The Gaming Den

Winnah wrote:Midichlorians make even less sense after Vader has a large percentage of his body replaced by inorganic tech.

When I first hear Qui-Gon say that I almost stood up in the theater and said bullshit. All I could think was did Lucas jack story elements from Parasite Eve?

Hicks wrote:Speaking of love being capital E-vil, how do you perpetuate your mystic society if you indrotrinate them as children with "a jedi cannot love"?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

There were Quakers with laser swords.

You're thinking of Shakers, not Quakers.

Winnah wrote:Midichlorians make even less sense after Vader has a large percentage of his body replaced by inorganic tech.

Retcon them into a benign bacteriophage or something, that reproduces a lot faster when their host has a strong connection to the force, whatever that is. They are simply a indication of force sensitivity, not the cause.

Yeah, that line would have been fine if it had merely been a "his power level is over 9000" sort of technobabble.

edit: Also, Anakin's mum. Not a virgin. His daddy just could not handle the responsibility, so used a Jedi Mind trick and skipped town.

Well, I interpreted Anakin's mom's line about his missing father to be something that couldn't cross the master/slave barrier in that society. Of course, I was wishing for both a subtext that wasn't there and actors / direction who could convey subtext.

FrankTrollman wrote:Now I am not sure how much the film makers could have influenced that train wreck. Some of the big problems are also big plot arcs. What you'd want to do is to have the action split between the Wookie world and Coruscant, with no Death Star at all, and have the speeder bike chase and fights in the woods be about Wookies fighting to keep their world and have all the final showdown with the Emperor in the actual capital. But I'm not sure you can do a reboot that extensive.

Well, if I was transported in time back to the pre-production of ROTJ and had George Lucas' balls in a vice, here's what I would do:

The Emperor was converting the imperial capital homeworld (which may or may not be Corusant) into a Death Star. Maybe a Mega Death Star, with the orbiting moons as space stations or some shit. Whatever. Personally, I think that kind of escalation is dumb -- but audiences do expect it and it's an easy enough cop-out to implement without it derailing the rest of the movie.

The wookies have been transported to the planet to work as slaves because something something high radiation and heat resistance. Or maybe Kashyyk the closest planet and the Empire are racist dicks. Most of the population has been forcefully relocated/genocided and one of the Super Shield Generators is on it. This Super Shield Generator is cooling down the planet because it is drawing all of the geothermal energy from the planet to power it. So most of the once-green planet is wasteland/tundra except for a tiny patch of forest where the surviving wookies are located.

Of course, the other shield generator is located right in the center of the Imperial capital, where Vader and the Emperor are waiting.

Other changes:
[*] Cut out the entire Jabba rescue sequence entirely. Boba Fett brings Han back to Emperor/Vader to use as a carrot and stick to lure Luke right where he wants. If Harrison Ford didn't doesn't agree to come back to reprise his role then Han Solo gets killed in a dramatic fashion that fuels Luke's anger and shit. If he does, then he gets rescued during Act 1/3 and joins on the ass-kicking adventure for some sexual tension.

[*] Include more Rebel aliens in the movie. It's an easy way to do the obligatory-yet-awesome Gondor Calls For Aid escalation and frankly Star Wars could always use more non-human aliens. They don't have to be important or even named characters but they should still be there.

[*] If Han Solo does come back then he should be the one to kill Boba Fett in an action-packed sequence. If not, then it should be Leia.


And I'm going to stop here. I'm starting to depress myself, wondering about a possibility that could have never been.

[quote="Lago PARANOIA]If Han Solo does come back then he should be the one to kill Boba Fett in an action-packed sequence. If not, then it should be Leia.[/quote]

Actually, I loved the fact that Boba Fett died in a burp gag.

The Jabba scenes were the best fucking part of the film, if not just because of seeing shitloads of Jedi asskicking and metric fucktons of Muppet aliens (which it was clear were the only things that Lucas himself was good at doing.)

I mean, it's kind of damning that the best parts of Return of the Jedi are just mindless action movie stuff, and not Empire or even A New Hope level, but that doesn't mean that mindless action movie heroics are bad for Star Wars.

