ROTS: OT loose ends and inconsistencies: SPOILERS - Page 3

We have to really watch ourselves when we start wondering whether certain major characters were bullshitting or not. This stuff needs to be made more clear. If it's a plot device, it should eventually be known so we can see thematicly, where things are headed. Unfortuanately, some things are so vague, we have no real idea what sidious had planned or what Obi wan meant when talking to Luke. By being this way, the movies themselves foster the hostile atmosphere of the fanbase by asking important questions that are never answered.

And then the explainations used for some are ridiculous. For example, Revisionist Lucas has been saying, well, the duel in A new hope is slow because they're old men now. Yeah, but we just saw a 80 year+ Dooku doing backflips!!!

It's just frustrating to be a fan sometimes. I do enjoy Episode III for the most part, but the jarring continuity between it and the OT is off putting at times. Hopefully, the tv show will bridge the gap a little better.

We have to really watch ourselves when we start wondering whether certain major characters were bullshitting or not. This stuff needs to be made more clear. If it's a plot device, it should eventually be known so we can see thematicly, where things are headed. Unfortuanately, some things are so vague, we have no real idea what sidious had planned or what Obi wan meant when talking to Luke. By being this way, the movies themselves foster the hostile atmosphere of the fanbase by asking important questions that are never answered.

And then the explainations used for some are ridiculous. For example, Revisionist Lucas has been saying, well, the duel in A new hope is slow because they're old men now. Yeah, but we just saw a 80 year+ Dooku doing backflips!!!

It's just frustrating to be a fan sometimes. I do enjoy Episode III for the most part, but the jarring continuity between it and the OT is off putting at times. Hopefully, the tv show will bridge the gap a little better.

The largest problem that the new movies brought about was saying that the force is something that's physical. If that's the case both the Jedi and the Sith should have had some kind of breeding and or genetic manipulation program to create a race of super warriors. Heck, even if they said it wasn't physical they should still have had a breeding program like what you see in the Dune series.

I heard a comment a while back about how the PT focuses on science and while the OT focuses on mysticism. Maybe the midichlorians were discovered as some kind of organism that amplified the force, because as the Republic became more and more advanced, their science advanced as well. Maybe Qui-Gon was among a newer breed of Jedi who were trying to view and practice the force as a much more spiritual thing. Sure, Qui-Gon took a sample of Anakin's blood and checked it for midichlorian count, because that was how the council viewed such matters. And if he were to suggest Anakin as being the chosen one, he would have to back up his findings with much more evidence that just his intuition. Thatr doesn't mean that he disliked the ideas of midichlorians, just that he saw past theem into the living force. I'm sure Jedi scouting agents would test infants for midichlorians before yanking them from their parents.

However, Qui-Gon had a more universal, living, humanistic view of the Force. He probably communed this with Yoda and with Obi-Wan while they were in their exiles. That's why Yoda was much more spiritual about his view of the force in Episode V. Like Buddha and many other mystics, Yoda shed the trappings of his old life, i.e., his narrow, beuracratic and stifled viewpoint from the days of the Old Republic, to a newer, more spiritual view. Why? Because he was partly responsible for the fall of the Republic. In order to forgive himself for his grave errors, he became humbled to the force, and in doing so, was able to pass on some of this wisdom to Luke, who was able to use it to hold off the dark side. Plus, if it is true that Luke re-instated the Jedi Order, he would most likely make sure the teachings would focus on Qui-Gon's observations. So, maybe the midichlorians do not negate the spiritual idea. They do, however, in my opinion, show how focused on science and logic the Jedi were at the height of their arrogance. Maybe their arrogance about their knowledge led to their fall.

1) But Wedge and Lando weren't 9 years old, were they?

2) He does "free the slaves". The galaxy was a slave to the Emperor and he freed them all when he killed Palpatine at the end of ROTJ,

3) I think Vader means when he left the Jedi Order. Obi-Wan was a Master at the point, Anakin was not. The reason the fight was so "lame and slow" was because David Prowse couldn't fence to save his life and the suit was extremely stiff and difficult to move around in. Plus, Alec Guiness had to have been in his 60s. It's called "suspending disbelief"--try doing it sometime.

4) Obi-Wan told Yoda that he couldn't kill Anakin. If Anakin was going to die, it was not going to be from a direct action by Obi-Wan. I think Obi-Wan's thinking when he saw Anakin catch fire was "if he dies, he dies. I am not going to influence that at all."

