SW - Episode 7: Mary Sue wakes up but there's no coffee. RAGE.

[Samwise]

We're 15 years out from 9/11 - why did the towers fall?

Because planes flew into them.   Same as when we were 15 days out.  

This only underscores my belief that the timeline established by the prequels makes no sense whatsoever.  Do planes still exist?  Did they EVER exist?  Who knows?

[jgsugden]

We're 15 years out from 9/11 - why did the towers fall?

Because planes flew into them.   Same as when we were 15 days out.  

This only underscores my belief that the timeline established by the prequels makes no sense whatsoever.  Do planes still exist?  Did they EVER exist?  Who knows?

I was alluding to the dozens of conspiracy theories... 

If the existence of the Jedi is only supported by evidence that is about as prolific/solid as the "evidence" that the US government actually took down the towers, then both might be treated with equal levels of (dis)belief. 

[NowhereMan]

I think the story does hold up but it basically requires a universe where people don't do anything like making movies, putting on theatre or writing stories because Jedi would absolutely have been a focus of a lot of those. It also requires no-one having easy access to visual recording devices because, as we now know, anyone anywhere near a Jedi going lightsaber happy would have been uploading that to ForceTube straight away. So it's possible but requires erasing a fundamental part of human nature (storytelling) that it is ironically a product of. And that is what is required just to get to 'yeah I guess maybe not many people saw one directly so people didn't know about them much beyond being the Republic's emissaries'.

[DraconianOne]

We live in a world where Stalin spent the best part of 30 years getting rid of anyone who might have undermined or opposed his authority and regime, where Soviet censors airbrushed people out of photos, where artists and writers were taken away and executed and where the full extent of the Government sponsored atrocities weren't revealed until after Stalin's death in the 50s. And this was a Government we were allied with in 1945.

We still live in a world where states censor their peoples access to the internet, where bloggers are arrested for treason, where people are still "disappeared" by covert Government agents. We live in a world were even as recently as 2010, politicians proposed to revise the history books in the way they wanted to make sure children only got taught a sanitized version of history. That's in Texas by the way - I believe the books are being used now but kids won't be taught about the Jim Crow laws or the KKK and the role of slavery as a reason for the Civil War will be downplayed.

Yet despite all this, people have a hard time believing that a facist regime which was technologically advanced enough to build a weapon that could destroy a planet - which they quite happily did (and let's face it, even Alistair Campbell and Tony Blair would have difficulty spinning that away) - might have been able to all but remove the existence of the Jedi from the history books and make it illegal to teach or discuss that traitorous cult who started and manipulated the Clone Wars?  Do you not remember what happened to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru?

 

[Johny Cee]

I think the story does hold up but it basically requires a universe where people don't do anything like making movies, putting on theatre or writing stories because Jedi would absolutely have been a focus of a lot of those. It also requires no-one having easy access to visual recording devices because, as we now know, anyone anywhere near a Jedi going lightsaber happy would have been uploading that to ForceTube straight away. So it's possible but requires erasing a fundamental part of human nature (storytelling) that it is ironically a product of. And that is what is required just to get to 'yeah I guess maybe not many people saw one directly so people didn't know about them much beyond being the Republic's emissaries'.

Lightsabers really don't have anything to do with the Force, though.  That's just technology.  (I think EU/retcons directly linked it to the Force later, but Ep IV Han was like "meh" and Empire Han used it to open up the tonton.)  Lightsabers are just stupid (if you can't see the future with the Force) since you'd probably cut off pieces of yourself really, really quickly.  Most of the Jedi magic tricks aren't really that impressive if you are talking about a society with tech bordering on magic in the first place.  

- Jedi mind trick?  Go to a hypnosis show now.
- Force jump? You have people using different kinds of rocket packs/belts, and I'm sure there is anti-gravity floating around.
- Force push? You already have various kinds of tractor beams in universe.
- Lightning? You have high technology blasters that can shoot through metal doors, I'm sure they can rig up a portable taser.

Even if you had ForceTube, that shit would have been pretty thoroughly censored in the 20+ years post-Clone War.  Look at the average Russian's beliefs about what is going on in the Ukraine, or news stories about when Chinese university students get shown videos/coverage from the democracy protests leading up to Tiananmen.  


