Are the people in the Star Wars movies humans?

but from whose point of view?

Are there any sci-fi movies that would not feature humans at all? I guess it's easier to do in books.

So Star Wars actually happens in our future, but the movie was made as a sci-fi historical document. Kinda like what-if our heirs find this movie? meta-geeky.

exactly!

I think so, for at least reasons:

1) less special EFX costs, and
2) having no human protagonists at all would probably be more alienating in movie, because the visual distance from humans would make it more difficult to relate to the characters. This is why even the non-human protagonists are usually humanoids or at least antropomoprphic. In books I guess it's a bit easier to relate robots, beings of energy, etc.

crosspost

Exactly...so maybe Han Solo is Star Wars's lone Judeo-Christian!

I saw a thing on NOVA or some other PBS show about 15 yrs ago that was basically a really awesome 45 minute Mousetrap-style cause-and-effect contraptions setting each other off type of thing. Sometimes you could see a human adjusting something or mulling about, but the ACTION was all pulleys and gases.

Having said that, are there any live-action films that wouldn't feature humans? Nature documentaries excluded.

-- Tuomas (lixnix...), April 17th, 2006.

milo and otis!

-- latebloomer's jazz oddysey brought to you by kellog's corn flakes (posercore24...), April 17th, 2006.

x-post

Fascism.

because it's easier to cast humans than aliens. there are more out-of-work human actors.

In the whole universe? I don't think so.

RIP

NG News: Should we assume the major characters are human?

Betts: The literature, I think, refers to them as humans sometime. Although we're in a galaxy far, far away, I still make the assumption that these people breathe oxygen. That makes things a little tricky.

No matter what atmosphere they drop into, they're able to breathe. It seems odd that the Wookiee planet, for example, would have the right amount of oxygen for people who grew up on Tatooine, when we know that even going to a higher altitude on Earth becomes a problem in terms of oxygen. But now I'm just nitpicking.

By the time hyperdrive was invented, humans were already present on a few scattered worlds throughout the galaxy.

I don't mind Han Solo saying "go to hell" or whatever. It doesn't make him christian any more than it makes me christian if I say it. It just requires christianity to have existed in his (or my) past. Which is does, assuming the star-wars-is-set-in-the-future hypothesis.

That would be amazing!!!

-- s1ocki (slytus...) (webmail), April 17th, 2006 12:38 PM. (slutsky) (later) (link)

http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fan/images/arilou.gif

http://www.impawards.com/1993/posters/beverly_hillbillies_ver1.jpg

Dude, that one's easy. All you have to do is buy one of the figurines and take its little robe off.

Also a good way to see Claw's face from "Inspector Gadget".

I remember seeing a picture of a Jawa with his hood off in some "making of" type book back in the day, and they looked like insects.

omg yes! I do there had to have been some parallel mythology that made use of a hell type place

(I guess it is Sol, but no one refers to it as such)

xpost

RUSSIAN JAWA DOLLS

They looked like Paris Hilton?

EVERYONE ELSE: "Oh, Wrinklepaws!"

but more sense than this Anakin Solo thing. xpost

!!

-- Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (dr_...), April 17th, 2006.

otm

to problems like what is the best way to reproduce/to oxygenate blood/ having to deal with the same physic, gravity, radiations etc aliens in that star wars film happened to find similar solutions to humans. it's statistically realist.

and space being infinite, from the point of view of mathematics of typing monkeys, it must be likely that somewhere at one point there is another culture also using the english language ! think about it.

alternative answer: space opera logic is not the same as hard sci-fi logic, of course.

anakin was an exception cuz he had super force-saturated midiclorian sperm

These people are clearly jedi trash

I have no idea what this even means?

hahahaha! The best parts are the places where the wiki author starts straying from objectivity.... :D

SuperShadow claims to have invented the concept of midi-chlorians, and has compiled a list of each character and their midi-chlorian count. Most of these characters are not recognized by Lucasfilm and only appear on SuperShadow.com.

they don't want to give up any of that precious star wars wiki pagerank.

In the midi-chlorian list, SuperShadow claims to have a cameo in Episode 3 starring as a Jedi Knight named "Nebar Foxis". In the "Brief History of the Jedi and Sith", a historical account posted on his site, "Nebar Foxis" is described as "the best looking male Jedi of his time". "Nebar Foxis" is nowhere to be found in Revenge of the Sith. He claims he is the Jedi with long hair fighting Anakin Skywalker in the security hologram, but this is really Nick Gillard playing Cin Drallig.

SuperShadow's girlfriend

SuperShadow claims as his girlfriend an "attractive" woman; typically, this "girlfriend" is a non-nude photo of a porno star or model. By SuperShadow's own admission, he "just can't stop scoring". A number of the women pictured on his website (which is changed occasionally) have sued Suttle, though most of the cases were settled out of court. Apparently, they are less impressed with his 'scoring' than he is himself.

SuperShadow has posted numerous glamour photos of a woman he claims is his girlfriend. [2] As of January 2006, the images are taken from the public section of Bullz-Eye.com[3], a subscription-based bikini model website, of a blonde woman named Lauren. The images have been noticeably edited to smudge out the copyright owner information and date. The previously depicted lingerie model (possibly scanned from a magazine) that was on his site for at least a year is now listed (humorously, in double-negative fashion) as "Former Ex-Girlfriend."

check the expert MS Paint usage.

http://www.supershadow.com/starwars/lucas/

George Lucas: Ewan asked for a gold-tinted light saber blade. I denied that one because I felt gold-blades aren’t Star Wars. Hayden wanted a black-bladed light saber. I told Hayden that was too off the wall. Natalie wanted a pink-bladed one for personal protection for Padme. I told Natalie that civilians don’t carry light sabers. SS wanted his Nebar Foxis light-saber blade to change colors. It would be white hot, then turn red, then turn deep yellow and green. I rejected that idea because it was too good of an idea. Some ideas are just too ingenious to be used.

