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David Brin Responds to Star Wars Issues
himi writes
"After his articles on what was wrong with the Star Wars
movies were linked here, David
Brin's mailbox got flooded - as per usual. He's posted an interesting
reply to most of the points raised in those emails.
It's a good read, even if you don't agree with him. "
It's fiction... FICK-SHUN! Lighten up.
George Lucas related the side of the Libertarian Party. It's too sophisticated for you.
/. is either college kids who depend completely on the government, or adults who get all of their news from National Public Radio or National Public Television. If you get angry when it's called National Government Radio, you're a /.er.
Most of
Their is a label for those who get everything they need from a government agency. If you get your paycheck from a govt entity, like a university or research agency, get your health insurance from the same, get your news from the above, you are a participant in the form of govt invented by Benito Mussolini. You are a Fascist.
The author understands very well the theme of this Star Wars movie. He's insulted by it, and it shows.
He's just saying that Highlander began to suck a movie early is all
Jedi knights probably are considered partisan. The commitee has to be composed of memebers from several independant nations. Just like the REAL world, (UN, senate, etc, etc, etc.).
The ewoks already thought that C3PO was a god. Luke just convinced the ewoks to further believe that. Without Luke, C3PO could probably have convinced the ewoks, it just would have taken longer.
Maybe, but our heroes would have been roasted and eaten by then.
Fascism is neutral on the point of who pays for what, whether it's public or private funding.
What Fascism worries about it whose viewpoint is carried, namely, the viewpoint of those in power.
Libertariansim, on the other hand, lets ideas live or die on their own. Abortion is a service that is heavily subsidised on the local, national, and international level by state and federal governments. The idea that abortion not only should be freely available, but widely performed, is the govt approved postiion in this country.
A Libertarian, while likely prochoice, would not let a govt pay for abortion. They wouldn't legislate against it, but wouldn't pay for it. In this instance, it might be available anywhere, but not commonly performed because of the lack of subsidy.
In his movie, Lucas is saying you should be able to do most anything you want, but don't expect the taxpayer to pay for it.
never saw the united sucky ship enterprise blow up an entire planet trekkie fruitloop
>Darth Maul isn't out to kill Amidala, he's out to
>kill the Jedi, thus leaving her without advisors >other than Palpitane.
Does _he_ know that? His explicit orders from Sidious-patine are to capture the queen and return her to Naboo; neutralizing the Jedi is just a stumbling block.
>They had *just sent* a committee, two Jedi knight
>ambassadors, and the Trade Federation had
>destroyed their ship and its crew and attempted
>to murder the ambassadors via multiple means.
>Said ambassadors were available as witnesses.
>Just exactly what would be enough evidence for
>the Senate?
If you read the opening crawl again, you'll note that the Jedi were send by the Chancellor _in_secret_ -- the bulk of the Senate had no idea they went, and would likely be outraged if Jedi came swinging in talking about things they discovered while executing 'secret orders.'
Hail,
I've e-mailed a response to his response (this could get messy... a response to a response to a response to a response), and thought I'd share it with anyone who was interested (hey, lots of people read this site, there's gotta be someone).
Arithon
I'm feeling argumentative, please contradict me
Ick! I wouldn't want to live in EITHER universe. Either I get to be a pawn of superpowered dictators, or a member of a stagnant humanity beyond any hope of moving forward... I'd rather live in the B5 universe, where humanity continues to struggle forward and become greater than it was before.
"As long as there are sword fights and things blowing up..."
I agree far too many people wanted the Second Coming.
He (it?) has saved more people than anyone else
R2 is also the only character to survive all six (EP II and III pending) episodes intact. True, he does get zapped by Jawas, but that is equivalent to being knocked out. Not like when C3PO is disassembled.
R2 is also responsible for destroying the Trade Federation ship and the Death Stars.
Who was there in ROTJ when Luke needed his weapon? You guessed it
The list goes on and on...
Right behind R2 are Han Solo and Chewbacca
Uh, didn't Aliens 2 come BEFORE Starship Troopers?
Who's the knockoff?
The serial numbers are for emperial driods designed for emperial ships. This is why R2D2 fought for the rebels in the other trillogies becuase he was programmed to protect the empire.
I believe the other driods are private driods or driods designed for other groups like the merchanants.
There are probably many different brand names of droids as well in Starwars.
Well, y'see, there's this thing called a book. With pages and letters and stuff. And one of 'em called "Starship Troopers" came out a really friggin long time ago.
The original "star wars" at least had witty dialogue amidst the ham-handed acting. The Fantom Menace passed all its chances. For example, the meeting with the Jedi Council could have had impassioned pleas for doing what was right, not what was bureaucratically feasible, but instead it was all lame "what? You mean I can't train him? Bummer!" type stuff.
Instead of humorous banter between Han, Princess Leia, and Luke, we get Jar Jar Oinks in TPM. Sorry, doesn't work.
Hate to tell you this, but government subsidies are almost non-existent for college kids. I graduated from college five years ago and will be paying my student loans off for another ten years. And the interest rate on those student loans is much higher than the prime interest rate that a developer would pay to build a new condo complex. Some "government subsidy", Mr. Clueless.
Typical Republican. Probably think all welfare recipients are black too.
"Abortion is a service subsidized bo local, national governments"? Man, where do you get your news from? It's *ILLEGAL* for the national government to subsidize abortion. Against the law. Period. Government hospitals won't even do abortions. Abortion clinics are primarily funded by groups like Planned Parenthood which rely on private donations, not government handouts.
But what do I expect, from someone who believes the lies that the hate-mongers put out? I bet you believe the black helicopters are coming soon to enforce the New World Order too, right? Hahaha!
I saw the movie, I liked it, but there were too many holes. Such as:
What is a Sith Lord?
Was Darth Maul relevant, or was he just an assasin?
What does "Darth" mean?
Who (yeah, I figured out he is Palpitate) exactly is the Emperor? Given that there is a senate, what exactly does the Emperor preside over?
Don't this as a troll: I'm a [casual] fan who would like to be educated. Please fill me in. I liked Episode I, but I got the feeling that I was viewing a rough draft rather than the final product.
-AC
Check this out. It's for real. http://www.landoverbaptist.org/new s0899/jar.html
The book! Please don't parade your ignorance in public.
read books. If you want great sword fights and chase scenes, then go see movies. Most of the criticisms of Star Wars seem (though I don't really know) to be from those of you who are young enough to have seen the original 3 episodes as a kid. And your opinions are set in stone by your first impressions. Great movies, I love 'em, but deep philosophical sagas they are not. This new one is no different.
I thought that Episode 2 would focus on the love story between Anakin and Amidala while Episode 3 would showcase Anakin's descent into the Dark Side. After all, Lucas has to introduce the Clone
Wars in Episode 2 as well, which doesn't leave much room for the fight between Obi Wan and Anakin.
Thats more or less Lucas' plan, remember reading that in an interview somewhere.
Han wasn't a spear carrier. The stormtroopers were. Jar Jar's people were (except for Jar Jar and Boss Nash).
His point about demi-gods is valid. Practically the whole movie is about them but the actual events are determined by the regular people.
In fact, without the demi-gods, the sequence of events wouldn't have changed much.
As to the queen's political power, that would depend entirely upon the procedures that governed that body. Perhaps ANYONE can call for a "vote of no confidence". If so, why did it take HER to call for it? Especially if he lost so easily?
And that still doesn't account for the fact that the TWO JEDI KNIGHTS that were sent to conclude the embargo were with her and they STILL weren't enough to get any action.
It's possible to have a very badly written story with HUGE plot holes that still follows the mythic standards. It just means that it's a badly written story.
Can't a person ramble philosophically every once in a while in an open, public forum? Especially considering the subject (ripping apart the philosophical and mythological aspects of the Star Wars universe), I think exploring a nother universe is downright welcome (since Brin did briefly bring Star Trek into it).
Now, I'm wondering what the hell the "Culture" universe is....
Don't take this as a flame, and don't flame my lack of knowledge but who is Tom Stoppard?
What are his works?
> Luckily, in the Free Software Movement/Open Source Movement, we do have heros.
I`ts amazing how everything always comes down to Linux!!!
p.s. Use the linux Luke!
p.s.s. Get a Life
[raises hand]
:-)
I've said this before too, you must have missed it
Daniel
If you get your paycheck from a govt
:-)
entity, like a university or research agency, get your health insurance from the same, get your news from the above, you
are a participant in the form of govt invented by Benito Mussolini. You are a Fascist.
Every time I think that I've misjudged the Libertarian party, something like this happens. Please go read the history of universities and science, of Benito Mussolini, and explain the horrible bias in NPR (that it doesn't laud your views 24/7??) -- right now, as a matter of fact, I'm listening to NPR and they're reading the Declaration of Independence, which sounds exceedingly Libertarian to me. (Taxes -> Evil! Government -> Evil!)
Or, if you don't want to educate yourself, please move to Montana and don't bother anyone
Daniel
I think the thing that clinches it is that there was an action figure from one of the earlier movies for the emperor.... and the name?
Emperor Palpatine.
Hopefully the other trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, which comes to theaters christmas 2000 won't suffer the same fate. I didn't even know they were making the movies until I got an amazon.com e-mail mentioning it and then searched yahoo. Anyway..
http://www.theonering.net
http://www.lordoftheringsmovie.com
http://www.lordoftherings.net
"the bomb" did not defeat Hitler it was used to crush Japan. Hitler was beaten by the combined armies of the allies. 40m of people gave their lives to stop that monster & you want to put it down to a few demigods? (one of which being Stalin) Show a little more respect.
Maybe what confused me is that the Palpatine appeared in his Emperor get-up in #1. So...if I understand correctly, Palapatine was a Sith Lord first, became Palapatine as a way to infiltrate the republic, and when everything goes as planned, he'll reemerge as a Sith lord (in his hooded get-up) and proclaim himself Emperor.
Right?
But if the Clone Wars happen in Ep III, this leaves little room for Anakin's transformation to
Vader, since he still fights for the Light Side in the CLone Wars. After all, in ANH, Obi Wan said that he once fought with (alongside?) Anakin in the Clone Wars.
"Only posting as AC since it is 2AM Down Under and
I have been behind this X-Term for far too long"
More dumb commentary. Yeah. Brin takes movies and
such _waaaay_ to seriously.
If you ask me, Chewbacca was even more annoying than Jar Jar. But with both i'd plug my ears when they had something to say. But I guess they needed something annoying like Jar Jar for the kids, since C3P0 didn't have a huge role in TPM.
I know luke called it an R2 unit, but its "name" was R5D4.
Presumably a newer model, which is why it crashed...
Or maybe it just means that his actions follow his beliefs.
You make a good point, I suppose up til now I have been impressed with the guy's business accumen, and not so much his storytelling. This is fairly evident in my "vote with my feet" attitude I suppose, as I have seen (and will see) SW:TPM only once, but have seen "The Matrix" three times and will be buying it on DVD! This in itself tells me that something must have went awry in Lucas' implementation of SW:TPM. In my little way I suppose my minimal contribution to the Lucas "Empire", if you'll pardon the pun, is my way of adding to the overall disenchantment of the public with SW:TPM, without having to come out and say it.
Another aspect is that the moviegoing public has grown up somewhat since 1977, our tastes have matured and our senses stimulated by some rather excellent offerings since that time, when hokey was the order of the day, and acting was - well - Mark Hamill says it all!
"I'll be watching your career closely, young skywalker."
It made the movie for me.
sKitZ
GL has gotten much sloppier. He doesn't even have to try anymore, he knows millions of fandroids will flock to the next SW even if it's two hours of still shots of gungan droppings.
For all I care, he has basically started doing that. Starting with RotJ and continuing with Phantom Menace, he's started taking the action scenes and putting much less care into them. And drawing them out. I got bored in the pod race. GL could have done that scene almost as well by only filming one lap around the track and then showing that one lap three times. The lightsaber fight scene could have definitely used a little conversation or something. 3 minimitochondrialthingummy stuffed guys swinging four lightsabers at each other had a lot of potential, and a lot more thank breaking a double lightsaber a jedi and a sith could have been done with very little effort on the scriptwriter's part.
As far as the Rumble of the Rastas and Robots, all that scene showed me is that thanks to computers it is now possible to get a lot more Ewoks on screen than ever before.
Evil Yoda.
Its kind of funny how it seems to work.
Actually, if you think about it, Yoda could be the one who turns Anakin to the dark side in Ep2/3
Of course, then it doesn't make sense that Yoda would help Luke. If they made it fit in, that would be awesome.
Anyway, yes it is just a movie, but the reason most people expected more is because there was just so much material to fit in there.
There was so much stuff from the original trilogy that wasn't explained, that we wanted to know.
Also, that after 3 Star Wars movies, you'd expect that George Lucas would be able to churn out a movie better than TPM. What worked in some movies, what didn't in others...etc.
It was a good movie, but I don't think it would've been too hard to include a lot of the things we wanted to know in it, as well as keeping it enjoyable for the general audience. Anyway, I'm guessing that the next two prequels take care of that.
Hmm.. there have been some weird rumors about the prequels.
Weirdest I heard were:
Obi-Wan has a clone.
Qui-Gon might come back??
Darth Maul might come back.
