictionary definition of Atheism is "One who denies the gods/God" and was coined a few hundred years ago. It has never been defined as "Lack of belief", despite the sense of the greek. In other words: one who believes there is no God. But for belief, rather than merely an opinion, one requires proof, and as any agnostic knows: no one has proven the non-existence of God (and it is probably impossible anyway). By his own admission Dawkins, for example, is really a form of anti-religious agnostic rather than a genuine atheist since he acknowledges the "tiny possibility that God exists". However many modern agnostics of Dawkin's ilk prefer to call themselves atheist and are insisting that atheist can also be defined as "one who has no belief" even though it clearly crosses in to agnostic territory. After all, those definitions pivot around 'belief' and that is binary: you either do or you don't, there are no degrees of belief. 'Opinion' serves for that. Agnostic is the null case.]
Luke Skywalker is Arthur Pendragon, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is Uther Pendragon, Obi Won Kenobi is Merlin, Han Solo is Lancelot, Princess Leia is Queen Guinevere but leaves Luke for Lancelot and Lucas changed her to Luke's sister in the second film for a soap opera effect. The Jedi are the Knights of the Round Table but get formed very early in the story instead of later. Instead of swords they have light sabers.
The King Arthur Myths are based off the Bible but rewritten for the middle ages.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Ignore the Prequels for a moment... let's take the universe deployed in the original piece. Also ignore the Nazi/Fascist imagery as well...
Why does random citizen on Planet X care if the Empire is there of the Republic is there? Under the Republic, he was governed by a nobleman, probably a King or Queen (though we don't know if lesser planets, or less connected families had lesser titles like in Dune, which was AN inspiration for Star Wars). If you wanted to rise up and not be ruled by a Monarch, the Jedi Knights were there to "keep the peace" as they have for 1000 generations. While Tatooine is an impoverished fringe world run by the Hutt Mafia, we don't know that being ruled by a random monarch is better.
The inefficient Republic couldn't really do much, and it clearly lacked a massive military so that the Jedi were keepers of the peace and generally given free range. They seemed to only answer to some Jedi Counsel, and while the Republic certainly appears to be mostly human (judging by the makeup of the Empire -- 100% AND the Rebellion, 50%), the Jedi Counsel seems to be heavily influenced by this little Green Guy we meet.
That world is somewhat ambiguous. We're told to root for the "White Army" there to restore the noblemen to power (where they are "elected officials," who wants to bet that Princess Leia's election to the Senate, as daughter of the King, was about as competitive of Saddam Hussein or Joseph Stalin's elections) and their Republic government where some form of vote takes place to send their children or other connected allies to the Senate (we don't know if the Senators are elected by the people or some Parliament, and we don't know if that Parliament is elected, appointed, or inherited).
One presumes that there were wealthy urban planets (or planets with wealth urban cores) with wealthy individuals served by the various courts... they probably lost out as their connections to the monarchs lost value as the imperial governors took power. OTOH, goods appear to be readily available to the wealthy because the smugglers seemed to grow in numbers (including the spice smugglers on Tatooine, but the importance of spice is unclear, or if it's a throw away line to pay homage to Dune), and the decline of the government while the Empire, Imperial Senate, Regional Governors, and Planet Monarchs are no longer aligned to screw the people (admittedly referencing the Trade Federation from Ep. 1, where we see a sanctioned monopoly that can strangle a planet with blockades).
So, one COULD have kept that moral ambiguity by leaving things in the background, but they didn't. A throw away line or two from Palpatine about the inefficiency of the Republic would have kept the idea that he might have been fed up with the pace of the Republic and the Jedi Knights. In the Prequels, he is made raw evil, in the originals, there is plenty of young rebel nonsense in there.
As a kid watching the originals, I saw NONE of that, but as an adult watching them, I appreciated some underlying ambiguities. OTOH, Jar Jar isn't substantially more annoying than C3PO's whining other than the fact that "Android/Robot = cool, retarded alien = lame," and I met C3PO as a child, and Jar Jar as an adult. My wife, who never saw Star Wars as a kid, so has no fond memories, thinks that the Droids are just as annoying.