Because Sidious was Plageous's apprentice. Did you see the look on his face when he was telling the story about how he died? Palps had a sly grin on his face the whole time.

Plus, in the book Palps mentions that he was the apprentice.

You walked out?!?!? Jesus, I don't know what possesses someone to walk out of a movie. You have spent money to see the damn thing, so it isn't like turning the channel at home. I think you went into the flick wanting it to be bad and weren't really giving it a chance.

1) Anakin said he was the only human who could do it. Age had nothing to do with it. I just think the ROTJ sequence WAAAY cooler.

2) The slaves on Tattooine were slaves long before the Emperor took over. They were slaves of the Hutts, and there's no evidence that changed after the Empire fell. If the whole fall thing revolved around Anakins dreams coming true no matter what, why not that one?

3) Anakin didn't leave the order at that point. He was dissassembled and left to burn.

4) Obi-wan does say to Anakin before the duel he will kill him if he has to. Its obvious Obi-wan still loves Anakin, but knows he must be stopped, so why leave him to nearly die in agony, but still live?

He left the Order the moment he knelt before Palpatine and became Darth Vader, aside from the fact that followers of the Jedi Order don't normally execute gradeschoolers.

I popped in a New Hope yesterday and was happy to note that the Obi Wan/Luke/R2D2/Vader Scenes have a new resonance. I am fully aware that movie swordfighting wasn't as sweet as when George made Episode I. Obviously, George, in making his Jedi more limber (Including the elderly Dooku) retroactivey makes Episode IV's fights look slow and bad. He had to say that Vader was more machine than man and that Ben was old, and that's why they fight badly. But we all know that that's just spin. So, I feel that the only way I can enjoy the transition from III to IV is to just forget that IV and I were 20 some years apart in filmmaking technology.

I'm also aware that Obi Wan doesnt seem to recognize Artoo as the droid he was palling around with 20 years ago. However, he doesnt negate that he doesnt know him. You could apply some imagination and believe that he is hiding his knowledge of Artoo on purpose, or that he lies to Luke to keep him safe, or whatever you want. I think that's a good thing. The fact remains: Lucas has made 3 new movies while trying to tie them into the OT. He may have done a poor job of that. But apart from a few lines, when i watched a New Hope, I had a wonderul time seeing those old and nostalgic scenes about the Clone Wars and your father's light saber, and a young pupil named Darh Vader murdering your father. etc. They worked for me, even though I can see right through them and realize that Lucas never planned for those lines to be anything other than a few hints to an outline of a backstory he compiled in order to try to tell his full story. I know this! But I choose to enjoy it. That's all I can do.

The way I see it, is that, no matter what our own ideas were, George came up with his, made his films and thats the end of that. The interesting thing is that we all watched it, and started to see how we would have made it cooler or better. Like the Anakin slave thing: Why wasn't he abused and mistreated more? Aren't slaves unhappy and abused? Well, that's what I would have done. However, when I imagined Anakin, I didn't ever think that he was a slave on Tatooine. So, retroactively, I can suggest how I would have made his slavery more intense. So after all three prequels, we as a fanbase can imagine how we would have done what George did differently. I think that has merit and it's fun to discuss. Now, of course, one can imagine a whole different story that still ends with Oni wan fighting Anakin and the transition into Darth Vader. But apart from fan fiction and fan films, we can't really re write the saga.

So, I'm not saying that you can't be pissed if you didnt like the choices he made. I just choose to view it through rose colored glasses in order to enjoy the story I wanted to see, while being fully aware of inconsistencies and the like. I do it cause I like Star Wars.

Edited!

Can't get the hang of quoting yet!

You just answered your own question. At that point Anakin was legless, on fire, and no longer a threat to anyone (or so kenobi thought). At that point he had no NEED to kill him, so he doesn't, just like he said.

Someone on another board mentioned something interesting. The whole chosen one prophecy was he would bring balance to the force. Wasn't the force unbalanced in favor of the jedi? I mean there were hundreds of jedi and two sith, why the hell would the jedi want to balance that?

In the end the prophecy was true. The only people left wielding the force were:

Darth Vader
Darth Siddious

Obi-Wan
Yoda

You do the math....

That's what I thought in the end, 2 to 2......

If you don't like the prequels, consider this.......without them.........We'd have no Wat Tambor!

Afterthought: So.........I presume Shmi's husband just up and died between episode II and III? MAN, that whole dying of a broken heart virus moves quickly!

