f13.net

http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/08/16/george-lucas-reveals-never-before-seen-original-opening-to-return-of-the-jedi-at-star-wars-fan-event/ (http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/08/16/george-lucas-reveals-never-before-seen-original-opening-to-return-of-the-jedi-at-star-wars-fan-event/)

Pretty cool, and somewhat surreal deleted footage Lucas has released.  Spoiled by man-baby going YEAH! into the mic.

Obligatory WUA post. But yeah, neat.

Kinda neat, but just as well it didn't make the final cut IMO.  Knowing Luke's plan ahead of time would lessen the tension leading up to the barge scene and kinda ruin the surprise of seeing the lightsaber pop out of R2 at the critical moment.

That very scene was a defining moment in my childhood life, so I prefer the original. 

I think that would have been great in the Special Edition.

Cool

It played out a lot better in the novelization than it did onscreen.  Unlike the Luke-Biggs conversations (one of which is still missing) in ANH, this is better served as the "OMG Lightsaber!" way the original edit handles it.

Wait a minute, there were books  :why_so_serious:

Which missing Luke-Biggs conversation? This one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aziOgYTGNmU or this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEPQ9OYOPnU ?

Even if you don't like this, skip to 2:45 and watch from there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKEg6fJ-7P4&feature=player_embedded

Never seen that footage before, awesome!  I'd like Lucas to put out two Blu Ray versions  of SW; the original theatrical version for the purists and the kitchen sink, CGI version to satisfy him.  But that won't happen.  I'd like to know more about Biggs Darklighter.  Who is he?  How did he meet Luke?  And is he gay?  The black cape?  FABULOUS.

I was thinking of the 2nd one.  I didn't realize they'd shot the "Wormy" scene at Tosche Station as well. Nifty.

The one scene I wish had never seen the light of day in the Special Edition ANH was Luke catching up with Biggs in the Yavin base before the Death Star Assault. It was awful on so many levels - acting, dialogue, purpose - and even worse than the scene with Jabba and Boba Fett that got added back in. It was just a case of Spot The Stiff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHGYdOQhu2g

Biggs Darklighter is a friend of Luke from Tattooine. He goes off to join the Imperial Academy, decides to flip to the Rebel side after a while and serves them as a pilot.

I knew that off the top of my head. I'm crying now.

Pssh.  You're not a real nerd.  I could give you the life history of his younger cousin, Gavin Darklighter.

Ok - I thought that you pulled that name out of your ass...

But apparently you didn't: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gavin_Darklighter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zd_khk6zXo

I'll just leave this here.

Han Solo was supposed to die in the original plans for Return of the Jedi (http://geeksofdoom.com/2010/08/16/wait-what-han-solo-was-supposed-to-die-in-return-of-the-jedi-but-george-lucas-changed-it-to-make-more-money/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+geeksofdoom+(Geeks+of+Doom))

That sounds terrible. Fuck that guy.

How would that even work ?


No.  Don't Answer.

Hey, I'll say this about Jedi, ewoks aside, at least the movie acknowledged the fact that they could just up and build another death star, and that blowing up the first one kinda did nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah. I mean sure it was like the first one, but their evil plot almost worked in the first one except for that damn exhaust port. They'd be even bigger idiots than they were to not just go "Okay try that again, but cover up that fucking hole this time!"

Plus, it's kind of a cool plot for the Emperor.  He built it as bait, knowing that the rebels would never allow a planet killer to become operational.  So it looks unfinished from the outside.  I mean he leaked the info (after killing lots of Bothans to make it look good).

No, RoTJ was good how it went, despite a few fuckups.

Yeah. Then Revenge of the Sith established that they started building the first Death Star more than eighteen years before it became operational and you wonder if half way through the construction of the first one they said "Hey, you know what would be better than having the ultimate power in the universe? Having two ultimate powers in the universe!"

Or the second one really only did take 6 years or whatever and they set up a committee to investigate what the hell type of shoddy project management was going on with the first one that it took so long.



(I apologise in advance for invoking the inevitable WUA rant about ROTS.  :why_so_serious:)

Fucking contractors, man. Overtime and over budget.   :why_so_serious:

I went to IMDB to I follow the career path of Lucas vs Kurtz.  tee hee.  Dark Crystal.. Return to Oz... bupkis!  :awesome_for_real: 

It sounds awful because it IS awful. The rebels are defeated yet Leia becomes Queen (of what.. the pebbles in space formerly known as Alderaan?) and Luke says "Fuck y'all I'm wandering off to be a monk and masturbate to visions of my sister in a metal bikini!"   :uhrr:

Lando was also supposed to die IIRC but it didn't test well.  That's why you have Han with the whole "last time I'm going to see her" line and the flames appear to engulf the Falcon yet it makes it at the last second.