BTW: I really liked how in Episode I, they delved into some political references. A trade dispute and a deadlocked Senate leads to a No Confidence vote in favor of the Senator from the isolated planet, clearly the rest of the chamber felt that their planet could be next. However, I did NOT like how the rest took events that were described as Epic and made them ordinary. The Clone Wars appeared to be a long war that bordered on a Civil War, instead it appeared to be a short series of events between Jedi and Clones/Storm Troopers/Battle Droids. I guess we don't directly here of a non-Jedi fighting in the Clone Wars, but the Clone Wars definitely seemed more substantial than Episode II made it seem.
BTW, lay off the margarine ok?
shouldn't end with you driving on cubes. The first three movies (not the "new" first three) were the best. The last 3? Not so much. Sometimes special effects on a shoestring budget are better, because you need to develop crazy things like acting, and plot. I'll happily turn over my "nerd card" if it means erasing any reference to myself and those movies. I bet George feels the same ;)
And you know what?
I think The Lord of the Rings trilogy was BORING AS SHIT and that Tolkien is a piss-poor writer. I think Dr. Who sucks ass. I think "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is overrated. I think "Ender's Game" is juvenile pulp crap. And I think that Verhoeven's movie version of "Starship Troopers" is absolutely brilliant, far better than the one-dimensional piece of shit book it was based on.
There, I said it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good?"
Because you all saw the originals as prepubescent boys, and the prequels as adults. Go back and look at the originals as an adult, and you'll find them equally dumb, annoying, and not that interesting. (My prepubescent sons love them, though.)
PDF only? Pity. I might have read it otherwise. My PDA has a PDF reader, but it's hardly good for reading more than a couple pages. You'd think that 500 pages of text could be provided in, you know... A text-based format?
(Yeah, I know about extracting text from a PDF. Call me insufficiently motivated.)
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
My first exposure to Star Wars was the book by George Lucas. I found it in the college book store at Cal Poly, SLO. It was NOT the one that came out with pictures of the movie. There may even be a chance that the book came out before the movie. I know that I read it before I saw Star Wars.
You can also find similarities to Irish mythology, with even closer linkages. Lugh, whose name can be translated by some as 'flashing light', is known as a boy hero among other things, who ended up slaying his father.
I believe that Kenneth C. Flint's Sidhe series retells Lugh's story in a way that makes you think that it was based on Star Wars, or vice versa.
Of course, I believe that Lucas was a fan of George Campbell, who wrote a lot about comparative mythologies. Story writers have been ripping off story ideas for thousands of years, translating the stories into terms and situations that their listeners/readers can under stand. Lucas just did it as a space opera, with lots of special effects.
Star Wars has a weak backstory compared to other world-builders like Frank Herbert, John Tolkein, and Gene Roddenberry. With a deep world you feel like you are just seeing the tip of an iceberg.
Start here for the story.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I find your lack of social skills disturbing.
George Lucas made Star Wars.
The stories were heavily influenced by samurai and cowboy movies/books. It doesn't really matter which specific ones. You may say he's unoriginal and not creative. Fine, who cares?
The stories went through a bunch of changes. Was the whole story originally from the point of view of R2D2 and C3PO? Was he really going to be named Luke Starkiller? Was the focus going to be about Anakin at first? Who cares?
Lucas LOVES to get attention by talking about Star Wars and how it started and what the original concepts were. Too bad Lucas doesn't know himself. He contradicts himself, changes his mind, adds things, removes things, and shits on people's childhoods.
Did he plan for 3 movies? 6? 9? 12? 152?
No. He planned for 1, and left it fairly open. Then, to everyone's surprise, it was super successful. So out popped Empire Strikes Back. Let's go ahead and call this Episode 5 and call the original Episode 4, and slap on the subtitle "A New Hope".
The second film gave him even more megabucks.
For the third he had to make up some shit about Ewoks, and I guess the Empire is building another Death Star, because you know it totally worked last time.