The Prequel Trilogy rocked. Now that its over I like it almost as much as the Origina Trilogy and its kind of cool to watch it in order, it all flows together in a strange sort of way.

About Anikans dream of freeing the slaves. His daughter dose kill Jabba the Hutt and blow up his palace

No Wat Tambor?! (Cue Vader voice): "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

And btw, Beru was really hot, how did she get so, er, grandmotherly in just 20 years?

It was living with all that rough, gritty sand, man.

You ever seen women who live in Arizona? They turn to leather by the age of 40.

The way I see it, we are to see Obi-Wan as being purposefully evasive when claiming he can't seem to remember owning any droids. He knows R2 perfectly well, as ROTS demonstrates, but is not ready to reveal things to Luke yet (a little later comes the flat-out "point of view" lie about his father's death), and is after all not lying about R2 because he never owned him. But when we hear the line now it sounds like he's just being clever for his own benefit. It works.

And here's how I see the problematic character ages in the films:

TPM: Obi-Wan is 25, Anakin is 9, Padme is 14 (that's a stretch, but that's what was claimed).

AOTC: Obi-Wan is 35, Anakin 19, Padme 24, Cliegg Lars 50, Owen Lars & Beru 25.

ROTS: Obi-Wan is 38, Owen & Beru 28.

ANH: Obi-Wan is 58 (this works), Owen & Beru 48 (little bit of a stretch-- they look a little older, but I like the sun-scorched explanation).

Maybe its that blue milk they drink. Not enough anti-oxidants in it.

Perhaps I used the wrong term. I left because something came up, not as a comment on the quality of the movie. I was bummed, too, because I had to go right when Obi-Wan steps out on the lava planet.

Regarding my impressions to that point, I'd give it a C.

get the fuck back in there and see the rest of the movie

So what the hell happened to Naboo? Seemed like a pretty important planet, seeing as how it pretty much started the whole mess we're in when the OT starts.

And what about the energy orb Boss Nass hoists up at the end of TPM? Weren't we told at the time that that would end up being extremely important?

Long story short (as Fett and a couple of others have already mentioned), a thousand years prior to the films, there was a Sith War that nearly consumed the Jedi and the Republic; the latter of which was forced through some rough political re-establishment.

The Sith, on the other hand, got fucked big-time hard, with only one Dark Lord -- Darth Bane -- surviving the Battle of Ruusan, the final conflict of that war. He decrees the "working-in-the-shadows" pronunciamento, and takes on as his first apprentice of the new order a little girl named Rain (travelling to Ruusan with her young friends), an orphaned survivor of that battle. She then later becomes Darth Zannah.

From Bane and Zannah, all subsequent Dark Lords descend, up through Plagueis, Sidious, and Vader.

That should have been in the films, the Sith are mentioned first in TPM, it would have been great to have Qui-gon explain them rather than midi-chlorians. Instead we're just told they've come back, nothing more. No sense of any threat whatsoever.

Would have been nice to see Nass place that on Padme's coffin at the end of ROTS.

Or stuff it up Jar Jar's backside. "PEEEEEAAAAACE!!!!!"

Well, let's see. We know the Sith are supposed to be extinct, and we know they're the enemies of the Jedi. Doesn't take too much to put it together, especially as Darth Maul flat-out says, "At last we will have revenge." Who was Qui-Gon going to explain it to? Padmé during an especially long flight back to Naboo?

I'm not sure why so many people are complaining that every single detail hasn't been spoon-fed to them. I've actually had discussions with people who think that Palpatine's story to Anakin about Darth Plaguis is lazy because it doesn't spell out IN SO MANY WORDS that that's how Anakin was conceived. I spoke to someone else who believes that it's a hole in the story that we don't see Vader make his red lightsaber. It's as if nobody wants any subtlety, or anything that could provoke discussion, or anything left to assumption or imagination. So who's really being lazy?

The irony is that if Lucas had done all this, they'd be complaining that he shoves everything in our faces, that the movie is too long, and whatever else. There's really no winning.

These guys were supposed to be the main villains in the piece, but you've pretty much summed up our entire knowledge of them. I wanted ACTUAL evidence of their hatred and need for revenge, not just a couple of throwaway lines. Why the hell NOT have Qui-gon explain it then? Most of the scenes on the ship were dull anyway. Hearing some info on the baddies would have been cool, and made everything much more interesting. As it was, Maul showed up, they fought, and that was it.

Remember Gandalf telling Frodo about Sauron at the hobbit house in FOTR? That sort of stuff would have been awesome in Star Wars.