As opposed to what? Howard the Duck? Captain EO? Tucker? Mishima? Ewoks: Battle for Endor? Lucas isn't without a significant list of failures to his name as a producer either. Most of his film career has basically been either Star Wars or Indiana Jones. Everything else is largely forgettable (and has been forgotten). Except for Willow perhaps. And Labyrinth - although no-one associates him with it.

The thing about Gary Kurtz was that he would say "No" to Lucas. Him and Irvin Kershner. I vaguely recall hearing that it was Kurtz that got Paul Hirsch involved to salvage Lucas' first edit of Star Wars which basically made it the film that got released because it was in such a fuckawful state. After he and Lucas parted ways, Lucas surrounded himself with yes-men and sycophants or people who wouldn't answer back (e.g. Richard Marquand and Rick MacCullum). So he got his own way without having anyone say "No, George, that's a fucking terrible idea."

Having said that, Lucas going after the toy sales may seem like a sellout but it's what let him develop ILM, THX, Skywalker Sound and even Lucasarts and so on. Lucasarts may be being run into the ground but the film related companies are still at the top of their game and still groundbreaking. The modern filmgoer has a lot to thank Lucas for whether they know it or not. Hell, Pixar started out as a department in ILM but Lucas sold it to Steve Jobs to fund his divorce - bet he regrets that now!

There's backstory on that stupid little mouse droid that shows up in a couple of the movies.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/MSE-6-series_repair_droid

No no.. you misunderstand. He did those two then vanished for several years between everything, producing nothing at all worth mentioning.  It goes those two, then '89, '95, '04.  It's one thing to produce flops and another to simply.. not produce.


It's Star Wars.  At this point there's backstory on the skull Luke throws at the Rancor switch by this point.  I just can't be arsed to find it.

Ed: Shit, it was simpler than I thought.  - http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bidlo_Kwerve

There had to be two death stars - the second started as the first prototype was coming online. Or else the dark side really is more powerful.

Is it the same one? I had kinda assumed the one at the end of ROTS was something the Separatists had built but failed to finish before the end of the war. I mean they had the plans as far back as the end of AOTC, which was the beginning of the war. Surely they must have tried to build one somewhere. There's probably some stupid shit in the EU stating that it is the same one, but whatever.


The first one was built while the Emperor was still humoring the existence of the Senate. (Which must have retained some sort of budgetmaking or oversight power, else there would be no reason for Palaptine to antagonize the populace by shitcanning it.) By the time of the second Death Star, he was operating completely unfettered and could do whatever the fuck he wanted without even bothering to make up lies about it. Presumably funding massive secret military projects is easier under the latter set of circumstances.

Plus there was probably a greater sense of urgency concering the construction of the second Death Star. Remember the rationale for doing away with the Senate was that even though it would increase support for the Rebellion, that wouldn't matter because the Death Star would allow the Empire to rule through fear. By that point their whole political plan revolved around having a giant gun to hold the galaxy hostage with, so I imagine they tried to hurry with the replacement when their original one went kablooey.


BEST STAR WARS MOVIE! BEST ONE! FUCK YOUUUUU! ARGLEBARGLE!

The second something you build is always easier than the first anyway, since you know all the pitfalls and such.

Yeah, instead of a 3 meter exhaust port, they build a tunnel a FREIGHTER can fly through.

I think they missed that pitfall.

An EU nerd might point out that in the novel "Return of the Death Star", Admiral Brillian Tstrategist used the framework of original, original prototype of the Death Star whcih was hidden away from prying eyes in the MadeupN'ame cluster and that's what we see at the end of of ROTS.

I went with the theory that it was a not-really-that-subtle visual easter egg from Lucas pointing out that the Death Star was designed and planned from the beginning of the Clone Wars and that it was all a part of Palpatine's planning. Sure it may have been a Geonosian-and-not-Verpine-ha-ha-fuck-you-EU-canon-nerds idea but I assumed that Darth Summerisle had been in the background going "Well yeah, if you want to design a massive, planet destroying battle station, go for it. I don't know what we'll do with it but I'm sure it'll be handy. No, really, it's not a stupid idea - you should build it. Go on - it'll be a laugh."

There's a cute little comic strip written by Kevin "Troops" Rubio called "A Death Star Is Born" which is about Tarkin proposing the idea of the Death Star to the Emperor. It's quite amusing but I can't find it online except for this page.

EDIT: Allegedly Lucas confirmed that it was the ANH Death Star that was seen according to http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star_Prototype (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star_Prototype) but there's no reference.

Eh, I'll buy that. Something that large and complex, and new technology to boot? Could take 20 years to put together in secret with a not-completely-toothless Senate still hanging around. Then once you've already worked out the problems building the first one, the Senate is history, and it's a top priority because it's the lynchpin of your whole political strategy, the second one takes a fraction of the time to build.