Still, more megabucks. But critics weren't as kind this time around, and the actors were getting old, and a 4th movie would require some creativity and originality, since he killed off most of his key characters. I mean srsly, Episode 7: The Empire Strikes Back...Again! ?
So Lucas sat around, wanting more money. He went through the bullshit additions, removals, readditions, digital touch ups and fuck ups, and about 400 different releases of Star Wars were rolled out.
Lucas had a nasty divorce, lost all of his money (because his wife clearly earned it, right?) and then grew depressed and nostalgic. He also wanted to be filthy rich again.
So he did the dumb shit prequels, and made megabucks again. Sure, people hated them, but they still lined up to watch them and buy the toys.
It was blatantly obvious that Lucas didn't remember / didn't give a shit about the established facts and plot and rules and such from the original films. Episodes 1 2 and 3 took a literal shit on the original films, and Lucas didn't bat an eye. He loves it. He loves the attention he gets from the people he works with. They treat him like some sort of midget (fucker's SHORT) god, and he thinks he deserves it. (They just want $$$$).
Did Lucas plan for 3? Maybe, at least they were coherent. Definitely had enough in his head for 2 stories.
6? Hell no. 9? No. 12? NO.
We've got a very poorly animated cartoon series coming out too. The shit train just keeps rolling.
Lucas has said multiple times that there is no fucking way he'll do 7 8 and 9. I say there's no fucking way he won't. He may have someone else do it after the cartoon series dies and eats shit, but he'll be getting the $$$ and the attention he so desperately craves, and new star wars films will be made within the next 5 years.
I thought it would be a few minute lunchtime read, but it looks like a get-a-life epic. I skimmed up to,
"Don't worry," he says, "Ten year old boys will love it."
Enough said.
It's kinda hard to take this writing seriously when the author apparently can't even justify the paragraphs properly...
When Star Wars and its sequels came out I bought and read all of the books. It was only when the re-releases came out, and the anticipation was growing over the "prequels" that I realized that Star Wars "storyline" never existed and was made up as they went along.
The original books that I read were screenplay adaptations, but I was too young and naive to recognize that. I figured it out when the "prequels" didn't have books coming out before them. They made it up as they went along. Like the X-Files and Lost. There's hardly even an outline to this so-called "storyline."
Kriston
Err... 1. Star Wars like Matrix is full of stolen content, stolen from movie makers like Akira Kurosawa and western elements (I know, I know...) 2. Star Wars was made with great filming technology, and combining Sci-fi and Fantasy elements was kinda a good move from mister Lukas but nothing else. (better move bringing F***ing Harrison "Han Solo" "Indiana Jones" Ford in the movie) 3. have you seen 2001? that's a decent sci-fi movie with great acting and filming skills (flawless). so in conclution: Star-Wars=Dorks=/=[2001=Nerds(+Kurosawa)=Geeks]
Whilst 633 was cheesey in many respects - the book was so much better - the attack was truly spectacular for the time. In the real-life Dambuster raid, make that awe-inspiring with added ohmygod and a side-order of hidebehindthesofa. I'm serious. Those guys were skimming 150 or so feet from the water with flak from either side and in front, trees and mountains surrounding them, enemy fighters bearing down, and they had to drop the bouncing bomb at exactly the right height at exactly the right speed at exactly the right point. If the Force existed, those pilots would have been honorary Jedi by the next morning. As with the Star Wars movie, you had one bomber on an attack run with two other bombers close by running interference.
The next-closest raid in World War 2 would be the Shell Building Raid, when a squadron of Mosquito fighter/bombers were dispatched with concussion bombs to destroy the interrogation and records rooms without damaging the prisoners cells beyond using the concussion to blast open internal doors. Over 90% of the prisoners escaped, if I remember the fact file correctly, making it one of the most successful raids by the RAF in terms of meeting useful objectives. (Unfortunately, one of the Mosquitos slammed into a school, killing a significant number of children.) You can see echos of the second raid in both 633 Squadron and in Star Wars, but it certainly wasn't borrowed from nearly as extensively.