The only really impressive Jedi power is that whole precognition thing, and that doesn't show up in a video.  You can search YouTube now for one of those martial artist "ki throwing" (think that's what it is?) videos and see the martial arts master knocking his students over by waving his hands at them.

[MahrinSkel]

Absolutely nothing of interest happened in Tianeman Square in 1989. The fictional sci-fi movie footage of protests there are obvious fakes, not even very good ones.

The stuff Jedi did isn't a patch on what people in North Korea believe the various Dear Leaders have done, and they have more evidence.

--Dave

[Goreschach]

Jet fuel can't met cortosis weave.

[Fabricated]

Didn't read a word of this thread.

Was bored and watched RLM's shocking unironic speculation vid and I wonder if they might actually kill John Boyega. You think people would flip their shit over that for really dumb reasons?

[Samwise]

You think people would flip their shit over that for really dumb reasons?

Even if I didn't know what you were talking about, the answer to that is always yes.

[Evildrider]

You think people would flip their shit over that for really dumb reasons?

Even if I didn't know what you were talking about, the answer to that is always yes.

[Margalis]

hey guise, what's happening in this thre -

Even if you had ForceTube, that shit would have been pretty thoroughly censored in the 20+ years post-Clone War.

Oh...never mind.

Edit: I make fun, but the idea that events so significant and so recent would achieve mythical / urban legend status really is very silly. "The Legend of How Han Solo and Luke Skywalker Defeated the Empire and Blew Up Not One But Two Death Stars" might be myth in 3000 years, but certainly not 30. Maybe all the oldsters were frozen in carbonite for eons or some shit.

[Sir T]

I'll just file this thread in the same pile on how the Soviet Union manages to completely obliterate all memory of Christianity and Trotsky and the Chinese managed to obliterate all memory of Buddism and the Dali Lama over longer periods than 20 years....

[eldaec]

This is a universe where crowds on Coruscant were aware of and celebrating events at Endor on the same day the emperor got his.

It doesn't make sense unless you just pretend the prequels never happened. The Jedi were all but wiped out by a mysterious thing, generations before Star Wars. See? Everything is better now.

[Riggswolfe]

Most of these issues are because of the damned prequels. Lucas didn't give a second's thought to what he was doing. He just wanted spectacle.

That said, prior to the prequels I remember some EU sources basically flat out saying the Emperor spent years wiping out every trace of the Jedi he could and using propaganda to discredit everything they'd done as basically parlor tricks on a gullible populous and edited holovids and stuff.

It's really not that unbelievable that it would work. The Jedi, as have been pointed out were a tiny, tiny part of the population. On Coruscant alone Jedi were 0.000001% of the population. (give or take a 0. ) Expand that out to the galaxy and most people know the Jedi only by legend and story even when they were out and about doing stuff. Once they've been gone for 20 years and a purge of all knowledge of them happens then it's easy to see people from Luke's generation thinking they were only myths from the start. Han would've been 12-15 during the prequels I think so while he was alive at the time and probably saw news video, odds are good he never saw a Jedi and once the Empire declared it was all trickery and scams he was probably like "I knew it!"

Sure, the Jedi were leading clone armies but, assuming some war video was shown, it was just guys twirling laser swords most of the time. And bluntly? Think about how quickly people get bored of news video of battles that aren't taking place where they are. Most citizens of the galaxy probably thought of the clone wars as "something over there, but who cares, the price of blue milk is up! What the hell Chancellor Palpatine?!?!?!"

[Merusk]

This is a universe where crowds on Coruscant were aware of and celebrating events at Endor on the same day the emperor got his.

It doesn't make sense unless you just pretend the prequels never happened. The Jedi were all but wiped out by a mysterious thing, generations before Star Wars. See? Everything is better now.

Knowledge of galactic events is far different from knowledge of a minority population of those events.

Quick, who was the battlefront leader of the push into Kirkuk when the Kurds retook the town this year.  You don't know? So how do you know it happened?

[HaemishM]

We live in a world where Stalin spent the best part of 30 years getting rid of anyone who might have undermined or opposed his authority and regime, where Soviet censors airbrushed people out of photos, where artists and writers were taken away and executed and where the full extent of the Government sponsored atrocities weren't revealed until after Stalin's death in the 50s. And this was a Government we were allied with in 1945.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0b5hlpd2cE

[jgsugden]

If you want, you can also factor in all the language barriers as so many different languages are spoken... oh wait, everyone seems to understand everyone no matter what language they speak in Star Wars, I forgot.