As an aside, I always got the impression that Vader was aboard the DS in order to keep Tarkin from getting any kooky ideas on who should be running the show once he was in command of the biggest gun in the universe. And to a limited extent, vice-versa, or else why not just put Vader in command of the whole thing?

That's a good theory I've not considered before.  I wondered why DV was on Tarkin's 'leash'.  Even Palpatine might crap a brick if the DS showed up orbiting Coruscant.

I think he was in the X-wing novels. And more importantly, had was in an Aaron Allston Star Wars novels.  (George Lucas will never defeat my love of the Wraith Squadron novels. NEVER).

He appeared first in the Rogue Squadron books that Stackpole wrote (which are also very good)...but he is a character that shows up from time to time in many of the later EU books.

:argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh:

Ok, I like Star Wars. I grew up with the stuff. I consider myself somewhat of a dork.

But  :ye_gods: the wacky lore stuff even in this thread makes me shudder.

Some people take their Star Wars waaaaaay too seriously for me.

Yeah I don't know as it was planned that way when it was written, but it works. I mean Vader obviously isn't what you'd call trustworthy, and the naval staff is openly exultant at having "the ultimate power in the universe" and probably wouldn't need much encouragement to consider a coup. So you put two authority figures on board. One technically in command, the other with the ability and willingness to kill the first if given a decent excuse, both of whom have large egos and aren't likely to conspire together.

God knows it had to burn Vader's ass to take orders from a muggle by that point.

Considering what we learnt about the nature of the Sith in the prequels and that Palpatine inferred to Vader about how he killed his master, Darth Plaugeis, while he slept - in retrospect, letting Vader anywhere near the Death Star shows either Palpatine was far too over-confident in Vader's loyalty or that Vader was not enough of an opportunist. Vader, Tarkin, locked room, force choke and a quick story about how Tarkin had released the plans to the rebels and he could have had the keys to the Death Star for himself.

On the other hand, Order 67 was probably a "Take down Vader" command. Or Palpatine took a leaf out of OCP's book and had a secret fourth directive installed in Vader's cybernetic programming.

Alright, I can get them on bluray.

Kool-Aid, when made with enough sugar, will in fact burn the shit out of your sinuses. Good show sir, good show.

Maybe this is just some obscure EU thing, but wasn't Tarkin pretty much the only person in existence that Vader actually respected and admired?

Well of course. Everyone respects and admires Scorpius, even if he is a bastard.

I looked up some EU shit just now. Apparently Tarkin was considering rolling up to Coruscant in the Death Star and declaring himself the new boss, with Admiral "Ultimate Power in the Universe!" urging him to hurry up and do it before the Emperor caught on and dealt with them. Vader was sent there to keep an eye on things, and the two shared some small mutual respect. But basically Tarkin considered Vader a weird scary meddler, and Vader considered Tarkin a dumb muggle to be tolerated because the Emperor said so.

I don't know if Vader really could have pulled off the coup himself though. He's not a naval officer, nobody has any special loyalty toward him, and he can't force choke everyone on the Death Star into compliance without them jumping ship or sabotaging things once he's out of the room.

I should have known. And now I can't unknow.  :uhrr:

Lorazepam.

After prequels I take it as gospel that the Emperor knew Vader was too whiney and fully of self pity to ever really spend his free time plotting. Instead I think he spent every moment not following the Emperor's orders in his little box looking at home movies of Padme and sighing a lot. Maybe writing bad poetry.

He still worried about Vader's plotting, but much less than he would have had Vader never been damaged the way he was.  He feigned disgust at his apprentice's weakness (because with the Sith rule of two, the apprentice is meant to eventually grow strong enough to challenge and overthrow his master), but was in truth rather pleased.  He knew that Anakin Skywalker had both the charisma and raw power to overthrow him at some point.  A Mangled Darth Vader had neither.  Palpatine was actually a bit of heretic...he wanted to perserve the Sith line by living forever.  Which doesn't really explain why he wanted to court Luke Skywalker, but nobody ever said all this retconning was airtight.  I suppose he assumed that Luke was young enough that he still had plenty of time before he would be threatened.

I am no Star Wars connoisseur by any stretch, but in my layman's opinion, I got the impression Palpatine wanted to live forever and just continue to cycle through apprentices much like Tyranus would eventually be killed by pre-Vader, and to that end Luke ending Vader - all while Palpatine keeping the position of Master.

Yeah, pretty much.  Really, him want to live forever makes complete sense for what a Sith is...the rule of two is kind of silly if you think about it.  No power hungry megalomaniac is really going to want some young upstart to replace him/her.  Darth Bane, who created the rule, technically wussed out himself and decided to shit all over his own rule (he tries to cover it up by convincing himself that his apprentice wasn't worthy).  We don't know yet how long Bane actually lived.  If you take the position that Palpy's story about Plagueis is a lie (which it at least partially is), it is even conceivable that Palpatine is Darth Bane.  Quite a stretch, and I'm sure Lucas would shit all over that idea, but there you go.  Not that I care any longer about what Lucas says...there are literally millions of people who know SW canon far better than he does anyway.