It's not Star Wars, but Battlestar Galactica also borrows heavily from RAF war footage. The attacks on the home worlds and the massive initial space battle (10,000 cylons versus a handful of human pilots) was directly lifted from The Battle of Britain with the sole modification that the British won. Not bad, when you consider that the Germans really did have 10,000+ planes capable of flight at any given time and the RAF had 12 operational squadrons. It would have made for a short movie, though, if Battlestar Galactica had followed the true-life story to the end, as the RAF had virtually reduced the Luftwaffe to non-functional status by the end, even though they were totally shattered themselves.
This is where the epic parts of the stories originate, and it has generally been the epic parts that have carried the rest.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Initially, you could post with any name you wanted. No login. It was kind of reckless and cool, that way. Then they decided that this wasn't so good and created logins. Many of us, though, didn't bite. We kept doing it the old way. Finally, the type in field for name was replaced by "Anonymous Coward".
Reluctantly, I and, I'm sure, many other long time users created logins. But, by then the suckups^W honored elders had taken all the low numbers.
Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition is a free, thoroughly unedited, unprofessionally written and unreadable e-book that brings together a huge amount of literary detective work to sort fact from legend and reveal how the story really evolved."
FTFY
At a quick read, and bearing in mind that I'm no authority, the summary seems to... conveniently ignore some recorded history, and make a hash of unrelated kinds of property.
;) And awarded fiefs based on those.
E.g., yes, there was allodial property, i.e., land held as private property and without any further obligations to a lord or king, other than their general authority over their country. That's why in Germany we had the distinct title "Freiherr" (literally free lord), in parallel to Baron. The famous Red Baron was actually called, "Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen", i.e., his family has had his lands as allodial property, not as fiefs.
But that was something that existed in parallel to feudalism. That's why we had the titles Freiherr _and_ Baron, at roughly the same level in the hierarchy.
So one isn't a counter-point to the other. It's a bit like saying that since day exists, night can't also exist and it's a lie.
The early history of the HRE is also full of such conflicts centered around:
1. Whether the fiefs granted to a bishop belong to the Emperor or the Church. The initial understanding and the reason why so many lands had been granted to the Church, was that (A) the land _is_ granted as a fief that keeps belonging to the Emperor, and (B) it was easier to get it back after a Bishop died, than from the heirs of a dead noble.
When the church suddenly claimed perpetual ownership of those, it caused quite the ruckus, because it robbed the Emperor of about half his lands in one fell swoop. I'd argue that it wouldn't have caused half as much conflict and controversy, if the understanding had been all along that the land is granted in perpetuity, as private property.
2. Nobles being simply removed or replaced from their fief by the Emperor, usually for failing to live up to their obligations. This isn't just conjecture from some law codex, but actual documented instances. E.g., duke Henry The Lion was removed from the duchy of Saxony and the duchy was divided, when he refused to follow Emperor Frederick Barbarossa into war in Lombardy.
England itself had to give explicit laws to limit sub-infeudation to such extent that it was no longer even clear or feasible to track who owed the military service for a given piece of land. Check out the statute of Quia Emptores, from 1290. I'd argue that you don't give a new law like that based on just some imaginary legal construct, but to deal with some actual problem.
Or you can look towards other places, for example Hungary, where at one point they actually had honour points like in WoW
I would agree though that it never was that simple as pure theoretical feudalism, though.
For a start people always tried to get into their private propertly, what was just a fief. Aiding that, you couldn't take someone's fief other than for gross breach of the obligations, so it was already _very_ hard for the liege to get it back anyway. After a few generations and given some weakening of royal/imperial power, it did become a pain in the rear to actually demand some land back. In the HRE, for example, it slid towards such decentralisation that the Emperor depended on the nobles' good will, rather than the other way around, and all land became pretty much just private property of the nobles.
In England, it quickly slid towards "bastard feudalism", where people just paid money instead of going to war for their liege. (Although, again, that was the theory they had started from.) So pretty much it (re)evolved into a money based economy instead of early manorialism. So pretty soon, yeah, you no longer had real feudalism.
But even in the beginning, the nobles, re-fashioned as dukes (from dux) and grafs (from grafein) trying to imitate the romans and greeks, were generally powerful chieftain of major tribes. Trying to transplant the Roman system of naming a provincial administrator over a province, without actually owning the province, may have worked in theory, but generally y
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, on second thought, I guess it depends on how you look at it.
The fact is, indeed, that most nobles weren't some nobody who was given a fief if he signs a contract. (Or rather, swears an oath.) They were guys who had the land to start with and entered a vassalage for protection, or were forced into being vassals.
Or indeed, it was often "given" as a reward. Being knighted and given some land in exchange for military service was a privilege, not something that was freely available to anyone who wanted to enter that kind of a relationship.
From there, well, what remains is that in exchange for the warlord's or king's protection, one had to provide 1 knight per hide of land in wars. Or in "bastard feudalism" enough money to hire a professional knight instead. And could have his lands taken if he failed to provide that service.
You could see it as, well, the modern idea of private property and taxes. You know, you own X acres of land, you have to pay Y pounds or Z knights per year as taxes. And if you fail to pay them, some guys show up and take your land and title as punishment.
Or you could formalize it as having pledged your land to the overlord/king/emperor, and receiving them back as fief in return for that military or money service.
It's in the end the same thing, save for some subtle differences. They tended to formalize it as the latter, back then. I suppose it was an easy answer to such questions as, "why should I pay the king anything if it's _my_ land?" or "why should the king get it if I die without heirs? If it's mine, why can't I leave it to my drinking buddy?" Formalizing it like "yeah, well, the king owns it" was probably easier than building the whole legal and philosophical framework we have nowadays.
So, well, I can see how it looks funny if you look at it through the modern concepts. It wasn't really the noble's private property, or at least not formalized that way. And it wasn't really the king's private property either, or not in the way we understand private property nowadays. He couldn't just post an eviction notice and move another guy in your place, save for gross breach of obligations. So reading that feudalism definition through the modern terms, you know, the king owns the land and rents it to some Earls, it doesn't really work at all like you'd understand "own" and "rent" nowadays. It was formalized like that anyway, though.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
StarWars eps 1-3 were not interesting and what failed to make them interesting isn't ... interesting.
You misunderstood my point. I'm not saying that Christianity itself was good or bad. And I'm certainly not saying you should believe in it.
I'm just saying that it changed history so massively, that we can't really know if 2000 years later we're better or worse off for it. I don't think anyone even knows all the events that were influenced by it, much else be able to honestly say what would 2000 years of history would have looked like without Christianity.
Look, let's put it like this: the plague outbursts were bad. Really bad. Freakin' horrible even. But their long term effects were good. We had a Renaissance and later an industrial revolution only because of the plague. It's what shook the status quo, and killed enough peasants kept at subsistence level, so the survivors could demand better conditions and get more land. And thus become able to have a surplus they could trade, invest in better tools, etc.
So basically even something horrible can have a good outcome.
So basically even if you think that Christianity is evil or bogus, what I'm talking about is about how it influenced history, since that was the kind of post I was answering to. And I'm just saying: nobody knows. Noone can simulate 2000 years without it, and say where we'd be in that alternate universe.
Or, if you will, take Van Gogh and lead poisoning as an analogy. Lead poisoning is a nasty thing. It may, however, have caused his paintings to be what they famously are. Would his paintings be better or worse without it? No idea. Noone can really simulate what his life would have been without lead-based paints. Maybe it even had a good effect on his style.
So basically if you were expecting a debate about the religion itself, well, it's not that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The Lensman series, by Doc Smith? The originals of the Jedi (no mitochodrians here!)?
mark "...
My name is Kimball Kinnison, I lead the Lensman band;
Although we're few in numbers, our abilities are grand.
We play with stars and planets, catch comets in a net;
and use a supernova to light a cigarette!"