: )

PS We are nerds, meaning that in a pinch we can play softball. Geeks all have heart murmurs and atrophied leg muscles.

http://www.snopes.com/movies/graphics/c-3p0.jpg

i always considered star wars to be fantasy, rather than science fiction. And in fantasy you can have humans crop up any dang old place and time you like!

http://www.airbornepress.com/superstar.jpg

HMMM

OK he says this right in the beginning, to a random extra telling him not to go out into the Hoth sub-zero temperatures to go find Luke. I just watched Empire Strikes Back the other day and was completely amazed by the first 30 minutes of it, because I had never realized before what a complete and utter asshole Han Solo is during the entire Hoth sequence.

1) all of the weird sequences with Princess Leia where he is berating her, lecturing her, insulting her, and trying to get her to fuck him constantly.
2) screaming "I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL" for NO reason whatsoever at that poor dude
3) being all sarcastic with their rescuer
4) getting all nasty to Chewy because he had the gall to laugh at something someone else said

It's like he must've had like world's worst hangover or something? It was completely out of character, like he's normally a huge asshole but not such an emo asshole.

xpost yes I always thought that strategy seems obvious and it shouldn't have taken Luke Skywalker for them to figure it out, but otoh it seems that ALL of the Empire's "impressive weapons" have major, obvious weaknesses that render them useless.

Have you not played Lego Star Wars?!

I imagine they landed somewhere where the ion cannon couldn't hit the drop ships or whatever?

the x-wings apparently just parked out in the middle of nowhere

Yea, they're lucky they didn't notice them!

-- Huk-L (handsomishbo...), April 17th, 2006 10:44 AM. (Huk-L) (link)

i thought exactly the same thing! and i haven't seen it, so i still kind of think this!
(ok back to star wars)

TV series?

Irvin Kershner had no access to Peter Jackson's helicopter shots, I guess?

Also tom, Wookiepedia has lots of art 4 u

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/All_Terrain_Armored_Transport

the bitchez disappointed me again.

Okay, but to his credit, you have to admit that this technique has certainly panned out for Harrison Ford in other films.

These are good questions and excellent replies, but the walker
being blown up after it fell brings up something else that I've noticed.
In the movie when the speeders are shooting at the AT-ATs, it looks like
the walkers are shielded, not just armored. Notice that in one of the
passes Luke did his blaster shots don't impact the surface, in fact, one
of the shots is high but strikes something anyway, as if it had shields
up. This can also be seen when the ground based light laser cannons fire
at the legs. The laser blasts look like they are hitting shields, not
armor.
I realize Luke said "armor" but it might have been a slip in the
heat of battle. It could also be attributed to bad XF shots, but so many
of them seem unlikely. Any comments or ideas would be appreciated

okay, about the ion cannon: i would guess that it works by
ionising electrical circuits causing them to over load,yes?
and its pretty darned big when you look at it...so, if they
had fired it straight into the atmosphere, imagine the havoc
it would reak with ALL the ships, including the
snowspeeders, it would likely down them all, granted the
walkers too,as every atom in the air is ionised,and that
isnt too smart a plan. plus, i doubt it was easy to aim: I
dont know how far the walkers were from the cannon: but
there could have been a land formation of some sort blocking
the path of the beam. still, though, i think youd have to be
pretty stupid to ionise the atmosphere and nock everybodies
weapons out.

oh yeah, and it was worth not using it just to see wedge and
Janson take one out with the tow cable...

The Walkers have very thick armor that is hard to peirce with small
laser cannons like those on the T-47.

When the AT-AT fell over the grapple line that was tied around its leg

(A tactic that was devised by Luke Skywalker and high authority Rebel
leaders. Also, an Imperial noticed this flaw and mentioned it to General
Veers. The Imperial was sent to be a regular Storm Trooper so that
nobody would atch on to what he was defending himselft from when he
crouched the AT-AT)

the AT-AT hit the ground at alot of force. This crash must have weakened
and fractured the Amror enough fro smaller weapons to casue critical
damage.

>And finally a question about the cannon that is used to let the transports
>get away: Can't that cannon be used in ground battle? In that case it would
>have been a lot easier to take out the Imperial forces on Hoth.

It was an Ion cannon. These cannons disrupt the circuits in starships
and overrun them thuse rendering the starship useless for a short while
because it has no electrics.
The cannon was fixed to the floor and couldn't be moved. It was most
probably on the wrong side of the base anyway. It was also to valuable
in the escape plane for the transports. It was probably designed with
only that purpose in hand.

The Rebels were alerted to Vader's forces because they came out of hyperspace
too fast & close ...
So the AT-AT's (ground attack) were sent down to knock out the generator which
maintains the force shield so Vader's ship et.al. can come down onto Hoth

But how could the ships transporting the AT-AT's get onto Hoth if the Rebel's
Force Shield was up ????? If Vader's ship couldn't come down, why would AT-AT's
be able to come down ??? My wife & I don't get it.

Hmm. Furthermore, why couldn't the Rebels have used a Cruiser in ROTJ
to blast the bunker housing the sheild generator?

>Hmm. Furthermore, why couldn't the Rebels have used a Cruiser in ROTJ
>to blast the bunker housing the sheild generator?

The bunker would logically be protected by the shield, too. (Again,
not quite reaching the ground! :)

What I still don't understand is what Vader would have preferred Ozzel
do in approaching Hoth. His fleet would've been noticed on its
approach any way you look at it, asteroid field or no. (I started a
thread on this subject a couple of years ago, but can't remember the
explanation folks offered.)

So, sending a couple flights of Tie bombers down to Hoth should have
worked.

> >Hmm. Furthermore, why couldn't the Rebels have used a Cruiser in ROTJ
> >to blast the bunker housing the sheild generator?

> The bunker would logically be protected by the shield, too. (Again,
> not quite reaching the ground! :)

Good point, however I'm sure a cruiser's targeting systems could angle
fire under the shield from a position adjacent to the bunker. IOW, not
directly over head, since Endor is obviously spherical and not flat.

> What I still don't understand is what Vader would have preferred Ozzel
> do in approaching Hoth. His fleet would've been noticed on its
> approach any way you look at it, asteroid field or no. (I started a
> thread on this subject a couple of years ago, but can't remember the
> explanation folks offered.)

How'bout this one?

Vader wanted him to drop out of hyperspace further out-system so they
could avoid detection and Vader could decide what to do from there,
rather than charging headfirst into the battle.

Send out a few more probe droids and such...

General Rieekan: "With all the asteroid activity in this system it will
be difficult to spot approaching ships."

Meaning that if the fleet had arrived just outside the asteroid
field, then they could have possibly used it as cover to avoid detection,
sending only smaller ships to Hoth. But, since the entire Death Squadron
entered realspace right over the Hoth system, the rebels had ample time to
raise shields preventing any attack directly from space.

Darth Vader: "Captain Piett, make ready to land our troops beyond their
energy field and deploy the fleet so that nothing gets off the system..."

So the Imperials had to land their dropships and such far from
Echo Base beyond the reach of the rebels protective shield. A ground
assault under the shield was the only way that the imperials could have
taken Echo Base. If the Imperials had used ships to fly under the shield,
the rebels would have used ships of their own to repel the attack.

In RotJ, the shield the the Empire was using more than likely
covered all of their base there including the bunker and landing pad
rendering an assault from space useless. So the rebels dispatched the
strike team to sabotaget he shields.

In both cases, the shields could not be penetrated by a space to
surface bombardment. The shields were also impenetrable to solid matter
as well as energy weapons (which is why no torpedoes or missles were used
in both cases). So how did the rebels get their ships off Hoth and how
did the Imperials get shuttles to and from Endor's moon? Again, a quote
from TESB:

Leia: "The energy shield can only be opened for a short time so you'll
have to stay very close to your transports."

So both sides could lower and raise their shields at will letting
their ships and pass through but preventing the enemy from doing the same.

Hope that helps!

Galactic time zone difference.

http://www2.far2muchtime.com/macro/hello%20kitty%20darth.jpg

-- vita susicivus (n...), February 10th, 2007.

so you would want the phantom menase part 11 then?

Another thing that has always bothered me is the fact that Yoda looks significantly, significantly younger in the prequels than he does in these movies, even though the time span is maybe 20 years, tops! He's 800 years old! What is 20 years to him?!

Actually, doesn't it make more sense that it took them weeks to get to Lando's with the hyperdrive broken?

how long is that exactly? SOMEBODY must have worked it out on the web in the last 10 years. in fact i can't believe this wasn't one of the first things ever discussed on the internet. at some length.

...

Actually, doesn't it make more sense that it took them weeks to get to Lando's with the hyperdrive broken?

yeah, i'm ashamed to admit that's how i remember it. the falcon goes to bespin without a hyperdrive, we know it takes some time because boba fett is tracking them, figures out their likely destination, and arrives well in advance to prepare the ambush.

from NYT review of Carrie F's latest self-expose:

“George Lucas ruined my life,” Ms. Fisher says, which doesn’t seem entirely fair. On the other hand, in a book full of weirdos, he emerges as possibly the strangest of all. He wouldn’t let Ms. Fisher wear a bra under her Princess Leia shift because, as he patiently explained to her, there is no underwear in space: according to Lucas-physics, if you were to wear a bra in a weightless environment, your bra would strangle you.

it would have been great if in the last shot of the last ernest movie you finally see vern and he's this glowing near-godlike benevolent alien creature.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, April 17, 2006 3:38 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

still slays me everytime

Hola, George. It has been said that Mace Windu has a purple-bladed light saber because Sam Jackson requested that his character have one. Did any other cast members request different colors? And if so, why did you shoot down their requests?

George Lucas: Ewan asked for a gold-tinted light saber blade. I denied that one because I felt gold-blades aren’t Star Wars. Hayden wanted a black-bladed light saber. I told Hayden that was too off the wall. Natalie wanted a pink-bladed one for personal protection for Padme. I told Natalie that civilians don’t carry light sabers. SS wanted his Nebar Foxis light-saber blade to change colors. It would be white hot, then turn red, then turn deep yellow and green. I rejected that idea because it was too good of an idea. Some ideas are just too ingenious to be used.

Saga of Supershadow

SuperShadow's Episode 3 cameo

In the midi-chlorian list, SuperShadow claims to have a cameo in Episode 3 starring as a Jedi Knight named "Nebar Foxis". In the "Brief History of the Jedi and Sith", a historical account posted on his site, "Nebar Foxis" is described as "the best looking male Jedi of his time". "Nebar Foxis" is nowhere to be found in Revenge of the Sith. He claims he is the Jedi with long hair fighting Anakin Skywalker in the security hologram, but this is really Nick Gillard playing Cin Drallig.

knew i shoulda just started a fucking Carrie Fisher thread

How many people here have fucked her, though, Morbs?

Are the people in the Star Wars movies humans?

Did she get into drugs thanks to hanging around with the blues brothers, or vice versa?

she got belushi hooked on coke

I bet that took a lot of effort

yeah, consider the source, and that Belushi was probly around 28 when he met her; total str8edge up til then im sure.

Was Christa McAuliffe wearing a bra when she died.

??

The girls have penises, the boys have vaginas.

― Deric W. Haircare

^^^ everything you need to know about young Skywalker. Not only does he have a vagina, he lives on a planet MADE OF SAND.

And there's a giant vagina in the sand!

if only it could meet up with the planet from Dune

http://www.tml.tkk.fi/Opinnot/Tik-110.501/1997/images/sandworm.GIF
http://blog.nj.com/beach/Sarlacc.jpg

XD

thanks for the revive, morbs.

according to a nicely zonked interview about a month ago her mom at one point asked cary grant to counsel her on her lsd use at some party, he was all 'uh take it easy w/ that' and she didn't say anything cause omg cary grant but this conversation if f'n weird. i'd like to read some of her books

never follow a hippie to a second location

http://www.supershadow.com/starwars/lucas/

George Lucas: I have certain reasons for not showing Luke's friends on Tatooine at the start of A New Hope. These scenes have never appeared in the film. First, it tremendously slows down the pacing of the film. Second, these scenes don't add to the overall story.

In essence, these scenes don't supplement anything to the film. I didn't include deleted scenes with the DVD release of the old Star Wars films because I knew the fans were going to buy the old DVD's even if there were fewer high quality bonus materials.