Reading the direction of this thread has me curious now. Could someone point me to a link that describes what happens to the Sith when both are destroyed as technically they were in RotJ? I know Leia's kid became a Sith from what I gleaned off the "wookipedia," but who was the Master after Vader and Palpatine were ended?

In the EU, people are tripping over Sith holocrons and teachings all the time plus it seemed that Vader and/or Palpatine secretly trained half the universe about the Dark Side of the Force.

Not technically true, but close enough.  You have types like Lumiya, who was trained by Vader way back in the day, that shows up at various points in the EU (she helped turn Jacen Solo).  There are other old crazy Jedi that turn up every now and then, and are in the sekrit Sith club.  Then, there is still a hidden faction of Sith adhering to the old ways (i.e. no rule of two) on Korriban.  Last but not least, a whole isolated planet of Sith that just regained their space worthiness (this is current EU material).

More or less. It wasn't until he found out he had a son (a potentially powerful son whom the Emperor feared) that he regained any of his old pre-suit ambition.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Contingency_Orders_for_the_Grand_Army_of_the_Republic:_Order_Initiation,_Orders_1_Through_150

 :oh_i_see:

(http://3do.jediknight.net/dcm/strips/dcmjk.gif)

Found a story that illustrates perfectly well how seriously Lucas takes his SW fluff/apocrypha and how everything works over there.
Ha ha, whatever, but then...


So basically he just walks around going "What's the name of Yoda's dad? Uh... Trashbin Stopsign... Taxicab... the third! Now get outta here!" followed by his slaves announcing a new book about the adventures of Trashbin Stopsign Taxicab III.

I always knew that Yoda would have father issues. Being Yoda Taxicab made his school life tough, and his father never understood why Yoda wanted to be a Jedi over taking over the family trash compacting business.

To be fair, I think any one of us would do the same.  "I created a story for kids, and you freaks turned it into a religion.  I'd complain but you've made me a billionaire.. so I'm going to fuck with you because this is all incredibly humorous to me.  You sad, sad little man-child."  :grin:

Whenever I start to think too deeply into Star Wars, I go back to an issue of Star Wars Tales from Dark Horse. Han and Chewie were fleeing in the Millennium Falcon. When they went into warp too early, a glitch occurred, sending them into our galaxy and a crash landing on Earth. Han was immediately arrow-killed by injuns. Chewie escaped and roamed the forests as Sasquatch. Two hundred years pass and Indiana Jones shows up to excavate the derelict ship while Chewie/Sasquatch looks on from a distance. Maybe I have a few details wrong, but that was the jist of the story.

Must have been the original script for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah it was a bad story, although the art was well done. Like most Lucas stuff, it was up and down. Star Wars Tales wasn't such a bad comic though.

I'll give Lucas one thing. He knows how to hold a grudge. Does anyone else in entertainment dictate terms the way he does, going back and modifying all of his work? Jon Stewart called it "Revenge of the Lucas."

Would have definitely been an improvement.

I kept thinking when I saw this thread, "What scene did the Jedi delete?"

He's made a fuck-ton of cash which means he can afford to do what he likes. The prequels were, essentially, independent films made on a studio budget and distributed by Fox. He gets to call the shots because they're being made with his money.

Yeah, you gotta respect the guy. I'd like to see him make those small, experimental films he was talking about doing after Episode III was completed. [An older Wired article you might have already read. Lucas talks about making "tone poems" (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/lucas.html?pg=4&topic=lucas&topic_set=)] Still waiting on that. I'm kinda surprised he hasn't been grooming someone (an apprentice? :evil:) to take over while he just tinkers on small projects. Or maybe there already is someone.

Tough to move on when there's so much cash to be made. I'm guessing he must be trying to keep ahead of Cameron and Peter Jackson, too.

As I look over to the shelf containing a dozen different versions of RotJ on VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD I've decided that I've already bought the thing enough times. The new stuff on them is getting less impressive and I really wonder what he'll pull out of his ass for the next super-ultimate version's release in 2-3 years.

Also, that giant corridor they flew down in the DS2 makes perfect sense. The probably used it for space trucks to deliver space drywall deep in the interior and then they'd cover it up when done. Man, think about how much space drywall would be needed in that thing.

So when do the new movies come out about the Old Republic?

Hopefully about 2 or 3 years after Lucas dies.

They'll probably be animated and based of the MMOG.  :sadpanda:

Considering that the Clone Wars is animated and is better than 4 out of the 6 Star Wars live action films that's not neccessarily a bad thing.

It's better than everything but Empire Strikes Back and Revenge of the Sith?  :why_so_serious: