A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy: The Star Wars Thread

Egarwaen said:

So... Yeah, on review... Is this part of Palpatine's plans? Who knows! The Separatists designed the Death Star, Palpatine stole the plans under the cover of a Jedi raid and built it himself after betraying and murdering his erstwhile allies. There's no other direct evidence for anything else.

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It's there because it tells us a lot about Palpatine and the Empire.

Egarwaen said:

That's exactly the problem; why not keep Jango either away from the Kaminoans or away from Dooku? Why use your clone-template as an assassin? If these aren't intentional risks to lead the Jedi into a trap on Geonosis, they're bumbling mistakes that only don't blow up the entire plot because the protagonists lose interest For Some Reason. If they are intentional risks, they make sense, but only inside of a plan that requires an implausible series of coincidences entirely outside Palpatine's control.

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Jango knows Dooku is playing both sides. Using him as the assassin means using someone he already relies on and not introducing a new person. Jango certainly didn't intend to be followed. If Obi-Wan doesn't go to Kamino, or doesn't survive the trip through the asteroid field, then the plan can still continue, and the war begins with the Separatists launching a surprise attack and Palpatine saving the day with a convenient clone army that a Jedi had the foresight to procure.

Dooku, on the other hand, has ambitions of his own that don't align exactly with Palpatine's. He's looking for a chance to betray Palpatine, and a relatively freethinking Jedi can help him with that. So if one of them manages to find him through Jango, they're a potential ally. He's taking a page from his master's playbook and setting up a win-win situation.

The only link between the clone army and the Separatists is Jango, and investigating Jango means talking to the man who hired him, Tyranus. With Jango's death, their last lead went cold, and the only thing the Jedi can do to dig deeper into the conspiracy is to find Tyranus. Dooku left himself the option to reveal that he is Tyranus if he found a Jedi he could work with, but he never did.

The only thing that tipped anybody off that the Separatists were gathering at all was that they attempted to have Padme assassinated because Nute Gunray hates her guts. And Dooku has total control over the timing of the attempts on her life. Although he's been working with Nute Gunray the whole time, he waited ten years before sending Jango after Padme. Why? Because the army is ready now, and it's only a matter of time before the war goes public, so it's acceptable to start risking exposure.

Adrenaline said:

It's also weird that the Death Star plans were complete enough to be worth stealing before the Clone Wars but incomplete enough to allow Galen Erso to insert an intentional catastrophic design flaw years into the Empire (Whatever, it would take a long time to build a moon-sized space station)

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Phantoon said:

Nah, the initial plans always have teething issues especially if it's something that's never been made before. They don't magically work first go, and I imagine that goes double for planet destroying super lasers

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The Death Star undergoing design changes and political meddling and becoming a protracted money pit of an engineering project is the most realistic thing about it by far.

Imagine the planning sessions where the client (Palpy) added requirements (giant laser) to the project mid-way through the sprint.

Y'all ignored my parenthetical where I said it was fine

I mean, shit, who ever heard of a fascist dictator doubling down on a proven boondoggle of an atrocity machine?

Zef said:

Imagine the planning sessions where the client (Palpy) added requirements (giant laser) to the project mid-way through the sprint.

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I want cup holders! *force lightnings the architect*

There was, in fact, a rather humorous comic about that.

Fredde said:

There was, in fact, a rather humorous comic about that.

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That's great

I love the blatant lack of Health and Safety on Imperial bases, just another thing to prove they're evil

Bongo said:

Jango knows Dooku is playing both sides...

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I don't recall a single moment that indicated this. I could be forgetting something, but Jango doesn't exactly talk a lot. He gives Zam some directions, has a brief conversation with Obi-wan, tells Boba they're bailing, and has some transactional dialogue during fight scenes. Beyond that he flies around and shoots at people. That's it. Nor does anyone else talk about him much; Dooku definitely doesn't, so any depth to their relationship is pure extrapolation.

Phantoon said:

That's great

I love the blatant lack of Health and Safety on Imperial bases, just another thing to prove they're evil

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Have you seen Coruscant? The whole city is riddled with railing-less balconies with mile-long drops. Or those Clone Army Gunships - it's a good thing the protagonists' transport was low to the ground when it got hit in AotC, or Padme would be paste.

Phantoon said:

That's great

I love the blatant lack of Health and Safety on Imperial bases, just another thing to prove they're evil

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And you'll note, the throne room HAD rails.

Daikaiju said:

And you'll note, the throne room HAD rails.

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One rule for him...