The fans keep buying the Star Wars films on video tape and DVD over and over again. It works out great for us because we can continue to make excessive profits from Star Wars year after year. The deleted scenes might be included with the Blu-ray disc editions of the Star Wars films in order to motivate the fans to yet again buy the Star Wars films on a home entertainment format. However, it is possible the deleted scenes from the old films will never be given to the fans as an official product during my lifetime.

Is this real or fake? I don't read too many Lucas interviews; does he usually come across as a shrewd heartless businessman?

Hope shrewd business man Lucas is crying because Star Wars Deleted Magic is cooler than anything he would ever release, and it's free.

SuperShadow's girlfriend

SuperShadow claims as his girlfriend an "attractive" woman; typically, this "girlfriend" is a non-nude photo of a porno star or model. By SuperShadow's own admission, he "just can't stop scoring". A number of the women pictured on his website (which is changed occasionally) have sued Suttle, though most of the cases were settled out of court. Apparently, they are less impressed with his 'scoring' than he is himself.

SuperShadow has posted numerous glamour photos of a woman he claims is his girlfriend. [2] As of January 2006, the images are taken from the public section of Bullz-Eye.com[3], a subscription-based bikini model website, of a blonde woman named Lauren. The images have been noticeably edited to smudge out the copyright owner information and date. The previously depicted lingerie model (possibly scanned from a magazine) that was on his site for at least a year is now listed (humorously, in double-negative fashion) as "Former Ex-Girlfriend."

in answer to mr. bruneau's query

Makes me think of like Billy Mitchell from King of Kong, with his wife with big tits. He also came across as a phony and a huge asshole.

Nerds with runaway egos = truly weird.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-king-of-kong-continued-donkey-kong-champ-billy,2159/

Read a bunch of follow-up articles on King of Kong this morning and I totally take that back. The movie certainly makes him out to be that but reading these interviews sheds a whole new light on the subject..

Anyone have any links to enlightening interviews with Lucas? I just read about how he painstakingly went back to the A New Hope master cut to edit the laser shots at bad guys in the Death Star to make it less disturbing for the kids.

With so many updates and patches, Star Wars is more like software than a movie.

"There is no underwear in space" - words we can all live by.

diapers, otoh...

George Lucas: Shadow and I sometimes spend time discussing the events portrayed in the Book of Revelation from Christianity. It's intriguing to wonder if the Anti-Christ and the False Prophet are alive today. What would they be doing right now? More importantly, why are they waiting, what seems like forever, to initiate their grand plot of global control? Many of you are probably laughing uncontrollably about now because it does seem extremely silly and far fetched. Yet I have to admit I have the characteristics and skills necessary to rule the entire world. There is so much good I could bring to everyone. I could bring a new world order for mankind that would be beyond description. However, it's not realistic to dream of such things. There is no one here amongst us who is smart enough to take over civilization. Granted someone from an extremely advanced extraterrestrial species would have the necessary genius to establish what you offer to me, but it's impossible for such entities from outside our solar system to be real. There will never be a united world. It's not going to happen. Thanks for having such a positive outlook on life. I wish you well because you are a fantastic person.

Okay , I just finished watching Revenge of the Sith for the first time, and in the end they start costructing the first Death Star, right after the birth of Luke and Leia. But in Episode IV Luke and Leia must be something like 19 or 20 years old, and yet the Death Star is being used for the first time! So it took the Empire 20 years to build the Death Star?! You can't say it was because of workers' strikes or something, because I don't think the Emperor would allow organized labour to exist.

http://i.imgur.com/DDiqX.gif

Isn't that supposed to be a smaller prototype - with just the frame and the laser - that they built as a test before building the first DS?

No, I just checked the Star Wars Wikipedia, and according to it, it really took 20 years to build the damn thing:

With the concept completed and the plans finalized, Lemelisk took the plans to Despayre, where construction would finally be completed after twenty years of hard work and the death of many individuals.

Also, what the heck was up with that General Grievous character? At first I was like, "He's a robot, why is wheezing and coughing all the time?! Robots don't have lungs!". But then during his death scene you saw that he actually had biological brains and inner organs (though I didn't see any lungs). So what/who was he? I guess this is explained in some SW comic book or something, but it would've been nice if such an important character would've been given a backstory in the actual movie.

twenty years for a moon-sized weapon/military base doesn't sound unreasonable tbh

One more thing: holy shit was Natalie Portman bad in this movie! And Ian McDiarmid's evil cackling after his transformation was almost intolerable! You can't even blame this on Lucas's stiff dialogue, because Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher and James Earl Jones certainly handled it better in the original trilogy. So yeah, maybe the original movies were almost equally silly when it comes to the plot, but a big part of what made them better is that there was actually some good acting in them.

twenty years for a moon-sized weapon/military base doesn't sound unreasonable tbh

With our technological level, yeah, but you'd assume the Empire had better construction technology at hand. And it certainly took them much less time to build the second Death Star.

lol thread connection from the Curb thread:

"upporting characters were absolutely A++++ in this ep. The softball mechanic dude was hilarious, see also Larry's shrink. If I could laugh and stare in openmouthed horror at the same time I would have been doing that during the "director, let's say he directed Star Wars, he liked to visit prostitutes" scene."

yeah, but given that the empire is probably viewable as a legit form of govt, essentially you're talking about a public sector infrastructural development contract, and those things tend to overrun ime

tales of the riverbank

It's taken five bloody years to get the old people's home across the road built - 20 years for building something the size of a planet is pretty quick imo

Even after 20 years it wasn't quite finished. Still waiting for the frilly curtains to go in iirc.

It's taken five bloody years to get the old people's home across the road built - 20 years for building something the size of a planet is pretty quick imo

Yeah, but why did take only a year or two to build the second Death Star to the point it was operational, then?

smaller snag list second time round

At what point were they at in the previous film? Were they just talking about a Death Star? Had they done the market research and feasibility survey? Had they appointed an architect? Had it gone to tender for a contractor?

Second Death Star was smaller, anyway, wasn't it? Also all the machinery to make the first one, which presumably had to be built first, was in place. It's like having to build a shipyard before you build your first ship; second ship is way quicker. Also, Lucas is a twat.

At what point were they at in the previous film?

Trying to get planning permission from the council iirc. Second time round the tories were in power locally, so they just waved it through.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTHrS2dwtvTFsMDL3_ArQdU4E4AisFIiE8bb1hhZba9Qbat6Vhp

Don't forget, the silly empire mashed up the Trade Federation and caused a massive inter-galactic recession. If it takes 1-5 years to build a shopping centre, then building a space station in space in 20 years is pretty good going.

Though, I guess they coulda used some sith powers to make it quicker, they can move girders and whatnot.

I really want to see that in the outtakes

'oh yeah mate, sith lords flinging round girders, i'd like to see them try that without the union kicking off. Then you got your c63 form for telepathy safety training, your p25 for release of evil ninjas to manual work squads, don't even start me on what those guys are on for weekends and overtime, more than your job's worth son lemme tell you'

oy you, can't come into the building with that helmet on innit.

You can't even blame this on Lucas's stiff dialogue

Anakin Skywalker: You are so... beautiful.
Padmé: It's only because I'm so in love.
Anakin Skywalker: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
Padmé: So love has blinded you?
Anakin Skywalker: (laughs) Well, that's not exactly what I meant.
Padmé: But it's probably true.

Padmé: Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo; so long ago when there was nothing but our love. No politics, no plotting, no war.

Also, General Grievous was revealed in 2003's Clone Wars animated miniseries, which came out before ROTS.

xp what did he mean? "ey luv yer a solid 5, maybe even a 6 if i'm wasted, but coz i love ya it's inflated to a 9"?

Yeah, but why did take only a year or two to build the second Death Star to the point it was operational, then?

lol Lucas said in the commentary track that despite a scary Sith as Emperor the Empire is crippled by the usual bureaucratic snafus: union problems, supply problems, etc.

Plus, if they could afford to make a second death star, perhaps that was already beginning construction before the first one blew up.

Also, General Grievous was revealed in 2003's Clone Wars animated miniseries, which came out before ROTS.

I don't think film-makers should expect the viewers to watch some miniseries in order to understand their films. Two minutes of exposition would've been enough, it's just stupid to have a relatively important character confuse the viewer because he's given no backstory whatsoever.

I don't think you understand fandom

I don't think you need to know General Grievous's back story. He sucks either way.

I do, but I don't think movies should be made for hardcore fans of the franchise only.

(x-post)

When I was a kid, I got into a semantic argument with my mom's boyfriend about how unrealistic it was that Han would say "I'll see you in Hell!" to someone since Christianity didn't exist in the SW universe

"Hell" is Corellian for "Hoth."

Well, they're actually speaking "Basic" in the Star Wars movies, so Han Solo probably said whatever their equivalent of Hell was and it was translated into English for us. (Somebody kill me)

lol

You can't even blame this on Lucas's stiff dialogue, because Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher and James Earl Jones certainly handled it better in the original trilogy

tbf the scripts for the original trilogy were written, i think, by people more talented in the script-writing dept. than Lucas -- though i am sure there are some mouth-breathers who insist that every word of it has lucas' inspiration and imprimatur

Tom Stoppard did some of the dialogue for Revenge of the Sith. Make of that what you will

Leigh Brackett wrote Empire. No doubt she was a better writer than Lucas.

Well, they're actually speaking "Basic" in the Star Wars movies, so Han Solo probably said whatever their equivalent of Hell was and it was translated into English for us. (Somebody kill me)

wait so the movies are self-consciously a dramatic reinterpretation of events for the consumption of earthly English-speaking audiences?

so maybe the people aren't humans at all but merely human actors playing the roles of whatever the 'default' species of the galaxy far far away is?

ha mainly i was thinking of her! one (oddly popular) person i knew as a teenager wouldn't believe that A Woman had had a hand in the script of 'Empire': literally refused to believe, said my sources were bad, wouldn't even look at anything that might suggest otherwise

Lucas did write IV by himself

probably no surprise that that one contains the most hateworthy iteration of Luke

his mastery of writing whiny annoying kids is unparalleled.

you know what would have been awesome, is if Obi Wan had just said "fuck it" and shot Anakin in the face, but Anakin survived and THAT pushed him over to the Dark Side

barring that, if Anakin had had like maybe even a tiny sliver of darkness in him as a child, his sudden "zomg slaughtering kids is totally necessary!" conversion might have been less laughable

a tiny sliver of darkness in him as a child

maybe this explains why jabba fett lucas told his dad to retcon iv-vi so woefully

Are the people who made the Star Wars movies humans?

apparently there wasn't much left of leigh brackett's draft in the final script for empire, which was rewritten a couple times by both lawrence kasdan and lucas. the real difference between the old movies and the new ones is that the old ones had people on set who felt comfortable contradicting lucas -- and in empire's case he was halfway around the world for most (all?) of the shooting. for jedi he resumed control. so that explains everything.

his mastery of writing whiny annoying kids is unparalleled.

His mastery at picking them even more so. If you've seen the Phantom Menace making of, there is a scene where they are casting from one of three kids. The first one is kinda meh, the second one actually pulls it off really well, and then you get to the one they went with and he overacts in the most cringe-worthy Christmas Pageant way possible.

Shoulda had 1 film Anakin, 1 film Vader transformation/battle, 1 film Darth Vader being evil/start of the rebellion.

btw

Okay , I just finished watching Revenge of the Sith for the first time, and in the end they start costructing the first Death Star, right after the birth of Luke and Leia. But in Episode IV Luke and Leia must be something like 19 or 20 years old, and yet the Death Star is being used for the first time! So it took the Empire 20 years to build the Death Star?! You can't say it was because of workers' strikes or something, because I don't think the Emperor would allow organized labour to exist.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, September 7, 2011 4:34 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

maybe it's just because the thing was frigging enormous. the big dig took 20 years to finish, and it wasn't the size of the mfin moon

oh man how much more awesome would the Big Dig be if it also blew up annoying cars

big as the moon = hot enough to melt rock in the middle <-- tricky problem to engineer round, hence minimum 20-year build projection

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/assets_c/2011/01/sn-lunarcore-thumb-autox600-5112.jpg

You'd save on central heating though

Wouldn't it only be that hot in the middle if it was completely solid?