I actually think some is necessary for the series; even Empire had the big ass battle on Hoth at the beginning, and A New Hope is at its core an excellent mindless action/sci-fi movie (Empire was much more character-driven.)

Part of my problem with the stuff beyond the original trilogy is the fetishization of everything about it.

I could buy Boba Fett being a good bounty hunter. And there's been some neat stuff done. But he only became the Galaxy's Greatest because he was about the only bounty hunter with any lines at all in the movie.

What really bothers me is how the YT-whatever-hundred freighter the Falcon is. Luke and Leia both comment on it being a hunk of junk.

Then over the years, it turns out the Falcon's exact model of freighter was the most prized and best thing evar. I remember reading something from RA Salvatore when he wrote Vector Prime. He included a scene with Han and Anakin Solo upgrading the guns on the Falcon. Just an excuse to have them working on the ship and being around each other.

He got a screaming phonecall from an editor going "DON'T MESS WITH PERFECTION!"

Anyways. Read entirely too much of that stuff in my early teens. I still like the Thrawn trilogy.

What was the super-weapon in the Thrawn novels? The Sun-smasher? Basically an invincible shuttle that blew up suns?

K wrote:What was the super-weapon in the Thrawn novels? The Sun-smasher? Basically an invincible shuttle that blew up suns?

No, the superweapon-of-the-week thing was Kevin J Anderson.

The Thrawn books did have:
A mary-sue who magically just-as-planned everything.
A magic clone army.
A jedi master who granted all troops combat bonuses because of magic.

But no magic macguffin of doom.

Thrawn did do a cloaking device. But that's about as close as they got on the superweapon front.

Maxus wrote:Thrawn did do a cloaking device. But that's about as close as they got on the superweapon front.

And the cloaking device made you blind.

Thrawn was the only early series without a super weapon/the super weapon was Thrawn Xanatos Gambitting everything except the Noghri.

Tumbling Down wrote:

K wrote:What was the super-weapon in the Thrawn novels? The Sun-smasher? Basically an invincible shuttle that blew up suns?

No, the superweapon-of-the-week thing was Kevin J Anderson.

The Thrawn books did have:
A mary-sue who magically just-as-planned everything.
A magic clone army.
A jedi master who granted all troops combat bonuses because of magic.

But no magic macguffin of doom.

Also a huge, abandoned fleet.
Anti-Force bugs.
Plants that record sound.

Neeeek wrote:Also a huge, abandoned fleet.
Anti-Force bugs.
Plants that record sound.

The "huge abandoned fleet" was in total less powerful than a single Imperial Star Destroyer.

Ysalamiri are not bugs, and are definitely not a super weapon, nor are sound recording plants.

You can't list every single thing that is added to the universe and call them all super weapons. By that Logic Empire Strikes Back added the "superweapons" of Imperial Probe Droids and AT-ATs.

AT-ATs look like giant ass camels.

Speaking of which, there was an interesing story about one of the Stormtroopers, before he became a Stormtrooper (this was written before it was revealed that (most) troopers were clones*).

I forget the dude's name, but he was basically in like an Imperial training thingy, and he was testing out the AT-AT which had just been invented, and in a simulation he found out the only weakness to the AT-AT which was it's legs. So he had the thing sit down, which made it look silly. His CO was pissed because he didn't want the Empire's newest weapon to look ridiculous, and so he demoted him from an officer to a trooper. Or something like that. Sorry I can't remember more, I just woke up and I'm not yet at my best operating performance.

DarthRabbitt read the story, so he can tell you more.



*It was ultimately decided that all the unique, named troopers (ie, ones that were written about before the prequels came out), were templates for the other clones. Kinda cool, actually.

Kaelik wrote:

Neeeek wrote:Also a huge, abandoned fleet.
Anti-Force bugs.
Plants that record sound.

The "huge abandoned fleet" was in total less powerful than a single Imperial Star Destroyer.

Ysalamiri are not bugs, and are definitely not a super weapon, nor are sound recording plants.

You can't list every single thing that is added to the universe and call them all super weapons. By that Logic Empire Strikes Back added the "superweapons" of Imperial Probe Droids and AT-ATs.

I wasn't claiming they were super weapons. Just more random stuff that was in the books. Which I haven't read since they came out 20ish years ago.