Edit: what a great way of getting out of Imperial conscription. "I've got vertigo"

Egarwaen said:

Or those Clone Army Gunships - it's a good thing the protagonists' transport was low to the ground when it got hit in AotC, or Padme would be paste.

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To be fair, they are dropships, they're supposed to open up like that. Not a good idea to open the doors when they're actually flying though

Nobody in Star Wars has an iota of self preservation

Egarwaen said:

I don't recall a single moment that indicated this. I could be forgetting something, but Jango doesn't exactly talk a lot. He gives Zam some directions, has a brief conversation with Obi-wan, tells Boba they're bailing, and has some transactional dialogue during fight scenes. Beyond that he flies around and shoots at people. That's it. Nor does anyone else talk about him much; Dooku definitely doesn't, so any depth to their relationship is pure extrapolation.

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The line was "I was hired by a man named Darth Tyranus on one of the moons of Bogden."

Count Dooku and Darth Tyranus are the same person, and, importantly, Jango has met both of them. "Tyranus" hired Jango to be the template for the clone army, and then "Dooku" sent Jango to assassinate Padme. Jango Fett is the only person in the galaxy who can come and go freely from both Kamino and Geonosis, the fortresses of both armies.

If the movie understates what makes him of all people so special - well, like father, like son.

Phantoon said:

To be fair, they are dropships, they're supposed to open up like that. Not a good idea to open the doors when they're actually flying though

Nobody in Star Wars has an iota of self preservation

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The infantry transports in AotC don't close all the way. When Padme fell out they were as closed as they get. Presumably they're relying on having cheap gravity manipulation to keep everyone aboard under normal combat circumstances, and on mostly being full of expendable clones the rest of the time...

Phantoon said:

To be fair, they are dropships, they're supposed to open up like that.

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For a second, I swore you were going to say, "they're dropships, they're supposed to drop you."

I love that scene because, when, she hits the sand, Padme makes a perfect Padme-shaped impression on impact, and then the trail she leaves implies she bounces rather than roll. Wile E. Coyote would be proud.

Bongo said:

The line was "I was hired by a man named Darth Tyranus on one of the moons of Bogden."

Count Dooku and Darth Tyranus are the same person, and, importantly, Jango has met both of them. "Tyranus" hired Jango to be the template for the clone army, and then "Dooku" sent Jango to assassinate Padme. Jango Fett is the only person in the galaxy who can come and go freely from both Kamino and Geonosis, the fortresses of both armies.

If the movie understates what makes him of all people so special - well, like father, like son.

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I know that line, and have been referencing it for the past couple pages - though there's no Darth, thankfully, Obi-wan isn't that dense.

So Jango knows Dooku hired him for the clone army project, and that Dooku's working with the separatists... And that's the extent of our knowledge. "Knows (he's) playing both sides", "relies on" - these are unsubstantiated statements about Jango's knowledge of Dooku's plans and Jango's relationship with Dooku. He doesn't need to know Dooku's playing both sides; an equally good explanation is that Jango's a no-questions-asked mercenary. Similarly we've no concrete evidence that Dooku is actively plotting to betray Palpatine - and he is literally shocked speechless when Palpatine orders him killed next film. He tells Obi-wan "the Republic (is) now under the control of the dark lord of the Sith", and names him Darth Sideous, but he's also just told Obi-wan that there are no bounty hunters here, which Obi-wan knows to be a lie and gives him no reason to trust anything else Dooku says. He's taunting Obi-wan, not recruiting him.

And even given everything else, it's possible that any Jedi who got Jango to elaborate on "Tyranus" would recognize the notorious ex-Jedi and Separatist leader and start asking questions instead of fighting a war. The whole "war" plan is entirely reliant on no-one realizing the Sith are manipulating both sides for their own ends. At the start of AotC, war is no certain thing - Amidala is confident that negotiations are possible, and while the Commerce Guilds are clearly raring to go, who knows what the thousands of other systems they've rallied will do?

It would be great if the stuff you describe were in the film. But it isn't.

Phantoon said:

Nobody in Star Wars has an iota of self preservation

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Maybe they assume that plot armor the Force will protect them.

I mean, it is absolutely in the movie that Jango knows who Tyranus is. That was the question, right?

The only one "playing both sides," though, is Palpatine. Dooku is in on the plan, but he's got no attachment to the Republic or the Jedi. He was ready to spill the entire beans about Darth Sidious' identity and position, and he wouldn't even offer that kind of dirt on someone he was completely loyal to, but he never acted on it because he never found a Jedi willing to follow him into apostasy over it, hopeful though he was. The scene echoes Darth Vader's own equally sincere offer to team up with Luke.

Bongo said:

I mean, it is absolutely in the movie that Jango knows who Tyranus is. That was the question, right?

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No, the question was whether "Jango knows Dooku is playing both sides". We don't know that; the film itself only tells us Jango knows who Tyranus is, that he's leading the Separatists, contributing to a cloning project, and willing to pay to see Padme dead. Any explanation of the film's action that relies on details of Jango and Dooku's business beyond that is extrapolation.

Bongo said:

The only one "playing both sides," though, is Palpatine. Dooku is in on the plan, but he's got no attachment to the Republic or the Jedi. He was ready to spill the entire beans about Darth Sidious' identity and position, and he wouldn't even offer that kind of dirt on someone he was completely loyal to, but he never acted on it because he never found a Jedi willing to follow him into apostasy over it, hopeful though he was. The scene echoes Darth Vader's own equally sincere offer to team up with Luke.

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That's one interpretation; certainly a valid one. Another is that he's just fucking with Obi-wan. He knows Obi-wan won't believe him, and so telling him about Sideous does nothing to harm his master. It could even serve to insulate Palpatine from suspicion, since Obi-wan (and the other Jedi?) will be more willing to discount any evidence they find as more Sith trickery. To me that fits better; Dooku opens the scene with information he knows Obi-wan knows is a lie. He's not trying to build trust with a potential ally, he's testing how credulous Obi-wan is before feeding him a line.

The "I am your father" scene at the end of ESB is indeed an interesting contrast; whether Vader is sincere or not, he wants Luke to accept his offer so he doesn't have to kill his own son. We know from the title crawl that Vader's seeking Skywalker, and he explicitly takes steps throughout the film to safeguard Luke's life, including testing the carbonite chamber on Han after Lando reminds him that its never been used on a human subject. Once he's got Luke cornered, Vader tries to break Luke's loyalty to his mentors by telling him the truth straight off.

I've finished watching the present extended editions of the Original Trilogy!

On balance, I think RotJ is the only one that's still really negatively affected by the changes. The Jabba's Palace Musical Number is an aesthetic abomination, and the new victory song ("WESA FREE") is just boring. Han and Greedo firing simultaneously works for me, and the ANH Jabba scene isn't great, but isn't bad either.

ESB is far and away the best of the three, and also the one Lucas had, per the credits, the least direct involvement in. I hadn't previously appreciated just how effectively ESB uses foreshadowing; the opening crawl sets out Vader's new agenda very clearly: he's looking for Skywalker, the pilot who destroyed the Death Star... For revenge? But throughout the first act of the film, Vader's choices don't make sense. He holds back his superior space power in favor of a seemingly slower ground assault, joins it personally, and as a result the rebels get away. Only when he has his conference with the Empire do we find out that he wants to capture Skywalker to turn him to the dark side. From here the film continues with a steady pace of laying down new questions, then pulling out a twist to answer them, culminating in the "I am your father" reveal that retroactively explains Vader's determination to turn Luke instead of killing him.

By not centering a super-weapon, ESB also does the most thinking about what the Empire being an empire means. The chief threat is the Imperial star fleet and its star destroyers. The effort to contain and capture the Millennium Falcon is a fleet maneuver, with Vader's fleet bringing their attached fighters and direct power to bear. Then, once they think the Falcon's escaped, their priority switches to bringing other star fleet assets into play - alerting commands along the Falcon's probable route. It's really effective at communicating the size and scale of the Galactic Empire compared to Skywalker's band of rebels.

I still like RotJ probably much more than it deserves. The Jabba segment drags on too long for something that's mostly about cleaning up loose ends, though it does a solid job of showing how Luke's grown into his role as a Jedi. Leia gets to do her one-woman army thing, which is honestly where the character is the best, and Fisher is basically the only reason the "Leia is Luke's sister" thing works at all. We also get some pretty solid foreshadowing again; Vader's initial confrontation with the Death Star's construction manager seems like he's just hassling an underling again, but later we find out that he's pushing the schedule to prepare to ambush the rebel fleet. In ESB, though, the foreshadowing was all about walking through the reveal on Vader. Here, it's all about setting up for Palpatine saying "I have foreseen it" every thirty seconds for a good quarter of the film. (No not actually but it sure feels that way)

ANH... Is a movie that exists. It's fun, it's got energy, there's a definite aesthetic sense here, and the pacing is just utterly and unbelievably awful.

Jabba's palace is wonderful for characterization, for catching up with everyone (well, except the Floor Lamp Lando) and see how different they are from ESB, but plotwise it's awkward and kind of weird. It probably sold a lot of toys, though.

The Endor [moon] sequence is fun, and as a kid you definitely love it. But it IS kind of awkward that the most heavily-defended, ambush-ready ground installation can be thwarted by stone-age bears (as opposed to techno-wiz Wookies, as was the original plan). It probably sold a lot of toys, though.

The space battle is the jam. It is everything. It is the best space battle in the franchise. But it--nothing. No buts. It's awesome. Great tension, great batle choreography, great character bits and in-story battle tactics. It absolutely sold a lot of toys.

I had a rancor toy as a kid. I used to try and feed it Gamorrean guards. Also had one of the speeder bikes from Endor.

Can confirm Star Wars is a vehicle for selling toys.

Egarwaen said:

It's fun, it's got energy, there's a definite aesthetic sense here, and the pacing is just utterly and unbelievably awful.

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Could not disagree more strongly about anything Star Wars related (I think?). It's my favorite of the OT partially because of the pacing.

Zef said:

Jabba's palace is wonderful for characterization, for catching up with everyone (well, except the Floor Lamp Lando) and see how different they are from ESB, but plotwise it's awkward and kind of weird. It probably sold a lot of toys, though.

The Endor [moon] sequence is fun, and as a kid you definitely love it. But it IS kind of awkward that the most heavily-defended, ambush-ready ground installation can be thwarted by stone-age bears (as opposed to techno-wiz Wookies, as was the original plan). It probably sold a lot of toys, though.

The space battle is the jam. It is everything. It is the best space battle in the franchise. But it--nothing. No buts. It's awesome. Great tension, great batle choreography, great character bits and in-story battle tactics. It absolutely sold a lot of toys.

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I still think the flow of the Endor battle makes a reasonable amount of sense. The Ewoks get an initial edge through a totally and completely unexpected ambush. The Imperial forces panic, then organize themselves and start using their scout walkers to repel the assault, as the Ewoks desperately try to find a way to counter them. Ultimately the Imperial forces over-extended, and a combination of Wookiee Power and the third iteration of their traps finally take down the walkers. And by the time you get to the battle itself, you've already got to either have accepted that Ewoks are threats to trained professionals armed with space opera weapons, or the whole "the rebels get captured" bit has already broken you out of the film and sent you sailing off into outraged fits.

Also: having lived in northern California for a decade now, it's impossible to see the Endor forest as anything even remotely natural. That's obviously the result of aggressive fire suppression policies. That whole moon is a tinderbox just waiting to go up in smoke.

I think the biggest thing about RotJ is that there's five good individual segments in there, but, after ESB, the structure they fit into just isn't as satisfying. ESB is a vehicle to get you to "I am your father", and it succeeds brilliantly at that task, while making sure to keep a steady stream of up and down beats as it goes. RotJ is a vehicle to get you to "You were right", and it... Is not as finely honed at balancing the path it takes as its predecessor.

YangusKhan said:

Could not disagree more strongly about anything Star Wars related (I think?). It's my favorite of the OT partially because of the pacing.

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After the initial space ambush, ANH takes forever to get going, with tons of awkward traveling to and fro. From the destruction of Alderaan through Obi-wan's death its pretty good; Han and Luke's bumbling shenanigans keep things moving, and it's just plain fun watching Vader and Tarkin get stymied and then adjust their plans over and over again. As much as I want to love the Death Star attack, it's both repetitive and trying to do too much.

Psh. Psh!

Egarwaen said:

That whole moon is a tinderbox just waiting to go up in smoke.

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...



...uh-oh.

Egarwaen said:

After the initial space ambush, ANH takes forever to get going, with tons of awkward traveling to and fro.

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I feel like this part specifically is where ANH's Hidden Fortress and other samurai/Westerns influences reveals itself. Those movies really do tend to take their time at the beginning, but it's never bothered me in ANH.

Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen are here for a good time, not a long time. Sit back and enjoy em while you can

Return of the Jedi will always be my favourite for the Throne Room alone. I later realised Palpatine is my favourite character.

Agreed on all points.

the entire last third of that movie is why I like Star Wars

RotJ is still a really good movie! Even bringing back the Death Star isn't as bad as people think it is. It just kind of shows how intellectually bankrupt the whole idea of the Empire is.