Absolutely right. That's why I keep saying "This ain't Star Trek!"

The accuracy/inaccuracy of the Stormtroopers, if it is a discrepancy at all, has been in question since 1977. It's simply a part of the action/adventure visual language of these fun movies.

There's been some great discussion here about how everything ties together. Here's one aspect that hasn't been discussed regarding when Anakin actually died.

In ROTJ when Luke questions Obi-Wan about "You told me Vader betrayed and murdered my father," he responds: "Your father was secduced by the Dark Side. HE CEASED TO BE ANAKIN SKYWALKER and became Darth Vader. WHEN THAT HAPPENED, THE GOOD MAN WHO WAS YOUR FATHER WAS DESTROYED." To me, this explains why Anakin is now a young ghost at the end of ROTJ--because he became himself again --original limbs and all-- after sacrificing himself to save his son.

Star Trek is not scientifically correct. Not by a long-shot.


I don´t consider poor aiming part of any "visual language", poor aiming is poor aiming, there´s nothing filmatically significant about it.

That said, most of the genuine misses take place when the characters are hiding behind an object. Any direct, head-on misses usually happen when the storm troopers are told to let them go (the long corridors of the DS, for example).

But it is a filmatic device--called script immunity. Kershner talks about it on the EMPIRE dvd track--good guys hit, bad guys miss. Unless the story calls for otherwise.

In my circles, it´s called 'character shield' and can often be used to the point of ridicule in certain stories. I once saw a guy slowly dodge a laser beam. SLOWLY. -_____-

And the good guys don´t always hit everything, the times they do they have to take proper aim first, so that´s a plus.

That too.

By "this ain't Trek," I'm saying that the fast-paced action scenes do involve good guys and bad guys shooting it out and missing sometimes, without having to explain it away in some sci-fi Trekkiesque fashion.

Same can be said for Indiana Jones movies. There are certain in-the-moment hits and or misses that are both character shields and visual continuity.

I thought it was because they couldn't see a thing in those helmets.

Well, if we're doing this, I want to know: If everyone has midichlorians and therefore an ability to use the Force, how come Lumpy the Ewok didn't return as a Force Ghost along with Anakin, Yoda, and Obi-Wan at the end of Return of the Jedi? TALK ABOUT PLOTHOLES!!!1!



C'mon. We ALL know who Lumpy is.

That is true.

"Han, calibrate the plasma-emitter so that it synchronises the energy-intervalls while giving optimal penetration-effect on the tri-calculated target-area!"

"WHAT?!"

"Set the gun to automatic!"


I don´t.

I guess it kinda works like Dragonball Z's powerevels. Everyone has a powerlevel, but not everyone can shoot balls of energy out of their hands.

Oh for SW's sake, done even say that name.

dragonball

Hint: Lumpy is the one on the left who is NOT alive.

Oh, I´m sure Lumpy´s spirit went to live in the magical trees of Endor, where he drank dewdrops and sipped sunshine and lived happily in the here-after. The end.

...where they watch nothing but ET, Willow and batteries not included for ever and ever...

Amen.

Hesa lives.

This is a popular fan-request, but really, what would be the point, what would be his motivation?

Apparently he hasn´t even got lines in ROTS, just let him fade away....

If you want to know if Vader can be treated as a totaly different entity with no common aspects (except for Anakin's body) this is not something the movies can answer. Becouse, no matter what Obi-Wan or any other character would say they think about it, the question when something (or someone) ceases to be what it was (changes its essence?) and becomes something else completly, is larger then Star Wars. It's a surprisingly tricky problem and without a general, definite solution. It's like how much more parts of Vader must become mechanic for him to cease to be human at all.

So I think one must be careful when saying things like "he became himself again after sacrificing himself" without explaining in what sense this transformation is meant to be understood. Otherwise such standalone sentences can lead to consequences like: before Anakin became himself again he was someone else for some period of time, Vader on the other hand was never himself, he was Anakin not being himself or perheps being Vader himself means actualy being Anakin, but only when he isn't himself....