Obi-Wan and Amidala fall in love and Anakin gets jealous. Where the hell did this come from??
..That the perpetrator of monstrosities like Earth or Infinity's Shore should get on anybody else's case for not being able to write a decent plot or decent characters.
She might be good if cast as jailbait in a Lolita remake. Really, what I would like to see is Queen Armadillo drop in as a guest on Saturday Night Lives's recurring skit Goth Talk. She could appear in her costume and play the role of a co-worker from the Cinnabun at the mall. Who knows? She may end up working there yet. Hardy har har.
Somehow, I see the Jedi doing something to Amidala (Yoda begrugingly agreed to have Anakin trained, and might try to do something to tear them apart). Has there bee nany reference to a Jedi being married? Could this be forbidden? Maybe they really are monks and Anakin won't like that he and Amidala aren't allowed to be together and continue training? Who knows? It will probably be really inane, though I do hope that Lucas is reading these message boards to see what people are reading into his latest weak movie.
It's a shame that Dr. Brin's interesting phylosophical points about the complexity (and varying interpritations) of good & evil and Ubermensch heros in the Star Wars universe are lumped in with a bunch of ST vs SW comparisons and plot hole objections.
/.ers who posted "It's just a movie after all" and left it at that have missed Brin's central point:
Plot holes, poor writing and horrible science are are tragically universal in current cinema. (Using humans for their thermal energy?!? WHAT THE ****!?!?) Personally, I feel Star Wars is better than most in this reguard, but that's not saying much. As for the Star Wars vs Star Trek stuff, well a critique of the morality of Star Wars should be able to stand on it's own. Including the ST comparison just ends up pushing various sf-geek buttons. It's perfectly valid to respond to all of Brin's points on these issues with "Chill out, it's just a movie, slamming them makes you sound vindictive over the whole Postman thing."
The important stuff, on the other hand, is just that, important. All the
>Some people say, why look for deep lessons in harmless, escapist entertainment?
>
>Others earnestly hold that the moral health of a civilization can be traced in its popular
>culture.
>
>In the modern era, we tend to feel ideas aren't inherently toxic. Yet who can deny that people --
>especially children -- will be swayed if a message is repeated often enough? It's when a "lesson"
>gets reiterated relentlessly that even skeptics
>should sit up and take notice.
>
>The moral messages in "Star Wars" aren't just window dressing.
>
>Speeches and lectures drench every film. They represent an agenda.
(from p3 of SW despots vs ST populists)
i.e. it's not "just a movie", it's a piece of powerful and effective propoganda aimed at the heads of 9 year old kids and 32 year old geeks. Brin vehamentally disagrees with the underlying messages which that propoganda is pushing, and is well justified in publishing his opinion in every forum he can find. Now if he can only do it in a way which will lead to people contemplating whether or not they've bought into the the slippery "wisdom" of Yoda, and whether or not they really agree with it, instead of trying to figure out just what was Darth Maul's mission anyway?
Before you dismiss Brin, take a look at the questionaire on his page. Nothing to do with Star Wars. Everything to do with making you think about what you believe and why:
http://www.kithrup.com/brin/questionaire.htm
Directed soley at kids? Part 2 is mostly a love story. You think kids are going to watch it because it's a love story? Get a clue.
...it's Fantasy. There is a BIIIG difference.
Preceding Anakin's fall, he's trained by Obi Wan, falls in love with Amidala and impregnates her...
:-)
Everyone I've seen speculating on what's going to happen in Episodes 2 and 3 has made the same assumption: that there's a love story between Anakin and Amidala. There is no requirement for this at all! What if Anakin simply rapes her after turning to the dark side?
I bring this up not because I want the story to go this way, but people might be shocked if they expect to see Anakin wooing Amidala and instead get Yoda convincing her to not abort the twins because they're the Jedis' last hope.
Oh, and for those relying on Obi-Wan's statement about Luke's father loving his (Luke's) mother very much... we've seen that Obi-Wan says things from his own point of view at times.
A democratic system does not, by necessity, imply greater human rights and freedoms, but it *is* the one under which such things *can* be *ensured*.
Wrong. In a democracy, all that is needed for "human rights" to disappear is for the required number of voters (or representives, or whatever) to vote them away. And they're just as gone as if a king proclaimed it to be so.
There is NO governmental system under which anything can be ASSURED. The only way things can even come close to being assured is for enough people to be willing to fight and die to make it so -- regardless of whether they're fighting a king, or Roman Senate, or American FBI.
I am responding to Brin's response. If you dont have the time to read it all, Read the
bottom. Its got a nice summary of my thoughts, to save you time.
1. Traders KNEW the 'dark lord' was Palpatine. "I'll make it legal"
2. They are NOT going to turn him in because perhaps they think he will save them, which
he may.
3. Brin's Queen toppling the head of the gov thing is BULL snot. Palapatine behind the
scenes got all the votes he needed, and all he needed then was an real and legal issue to use
to get the first guy out. the queen does not have this power, the assembly does (Strike One
for Brin)
4. Vader is NOT Hitler. Vader is every Hitler Youth ever taken in by the very, very sexy
and alluring Dark Side.
5. Skywalker and acting in point #3 (Strike Two) Skywalker is not acting. Mark Hamill
is. Bad acting does NOT impact the nature of the character, only the portrayal of him.
Skywalker as archetype is not affected by 'bad' acting.
6. Han Solo as "just a heroic guy". Okay, he's right here (Remove a strike) That is the
appeal of Han. One of the norms, hanging in there, and getting some. Han is needed
because the love interest can no longer stay 'in the family'.
7. Point #4. NO, poor Brin does not get it, BUT he does not get a strike, cause the 80%
don't get it either.
8. Point #5. WHAT!!!!! WHAT!!! WHAT????? (Vader as spy) Strike Two for Brin.
Lord this guy should stop writing his thoughts down. Or at least stop smoking pot while he
writes them.
9. Ummm, sorry Brin, its a kids film, its not aimed at you. ("is it me?" - Friends and
Neighbors.)
10. (Mad equals Evil) This is a tricky point because we are all using words as if we all agree
we know what they mean. But I'll try and splice it up: Mad means like a Mad dog.
Hostility without thought or consideration. A motivated, angry solider killing the enemy
need not be Mad. But someone motivated entirely by Fear(the mind killer) becomes Mad
and blindly follows twisted old men and blows up planets, etc....
Brin is blameless here as well, cause he is still not seeing the real point.
11. Point 7
This is the final and damming blow for Brin. Star Trek is a better world/universe
sociologically. Star Wars is a better world from a more clear psychological insight
perspective. See my summary below:
(Humorous aside:
"Spear carriers always obey orders in Star Wars...and they die. They routinely ask
questions in Star Trek. They perform little
rebellions in nearly every episode. That is WHY the institutions mostly work"
Does he mean the red shirts? 'Ensign Ricky')
Summary:
Something about Brin's writings made me wince and I was not sure what it was, but now I
do:
Brin's in the 80%, he THINKS he's in the 20% and he represents what is MOST wrong in
the Liberal mind-set:
Seeing enemies where there are none.
Mixes Spheres of thought (Psychology VS Sociology) - confusing the already
confused masses by being unclear and muddled about where his own point is aimed.
And worst of all, he carries a banner he calls Equality wrapped tightly around him which
blinds him to the more subtle and complex issues. Not All things and people are equally
important or valuable in ALL situations. I don't go to my foot doctor to ask him how to
deal with my throat illness. All people are of equal moral worth, but not equal tatical value.
Brin's arguement of 'ruling by committe' Star Trek idealism it false. He is mixing 'Skill-sets'
of usefulness (Geordi solve this problem and get back to me, I trust your ability) and
psychological usefulness (there is a Vader in us all).
In a dream, we are ALL of the players. Its like a play that reflects the portions of us that
live WITHIN us. Star Wars is a fable and hence like a dream. We are ALL of the
players. We are tempted by the dark side. There are parts of us that want to rise above
the petty anger, as there are parts of us that just want to blow up the enemy and cut them in
half. Star Wars speaks to the Kosmos with-in and Star Trek speaks to the Cosmos
with-out.
Keep dreaming.
Religious nuts in complete uproar over life-sized Jar Jar toy!
"If you want to hear a Spanish accent, listen to Antonio Banderas."
Uh . . . no.
">Vader is a slave to the emperor, a smart pawn. He tells Luke this, that
>he can't resist the emperor's power, that Luke too will be enslaved, but
>he has no choice but to bring him.
Not! For several reasons.
...
(d) Finally, if the Emperor can mind-control Annakin Skywalker (all fulla midichlorians!) then he can do it to anybody. If so, he is Isaac Asimov's "Mule" and can simply go from world to world, adjusting elites to adore him! Why be mean at all, then? Battlefleets are inefficient and much costlier than mental-suasion valentines! Why blow up Alderan when you can make Leia's Papa love you? "
Yoda does remark in the funeral scene at the end of TPM that there can only be 2 Sith lords at one time (the master and the apprentice), so perhaps the Emperor can't get more than 1 dark side henchman.
But exactly how the Emperor wins over Anakin will probably be one of the more interesting plot points in Episodes II and III, so hey, give Lucas some slack.
-->"Guess what, vader may have been more than a 1-dimension cardboard cutout. So might luke. And Han. And Chewie. And C3PO. And every damn character in the movie. Lucas could have been telling a story about people. Genuine, multifaceted people."--
But they're NOT!! That's the point! You can't just rant and rave and say "George didn't tell us anything about their inner character because we were supposed to fill in the blanks with imagination". The characters ARE ARCHETYPES. The entire storey is ARCHETYPICAL. That's why it fits so easily into those literary slots. And that is Brinn's point! Real stories, good stories don't follow a formula. They challenge us, make us think, at the same time as giving us a kick ass story.
StarWars has no real story, no depth of character. That's not to say it isn't "a damn good yarn", but there's only so far down you can pear a plot before there's nothing left.
-----------------
"Psychos do NOT explode when exposed to sunlight, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!" -DTD
A friend once told me I was the only person she knew who saw a moral in the diehard movies (well, in the first two, anyway). That is, just because you have impossible odds, don't stop trying - you might just win out of sheer endurance borne of desperation.
Anyway, I liked it.
Mark Edwards
-----------------------------------
Proof of sanity forged upon request
That said, In Real Life (TM), it is important to acknowlege your mistakes, try to correct them if possible, and, most importantly, learn from them.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
One of the major problems with today's society is that we no longer have real heros. The Human race is always inspired to achieve higher goals by seeing that which is greater than it is. The dbasing of heros has hurt our general society. Luckily, in the Free Software Movement/Open Source Movement, we do have heros. We have people who aspire to higher ideals than those of the general populace, people who will fight for those ideals. Names like Richard Stallman, Linus Torvolds, Eric Raymond, Larry Wall...and the list goes on.
This is part of the reason why our society is ascendant. We have heros to inspire us.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
General society has a lack of Heros, it is the Free/Open Source software community that has heros. The average Joe/Jane on the street has no idea why say, RMS is important. Because this small community has heros to inspire us, we are doing good things.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Yes. Check Brin's web site. Somebody has bought an option on the Uplift series, to try and create a new SF mega-family of related films. Brin also has some amusing comments about "The Postman".
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Using an excuse like that is like closing the barn door after the cows have escaped. Are you trying to say that any work of fiction that fills holes in a previous work is retroactive? If an event was not covered or mentioned at all in the _Original_ movies, its just someone else patching up invisible holes with silly putty.
No its just that all the Star Trek people have intelligent weapons that aim for them.
Posted by OGL:
OK, the supposed "holes" in the plot here really get my goat...I didn't flame him the first time, but his nitpicking excuses against hoardes of SW fans who are obviously right are kind of obnoxious. How influential were Jedi Knights in saving the day in ROTJ and TPM? Well, besides the obvious reason Darth Maul would probably have chopped the Queens head off had Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon not been there (yes, Sidious wanted her dead at that point in the movie. The goal of sending Maul to Tatooine was to kill the Jedi and bring her back to sign the treaty, after which she would be killed. Maul arrived too late, so instead he used her to gain power in the senate, then let her go back to Naboo where she could more easily be gotten rid of), the two Jedi went back in order to learn more about Maul and the return of the Sith (albeit at the expense of one Jedi). If there was any flaw in Lucas' storytelling, it's that Maul just stood there pacing while the force fields were closed, instead of ranting a little bit and revealing some useful information...all Yoda and Windu managed to discover was that Maul was indeed a Sith...well DUH, Qui-Gon died for THAT?
Anyway, getting back to ROTJ, I think it's pretty obvious that Luke's killing of the Emperor was instrumental to the rebellion's long-term victory. If Luke hadn't been there, the Emperor would have easily escaped from the Death Star before it was completely destroyed. If you think about the scope of the entire series, the Emperor is really the head baddy...present in ALL SIX movies. Vader was just a sorry, crippled old man underneath a scary exoskeleton. How could Brin have watched the movie and missed that?
Anyway, to sum up: Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon helped the queen capture the Viceroy and helped the good side of the force (arguably a more important cause than anything else). Luke turned a rebel victory into a rebel triumph. Vader was a complex character who doesn't deserve to be typecast the way Brin sees him. Basically I think Brin should just back down and stop trying to see non-existent holes in good (well, good if you take out Jar-Jar) movies.
-W.W.
Posted by stodge:
EXACTLY! It's only a film! And an average one at that.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
Um, not as such. From what I have been able to work out, Dr Brin's main objection began with an interview with GL who who blathered away at some considerable length about "the joy of benevolent despots".
It's the contempt that Lucas expressed for the entire nature of the democratic process, and the fact that this is the perspective that underlies the Star Wars movies, that is pissing him off.
So it's as much the publicly stated attitudes of the director, and the way that these have been presented, that Dr Brin is taking offense to.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
Hate to tell you this 'd00d', but your showing way too much attachment to your childhood here.
In case you haven't heard - Santa Claus is currently doing a twenty year stretch for the production and distribution of kiddy-porn. The Easter Bunny was terminated with extreme prejudice when it was positively proven that it was a vector for the transmission of BSE and the tooth-fairy is currently about to go to trial for practicing dental surgery without a licence.
And yeah, I remember when star wars came out. At the time, I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I very quickly learn't to keep this opinion to myself as a result of all the people who shouted at me for doubting that it was the greatest art-work of modern civilisation.
What a pity it is that in the twenty odd years since then that so many of those idiots still haven't managed to *grow* *up*.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
...but I agree. Hollywood directors arn't well known for their ability to deal with intellectual subtley. The Uplift stories will get mauled, and the viewing audience will sit there asking each other "are we supposed to laugh right now or this supposed to be serious?".
Hollywood - a great place to do nuclear testing.
GL has gotten much sloppier. He doesn't even have to try anymore, he knows millions of fandroids will flock to the next SW even if it's two hours of still shots of gungan droppings.
Yeah, but maybe not as many times. I saw Episode IV and V about a dozen times each in the theaters, and ROTJ twice. But I only felt like seeing Phantom Menace once. Thought it was okay, but not enough to see again before video. Lucas's attempt to put DC Comics-style "science" into the story with those milimitawhatchamacallitochondria really grated on my nerves. The whole Luke storyline seemed to make clear that the Force was something cosmic, all-encompassing, and basically unmeasurable except in the vaguest way. Turns out everybody just forgot to bring batteries for their Force tricorder!
I'm seriously hoping at least one of the next two movies is comparable to Empire. This one gave me horrible flashbacks of the first Star Trek movie...
Oh wait, I just figured out what turns Anakin to the Dark Side. Red Kryptonite. Just wait. See if I'm wrong.
Posted by Faithless the Wonder Boy:
...one of the greatest satires ever.
Each time I see it it becomes more unbelievable that anyone could take it seriously. Everything about the film, from the perfect Aryan hero to the commercial style presentation and utterly dimwitted tactics, is a complete piss-take. While I was shocked by the ridiculous amount of gore the first time round, I find it hilarious now.
Oh, and the line "Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today..." is a classic.
Re: Aliens - symbolism or not, it's a fantastic action film, with the powerloader/alien queen face-off standing out as an all time great film moment.
--------------------------------------
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
The problem is that there are rather a lot of people who are taking the whole star wars series *very* seriously. For a disturbingly large number of people, it has an almost religious focus.
Because of this, it is perfectly valid for Dr Brin ( or anyone else ) to critisise, since it presents an essentially elitist view of society.
His critisisms are not directed at those who regard it as being only entertainment - his critisisms are directed at those who regard it as "divinly inspired", and who seek to elevate it to such a level.
Neither is this irrelevent issue within our contemporary society. As we continue to develop more and more sophisticated methods for the manipulation of the human genome, the temptation to create the "Ubersmench" ( the Super-human ) is gradually leaving the realm of fiction and begining to emerge within the realm of actual possibility.
In this respect, Star Wars is very much a moral tale, and one which tells a very questionable lesson.
As someone who grew up in the early sixties, the concept of the Ubersmench was very much present for me. It's central position within Nazi ideology and their experiments in eugenics were very much within peoples minds.
Sadly, this is no longer the case. Recent surveys have indicated that many people today would utilise genetic modification on their own future children if such techniques were available, and that the traits that they would select for would simply be in accordance with their own particular racial and/or ethnic prejudices.
It has been said that those who do not learn the lessons of the past will inevitably make those mistakes again in the future.
My own suspicion is that the Ubersmench is very much alive and well, and living next door to George Lucas.
This is a very well reasoned article. The points made are valid whether you like the American political system or not.
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...and a remedial English grammar class.
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
He states that human rights, international law, freedom of speech, etc. are not necessarily the province of western government. Consider American government (oh, I am a US Citizen (born & raised)). We have this supposed checks and balances system to prevent the government from depriving us of our rights (remember the "due process" clause?).
Would a government that upholds human rights deprive its citizens of land, of wealth, of their own lives without due process? Ours does. Don't believe me? We have "environmental impact" laws that forbid construction activity in an area because of "endangered species" even when those species are thriving or don't even live in the area. We have the RICO law which allows the FBI to seize anything you own even on the suspicion that you are doing something illegal--and they don't always return it either. Ask people suspected of cracking if they got their computers back even when it was proved that they were innocent. We have the careless disregard for life and property shown by the ATF and FBI. Remember Waco? Remember Ruby Ridge? I don't agree with what those folks believed in, but what they were doing wasn't necessarily illegal.
Ever hear what happened to the Mormons in the mid 1800's, courtesy of the US goverment which you so proudly hold up as a model to the world? The government drove them out of the US, refused to answer their cries for mercy as the citizens of Missouri and Illinois deprived them of life, liberty, and happiness. The government sent Johnstone after them with an army on false reports of sedition, and his soldiers did all sorts of cruel things to them.
What about the treatment of black people in this country by the US government? Abraham Lincoln might have "freed the slaves," but the "Emancipation Proclamation" only freed slaves in rebelling states--not loyal ones. There are more examples, if time would permit.
Don't get me wrong--I would still rather live here in the US and have the privileges of Citizenship here, but it isn't perfect, and just because it has the "western-style democracy" that you are so excited about does not in any way mean that it necessarily is more predisposed to human rights. Our politicians may spend a lot of time talking about human rights, but talk does not usually equate to action in our political system, as you well know.
To say that having a democratic system implies a greater degree of human rights and freedoms is a logical fallacy. It may be true in some cases, but it will not necessarily hold true in all cases, and it is conceivable that other forms of government if managed well could provide an equal or better degree of these freedoms than ours does.
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Where is the chocolate?
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...that you just stated my main point without the surrounding logic ;)
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...is a Swedish actress...hence the Swedish accent. If you want to hear a Spanish accent, listen to Antonio Banderas.
Who am I?
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Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
Maybe the full serial # is too long so they never bothered to say the whole one ... on some devices, e. g. assault guns, only four digits are shown on most parts, and only on a few parts the full (6 digit) number is printed. :)
Which gives us a good explanation for this
In the mid-1970s, movies were decidedly non-saga-oriented. There were a lot of excellent movies out, but they tended to stay away from the grander themes. Star Wars revitialized the epic saga.
A lot of people criticize Star Wars and its sequels/prequels, because they are not good SF. But they never were SF! The Matrix is SF; The Martian Chronicles is SF; Star Trek is (borderline) SF. But Star Wars is not SF; it is a fairy tale that happens to occur on other planets and involves the use of space travel. And for what it is, does a pretty good job of entertaining. IMO.
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First off, I'd like to summarily dismiss all of Brin's arguments that so-and-so must have planned for someone else to do something by acting like they wanted to opposite. This assumes that the characters are, in fact, demi-gods and have the ability to entirely manipulate every one's actions, taking into account that they can place barriers and assume that the foe will defeat the barriers. Brin says
and
VADER's the one who sent the secret plans to Leia's ship! He arranged for the droids to get away, and coincidentally land just a few miles from his hidden son! Remember how, a little later, he talks Tarkin into "letting them go so we can trace them"? Likewise, he's the only close-up witness to Obiwan disappearing, when he supposedly "killed" his master in that sword fight! (Maybe he actually helped Obiwan pull a vanishing act.) Note that the "fight" with Obiwan distracted the guards & helped let Luke get away!...
Brin goes on to suggest that Vader/Anakin planned the entire course of the movies starting from his escape from Tattoine just to overthrow Palpatine by arranging for Luke to distract Palpatine at a critical moment. Finally, Brin offers a quicker way for Anakin/Vader to meet his life-long goals and chides Lucas for not seeing this simpler method.
My complaint with this entire criticism is that people, no matter how powerful, simply don't plan that far ahead. Brin accuses Palpatine of planning for Amidala to escape just in time to win him the senate. He then wonders why anyone had to die if this was the plan all along. This is ridiculous. The reason these movies (at least 4-6) are fun, is watching how powerful figures react to unpredictable events.
Fantasy is a type of fiction. Star Wars is clearly fiction in that is is, to the best of our knowledge, untrue. Since it is not "fact", it must be "fiction". This is a kind of boolean either/or situation.
Star Wars may or may not be "Science Fiction", a particular type of fiction. It has been too many years since I studied Sci-Fi (what a literature course), so I don't remember the definition (yes, there is on). My professor (author John Kessel) would have agreed that SW wasn't up to "Science Fiction".
I personally use "Science Fantasy" to cover SW and other things where the line between Magic and Technology gets blurry. This is a cop out on my part, but I've gotten over it.
- doug
>Jedi knights probably are considered partisan.
Your average Jedi knights, perhaps. But these ones are *specifically* identified as ambassadors, and were empowered to negotiate.
Brin is incorrect in his assertion that "(a) Lucas never even tries to use this excuse [that Vader is completely controlled by the Emperor], so why concoct it?" But Vader clearly says "I *must* obey my master." in the scene where he meets Luke on Endor.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
[The Jedi were sent in secret]
Ah. Which explains why they show up in a brightly painted diplomatic vessel (according to the Star Wars Scrapbook) and immediately go talk to the leaders. Well, given the size of the galaxy, at least this is secret to the rest of the Senate. Point taken, particularly given that Valorum *is* weak and corrupt.
The victory at Naboo eliminates the Trade Federation as a vassal of Sidious's, which given the hundred (disappearing? Where did the others in the blockade go?) battleships they had was a significant force. So Sidous did lose something significant in that battle, although the Chancellorship for Palpitane was probably more than compensation.
>Luke made the Ewoks (spit!) fight the Empire?
No, his actions were just a vital step in getting the Ewok involvement. Otherwise, Luke, Han, and Chewie were going to be eaten. There was no indication the Ewoks would have spontaneously attacked the shield generator, and Leia would have been hard-pressed to do it with just herself, the robots, and any help she could get from the Ewoks.
Apparently in early scripts the Ewoks were Wookies.
Another non-ubermench who plays a vital role is Wedge Antilles, who survives the first Death Star attack, takes out an Imperial walker, and leads the attack on the Death Star, talking out the main power coupling or something like that.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
But who is the Chancellor keeping this mission secret from? Primarily one would think it was the Trade Federation folks and their allies, in which case sending a diplomatic vessel with a couple of Jedi (ok, not everyone knows how to spot those) straight to the leaders of the trade fed just isn't going to keep it secret.
I also wonder why, in a world where people can fly halfway across the galaxy in (what seems like) a few hours, there isn't anyone who will exchange Republic credits for whatever ones are used on Tatooine -- one would think the Hutts would arrange to for usurious rates if no one else would. And don't the Jedi have any secret way to wire for cash/aid? Clearly they had the potential of contacting Naboo (otherwise there was no way they could respond to the pleas for her return), so they should have been able to call elsewhere.
Apparently by the time of Star Wars, btw, those exchange problems must have been worked out by those efficient Imperials; Han didn't worry about the different credits he was getting on Tatooine versus Alderaan.
Last little note: Darth Vader apparently wasn't the only one to survive the explosion of the original Death Star. The same actor who plays the part of the guy who tells Grand Moff Tarkin that there is a danger in "A New Hope" appears in , I believe, "The Empire Strikes Back", again as an Imperial officer. So apparently he took his own advice.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Darth Maul isn't out to kill Amidala, he's out to kill the Jedi, thus leaving her without advisors other than Palpitane. If Maul had succeeded, he would have fixed what (to me) is the biggest plot hole in the movie, the whole "let's send a committee rather than an army" bit in the Senate. Exsqueeze me? They had *just sent* a committee, two Jedi knight ambassadors, and the Trade Federation had destroyed their ship and its crew and attempted to murder the ambassadors via multiple means. Said ambassadors were available as witnesses. Just exactly what would be enough evidence for the Senate?
Oh, and Luke *did* matter in ROTJ; without his Force skills, the Ewoks would never have attacked the Stormtroopers.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Better yet, wait until it comes out on video or is showing on some cable movie channel.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Landover Babist Chruch is a joke. Do a little reading on the site.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
1: Obiwhine and Cal-Gon Jim were sent NOT by the senate but the nitwit the Queen had voted out of office, and he sent them in secret (you did READ the opening text, didn't you?).
2: Luke made the Ewoks (spit!) fight the Empire? Really? Not in the movie I saw.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
All I wanted was a good movie. What I got was a piece of crap with an amphibious Teletubby in it.
After 16 years Lucas can do better than that! Or maybe he can't. Regardless, I really doubt I'm going to bother with Episode 2.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
True, but Star Wars was GOOD. Phantom Menace is not. Phantom Menace is a piece of badly thought out crap.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Peter David has a story, soon to appear in a comic from Dark Horse, about "Skippy the Jedi Droid". Skippy is not R2D2, but it did appear on-screen in one of the movies; further information would be a spoiler.
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
> ...there can only be 2 Sith lords at one time (the master and the apprentice)...
This has been explained, I believe through official Lucas sources, as a strong rule of thumb, not as a law of the universe (like those of thermodynamics). A lone master would naturally seek out an assistant (and, I presume, someone with whom to gloat); but two apprentices (or an apprentice with his own sub-apprentice) would overpower the master and reduce the count to two (just as Vader offered to Luke in ESB). And of course two independent masters could not co-exist.
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
Exactly, I also wrote about this in my review of the movie. I felt totally cheated!
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
David Brin, David Brin, David Brin... It's a MOVIE! Entertainment type thing. Sheesh, you'd think by listening to him that all of us use movies as a blueprint for our lives.
Witness the scene in episode IV (as one example) when uncle owen and luke are first buying r2d2 and c3po from the jawas.
both r2d2 and the red droid originally purchased are referred to as "r2 units", which would lead one to believe that the r2 is a model or class designation, and d2 is the only component of "r2d2" that's a unique identifier.
| I learned, "Ahh..Mexican food, and badly
;)
| written science fiction..I see the connection."
Except that Taco Bell isn't real Mexican food and Star Wars isn't real science fiction.
-- Rick
but one must ask whether star wars is really worth all this analysis.
... has anyone ever wondered about Gene Rodenberry's sincerity - he puts forth this quasi utopian scenario where there is no "property" and the problem of scarce goods has been done away with by technology (umm ridiculous). Yet Rodenberry was an IP droid who maintained an iron grip on his lttle Star Trek franchise. Ho Hum. So much for "vision".
Yes, Lucas sucks, he should've hired Tom Stoppard or something to write his movie. *That* would've been interesting.
Star Trek
support gun control: take guns from cops
No, DM was there to kill QuiGon and Obi Wan specifically. Not to atack the queen.
support gun control: take guns from cops
... guess it's Paramount that has the evil IP grip then. Apologies to GR.
Anyway - think about it - there will ALWAYS be scarce resources and people will ALWAYS "pay" more for them.
A "replicator" can make a perfect pound of 24 carat gold or a cup of coffee but can it give me a vacation on a beach in (real) Aculpoco? Something will always be "scarce", it is the nature of things.
support gun control: take guns from cops
We are talking about a movie, right? I think
StarWars was a little like Independence Day.
One of the best B rated films of it's time. It
had all the special effects, and a mediocre story
line. Good vs. Bad, not very complicated. But
hell most of us were 7 years old when we saw it,
and we had never seen anything like it. It was
just plain AWESOME!
Somewhere along the lines this was lost I think,
everyone started personally identifying with the
characters. Started getting into the books. In
such a way that now in our late 20's, Phantom
Menace comes along, and instead of a "cool" movie
with special effects, we expect some Oscar winning
epic on the lines of BraveHeart.
My best friend took his 5 and 10 year old to see
it, they loved it as much as I did StarWars... I
hope it stays that way with them.
Awesome!
> Archetypes are the bad ideas generally recycled
> by third rate intellectuals
Well then I guess you'd have to put George Lucas into that category. Lucas follows Joseph Campbell and Campbell followed Carl Jung. (inventor of the term "archetype") Now, you can call Jung (or Campbell, for that matter) a "third rate intellectual," but I'd like to see you back that one up...
Try the "culture" universe from Iain Banks. Gotta love the power of those spaceships :-) they'd eat anything (in fact, everything all at once) in the trek or starwars universes for lunch - but they are too nice to want to :-/
What he meant was that the Highlander series didn't bother to wait 'till Highlander III (The Apology) to suck really bad.
The basic idea of that aside was that of SF movie trilogies, the first one is okay, the second is fantastic, while the third should nailed to the wall and set on fire. Highlander is a very obvious counter example.
Now, I haven't completely deciphered the above post (there needs to be a moderation catagory for "incoherent"), but I think it says someone is making an Uplift movie.
Is this true? Has someone bought the option? Are they doing anything with it? Even after Postman? Which book (Sundiver or maybe Uplift War, I should think)?
The _facts_ are that we don't know if Palpatine and Sidious are tha same person. Nowhere in the movie is it even _hinted_ that the are.
Sidious comment that he would take care of the Senate can just be like the way he took care of Naboo.. He didn't do it personally but through a subject or other means under his control.. the Trade Federation, Darth Maul or.. Senator Palpatine.
Palapatine and Sidious look alike, but Sidious is clearly older than Palpatine. At least to me..
I am therefor one of those who believe that Palpatine is a clone puppet to Sidious. The fact that neither Jedi could felt any "presance" when close to Palpatine should indicate more clearly than aything that Palpatine _is_not_ Sidious.
Their voices aren't identical either.. bur neither was Padme/Amidala's.
Sidious plan is probobly one of manouvering Palpatine into power, and then take his place as Emperor to be.
But.. nothing is certain until we see Episode II. and perhaps not even then. If I'd to pick the one thing that makes SW so great is that nothing is certain.. not even when you've been presented with the facts.
- Henrik
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
The difference between genetic diddling and the third reich is that there is no german army and pals making Lebensraum für der Übermenschen.
If people want their kids to look like supermodels and have the intelligence of rocket scientists, why not, as long they can pay for it? Ain't capitalism great?
If you can't afford it, your kids might be ugly and stupid, and they'll get dropped out of the gene pool. Good riddance. If they're ugly but smart enough to get along, great! If they're stupid but pretty enough to be taken care of, great!
The only problem with this scenario is if there isn't enough effort put into getting rid of the need for jobs to keep the ugly and stupid people occupied. Hrm... Brave New World, anyone?
Seriously, though... I don't think that it's anything to worry about. And if it is, what're you going to do about it? Ugly People Unite!? "Morons who stick together, umm... Do stuff together!"
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Whoah, somebody must have received *just a few* too many flames. I read the entire critique, and I have to say it's really a nitpicker's guide to star wars. I mean, yes, the plot has some holes. But after reading that article, I wouldn't have been suprised to see "So there, Nyaaaah!" written at the end.
:) *ducking and running*
In my opinion, it was still a good movie dispite the holes in the plot. Take Armageddon - did you really think for one second that a nuclear warhead that might have weighed maybe 300 lbs was going to blow a asteroid the size of *texas* in half? No, but that doesn't mean the movie sucked for that fact alone (it sucked for other reasons *g*).
And finally, comparing Star Trek to Star Wars is just *asking* for the geeks here to break out their light sabres and phasers and go get medival on your ass. Those two universes are seperate. For one, Star Wars has far more interesting aliens. However, bar none, the Enterprise has the bigger guns.
--
You know, a simple "the show was cool" would have been enough...
--
Your primary point seems to be that the goods we associate with modern government (human rights, education, lack of violence in everyday life) are not directly tied to democracy, but can exist without democratic government. I agree with that if human nature were perfect, but it is not, and therefore it is better to design systems of government to account for the fact that anyone wanting to rule is likely to be a rotter.
Given that, we need to ensure they are as accountable to the values they are meant to uphold (liberalism, human rights, etc) as possible. Democracies accomplish this quite well, by ensuring, as long as elections are held, that governments will be punished for spoiling people's sense of wellbeing, and another part of the elite will be put in their place.
I completely acknowledge your point about Athens. Some of the things they did were barbaric. What a democracy acheives is hugely dependant on the values of the electorate, and some western democracies show occasional signs of going wrong for just that reason. I'd only argue that the democratic barbarians of Athens were better off than the non-democratic barbarians who surrounded them.
I don't really agree that people need much political sophistication to participate in a democracy. Giving people direct control over government, or encouraging activism, might lead to some very misguided policies. It is better in many ways that the mass of the population answer the question "do they suck or not ? and do you care ?" every few years.
You seem opposed to elitism, so you probably won't agree with that last paragraph, but consider this: can anyone program a computer ? mend a car ? build a house ? Then why is there such a widespread idea that anyone can run a country ? You need a certain personality and certain skills. The best the rest of us can do to experts in any field is keep tabs on how badly they suck, and avoid the ones who suck the worst.
The Nazi government in Germany had very little democratic mandate. They were selected to form a government in a parliament that had no clear majority, while their power was in decline. Its pretty hard to argue that the will of the German people was a Nazi government. In practice the will of the president was to keep the Commies out, and he thought the Nazis were the lesser evil. An argument against a political head of state perhaps ?
Which leads me on to saying that Britain's system of government is hugely complex, but largely informal. In practice the monarch acts as a guard against illegitimate governments. Any government that tried to get rid of the monarch out of anything other than republican principle (in which case they'd want to replace the rest of the system as well) would lose the good will of large and important parts of the public. This is probably as good a safeguard as any bit of paper.
Finally, Kosovo. International law, and therefore the UN, is mainly concerned with interaction between states. Conflicts on this level are rare these days, and therefore many situations lead to conflicts within states. These are not covered by any kind of law, and are fairly horrifying to nice western couch potatos. Our governments therefore feel driven to do something about them - at least those that occur in Europe, in places that don't matter much strategically (ie. not Turkey) etc.
What this proves is that international law is woefully inadequate, not that NATO acted with anything but the best of intentions. We have nothing against the Serbs and very little nice to say about the Albanians (indeed most westerners would be hard put to tell a Serb from an Albanian or find Serbia on a map). There is no failure to acknowledge Turkeys behaviour (indeed the EU has pissed Turkey off over this very issue). Its just that Turkey matters too much. I think that sucks too, but the appropriate thing to do is strengthen international instituations to deal with Turkey without threatening NATO's integrity, not to cry "let the poor Serbs alone" while they rape and pillage minority areas of their own country.
Perhaps Marcvs is unfamiliar with how countries with parliamentary systems work. Generally speaking, there is a president whose powers are mostly ceremonial except for times where there is a change of governments. At that point, if one party has a majority, there isn't a choice: the leader of that party gets to be prime minister or premier or chancellor. If no party has the majority, the president has some choice who to appoint, but the appointment is only successful if the appointee forms a successful coalition. In this case, Hindinberg picked Hitler. While Hitler's own party didn't have a majority, he had allies in other parties. These allies thought they could control Hitler; they were about as wrong as they could be, but that's why they went along.
What this means is that Hitler gained power by standard constitutional means; dozens of other leaders of democratic countries gained power in the same way (e.g. the current chancellor of Germany, who also doesn't have a majority).
Hitler later managed to abolish democracy. But at the time that he did this, he was wildly popular.
If using the concept of archetypes is a sign that someone is an ass, Lucas is an ass. The source for the idea that Lucas is using concepts out of Joseph Campbell to construct Star Wars, complete with archetypical heros and villians, is ... Lucas himself.
As for your last question: the fact that you rebel against a despot doesn't mean you're a democrat. It may just mean that you believe that someone else has the right to be despot (e.g. you think Princess Leia should be the queen, with powers like those of Elizabeth I).
In the end, you're just defending illiteracy. Anyone who analyzes the sources of a film or book you dismiss as "a middle-aged English teacher".
> So why is R2D2's serial number so short?
Well, aside from the known fact that he was named for the reel of film he appeared on, the other explanation is that R2D2 was simply the designation for his class (Repair), and he was unit D2 on that ship (since A New Hope does refer to "R2 units" in general).
Going a little deeper and probably off the deep end, it would seem they were designed to deliberately be non-anthropomorphic, to have less interaction with humans and more with machines. They likely learned through interaction, and didn't want them getting cluttered up with social interaction routines -- thus no human comprehensible audible language. R2D2 got put around more humans than normal and thus learned to mimic some human expression.
That's the hindsight angle. Really he was just a cute squeaking sidekick named after the reel of film he was introduced on (then likely re-written to be put in on the first)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Wow way to rebut those points without having to descend to use of logic, counterpoint, or counterexample.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Read the trailer...
bah...the only good alien was the first one. The second was just a cheap starship troopers knockoff, and the third just plain sucked.
Examples of these evil archetypes that no right minded american should use except for middle aged english teachers (I've had some damn good ones, actually)?
Though I suppose "archetype" is in and of itself one of those "big unfamiliar words [used] as labor saving devices," unless you've taken some of those english classes. Anyways, arent big words by definition labor saving devices, used so that you dont have to use a larger collection of smaller words? Seems like it is just straight big words you object to.
Course I'm just getting upset cause Brin is one of my favorite sci fi authors, a field where he writes some fascinating (though overly optimistic) novels, with the occasional big word sprinkled in...
Mr Brinn makes many MANY assumptions about what will go in the last two installments of the prequels. The fact is very few people (Lucas himself and a small handfull of trusted individuals at this point) know how things are going to go down in the next two films and very little will be known by the public at large untill they are actually released. This is part of Lucas's magic.
As much as I love Star Wars (jez its all i talked about for two weeks befor phanton menace was released) I think Mr Brinn needs to get out a little more ( this coming from me, whos sits in front of my terminal for 12 hours a day). He may be taking these films a bit to seriously and fallen into the trap of reading TOO much into these films (as Ive seen so many ppl do over the last two months).
It isn't really fair to poke fun at a movie that was directed at children considering that one of the reasons we adults liked the originals so much was because they were directed at us when we where children.
I also have to comment on the midi-chlorians argument. Everyone is always complaining about this without looking for any depth. The first time I saw TPM they bothered me a bit. The second time I saw the movie I got an entirely different impression. I viewed it as cruft in the jedi system much like the beaurocracy in the senate.
The jedi have become so complacent that all but the wisest of them feels that they can "measure" someone's force ability with a blood test. I think this is a sign of the decay of the jedi.
So far the biggest whole that I've found, that can't be easily explained by an attempt at some literary depth, is the fact that the droids (C3PO for sure at least) later have no recollection of Tatooine despite having been their previously. Hopefully, this will be "repaired" in the next two movies.
When I go back and watch "A New Hope", I'm really amazed at how much back story was revealed through subtle hints.
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
This is what passes for intelligent commentary on the internet?? The best you can say to repudiate Brin is to say that your "take is that Brin is simply jealous"??
Yes. Jealousy is a very simple, and natural, human emotion that does not need complicated explanations. Brin obviously thinks he can write better than Lucas, and he attempts to prove it by writing obfuscated opinion pieces that nobody can understand. If I put my mind to it, I'm pretty sure that I can put together long-winded diatribes that are just as convoluted. If you won't be able to understand a word of it, would that mean that I'm smarter than you?
Then you offer jealousy (since you either can't, or won't, invalidate his argument intellectually)
What argument would that be? There's apparently some trouble finding anyone who can coherently explain what Brin was trying to say in that Salon piece.
or proof that we should all keep our heads in the sand and just listen to the rich guy, because he's got all that money and thus must be doing something right??
Who said that we should all listen to the rich guy? It's just a movie, for God's sake, and a damn good one. It's not the Bible, or the Torah. It's "Star Wars", not "The Ten Commandments". Liam Neeson doesn't look anywhere like Charleton Heston.
I read Brin's original piece in Salon, as well as his follow-up.
My personal impression is that Brin is simply too full of himself. The Salon piece was the most long-winded, arrogant, and condescending drivel I've read in a long, long time. Parts of it were completely unreadable because, I guess, Mr. Brin wanted to impress the reader with his extensive vocabulary. After reading that dissertation a couple of times, I still can't figure out what he was saying. Picking apart popular sci-fi movies and books is a popular past time on Usenet and the web. It goes on all the time. Yet, Brin takes this to ridiculous extremees.
I've read some of Brin's novels. They didn't impress me much. My take is that Brin is simply jealous of George Lucas's success, that's all.
You know, a simple "I hated english class" would have done...
:)
This is a joke.
Try the "culture" universe from Iain Banks.
That's an interesting suggestion in terms of Brin's argument.
On the one hand, the Culture is held up as some sort of endpoint for the rational questioning of all things in society and the ultimate permissiveness of individual tastes: the egalitarian utopia which Brin asks us to struggle toward. It has no money, no laws, no violence or coercion, no secrecy outside your own head. (Plenty of values and social norms, though.)
On the other hand, the gap in power between the Minds and the human population is effectively disenfranchising. Most of the humans give their lives over to the one thing where competition with machines doesn't mean anything: having a good time. One could argue most of the machines are up to the same, but where the moral exercise of power requires the most complete understanding of the consequences of your actions, the important decisions must lie with the Minds. More to the point, the stories always focus around the experience of a single protagonist, often a person to some degree outside the human norms of the culture. A "throwback" or a "barbarian". These characters act as demigods to the societies the Culture intervenes in, usually by natural talent, other times by technological or ethical fiat, but they are also shown to have been instruments of the Minds that are the real movers behind the plot.
What little is described of the Culture's origins says they developed from a splinter group of humans who started a somewhat radical society and left the mainstream when it got unfriendly. (secessionist fandom anyone?) From isolation it grew into one of the dominant civilations in the galaxy, either by luck or the strength of its open development model. Presumedly they still work this way, because the Minds see it as the most efficient way to run things. Indeed, it seems to be be their evolution, not that of the humans, that's keep to society stable for millenia. Marain, the language the humans speak was designed by the Minds, and humans tend to drift into less utopian modes of thought when they stop speaking it. Witness the "almost inhuman detached passion" required to prosecute antagonists in a way least damaging to both sides, or the common occurence of characters gone native in "primitive" (meaning less egalitarian) societies. Perhaps this is an unfortunate 'way out' a la LeGuin's Disposessed.
How-we-get-there-from-here aside, I'd like to ask, "The best way to keep things running compared to what?" We're led to believe it's "compared to everything", like RMS's contention that open development makes sense from a rational point of view without an appeal to ideology. This has always rung false to me, like Star Trek's claim that the the android Data has no emotions. I think the Vulcans got it right: logic tells you the consequences of your actions, but it doesn't tell you with of those consequences you'll prefer. That comes down to values, or feelings, or something we don't understand from a technical point of view yet.
The message I've always taken from the Culture novels is that it's the values the society is based on, the values the Minds grew up with, that make it what it is. The consequences of our power to affect each other, which has only been magnified by technology, can't be avoided. Our only hope is to find ways of dealing with each other that improve our lives and avoid the miseries of the past for all of us. And that's what David Brin is talking about.
Someone moderate this post up! I had the same feeling through Brin's silly puff-piece article. I think his main problem is in categorizing Star Wars as sf, when it's really fantasy, just an escape-tale. He also assumes that we MUST take life lessons from it, or that everyone who sees Star Wars will somehow "see" everything Brin thinks is there and it will turn all of us Americans in monarchists. He's reaching for points that aren't there and just generally making an ass of himself for no reason, much like the Village Voice did in their incredibly stupid "Jar Jar is Gay" article, in which they assume that everyone in America hates gays and use that to explain why people hate Jar Jar, and then use that to prove that everyone in America hates gays. (It's called Circular Reasoning).
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
The problem with Brinn isn't that he used $10 words, everyone does that in a specialty. It's that he used archetypes. Using archetypes is nearly the surest sign that you're an ass that I can think of. Archetypes are the bad ideas generally recycled by third rate intellectuals (most of whom become english teachers or english professors) to try to come up with something to talk about. They take these archetypes, push and tug characters until they fit into them (or just proclaim that they do), then procede to talk about a story in general terms.
That is, they figure out a way to say pretty much nothing in as many words as possible with as arrogant a tone as possible, doing their best to imply that they're in the know because they can categorize everything into a bunch of made-up cubby holes.
Guess what, vader may have been more than a 1-dimension cardboard cutout. So might luke. And Han. And Chewie. And C3PO. And every damn character in the movie. Lucas could have been telling a story about people. Genuine, multifaceted people.
Did you notice that just about every one of the main characters in the SW trilogy was responsible for saving each other at least once? Did you notice that every one of the main characters was saved by someone else at some point?
The problem with Brin wasn't that he used big words. Big words are just accedents of the fact that human beings only tend to pronounce so many sounds, and to get more words than sounds we have to string the words together. Unfamiliar words are just side effects of the fact that we're not all the same person, and we don't all live the same life. Noone objects to those. What people object to are people who use big, unfamiliar words as labor-saving devices. Instead of coming up with something worth saying, they just use a special cant that's readily appliable to any situation because the can't is fairly similar to the cant of newspaper psychics - so broad that it always describes everything without exactly seeming to.
I don't think that Brin is jealous of Lucas. I just think that he's talking about him to get publicity. Talking about big issues is a way to get attention, especially if you show opinions contrary to popular belief.
I think that most people will be intereste din listening to Brin when he doesn't sound like a highschool english teacher. It takes most of us a long enough time to recover from that crap and regain the ability to appreciate good literature, we don't need another dose of mindless elitist drivel.
On the other hand, I think that Brin is right that we are all part of a community. I just think that it's strange that he thinks that star wars has anything to do with the idea that democracy is bad. After all, weren't 4-6 about the goodguy rebels defeating the badguy despots?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
All the line about looking after the senate tells you is that Sidious has an agent working in the senate (Palpatine). It does not necessarily follow that he is Palpatine.
I am not saying that Sidious != Palpatine, but I don't think that the possibility has been ruled out.
Does it seem strange to anyone else that he would be slamming Star Wars and praising Paramount's Star Trek series in his articles?
Maybe I am being a little too suspicious, but it is good to get a little background information rather than taking someone elses comments at face value.
Maybe I am being a little too suspicious, but it is good to get a little background information rather than taking someone elses comments at face value.
Plan 9 from AT&T
CPM
Tripos
P-System
OS9
Amoeba
Xenix
...
Just look and you will find many. These are just the ones that came off the top of my head. I haven't bothered to crack one of my OS tomes yet.
I'm surprised I haven't seen comments on how this may come about. Something needs to be done to cause Annikin to see the dark side as the side to go with.
What might be done to acheive this? The Emperor is a manipulator. He guides events to create the reactions he wants. As far as I see the entire plannet Nabo and the Trade Federation are pawns to gain Palpatine power in the Senate. It didn't quite work out the way he was intending, but the end result was the same.
What will Darth Sidious do to turn Annikin? What are Annikin's hot buttons that can be pushed to acheive Annikin's disalusionment with the current system? How to manipulate them to get the desired reasult? My feeling is it will involve a few events. Each designed to chip away at Annikin's trust in the light side of the force and the current Senate. I foresee The deliberate ignoring of events on Tatoone by the Senate that leads to Annikin's mother's entirely preventable death. The relationship between Amidala and Annikin will likely also be used. Some sort of tradegy will be allowed to happen to her by inaction on the part of the Senate/Jedi. Could even be as drastic as her death. This would an especially powerfull hook after Annikin and Amidala have been allowed to become quite close. This would be even more powerfull if they have are married and going to have a family toghther. I can also see lack of support for the Jedi by the Senate being used to further drive a wedge between Annikin and the light side. The important thing I see is Darth Sidious can't just take over Annikin's mind. He needs to have a wedge to get his hooks to set in so he can take control.
My feeling is that even though the Darth Sidious is very powerfull, he can't do direct mind control. He can't turn somebody against their nature. He can only influence tendacies already present in the subject. Yes this is a powerfull limitation, and the one that makes it possible to oppose him at all. Despite questioning by Vader, Leia was able to resist. Vader didn't have a hook to break her belief in the rebal cause. Somehow Sidious will generate the needed hooks in Annikin to get him to turn away and become dark. To do so he needs to make it so it looks like it isn't him that is doing it. It needs to be through indirect means, pawns, else the hooks won't work as they will be tainted.
I wouldnt even call it average. I'd call it Home Alone 3: Home Alone In Space.
Everything I needed to know about Star Wars: The Phantom Menace I learned from standing in a Taco Bell for 10 minutes.
I learned, "Ahh..Mexican food, and badly written science fiction..I see the connection."
Bowie J. Poag
Wait for the "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Darth Maul Huggies With Leak Protection" to go on sale. Buy a box. Attach one of the diapers to a baby. Come back in 3 hours, and open the diaper. You'll find a plot summary inside.
Bowie
Bowie J. Poag
"Yoda does remark in the funeral scene at the end of TPM that there can only be 2 Sith lords at one time (the master and the apprentice), so perhaps the Emperor can't get more than 1 dark side henchman. "
No, what he says is "Always two there are, a master and an apprentice." Kind of like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, later Obi-Wan and Anakin, and still later Obi-Wan and Luke.
... Otherwise, how can there BE a Jedi council?
More likely, the Force requires a 1-1 student/teacher ratio. This is not really surprising. In many cases, medieval knights and samauri kept only a single servant (read: a Padaua learner is a Page or Squire?) The few exceptions were if there was an academy/school in the castle, which were pretty rare...
So it is VERY possible that there are other Sith around, and that they are just underground, biding their time. Maul was just Sidious's padaua.
With apologies for any misspellings,
-Markvs
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Go to the Blake's 7 Universe, where the good guys are bad and the bad guys are even worse! Sure, it's 20 years old and was done on a cheaper budget than Dr. Who... but the stories are 100 times better than Space:90210 or Star Wreck:Katerine Hepburn.
-Markvs
..."Graduate of the Vila School of Unauthorized Entry."
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
... you're both half right.
"HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY HAD A DIRECT MANDATE FROM THE GERMAN PEOPLE, AND YET THEY ARE STILL THE CAUSE FOR SOME OF THE WORST ATROCITIES EVER COMMITTED."
ERRRRRRRRRR...the Nazi government was NOT elected. The Weimar Republic was set up after WWI. Hitler dissolved the Weimar Republic in a military putsch.
Try Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by Shirer "
...obviously, you've never read the book, or have forgotten a key point:
The NSDAP (Nazi party) WAS elected into power, but into a coalition government. Read this:
"By the 1930 elections, the Nazi party took 18% of the popular vote. Hitler ran for president of Germany in 1932 and won 30% of the vote. In 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by president Hindenburg."
Note, however, that the NSDAP NEVER won a majority vote. There was no direct mandate, there was no successful putsch.
As for attrocities, no question. Not that Stalin's USSR was any better, or even the US, if you consider the native Americans or our conquest of Hawaii.
-Markvs
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
All true, none of which was said in the previous post. I was refuting two generalizations and didn't want to go into a tirad on parliamenatry democracy...
(I thought that the "The NSDAP (Nazi party) WAS elected into power, but into a coalition government" line bore out this point. I'm sorry if I caused any confusion.)
-Markvs
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Highlander III was one of the worst movies I've ever seen, the only reason I saw it twice was the fact that I fell asleep the first time.
/now/ and get it out. You'll thank me for it.
PS: If you haven't read the article; what I've said won't make much sence.
PPS: The worst movie I've ever seen was Chicken Park... Go to a video place
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
It's personal. For me it was good, because I've managed to get lots of other people to see it. And no one but me so far has [openly] liked it. It's very much in the middle.
I do recommend watching it, just get as many people to watch it with you as you can.. It's more fun that way. Just don't blame me for all the lost friends. A definate B grade classic.
I can't remember how much is on the video cover, but (the cover's pretty clear it's a Jurrasic Park parody) it's cheaply done. But better than what it's parodying.
Just get it, live a little. :)
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
Oops ... posted in the wrong place ...
Here's one curious thing I have noticed about R2D2, C3PO and droids in general. Droids appear to be very common (the tiny Naboo ship had at least three of them). There's probably thousands of worlds, hundreds of thousands of ships and perhaps hundreds of millions of droids in the Star Wars galaxy.
So why is R2D2's serial number so short?
If we assume that a droid's serial number can consist of any combination of four letters and/or numbers, then there are only 36 ^ 4 combinations, or 1,679,616 different serial numbers, which would barely cover the number of droids found on a small, backwater world such as Tattoine.
On the plus side, R2D2, as always, has a lot of hack value. He is also clearly running Linux: R2D2 did not bluescreen once in the whole of the Star Wars series. The only times R2D2 failed that I can recall were hardware failures such as an external electrical overload (Jawas, Endor) or being shot in the Death Star trench.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
as well as the co author of many truly excellent films
Brazil for instance
or Shakespheare in Love
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Check the story about IPv6 further up home... maybe they've run out of old addresses and have to reuse numbers!
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
I love the first three movies, and I love TPM. I consider myself a really big fan, seen the old ones at least a hundred times each, blah blah blah.
But why is everyone arguing about these movies and making such a stink about them? It just goes to show we're taking the whole thing too seriously, which is why people associate honest, caring Star Wars fans with Trekkies who don Spock ears and head to weekly comic conventions. They're *fun* movies, but they're not meant to be a religion, or even intended to be *good* movies. And let's face it: they're not! They're extensions of old serials that were adventures in space, not Classical epics. Sure, Star Wars has turned into a contemporary epic, but we shouldn't treat it with the same respect we do works that lasted thousands of years. It's just not worth it. It's a movie for crying out loud.
-Chris
they're almost all wrong, IMHO. Star Wars, contrary to what many people (including Mr. Brin, it seems) believe, is just a series of movies. That's it. If you look at them as being more than that, you walk into a vast array of problems with it.
Something I feel I must point out, is the opening of "A New Hope" where it says "Long ago in a galaxy far, far away." This means that they are not on our tech' tree, and they aren't in our civilization. They aren't to be expected to act like us.
I like Star Wars, and I think it's one of the better stories' (movies') out there. I think it's interesting to see how they all go together. I get entertained by them, and that's all I ask of them.
Just my US $.02. =)
-- ioctl
Hi, I'm Ghost, the vapor-sig.
I still prefer "Flaming Ewoks From Hell!" heh
yeah.... but just about anyone here REALLY could have helped out the script to Menance. We have to expect more from movie-makers, has it really gotten to the point where we're going to shrug off even STAR WARS as "just a movie." Lucas has to be pretty far gone to not realize what a terrible actor Jake was (he spits his lines as if off a teleprompter!) and not correct the rest of the hokey dialouge. The fact is, the man owns the franchise, but unless the plot does something tricky like Brin's evil Yoda, he's not doing anything very interesting or creative, just throwing CGI at us. No heart mon. No heart. Does he really deserved to be credited for that?
thats all i can say. Die Jar Jar, Die.
Consider the ideals that the the F/OS software heros represent. I think you'll find you're actually supporting Brin's agrument.
Are these coders supermen? Are they priveledged elites? No. They are just some guys with some good ideas, and the time and ambition to implement them. Ok, granted, they are pretty darn smart, but so are most people who read slashdot. There's no magic specialness that prevents us being like them.
And do these heroes claim leadership as their right? Do they demand the perks and and relaxed accountability typical of leaders? No. Their leadership rest purely on their credibility within the free software community. We'd drop them in a second if they ever compromised our trust in them. And we are free to do so, because the software has no owners.
Remember, Brin is not criticizing hero worship. He's asking people to carefully consider the heros you choose.
1. That individual rights can exist under a non-democratic government, and are unrelated to democracy.
2. That history is changed only by elites.
This statement is bizarre. These things cannot exist but in a democracy. If there is no way to hold leaders accountable, then you can not stop them from silencing speech or making people "disappear".
And how do you suppose these rights become law? In the US, they were voted on by ratifing the Constitution. What do you think is more credible and more likely to endure: rights declared "inaliable" by those who choose them and with the power to ensure their protection through the process of democracy, law, and public criticism, or by rights granted abirtrarily by a dictator or ruling elite? Consider what happens when power is transfered to another elite. The most enlightened king can have a tyrant son.
With a significantly reduced reign and less power. And they can be removed from power without bloodshed. And anyone can become a politician.
But being able to criticize that government, and select that government from the most qualified canditates DOES mean you get good government, or at least the best available.
That is circular reasoning. Any example of someone who has changed history is automatically had the "spear-carrier" status removed. But the fact is many people who had humble beginnings have gone on to change the world. Martin Luther King, Jonas Salk, and Albert Einstein are just a few examples.
Or look at this way. Of all the people born to be elites, how many have turned out to be mediocre? Certainly more than those who haven't!
And what did that party do as soon as it had power? It outlawed other political parties and silenced public criticism. There was no democracy when almost all of the atrocaties were committed. The German people and their rulers were at fault, not the democratic model of government.
Besides, this is a pathetic argument against democracy, considering the number of autocratic governments which have committed atrocities throughout history.
Offtopic sidenote: The fact that you prefix "supposed" in front of "ethnic cleansing" says about your bias. I assume you get news from the international wire services in Greece. Whatever you think of NATO's intentions, or the indepndance of the media, the fact is that thousands were murdered by the Serbian army. I've seen mass graves on TV, and heard survivors describe how the entire adult male population of villages were rounded up and shot. It happened. You can't fabricate stuff like that and get away with it, at least not in countries with competing news services and laws against censorship (ding ding, only in democracies!). The only part that people don't agree on is the accuracy of the estimates of the number killed. Some claim that the numbers are being inflated to help justify NATO's bombing, but that does not mean it didn't happen.
Dear Slashdot,
First off, these are just movies, meant to make money and entertain. Secondly, when Lucas first began working on Star Wars I am sure that he knew that the idea of a "fatherless hero" (as Luke is in episode 4 before the other movies were made) would identify with all people because it is a highly mythological and is an archetype. As the movies progressed he had to build on what he had, and with all due respect he did a fantastic job.
Another point to consider is that when you are dealing with Star Wars and arguing over them, you must dispense with reality and accept the reality of the movies. With this in mind we can see that perhaps many of David Brins arguments are false.
Most importantly, as much as we all love the movies, the only person with the answers is Lucas. It is his world that he conjured up and only he has the right to say what has actually happened. Take for example Tolkien, his world of Middle Earth was completely conjured in his mind. Today readers have questions about the books, that were not answered in Tolkien's novels. In an attempt to solve this problem one of Tolkiens sons tours, having meetings to discuss the books and answer questions as best to is knowledge. Perhaps the people of Slashdot (whom we all are in ever obliged) should send a letter to Lucas (if this is possible) asking him about many of the inferences that have been made about the movies, ie: David Brins theory that Vader was trying to bring balance all along ( see point #5).
Again, those are just the thoughts of a crazy high school student. You can reach me at chatobaz@hotmail.com .
"To know what you know and know it, and to know what you don't know and know that. That is wisdom."
David Brin's major objection to Star Wars, other than quality, seems to be its elitist culture/heros. Objecting to these in Star Wars means objecting to:
1. Dune - Paul is destined to be a demi-god, son of a Duke, and becomes emporer. Also in Dune, fear is the mind killer - those who fear are animals.
2. Lord of the Rings - Aragorn is destined to be king, and comes from a master race, the Numenorians.
3. Ender's Game - Ender's entire family become the elite of the galaxy.
4. Nine Princes in Amber - a demi-god story in the first person.
5. Stanger in a Strange Land - talk about a messionic character.
6. Highlander (his example) - born to be kings; we are the princes of the universe.
I could go on. Most great science fiction has larger than life characters. There are a few notable exceptions (William Gibson comes to mind). I would strongly argue that the ones that will be remembered (and remain meaningful to future generations) are the ones with a mythic subtext.
Changes aren't permanent, but change is.
please don't mention insurrection - i'm still denying it happened
some of us *still* haven't seen the film yet...
:-)
Lets do a once and for all vote...do I go see it now and pay ~$7, or do I wait til it comes to campus and only pay $1?
--------------------------
Go tell it to the All-Mighty Taco....not here
--------------------------
I don't think Lucas's disdain is directed so much at democracy -- note that Amidala, who seems meant to be an admirable character, was elected -- but rather, at the apparent disorder that rules in a checked-and-balanced government, a limited government. Lucas's references to a "benevolent dictator" who can "get things done" -- without regard for messy things like accountability or the rule of law -- point towards a disdain for limited government, not democratic government.
I won't go as far as Pournelle myself; I think that it does matter how leaders and representatives are chosen. An hereditary ruler is somewhat more likely to overstep the bounds of his office than an elected, term-limited President. Though obviously, neither is proof to temptation.
(Personally I'd like to try election by spelling bee, even if it meant that no one on Slashdot would stand a chance of winning. :)
It must be incredibly difficult to build such a large franchise from a single (albeit good!) movie (StarWars). To expect utter continuity in a storyline which, despite Lucas' protestations to the contrary, is largely being written on the fly, is a bit optimistic I feel.
The fact that he has done such an admirable job to date is a testament to the guy's sheer ability - who really cares if he messes up on a few minor details, he tells a good old fashioned "yarn". Great escapism that takes us away from the sometimes awful reality of the world we live in.
Often in a good story it is not what is said, but what is left unsaid, that makes the story most plausible - and the fact that so much debate has been able to be raised over so many of these unspoken aspects speaks volumes about Lucas' talent as a storyteller.
>would probably have chopped the Queens head
>off had Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon not been there
What possible good would come from chopping
head off ?
>The goal of sending Maul to Tatooine was to
>kill the Jedi and bring her back to signthe
>treaty, after which she would be killed.
Again, how would this achieve anything ?
> Maul arrived too late, so instead he used
> her to gain power in the senate
/dev/null
"I didn't flame him the first time, but his nitpicking excuses against hoardes of SW fans who are obviously right are kind of obnoxious."
:)
I beg you're pardon? "Fans who are Obviously right"? Well excuse me and Brinn and everyone else in this thread for having a different opinion.
"Vader was just a sorry, crippled old man underneath a scary exoskeleton."
Really? He made quite a good sword fighter/neck crusher/tyrannical despot for a sorry old cripple. Fine, so it's his bionic suit that allows him to be strong and stay alive; so what? An asshole in a wheelchair is still an asshole.
"Vader was a complex character who doesn't deserve to be typecast the way Brin sees him."
Complex? How do you justify that statement? Where is the deep character interaction that reveals Vader's "complex" nature? Somehow I don't think "If you fail, you die", and "You failed, so you die" repeated over and over albeit in various different ways, does not constitute complex interaction indicative of a complex character.
Regardless of the above, the plot holes are not the point of Brinn's article. It's the messages hidden inside the plot holes that he's worried about
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
That's the point! Brinn is simply asking what type of message is George Lucas sending MILLIONS of CHILDREN in his films? Don't tell me StarWars hasn't inspired you, and somehow, in some small way, defined you and your friend's ideals? It has mine; I have loved the entire series since I first saw it as a child.
But that does not mean we should not be carefull about what people are trying to say with their movies, or plays, or books for that matter. The best way to keep ourselves politically and ideologically safe (without censorship) is to keep everything out in the open and continue to question.
BTW, Gene Rodenberry lost the rights to Star Trek as soon as NBC bought the first TOS episode. When NBC sold it to Paramount, he lost what little control he had left, (he did not like the direction the movies took after ST:The Motion Picture). He was not even a full producer for ST:TNG.
Also, as far as scarce resources being eliminated by technology being ridiculous; Why? Fusion and Nanotechnology are all that stand between us and a state of unlimited energy and commodity resources, so why is that so implausible as to be ridiculous? Certainly, you can IMAGINE nanotech and fusion?
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
No, it's not a blueprint, but like I've said before, it does contain messages that we have every right to examine and critique. "It's just a movie" is not a valid point. Movies are valid art/literature and as such can be just as good or bad as other art/literature, carry important messages, etc... What do you think Schindler's List was? Just a movie?