Shoulda had 1 film Anakin, 1 film Vader transformation/battle, 1 film Darth Vader being evil/start of the rebellion.

― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 11:44 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Goddamn it that would have been great.

wouldn't its own gravity ensure that it became that solid?

She was a little girl when she first got started!

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0505/fig2.large.gif

Death Star: 160 km diameter
Earth's Moon: 3,474.8 km diameter

So like, 1/20 the size of our moon. Don't know how that would affect gravity. Still would have been a bitch to engineer, I'm sure.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Endor_Holocaust

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110206203151/starwars/images/thumb/d/d0/Endor_Holocaust.jpg/451px-Endor_Holocaust.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdkSLzuwp10

In response to Tuomas' original quenstion:

Not if George Lucas has his way.

wait a minute, endor was a MOON?

"forest moon of Endor" pp.

"forest moon of Endor" pp.

"forest moon of Endor" pp.

"forest moon of Endor" pp.

DJP OTM Re: Endor

aw, I liked that pic more when I thought the Ewok was actually on fire

how do you have a forest on a moon Look, I'm just going to make my picks in the NFL Week 1 thread now, okay?

...in actuality "luke" resembled a pile of silly string and communicated through odours.
― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, April 17, 2006 2:55 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

warning: do not be trying to eat yr butternut squash lean cuisine while reading this thread. too many lols for that.

I think building a death star using my sith skills would be a good distraction from getting my legs chopped off by my best mate, losing my wife, and finding out I'd been groomed by some evil tosser :(

Except that in Episode IV Vader doesn't seem to be that impressed by the Death Star - it was Grand Moff Tarkin's pet project.

Anyway, even if there was some logical explanation why it took so long to build Death Star, its appearance in RotS was completely unnecessary. It served no plot point, it was there just to remind us of the original SW movies. So the whole "20 years confusion" could've been easily avoided by leaving the Death Star out of the movie.

Thomas, at eve point you are forgetting the key fact - George Lucas is both a disgusting savage and a monstrous cockfarmer.

Every not eve.

Tuomas not Thomas. Fucking iPad.

we're making huge leaps in determining how long a year is in the Star Wars universe - maybe the movies were in real time? :)

wait so the movies are self-consciously a dramatic reinterpretation of events for the consumption of earthly English-speaking audiences?

so maybe the people aren't humans at all but merely human actors playing the roles of whatever the 'default' species of the galaxy far far away is?

― known for melding an outrageous stage presence with tenacious hooks (Merdeyeux), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 11:20 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaBgd_nOXKM

great thread.

Here's a nice theory:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/04/every-human-in-star-wars-is-really-a-humanoid-bee

Every Human in Star Wars is Really a Humanoid Bee
Max Gladstone

There are no humans in Star Wars.

This should be obvious from the title card. We’re a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Human beings evolved on this planet, Sol 3, over the last sixty million years or so depending on how you count. If we don’t want to go all “Chariots of the Gods?” we have to throw out the notion that the people represented by human actors in Star Wars movies are in fact human. They’re something else.

Why represent them as human? Let’s assume that the Star Wars movies are dramatizations of real history: that Luke, Leia, Han et. al. actually existed in a galaxy long, long ago (etc.), and that George Lucas accessed this history via the Force and wanted to represent it on film. Star Wars tells the story of a dominant-species empire arising from a pluralistic society, then being overthrown by courageous rebels and warrior monks. Lucas had to cast this drama with human actors, and the obvious choice was to use unmodified humans to represent the most common species.

While convenient, this approach does present one problem: watching the Original Trilogy, we assume that the ‘humans’ of the GFFA (Galaxy Far Far Away) are biologically and sociologically identical to Sol 3 humans. When obviously they’re not! In fact, I think a few important context clues present a very different picture of the dominant race of the Original Trilogy.

Gender is the most important clue. The Original Trilogy has a shortage of women when considered by the standards of a two-sexed mammalian species. Leia is the most prominent female, and the only one to feature in all three movies. Aunt Beru and Mon Mothma also have named speaking roles. Aside from these three, I can’t think of another definitely-female, definitely-‘human’ character in the series. In RotJ Leia describes her mother, who is obviously a queen. These females all possess at least local political and social authority.

Family is a second important clue—or, rather, the absence of family. With one notable exception, people in the series don’t talk much about parentage. No non-Force sensitive male ever describes his family, if I recall correctly. Han, Lando, Wedge, Biggs, Tarkin, Dodonna, and so forth, all might as well have sprung from the brows of their ships. In six+ hours of film about war, I would expect to see someone to drop at least a single reference to parents of some sort. The lack of strong family ties suggests that parenting relationships are much less close for most GFFA ‘humans’ than for Sol 3 humans—which in turn suggests large brood sizes, short gestation periods, young ages of maturity, or all of the above.

So we’re looking for an organism with large brood sizes, young ages of maturity, short gestation periods, and relatively few fertile females who naturally assume positions of social and organizational authority.

Here is my modest theory: the GFFA’s ‘humans’ are in fact sentient hive insects, organized around a single queen, a handful of fertile males, and a horde of infertile female soldiers. For parsimony’s sake, let’s assume that Force sensitivity in this species is possessed by fertile males and females, and that male actors used to represent non-Force sensitive characters are actually representing infertile females.

This explains a few things:

* The Emperor’s Reproductive and Political Strategy. The Emperor, a fertile male, has replaced the old Queen, substituting the use of clone warriors for ‘normal’ biological reproduction.

* The Horror of the Clone Wars. The true horror of the Clone Wars thus becomes clear. They’re not just wars in which cloning technology is used. They’re wars in which the fundamental structure of the ‘human’ species is inverted: wars in which queens are killed, hives consolidated, and clones take the place of biological reproduction. Wars about the use of clones instead of queens.

* The Deal with Jabba’s Humanoid Slaves. Doesn’t it seem weird that a presumably hermaphroditic gastropod should be so fascinated by displaying captive females of another phylum in bikinis? The Hive Insect theory makes this habit a clear and calculated display of dominance, communicating to ‘human’ visitors that Jabba is to ‘human’ queens as queens are to drones and soldiers. (This also suggests that Jabba’s interested in twi’lek girls because they look like ‘humans,’ but may be easier to come by—giving his character a bit of extra complexity, since he wants to communicate dominance to his followers in this way but isn’t able to do more than pretend until Leia comes along.)

* Why Kill the Jedi? I mean, sure, kill the old ones, but wouldn’t it be easier to convert younglings than wipe them out? Well, drones in the absence of a queen naturally rear fertilized eggs into new queens. If Palpatine is trying to destroy queen-dom, he cannot permit the existence of any drones who are not perfectly loyal to his New Order. Conversion is apparently a brutal process. Vader survived it; Luke might survive it. Perhaps no one else did.

* What’s with all the Death Stars? It isn’t hard to annihilate all life on a planet from orbit. If you’re in orbit, you’ve already done the hard part—just tractor some rocks into the surface. Obviously a superweapon is nice to have, but why not build just the weapon and the shielding system? That would be cheaper, certainly. It seems that the superweapon is only part of the purpose of the Death Star—the Star is in fact an artificial hive, built as the perfect environment for the Emperor’s new clone-based society.

Admittedly, this doesn’t explain what’s going on between Leia and Han. It’s possible that Han is in fact a drone and doesn’t know it—he is phenomenally lucky, after all, which suggests Force sensitivity. On the other hand, it seems reasonable, given the importance of queens, that some sort of queen-soldier pairbonding could occur. This may even be the sort of relationship that the Emperor is intending to replicate with Vader.

So that’s a theory. I mean, what’s more likely—a Galaxy Far Far Away full of psychic alien super-bees, or one in which you can cross thirty solar systems and run into three women with speaking parts?

duh

JEWS COME FROM SPACE

― Washable School Paste (sexyDancer), Monday, April 17, 2006

is this true? i'm jewish, and i've never heard anyone say this at the meetings.

http://i62.tinypic.com/oho00l.png

QED

All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

ftr lucas just declared ALL the videogames non-canon.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Human

god it's like you people haven't even heard of a little thing called wookieepedia.

QED

― Mordy, 5. toukokuuta 2014 2:46

Oh, sorry, I forgoto to copy+paste the disclaimer in that article:

DISCLAIMER: I love Star Wars. It rocks. And precisely because of this, it’s fun to tweak. Obviously, the above argument only refers to the OT; the EU features a much broader range of characters and situations, and I don’t want to be responsible for creating a consistent interpretation of the prequel trilogies. (Though just off the top of my head, Naboo-’humans’ do seem to fit with Hive Insect theory.)

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Human

god it's like you people haven't even heard of a little thing called wookieepedia.

I'm not sure this proves anything, though. Sure, the word "human" is used to describe one of the species in the SW universe, but that's only because SW works have been translated into English, and "human" was considered as the best English translation of whatever the actual word is that the Star Wars "humans" use for their race. (This makes the text of SW works more fluid, because they then can use common English words of like "humanity", instead of inserting the original name of the SW "humans" into those words, which would be jarring.) However, it's still obvious that the SW "humans" can't be the same as Earth humans, because of two reasons:

1) The story of the original movies takes place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away". There is no canon evidence for the theory (mentioned upthread) that the SW movies are actually from the distant future, and their "long time ago" would actually be our future. As far as the canon is concerned, SW takes place in our past.

2) SW "humans" have some traits that Earth humans don't, the most obvious one being that inside their bodies exists microscopic life-forms called midi-chlorians. (And according to Wookieepedia, midi-chlorians are "isomorphic on every planet that supports life", and they are "necessary for life to exist", which means they couldn't have just been inserted into our system sometime in the future.) SW "humans" are also able, via the midi-chlorians, to connect to an energy field known as the Force, something which Earth humans obviously can't do.

God that page is weird; "A yellow-skinned Human female displaying characteristic curves and hairless face".

ftr lucas just declared ALL the videogames non-canon.

― it definitely wasn't designed to be a pants pocket player (stevie), Monday, May 5, 2014 3:23 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

L. Ron Lucas

(does lucas have pope-like authority and infallibility in these matters, even after having sold the intellectual property to disney?)

i'm not sure, tbh. what is his involvement with Star Wars 7?

zero

really? not even story?

now imagining George Lucas like season 7 Don Draper

Vader all too human

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/the-empire-strikes-out-nobody-first-pitches-veer-off-course-050414

bees?

bees.

BEES!

bwahaha wtf

for a long time i thought the ewok movies involved a human family from earth who crash landed on endor.

Apparently the new movie features characters with names like "Finn", "Rey", and "Poe Dameron"... These sound suspiciously like English names to me, though with a letter or two in the wrong place. Similarly, the humans in "Star Wars Rebels" animated series have actual Biblical names: "Ezra" and "Kanan". So maybe we're supposed to think the SW humans eventually landed on Earth in prehistorical times and actually founded the human civilization (a la Battlestar Galactica), and their names were passed down along the generations?

They're played by human actors who come from a planet called earth.
Seems to be a constant thing with sci fi creations, they are centred on the planet they're made by. or at least filtered through the viewpoint of people from here.
The doctor is a big friend to the human raceand the planet Earth because the series is made here.

Otherwise you are likely to constantly be falling prey to the filtering system that has its finest example in pictures of the New World being made in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries where everything that is outside of European culture is being redrawn by people inside it so is morplhed into something that is a bit different to its actuality.

actual biblical names like luke skywalker

So maybe we're supposed to think the SW humans eventually landed on Earth in prehistorical times and actually founded the human civilization (a la Battlestar Galactica), and their names were passed down along the generations?

this would be worse than Jar Jar

They're played by human actors who come from a planet called earth.
Seems to be a constant thing with sci fi creations, they are centred on the planet they're made by. or at least filtered through the viewpoint of people from here.
The doctor is a big friend to the human raceand the planet Earth because the series is made here.

Yeah, but the difference is that most movies/shows at least try to justify their human-centricity somehow (the Doctor loves Earth and it's inhabitants, that's why he's always hanging here), whereas the SW movies don't... They take place in our past, and Earth is never seen or mentioned in the whole franchise, yet somehow these folks are just like us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

Fuck me.

I think human actors were easier to cast, feed, tailor and manage in the 70's otherwise who knows how it may have turned out, I believe it was studio/production that made the call in the end.

NOt another source of income for illegal aliens since though is it? Come to the USA and get work in the movies and disguise yourself as CGI

how do you know they take place in our past? maybe the pov of the opening titles is our future. making the action of the movies our present. maybe the movies are actually human history, remembered in distorted, compressed, and mythologized form by the humans of the extreme future, for whom an existence bound to a single planet is unimaginable and unrelateable, but who do have access to a lot of vintage '40s First Motion Picture Unit footage preserved on celluloid in airless satellites. would that clear it up for you.

Uh, Tuomas?

perhaps Star Wars, like Tuomas questions, are a question of cyclical history and what happened in a galaxy a long time ago will happen again

Haha, I'd forgotten I'd thought about this stuff before... But back then I hadn't seen Rebels though, which I think gives some new support to the "SW humans as ancient astronauts" theory with its Bible names. (Though confusingly enough Rebels also has two characters named "Sabine" and "Hera" who, despite their familiar-sounding names, are not humans.)

how do you know they take place in our past? maybe the pov of the opening titles is our future. making the action of the movies our present. maybe the movies are actually human history, remembered in distorted, compressed, and mythologized form by the humans of the extreme future, for whom an existence bound to a single planet is unimaginable and unrelateable, but who do have access to a lot of vintage '40s First Motion Picture Unit footage preserved on celluloid in airless satellites. would that clear it up for you.

This theory has been brought up before, see my rebuttal of it here.

http://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/slideshow_large/slideshow/2015/09/3051411-slide-s-11-the-making-of-star-wars.jpg

(Though confusingly enough Rebels also has two characters named "Sabine" and "Hera" who, despite their familiar-sounding names, are not humans.)

Ahem: http://www.starwars.com/databank/sabine-wren

GENDER
Female
SPECIES
Human

Ah, okay. The series just said she's "Mandalorian", I thought that meant another species, but I guess humans live on Mandalore then? Hera is definitely not human though.

I find Stevolende's analogy very helpful for eliminating many of these problems and paradoxes.

Otherwise you are likely to constantly be falling prey to the filtering system that has its finest example in pictures of the New World being made in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries where everything that is outside of European culture is being redrawn by people inside it so is morplhed into something that is a bit different to its actuality.

Another useful comparison might be Shakespeare's famously anachronistic clock and chimneys in Julius Caesar. While ancient Romans would have had neither clocks nor chimneys, the AUDIENCE would understand those things. Hence because the original SW audience was 1970s/80s Earthian-American human moviegoers, you get recognizable humans, "hell," etc.

The Bee Theory is tantalizing - made even moreso by the totally ridiculous "Jupiter Ascending" universe in which we are expected to take it straight up that Sean BEEan is part-bee.

So slutsky's theory (posited upthread) that Luke resembles a pile of silly string who communicates by odors can neither be ruled out nor ruled in. Viewed from the perspective of the angels it's no more or less plausible than Jesus or Santa Claus, so I say we're free to go with it.

Next up: the whole franchise is an allegory for the Russian Revolution. It was originally supposed to be called TSAR WARS, but an early version of spell check set it on another course and the rest, as they say, is teleology.

is the name "Poe Dameron" a nod to the character Nicolas Cage played in Con Air named "Cameron Poe"

I was thinking mainly of the images sent back by Hakluyt from the New World that were set up for engraving for further printing by artists in Europe who had never seen the original images so changed several details
like
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.answers.com%2FQ%2FWhy_did_Richard_Hakluyt_urge_England_to_start_colonies_in_the_Americas&psig=AFQjCNFoOQEulLjcCPDoLCYVPkFF04qMBw&ust=1443881029294085

becoming
https://strangewayes.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/de-bry-from-hakluyt.jpg

and so on. Probably not the greatest example but you can see that the figure as drawn by Hakluyt has become more idealised european than its origin.

no you can't

I live in Virginia; I can personally attest that the natives look nothing like that.

Ah, okay. The series just said she's "Mandalorian", I thought that meant another species, but I guess humans live on Mandalore then?

This was finally cleared (to me, though it could've been explained in later seasons of Rebels too, I haven't watched them) in The Mandalorian: the Mandalorians are more like a religion or ideology, and anyonen can become one of them, so Sabine is both human and Mandalorian.

They're both a planet of people and an ideology. The guess is that the Mandalorians that show up on the show are part of a splinter group that's grown its numbers by recruiting outsiders to their culture.

But yeah, planet of humans.

Why do so many of the planets have planet-wide mono-eco-systems and yet breathable atmospheres? Here's a desert planet / here's an ice planet / here's a carbon dioxide planet where Star Destroyers grow spontaneously under the ocean. Surely they must all have temperate and forrested areas to produce enough breathable air for humans etc to survive, so just build your spaceports there, rather than on the desert bits / inaccessible ice mountain ranges?

It's as if all this stuff was made-up on the hoof with no science advisor.

Werner Herzog delivered the line I keep thinking of from recent Star Wars stuff, when he asks Mando why the Mandalorians resisted the Empire.

"The Empire improves every system it touches. By any metric: safety, prosperity, peace. Compare imperial rule to what is happening now. Is the world more peaceful than the revolution?"

https://www.cbr.com/the-mandalorian-makes-a-case-for-the-empire/

what if its us* that isn't human

*(ilx)

Werner Herzog delivered the line I keep thinking of from recent Star Wars stuff, when he asks Mando why the Mandalorians resisted the Empire.

"The Empire improves every system it touches. By any metric: safety, prosperity, peace. Compare imperial rule to what is happening now. Is the world more peaceful than the revolution?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZdjT1472Y

just something to think abt