However, we can assume, Vader and Anakin being the same person or not, to be only a question of morals/spirituality. And here the movies give some objective answers I think. There are two ways of looking at Vader's moral identity. One is dependent on if "there is still some good in him" statement was true the other on the nature of his concious decisions and actions and how he embraced their consequences. Watching ROTJ from the first perspective proves that Anakin was never wholy "consumed", so Vader=Anakin always, even when he does all the evil stuff. The second perspective changes Anakin into Vader from the moment he pledges his services to Palpatine (accepts his fall and the finality of it) and changes him back in the moment he saves Luke (rises above the finality of the fall, becouse he is compelled so strongly to save someone he cares about).

The ghost image doesn't feature into this in my opinion.

Although your point is correct, anybody who makes copies of anything (songs, jpegs, Jango Fett, etc.) knows to keep a master copy from which all future copies are made. It doesn't have to be Jango himself - didn't these people hear of stem cells?

If I were the Republic, I'd be pissed to find out that I was getting 3rd or 4th generation clones! REFUND!

You don't have to keep master copies of digital items, because they can be copied exactly. Clones, who knows, and honestly who gives a fuck. It's all speculative anyway. People need to quit being so damned nit-picky and enjoy the movie.

I wonder if the storm troopers took it upon themselves to roast the Lars or if word got back to vader that they'd tracked the droids to them and it was vader's decision to have them killed.

Since reading the script, seeing some of the clips and listening to the audio book, I've been thinking more and more about Anakin and Vader as separate personalities. Like, when he takes care of the Jedi temple or the Separatists, he's all Darth Vader, yet when he's with Padme on Mustafar just before Obi shows up, he's Anakin again. He even mentions getting Palpatine out of the way. Then he goes all Vader again, then he's immolated, yada-yada. This goes along with something I mentioned over at VE, about Vader using the Force to help himself breathe again without mechanical assistance. This happens in the ESB novel. So imo, to abandon the Anakin persona and embrace all that is Vader is to live, cause I think Palpatine teaches Vader how to preserve his life. He ceases to be Anakin the moment he feels Obi and Padme betrayed him, and since he technically didn't die, that persona is in limbo until his son Luke is getting crispered by Palpatine. Hence the new Force ghost of Hayden instead of Sebastian.

I bet they just went in with blasters blazing, with no questions asked.

but only imperial stormtroopers are so precise

Apparently, it´s a giant blue, translucent larvae with two eyes, one above the other. It´s creepy.

It's one of Aayla Secura's breasts.

The biggest problem (in my humble opinion) is, as some have stated, even though certain things can be assumed or understood, they aren't shown quite enough in any of the movies for them to feel quite contiguous. I don't mean that they should be explained to death, a little subtext is good. But it needs to be atleast slightly more implied than it is, or else it doesn't seem real or feasible enough to (most of) the audience.

Things like Vader's concealment of Luke from the Emperor in Ep. V, Owen's belligerence toward Obi-Wan, Anakin's true origins, etc. are eluded to, yes, but they need to be implied with slightly greater emphasis in my opinion. Not through lengthy exposition or on-the-nose revelations, just a bit more fleshing out of the subtext that's already there.

Too late now though I guess.

I'll still love Episode III though no matter what. I'm not picky when it comes to what I enjoy and what I don't. If I can love Ep's I and II I'll definitely be forgiving of any of III's so-called "flaws." That doesn't stop me from dreaming though lol.

That´s why Lucas changed the Emperor-scene in ESB in the first place.

I definitely think of them as two different people, Anakin and Vader.

I think that what we are seeing is the "once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

There's a notion called "being seized by an archetype" in depth psychology, where someone's personality becomes totally dominated by a role that they have taken on. I think that Anakin arrogantly embraced the dark side, thinking that he could control it, and it seized him back. Tapping into something like that probably doesn't just feel good, it taints you.

The book mentions Vader savoring the smell of charred alien flesh while killing the Separatist leaders. It also mentions Vader trying to smooth his features into Anakin's pleasant countenance to meet his wife. The whole chapter pretty much sums up what I've felt for years: the original Darth Vader was a totally evil, healthy young man with pretty much nothing to hold him back until Obi Wan nearly kills him.

That just added even more need for further elaboration though in my opinion. When Vader asks, "How is that possible?" in response to Sidious, it contradicts what he said earlier and creates more questions rather than answering them.

Not if you stick around for the end of the movie...

You sound like one of those idiots who needs everything spelled out for them in movies. Goddammit, what ever happened to using subtlety, subtext and letting viewers figure things out by themselves?

I'm not sure why some fans continually complain about plot errors in the Star Wars films. The only good explanation I have for this is a continued belief in the urban legend that GL envisioned the plot for the entire saga in detail before making Ep IV. I have the special edition DVD set for the original trilogy and in the special features disk there is a "making of Star Wars" feature where GL is interviewed extensively on the development of the story line of the saga. The truth is that GL had only a very vague idea of what the plot for the saga would be when he made Ep. IV. At that time Luke and Leia were not intended to be brother and sister (hence the incestuous romantic plot line and the goofy stuff about Leia remembering her mother) and Anakin and Vader were two different individuals (hence the inconsistencies regarding how Obi-wan gets Anakin's lightsaber and his explanation to Luke of what happened to Anakin, etc.). I don't remember Lucas revealing when he decided that Anakin and Vader were one in the same or that Luke and Leia were sibs but one could speculate that it was during principle photography of Ep. V. How else could one explain why the big saliva swapping Leia gives Luke in the infirmiry on Hoth in Ep.V(yuk!), inconsistencies in Vader's dialogue, the big smooch Leia gives Luke in the MF at the end of Ep.V and Yoda's "No, there is another" line.

Let's face it people, George Lucas has made this stuff up as he's gone along and he didn't care about solving every inconsistency that the on-the-fly development of the plot line has induced. It's fun to make fun of the inconsistencies but to give GL credit that they are all on purpose and we just don't understand his genius is going too far.

I do find it funny that the clone soldiers in the prequels are such super-soldiers and stormtroopers are supposed to be the scourge of the galaxy but the ones on the Death Star are such bumbling idiots. Maybe the deviant clones that couldn't be fixed in their development were sent to the DS since it would be such a secure location that staffing it with half a million super troopers would be such a waste. It seems to me that the storm troopers are definitely clone soldiers. Hasn't anyone noticed the morphing of the original clone trooper armor suits in Ep. II to look more like that of the storm troopers?

My point is that those details themselves are not even major inconsistencies. They're really not that big of a deal.

And no one cares that he did except those still complaing about it.

I agree with both of you. I've enjoyed all of the movies so far although I thought HC's acting was a little forced the first time I saw Ep. II. I've never caught myself thinking "hey, that's a big plot error" while watching any of the movies. Instead I've been entertained by the plot twists that have been revealed in a neat way by the fact that Ep. 4-6 were filmed first. I remember watching Ep. 1 the first time and thinking "Senator PALPATINE! Hey, that's the same name of the emperor in Ep. VI! That guy is going to become the emperor and look how nice and diplomatic he's acting. He IS pure evil! And Darth Sidious looks a lot like the emperor looks in Ep. VI. Hey, Darth Sidious and Palpatine are the same person. How devious!"

Despite all of the dramatic hints as to Palpatine's true identity some people who have seen the films still don't realize this plot twist and will still be surprised by it in Ep. III since it has not been eplicitly shown in the films yet that Sidious and Palpatine are the same person. I was talking to someone in my office recently; she's not a rabid fan but she has seen all of the movies. She was talking about how disappointed she was with Ep. I and II and I asked her if she didn't find the development of the Palpatine/Sidious/Emperor character as interesting and she said "That guy is the Emperor?" I guess I ruined Ep. III for her.

"That guy is the Emperor?"

I had that exact same thing happen just yesterday. I was talking to a former drama teacher of mine, who is a very smart guy, and he had no fuckin' clue whatsoever. I stopped myself from totally "revealing" it to him, and told him to just go see the movie, then he'll get it.

All of us die-hard fans already know, of course, but this is going to be a major epiphany to a lot of the audience in a couple of weeks.

I find it hard to believe too, but its true that many people who have seen the films don't yet realize this connection. Apparently, Ep. III will make it obvious. I don't remember if the name "Palpatine" was ever used in dialogue of the original trilogy and thats maybe why people don't get it. If it wasn't I don't know where I heard the name but I definitely knew the name of the emperor was Palpatine before I saw Ep.I. I've only read one of the Star Wars novels ("Splinter of the Minds Eye" I think was the name) - maybe it was in there.

He was never mentioned by name in the OT, only by his title.

His name is mentioned in the OT novelizations if I remember correctly.

Oops!

Ruined the surprise for another (slow) fan.