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
I find it most disturbing that you can brush off the combined sacrifice of millions as useless and ineffectual bumbling. It strikes me that you should probably brush up on your history before making broad generalized statements like that one.
Which by the way, is one of the things which buddy indirectly condemns in the Star Wars movies in his article, and I happen to agree.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
Did anyone see the movie 'Seven?' Do you remember the last scene in that movie? Where the antagonist is on the ground with the protagonist holding a gun to his head. (I forgot the characters' names.) That was what I though of when I read that 'getting mad won't make you evil' and killing the emperor wouldn't make Luke evil. If you saw and understood 'Seven' then you'll realize that getting mad and killing someone _will_ make you evil. The whole trick of 'Seven' was that the seventh murder, the one for revenge, would be the murder of the serial killer himself (again, sorry, forgot the names). By killing him, the protagonist confirms that he has the sin of revenge within him, and that makes him evil.
The same thing applies to the scene in ROTJ. What Brin forgets is that things have symbolism. The movie is not just a string of events that may or may not make perfect sense. I saw that scene in ROTJ as a fight for the goodness of all of mankind, not whether one person can get mad enough to kill someone. Sure, you can pick out plot flaws, but it was the symbolism and the great overriding theme, the clash between good and evil in _everyone_, that made SW great.
Hail,
:)
I hear this sort of thing a lot
First, in that bit on the funeral scene, why couldn't it have been foreshadowing? Couldn't Lucas have been saying "Look, here's the next apprentice" rather than "Here's Mr. Sith Lord himself"? Face it, this whole movie was a set-up for the rest of the story. This scene being foreshadowing would fit the rest of the film better. Also, Mace says "But who was it that was killed? The master, or the apprentice?" which places a bit more emphasis on the apprentice than on the master. Also, since we know it was the apprentice that was killed, we know there's an opening... and since Palpatine has yet to turn to the dark side (he does it during the Clone Wars), this is more likely to be a comment on the next apprentice than the current master.
It seems far more likely that Sidious was working the Senate through other proxies (he already had the Trade Federation... want to be the other race that supported the committe are under his control?). It seems unlikely that a Sith Lord is going to be able to disguise himself from two of the most powerful Jedi alive (Yoda and Mace Windu) while they're activly searching for him, while in the same room (ie. the funeral scene). Palpatine, as head of the Republic, is going to have a lot of contact with the Jedi Council, which would be extremely dangerous if he was Darth Sidious. It is much more likely that Palpatine, at the time of Phantom Menace, isn't evil but is politically ambitious, and later gets turned to the dark side as Sidous' apprentice.
Arithon
If space is warped, time is all that's weft
Of course Senator Palpatine == Emperor Palpatine == Darth Sidious. Just check out his entry at starwars.com.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are dead. It was an awesome play, a Shakespearian version of Waiting for Godot (R&G are the two friends in Hamlet).
I think people forget that there have been possibly hundreds of different ways to govern a group of people. Canada is a democracy, but has a
mixed economy. The US is a constitutionual republic (I think - izzat right?). Commonwealth countries are constitutional monarchies with the Queen as a figurehead. Democracy has different connotations for people in China, say. The thing is, whether it be democracy or communism, political systems don't come in a can and you can paint every country with it.
An enlightened despot back in the middle ages was the greatest thing for Europeans back then. Sure, there was no upward mobility, but the state and church were closely tied. People believed that their reward for all their toil would heavenly redemption and so forth.
Yeah...Brin's response was too sarcastic. Frankly, I don't know why people don't let Star Wars and Star Trek be. Don't ruin whatever meaning these shows have for people. I like *both*, tho I prefer Classic Trek...it's freakin apples and oranges, apples and oranges.
Palpatine is the Sith Lord Darth Sidious. they are the same person. Many people agree/disagree, but the reason I agree is this
During the movie Sidious said that "he would look after the senate"
How could he look after the senate is he wasnt in it??ie Palpatine. It makes perfect sence that he is the same guy.
Also doesnt it make sence that since he is now head of the senate, he somehow becomes Emperor? Hes in the perfect position to do so. Otherwise if Sidious does become Emperor and he is not Palpatine How the fuck does he do it??
Here's something that I've been wondering about. I, like Brin, thought that the guy in the hood was Palpatine in his Sith getup. But one of my friends is insistent that this is a different guy named Darth Sidious. What's the deal? And even if I'm right, I've heard about Darth Sidious elsewhere, who the heck is he?
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
I have read Starship Troopers. Heinlein originally designed it to be one in a series of "youth education" stories (along with the stories of juvenile delinquents working on an asteroid etc.) but the theme proved unsuitable (at least his editors did think so).
Personally, I don't see Heinlein as "racism proof" as you would like to picture him. I agree that the Lazarus universe and Stranger in a Strange Land are free of this, but if you look at "The Fifth Column" (a story where the chinese take over the world, and get wiped out by a genetical weapon (the death ray that only wipes out the bad chinese)), you'll find very strong racism there (and some unreflected reasoning too - you don't free people with a slave mind just by removing all oppression).
For the Alien, Aliens and Alien III comparisions - Alien and Aliens are simply two different movies revolving basically around the same theme - How
mankind is the greatest beast of them all.
Alien is a psycho thriller. You don't exactly know what the alien is up to, and you don't find out until the end.
Aliens is an action movie by James Camerone. It centers around the action.
I never liked Alien III for its unrealistic computer graphics and lame (and old) story and even worse ending.
Alien IV resurrects some of the virtues of Alien and Aliens and has at least again a good portrait of all participating (and dying) characters, so that you at least care about them when they die...
BTW - anyone have the directors cut of Aliens for sale ?
Premier argument to install Linux at the workplace - I get paid while waiting for fsck to scan the partitions.
Bravo! This is the best piece I've seen so far. It's absolutely right on in making the distinction between the "core" of democracy and the assorted "features" people tend to attach to it.
I've heard it said that "democracy is a terrible way to run a government; its only redeeming quality is that it's about eight times better than anything else we've got." I suspect that Pipis might agree with the first part, and we could delightful discuss the merits of the second observation.
My major complaint with Mr. Brin is that he's rejecting Lucas' stories primarily because they aren't compatible with his competing agenda. I think Pipis has already skewered Mr. Brin for perhaps the major aspect of that agenda (the "democracy==virtue" angle). In addition, I think Brin takes issue as a jealous rival would: he doesn't like the way Lucas tells his stories, so he concocts shallow and sarcastic objections to supposed "plot holes." They're straw men, almost to a man (so to speak.) As a professional writer, can he really fail to come up with a plausible explanation for the so-called "holes"?
At any rate, I thought Brin showed sloppy, lopsided argumentation style, leaving major problematic assumptions unexplained and using sarcasm instead of reasoning. After this second piece, I conclude that he still suffers from the same flaws, albeit with good humor. Pipis has rather skillfully blasted one of those assumptions, and I commend him for it.
I've also read the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as several plays by Evripides (in the original, no less!).
I'm jealous!! (and impressed! Maybe some day....)
"Let me tell you something you might have forgotten. The Nazi government was elected, through due democratic process. The public loved them. For the average German in the 30s, a government that promised freedom from the economic hell imposed by the winners of WWI and getting rid of the Jewish commercial elite that they believed was the source of all their problems (there, another elite creeps into place). HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY HAD A DIRECT MANDATE FROM THE GERMAN PEOPLE, AND YET THEY ARE STILL THE CAUSE FOR SOME OF THE WORST ATROCITIES EVER COMMITTED."
ERRRRRRRRRR...the Nazi government was NOT elected. The Weimar Republic was set up after WWI. Hitler dissolved the Weimar Republic in a military putsch.
Try Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by Shirer
If you want to point to evidence showing how democratic governments can do Bad Things, try the U.S. government's genocide of another democracy, the Iroquios (a 5 nation confederacy, the largest in North America).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Besides all the illogical things Brin points out:
* Who the hell is Darth Maul? His on-screen life span is about 30 seconds!!! This very intriguing character is not explained at all, and then killed.
* What the hell is that two-headed sports announcer??? When I saw that I thought "Is this a joke? Does Lucas want to destroy all my credibility of his universe?"
* Within 1 day on Tatooine: Jedis meet Anakin. Anakin wins race. Jedis take Anakin away from mother forever. Ummm...what?? Anakin's mother is just willing to have strangers come and take her child away in the span of 1 day?? Um, sure she's a slave virgin and all, but she didn't even want a few days to say goodbye? Whatever...
* Evil is SO STUPID. Remember when Anakin lands on that droid ship? He shoots at 1 piece of machinery (1 piece! looks like a column) and the WHOLE damn ship blows up! The Sith must have the stupidest engineers in the universe! And they don't even REMEMBER this fact when time and time again in all the other movies, inevitably some gung-ho jedi shoots at one object and the whole ship/doom star/whatever blows up. Dumb Sith.
* Those little things that live in Jedis and give them powers. Oh give me a break. What type of bull is this? This is such a totally weak explanation. Oh, the Force is not a big uncomprehensible cosmic thing, it's just due to little organisms in your cells...sheesh...through this whole movie I feel like Lucas is talking to me like he thinks I'm a moron...
* Super backflips. Ok, what the heck was that thing that Obi did at the end to kill Darth?? He flipped up backwards magically?? What kind of bull is that? Is that some Jedi power? If so, why the heck couldn't Qui-gonn pull some of that out of his butt and whoop Maul?? Given that he is older and more experienced than Obi.
* Engineer stupidity again. Make a humongous droid army. Make droids totally innocuous unless controlled remotely. Make one master control center. Let a 10-year old kid destroy it. How stupid. I wish I lived in a universe like that, in which all bad people were stupid as rocks.
* Balance of the Force. Um, wasn't Anakin the one to bring "balance to the Force"?? Supposedly things are really unbalanced because there are not enough bad guys right? So why try to kill them??? Duh. If you want balance let there be just as many on the Dark side as on the Light side. Lucas tries to meld some sort of Zen into this, but it really doesn't work.
* Um, what the heck was Samuel Jackson doing in this movie?? Lucas gives this intriguing character like 30 seconds of screen-time also, without any explanation?? Really, a Jedi knight is not the role for Jackson. I expected him at any moment to stand up, pull out a 9mm and say: "Let's get medieval on these Sith mofos!!"
* Racial stereotypes...was I the only one to pick this up:
Jar-Jar: Can we say sambo?
Trade Federation: Why do all these guys have oriental (ok, to be p.c., far eastern) accents??
Anakin's mother: What, just because she lives in something that looks like a pueblo hut, she has to have a Spanish accent??
Jedis: Well, of course they have to be British.
Along with Independence Day, and Armageddon, yet another movie with dazzling effects, and a *very* promising plot that was done stupidly and horribly wrong.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"By the 1930 elections, the Nazi party took 18% of the popular vote. Hitler ran for president of Germany in 1932 and won 30% of the vote. In 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by president Hindenburg."
l er/collapse.htm
Yes, Hitler ran in 1930, and his party won %37 of the vote, but he did not *win* the election. Hindenburg did. The Nazi party had 37% of Reichstag seats, and violence on the streets by @400,000 SA "brownshirts" was already prevalent (Bloody Sunday). Yes he got the majority vote, but it was because if you didn't vote for him your's and your family's welfare would be in extreme danger. That's not what I call popular, or a democracy. In effect, Hitler's appointment was due much more to deciept and treachery on his behalf, and the egos of several other people vying for chancellorship. It was not a military putsch in actuality, but the threat of a military putsch that got Hitler appointed.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhit
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
> What he meant was that the Highlander series didn't bother to wait 'till Highlander III (The
> Apology) to suck really bad
I agree. That is what he meant, and I agree, Highlander II more than sucked wind. I'm amazed you even bothered to watch HL-III.
From what we've seen, it's been mostly to force Naboo to sign a treaty with the Trade Federation. And after that either come back and say this wrong or simply use it to build is power base and pile up the atrocities.
He took advantage of having Amidala arriving in Coruscant but this is not necessarily what he wanted and what he had originally planned to do.
We have the choice between someone who can either see the future, or someone who is forced to act earlier and takes advantage of it.
And the main reasons why the Jedi were not presented as proofs of the atrocities, I would guess that several of the senators would not have trusted them. I mean, they have quasi-magical powers, they are pretty much independant from any temporal power. And being all-good does not really inclines rulers to try to trust you (I doubt a lot of them have clear consciences, at least from a Jedi's POV).
Of course, there are holes in the scenario, but that doesn't mean that this excuse should be used whenever you don't understand (or course the reverse is also true).
And as for what matters or not, the point is that everything matters. Everything you do changes the outcome for the better or for worse and usually for both. But you can look at pretty much every events and see how it could have turned better or worse depending on what happened.
And not to forget that one of the lessons there is to always try to do what you should be doing, not to tell yourself that it doesn't matter, because you never know when it's going to matter or not.
If you're going to miss the $7, don't bother.
If not, go see for two reasons: so you can participate in the massive hate-on everyone has for Lucas and Jar-Jar Binks; and because, if you go without expectations, there are some mildly enjoyable parts like the fight with Darth Maul.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
One objection I've never heard, and this surprises me, is that Star Wars is a wonderful missed opportunity.
The Star Wars universe is a huge and well developed context in which many different, interesting tales could be told. Unfortunately, because they're marketed to kids for toy sales, the movies, books and comics are juvenile. I enjoyed Phantom Menace once I remembered it's directed at ten year olds, and concentrated on the special effects.
The fallout from that marketing angle is througout all the movies. The force is no longer a mystical element of the universe; it's a microbe that people have in greater or lesser quantities (leading, however, to the tantalizing possibility of bottling and freebasing it). The wars aren't fought with blood and bone, but with plastic aliens that get knocked down and don't get up. The insulting caricatures of other cultures were used for comic effect, with little thought to how adults might interpret them.
Surely I'm not alone in feeling cheated of what could happen if those movies were directed at adults. Whatever mythic quality they have is diluted to uselessness by the action figures that follow.
Star Trek movies make the same mistake, to a lesser degree. In Insurrection, Federation shuttlecraft come with a karaoke machine as a standard option, and the Enterprise can be flown with a Sidewinder joystick. I nearly puked in the theatre when I saw that.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
that is fucking sick for fuck sake i havent even seen the filim yet and i know now from the way the
toys are being used its gona suck shit i mean for fuck sake using a fucking starwars toy for that
and a fucking jar jar binks toy no less that
is fucking siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick
lucas as gone way way way way to far god dam it
it would have been more scary if it was the dancing jar jar tho god what is discusting......
well i didnt know that people were considering
making a movie out of his while the books offer
a fasinating idea about uplift and evolution
i think that its gona get seriously screwed up on screen and will probably look like sea quest dsv in space (a slight change from under the sea)
while i setinaly hop it will go well i have a
fealing that the director who grabs onto this is going to make another lost in space with a sea quest twist then shove in a few chessy actors (maybe) that guy from frinds and dull down the plot and try to turn it into a big summer movie
which will probably stink .
alot of people would say (and quite rightly to)
that i make a very very lot of presumptions about
the filim but after watching science fiction filims lately and reviewing the old archives at the video shop i have to say that this is probably
the way the filim will go but for al of you (me
included) who hope for a birriliant filim here are two sighns which will well you if its good or not if it is not atleast a 15 rating you can bet
its full of kooked up kooky kiddy shit or if it is a lower buget obscure director afair with non
hollywood big shot stars the filim should be good
it is definilty something to keep youre eye on
as brin is a very good auther altho he does seem
to right very close to the edge of kiddy sci fi
which seems to be just that little bit kooky or maybe thats just me after reading peter f hamiltons the reality disfunction (an excellent book) then reading brin any ways please email me youre replys
pyroskie@hotmail.com
i want to see a penguin with an amd light sabre
hack insto some evil intel dancer storm troopers
to bad in the world of software and opensftware as in real life no one is innocent and their is very few things which are simple case of black and white or right and wrong oh well i guess i can still get my darth maul style freebsd guy jumping around with his light spear and generaly
gihting two penguins at once but then this raises the question would bill gates be jar jar binks or would intel ?????? hmmmm or maybe its
just os2 or Beos dam we need more os before i can make my os starwars comparisons
mail me pyroskie@hotmail.com
That may be a generous comparison though.
What I found most disturbing in the whole affair, and the only point I will address, is that Brin's objection is Lucas presenting a story that supports the opinion that democracy might be inherently bad.
This being an opinion I currently hold, I would like to offer a couple of comments. Brin seems to be confusing several of the underlying concepts of American society and over-generalizing about how your political system works.
Democracy is not a cut-and-paste solution. Democratic governments vary greatly, and the principle behind democracy is elected government. A lot of other things that exist in American democracy and various other types of government in the Western world, such as human rights, international law, freedom of speech and expression etc. have little to do with democracy in itself.
I am not an American. I am Greek, and I live in Athens, the place where democracy was born. I would like to point out that the ancient Athenian democracy came with little of the sprinklings and egalitarian human-rights laws that come with most modern forms of government. And it didn't work well. It didn't work well at all, and it could be argued that democracy was largely to blame for Athens' fall and decline after the Pelloponesian War.
I've also read the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as several plays by Evripides (in the original, no less!) and would like to wonder about how they differ with the kind of stories Mr. Brin advocates.
For one thing, Mr. Brin agrees that a story must have heroes. And, believe it or not, this is the way history works. I'd like to see someone come up and disagree with me when I say that a handful of people have made an incredible impact on the history of human civilization while most people did indeed play the role of un-named spear-carriers. Especially in the case of war, the decision to go to war is usually taken by a small group of leaders to whom many have sworn allegiance by one means or another. It was the American government's decision to start the war in Kosovo over supposed ethnic cleansing just as it was Agamemnon's decision to start the war in Troy over the abduction of Helen.
The only moral objection that Mr. Brin brings up is how the elite is selected. The only difference he really sees between the Homerian demi-gods and everyday-Joes-cum-heroes is that one is selected by fate / hereditary rights / genetics while the other is selected by a handful of people around him. For Mr. Brin, the deciding difference between Agamemnon Atreides and Bill Clinton is that Agamemnon was king because he was the son of Atreus, while Mr. Clinton is president because of the small percentage of the American public that actually voted, more than half chose him over the other candidate.
The fact that he's at least partially responsible for bombing the houses of people in Serbia, half way around the world from the Oval office, is not the problem. Supposedly, our beloved democracy would have struck him down in his place if his action was morally reprehensible.
Please get me straight. Although I do take interest in these matters, I do not wish to debate the moral right of this or that leader to wage war against another nation. That is a matter of a different discussion. What I am debating is Mr. Brin's point that all the good in society comes from the fact that our leaders are elected.
Let me tell you something you might have forgotten. The Nazi government was elected, through due democratic process. The public loved them. For the average German in the 30s, a government that promised freedom from the economic hell imposed by the winners of WWI and getting rid of the Jewish commercial elite that they believed was the source of all their problems (there, another elite creeps into place). HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY HAD A DIRECT MANDATE FROM THE GERMAN PEOPLE, AND YET THEY ARE STILL THE CAUSE FOR SOME OF THE WORST ATROCITIES EVER COMMITTED .
Mr. Brin supports that power corrupts, and that despots invariably become egotistical and power-hungry, incapable of acting in the best interests of their people. Just because a (relatively small) bunch of people picked an elected president over his opponent does not mean that the above cannot apply to him as well!
Democracy is, IMHO, just another way to pick an elite. But the way the world is governed at the time being means we NEED an elite. We just switched from passing the crown down from father to son, and are now passing the mandate from politician to politician.
The average citizen might have an opinion, and even a valid and just way of thinking about how the country should be run. But he might not. Putting the decision of one political party over another in the hands of the public does NOT mean you get good government.
This is Slashdot, a site for geeks, people who see ourselves as an intellectual elite. Saying that if more people pick a Democrat over a Republican (or the other way around) means we get good government is like saying that having people pick Windows over Linux (which they do, mostly, and the reasons, though bad, apply equally to democracy: lack of choice, lack of support, bad media coverage, lack of education and awareness, lack of interest) means they get good computing.
If George Lucas wants to thrash democracy, let him. You might disagree with him (and me), but it's a valid point and not unethical or morally reprehensible. Mr. Brin's point about GL thrashing a culture that has been good to him is invalid. GL is thrashing ELECTED GOVERNMENT, not the institutions that allow freedom of expression and opportunities for financial success. The two do not go together hand-in-hand. You can have one without the other. And in ALL forms of government to date, be it monarchy, aristocracy, communism, tyrrany, democracy or anything else, (perhaps not socialism? But the examples are few and far apart, and hard to judge) an ELITE has governed the masses, who have had little say in government except when they rebelled or went to the polls to exchange one elite for another. The question here is how an elite is selected. Elected government might be the best we have so far , but it is not close to being a good and effective system. You can judge individual elites (e.g. Nazis were bad, JFK was good, Agamemnon was bad, Pericles was good etc.) but you will find that the way they were brought into power has little to do with their effectiveness. Mr. Brin's objection to this I find appalling.
Give a monkey half a brain and still he's bound to fry it - Placebo
look at the history of earth. the people that changed the earth were all of his 'demigod' status. joe shmoe didnt put an end to hitlers reign of terror, it was a group of geniuses that got 'the bomb' working. history has no cases of normal minds doing great things. look in any history text, average people are written about as a mass of people(ie 'the american people', 'the protestors', etc.), the people whom are singled out are the great 'demigods', the ones that changed the world.
Well, I've carefully read both original articles, and this recent addendum. I'd have to say I'm left even more confused about Mr. Brin's standing than I was before.
First, he forgets the fact that, although the Queen's influence might be enough to call for a revote (not even influence - she's a part of the senate, and therefore capable of using the rules), that influence wouldn't be enough to call for an army. Legal maneuvering is completely different from power.
Then, he says Lucas believes that demigods are the solution to everything. But, he points out that all the "having sword fights and leaping and slashing and dying" of those demigods was for nothing, and the people who really provided the happy ending were the normal people. Which is it?
He goes into the theory that both Obi-wan and Yoda faked their deaths. I just can't give that very much credence.
"Spear carriers always obey orders in Star Wars...and they die." Huh? I think there's quite a few times when the "spear carriers" in SW actively went against their orders. Especially his favorite, Han.
After reading both articles (which sounded almost exactly alike, down to the Hitler comments) and the responses here, I'd have to say that someone is trying a little too hard to prove that his way is the right way. And he winds up never concluding either way; what is wrong with SW is that it follows the "hero myth" brand of storytelling, yet "hero myths" still have their place. We should outgrow hero myths, yet still have them. I think he should firmly decide which side of THAT fence he stands on before using the argument to pick apart someone else's work.
>Han wasn't a spear carrier. The stormtroopers
>were. Jar Jar's people were (except for Jar Jar
>and Boss Nash).
And since when do unknown people in stories argue with the rules? Since when does it even *matter* if the unknown people argue? If the author hasn't given the person a name, or anything for the reader to relate to, it would be idiotic to make that character a plot point!
>His point about demi-gods is valid. Practically
>the whole movie is about them but the actual
>events are determined by the regular people.
>In fact, without the demi-gods, the sequence of
>events wouldn't have changed much.
Exactly my point. Was the movie really about the demigods, if the demigods didn't effect much? In fact, following the reasoning you just stated, I could say the movie was actually about the *common people* effecting the *demigod's* lives, rather than the other way around. Which is completely opposite to the "hero myth" brand of storytelling Mr. Brin was bashing!
>As to the queen's political power, that would
>depend entirely upon the procedures that governed
>that body. Perhaps ANYONE can call for a "vote
>of no confidence". If so, why did it take HER to
>call for it? Especially if he lost so easily?
Think of it as similiar to the president of the US being impeached. Many people may not like him, and a large number of his fellow politicians may want him out of the way so they have a chance at the position, but it would take a crisis to actually bring the matter to a vote. And even when impeachment hearings ARE called, it takes time to carry out the proceedings... which means you need an extremely emotional, ongoing crisis to ensure that tempers stay hot enough to carry it through. Hence, the emotional plea of the princess was exactly what was needed to puff the volatile situation into flames.
>And that still doesn't account for the fact that
>the TWO JEDI KNIGHTS that were sent to conclude
>the embargo were with her and they STILL weren't
>enough to get any action.
I take it you're another one of those who didn't read the opening? The jedi knights were sent in secret. The head of the senate sent them without asking the senate, and that fact alone would have caused him serious problems if things went bad. If you paid attention, you would have noticed (I think even Palpatine pointed it out) that the politicians were more interested in the rules of politics and their own power than anything else... meaning, revealing the secretly sent jedi at that point in time would probably have called down a vote of no confidence anyways!
I have problems with not just the Star Wars but also the Star Trek universes as well. Both are fascinating, inspiring works of (quasi) Science Fiction that have inspired me in various ways in my youth, but I have always been willing to recognize the inherent flaws in each. With Star Wars, many of it's problems stem from bad writing on Lucas' part as well as the franchise's kiddiefication, i.e., whoring it out to sell toys, action figures and fast food. Plus, aiming it at kids has had a noticable downward effect on the level of writing (the fart and poop jokes, etc.). In Star Trek's case many of *it's* problems come from, again, bad writing and also continuity problems--the movies don't agree with the T.V. shows which don't agree with each other with don't agree with the books. . .this is part of the reason why I so love Japanese anime (Macross Plus, Ghost In The Shell, Akira, Ranma 1/2, Shogo kakume Utena, et al) and the Babylon 5 universe--they understand the concept of the story arc and don't have that "everything must return to status quo ante" reset button that so much of American television suffers under. That said, I would very much like to know--what would you Slashdotters out there recommend in the way of Science Fiction aimed at the adult mentality? I loved "Snow Crash," H.G. Well's "War Of The Worlds" and the more recent companion piece "Global Dispatches;" and I plan to start on the (Red, Green and Blue) Mars series as soon as I finish off "Lord Of The Rings"--anything else anyone out there can recommend? _________________________________________
One thing we have to remember when discussing perceived plot holes is that we saw the end of the story first. Lucas released the last three movies and has just now started to release the first three. Given that we already know how it's going to end, and we're still missing a large chunk out of the middle.
---Hliftus
a. k. a. Bandit
---Hliftus
a. k. a. Bandit
Populus Vult Decipi