[Margalis]

Most of these issues are because of the damned prequels. Lucas didn't give a second's thought to what he was doing. He just wanted spectacle.

Yep. In the originals it seemed like the Jedi has not existed in hundreds of years, but then according the prequels they are active and well-known just like 15 years earlier.

[DraconianOne]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0b5hlpd2cE

Win!

[Velorath]

Most of these issues are because of the damned prequels. Lucas didn't give a second's thought to what he was doing. He just wanted spectacle.

Yep. In the originals it seemed like the Jedi has not existed in hundreds of years, but then according the prequels they are active and well-known just like 15 years earlier.

From the originals we know that Vader hunted down the Jedi, that he's Luke's father, that Luke is probably in his early 20's, and we can assume that Vader hadn't already been killing Jedi for decades when he had Luke. I don't think it's the timeline that the prequels fuck with, it's the scale. If the Jedi were a small order scattered across the galaxy, and if the Clone Wars were just some local war going on that Obi-Wan pitched in with rather than a massive historical event that dozens of Jedi took part in as generals and such, then you could have Vader hunt them down one by one over the past 20 years without it being something the galaxy at large took notice of.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, if you have Obi Wan and Vader still alive, it kinds of fucks your 'It was Ages Ago' narrative.  Yoda maybe lives for 900 years, but that pair not so much.

[Khaldun]

Well, now that I think on it, who is the main source of a statement about how long ago it was, etc? It's Obi-Wan in ANH in his little house, when he first has a conversation with Luke. First off, we know by ROTJ that Obi-Wan is lying his head off in that scene, manipulating Luke in all sorts of ways. We also know Luke is an unusually sheltered and somewhat stupid young man who knows almost nothing about the wider universe.

Second person we hear talk about the Jedi is Han Solo, and it's his attitude that is a bit hard to reconcile with the prequel history. But we could just chalk it up to Han being a cocky asshole.

On screen, there is very little else that we hear about the recent history of the galaxy and the Jedi. Leia knows about the Clone Wars and Obi-Wan's past--she says as much in her holographic message to Obi-Wan. The Rebels believe in the Force but we never really see Rebel leaders talking with Luke about his incipient Jedi-hood. Jabba mocks the idea of Luke being a Jedi but he doesn't say anything more comprehensive about the history of the Jedi, really. The Imperial officers in ANH including Tarkin take it for granted that the Jedi are all dead now and at least one doesn't really believe in the Force, which suggests that the Emperor is continuing to keep the Force under wraps. (Not that Vader is helping much with that, however: that's the most inconsistent thing, because I sincerely doubt that Vader has not been Force-choking Imperial officers until suddenly in ANH he gets a taste for it. Why Admiral Motti is willing to mock Vader is kind of a mystery when you look back on it.)

Actually the most MOST inconsistent thing, and it's entirely due to the stupidity of the prequels, is that when Han says, "I don't believe in the Force", Chewbacca should yell at him, "Hey, dumbass, I worked with Yoda in the past, don't be an idiot."

We never really get anything like a normal civilian's point of view on any of this. I would guess that on Alderaan, Coruscant, Corellia, etc., the truth is pretty well known to people.

[Ironwood]

Yup, it's actually quite the clusterfuck.

[Ghambit]

Chewbacca has to keep Yoda (and the few remaining Jedi) safe; the Wookie are one of the smartest races in the damned galaxy... he wouldn't just yell out to Han "brrrwwwwww.... yo bro!  I worked with Yoda! The Force is real!"  Cmon man.  Especially to a goddamned smuggler scoundrel (even though they're best friends).

As for Boyega being killed off; I used to think it was a given, if not due to the loss of revenue of just having a black Jedi main character to begin with.  But really, the franchise doesn't need the money.  Truthfully, they have the kind of carte blanche now to really do a lot more with the world if they wanted to... ala Roddenberry.  I think what you're seeing now is that actually happening with the next few movies.  So no, Boyega will stay alive but likely won't be a focus.

[eldaec]

I think you can reasonably reconcile all of the 3 acceptable movies with jedi having been very rare and entirely without a formal role in society for a long time, then vader hunted them from very rare to near extinction. Leia speaks of Obi Wan as an effective republic general who might have powers she doesn't understand - not as a member of a highly visible space wizard corps. Some/all Jedi fought in the clone wars, but Obi Wan doesn't tell us they provided the entire staff officer cadre of the republic forces.

Nobody in the 3 films implies the jedi organisation had any institutional role in recent history.

[Lakov_Sanite]

  So no, Boyega will stay alive but likely won't be a focus.

Wishful thinking on your part? Nothing at all points to him playing a minimal role in the movies.  God I don't even know if it's racism but the amount of hate Boyega is getting online is beyond stupid..."he can't be a jedi" "he's just holding the saber"  "they will kill him off" "he will play a minor role"  are you fucking serious, why?  What makes people think any of that?  There is literally no information to base those assumptions on other than some sort of wishful thinking. 

[Merusk]

Boyega is the new Jedi. You hold a lightsaber on the poster, you're a Jedi.

He's even gone so far as to say in a Hollywood Reporter interview that JJ told him he's the new star. Folks like to use Daisy Rei's prominence on the poster against Boyega, but she's central because she's the point of conflict. Han & Leia's kid most likely and going to be Force-sensitive and at the center of the Light vs Dark conflict, represented by Boyega's Finn & Kylo Ren.

People who have problems with this can deal now.

[jgsugden]

Just to toss it on the fire: There were people assigned the task of managing the continuity for Star Wars from 1991 to 2012 - the films, the books, the video games, all of it.  They had a multiple tier structure and put a huge amount of effort into maintaining logical sense and contuity to their universe.  There was a lot of effort to make sure everything released between 1991 and 2012/2014 - including the 3 prequels - made logical sense and did not conflict with other existing material.   There were failures, but there was a huge effort to make sure things like the general knowledge of jedi in the universe and the specific knowledge of Jedi by specific characters made sense.

[Samwise]

Man, if that's true I'd be ashamed to be one of the people who worked on that.  Like being the fire inspector on the Hindenburg.

[Draegan]

Man, if that's true I'd be ashamed to be one of the people who worked on that.  Like being the fire inspector on the Hindenburg.

It's probably more like you tried your best but Lucas really fucked you up.

[jgsugden]

Man, if that's true I'd be ashamed to be one of the people who worked on that.  Like being the fire inspector on the Hindenburg.

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

[Lakov_Sanite]

Boyega is the new Jedi. You hold a lightsaber on the poster, you're a Jedi.

He's even gone so far as to say in a Hollywood Reporter interview that JJ told him he's the new star. Folks like to use Daisy Rei's prominence on the poster against Boyega, but she's central because she's the point of conflict. Han & Leia's kid most likely and going to be Force-sensitive and at the center of the Light vs Dark conflict, represented by Boyega's Finn & Kylo Ren.

People who have problems with this can deal now.

Well it's canon that Han had a relationship/wife with a dark skinned smuggler woman so I'm betting Boyega is his son and Rey is Luke's kid.  Also every poster so far suggests she is taking the heel turn or at the very least going to be drifting towards the dark side and in need of redemption by the end of the movies. 

Feel free to point this out but this is how I'm calling it. Finn is the Jedi, Kylo Ren is NOT a strong force user if at all just a Vader wannabe, Rey becomes main antagonist/disciple of.  Last movie is Rey v Finn.

[HaemishM]

Man, if that's true I'd be ashamed to be one of the people who worked on that.  Like being the fire inspector on the Hindenburg.

It's probably more like you tried your best but Lucas really fucked you up.

Or in other words, the fates of everyone of the ancillary guys who worked on the prequels but Lucas himself.

[Merusk]

Man, if that's true I'd be ashamed to be one of the people who worked on that.  Like being the fire inspector on the Hindenburg.

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

Yes and no.

There wasn't a Department at Lucasfilm, it was the job of 2-3 people, one of whom was put in charge of it when Disney acquired them and DID establish a group. He's the guy who said, "scrap it all." Leland Chee, he's a hero.

[Samwise]

Feel free to point this out but this is how I'm calling it. Finn is the Jedi, Kylo Ren is NOT a strong force user if at all just a Vader wannabe, Rey becomes main antagonist/disciple of.  Last movie is Rey v Finn.

I doubt this simply because I can't believe that in a Star Wars movie they'd make the pretty girl the bad guy.  Maybe if she gets her face burned off first a la Vader?