There's a difference between being subtle, and just leaving important/interesting stuff out so you can have Jar Jar step in shit.

As I said above, the Sith were the VILLAINS of the trilogy, yet we never heard shit about them. Because, you know, Anakin riding an ass-cow is waaay cooler and more important to the story.

Darth Zannah? That isn't even menacing. She may as well have gone with Darth Suzie.

What about Tarkin's age? He looks at least in his 60s in ANH, but with the brief view of him we get in ROTS, he looks to be younger than 40.

Not only that but it looked like he also changed species between trilogies.

I remember the time when Chris Walken was gonna be playing Darth Bane in AOTC. Or some other Sith Lord. Fun days.


There was a MoriartyReport™ where he SWORE on a stack of Bibles that the Walken casting was, like, A Done Deal. Try and dig that one out if I get a minute; recently saw it not too long ago.

Or maybe it was Jay Mohr PLAYING Walken playing a Sith. For that, I'd have smooched George Lucas' wrinkly flannelled throat-pouch on the corner of Bourbon and Canal Street.

What a lot of diehard Star Wars fans don't seem to understand is that most of the movie going public don't know any of this. The majority have not read the books, the magazines and the websites. All I knew about the Siths before reading this tread is that they are bad. A little explanation in the movies would have been welcomed.

The comparison with LOTR is spot-on. Anyone who hasn't read the books can understand the whole story. That's a big part of the movies popularity. If you've read the books, you get more subtext and more enjoyement out of it. If not, it's still a complete story.

With Star Wars, the casual fan is often left in the dark.

I agree about that Alexor. I don't have any real life friends who frequent Chud or any other nerd websites or message boards. They are left with a million questions after viewing the movies. there are just so many concepts that are brought up and then dropped. We're supposed to infer and guess about what it all means, but that's exactly what most people here hate about the Matrix trilogy. We're not supposed to have to go looking into other sources for answers. The movies should present a story that, at least on the surface, does not have huge gaping holes. As it stands, there's alot to infer and many important plot points happen offscreen that if you're not a nerd, you'll never really understand what's really going on.

I'm willing to bet a lot of average folks had no idea who Bail Organa was at all.

I know! It's that guy from NYPD Blue!

A few throw-away lines in the Original Trilogy is all we have about the clone wars, the senate, Alderaan, the old republic, etc.

Lord of the Rings (and to an extent, the Matrix) changed things by willfully expanding the core story beyond the theatrical films. With LOTR, it only makes sense because the story is already there in the books, the films can't cover every single page and are their own entity, and so on. Peter Jackson's solution of shooting a lot and then releasing separate versions could probably be the defacto new standard for geek-obsessive film properties like Star Wars, but it's not, and that causes some friction.

For the die-hards and people who would even bother to talk about this on the internet, extended versions of the Star Wars films might be welcome to flesh out plot points, characters, give some more action shots, etc. But that's not the mold Lucas is working from. Unlike LOTR, there's no definitive version of the story or backstory that would fill out these extra scenes--so anything that gets left on the cutting room floor is not "something that would have been in the movie if there was time," it's simply not part of the story. Dooku was at one point responsible for Anakin's mother's capture and death; Solo was going to be on Kashyyyk talking to Yoda; Shaak Ti was going to be killed by Grievous--none of that is in the film, and unlike LOTR, it's not in the story either, because to Lucs the films are the beginning and end of it.

Understanding Lucas' process for making these movies sheds some light on why he doesn't use the PJ model of longer cuts with all the nerd details. Surely the Harry Potter movies, the Narnia films, future Sky Captain installments, and so on and so on could benefit from the added dimension that was used in LOTR, but who knows if anyone else will ever go down that route.

I disagree. Here's one example of many (trying to remember all the details here) - When Matthew Stover was writing the ROTS novelization, he asked Lucas what Dooku's motivation was for staging the kidnapping in the beginning of the tale. He told him that Palpatine told Dooku of a perfectly logical plan that involved Dooku killing Obi-Wan Kenobi, then Palpatine convincing Anakin to stage a capture of Dooku while working to subvert the Council's authority by having Jedi led by Anakin to swear allegiance to Palpatine instead, which would give enough political power to Palpatine to declare himself Emperor.

No matter what the outcome of that duel was, Palpatine had an evolving plan to get him to his goal of creating the Empire. Of course, Dooku didn't know that his death was planned for as well, which we clearly see when he gives Palpatine that look of shock when his execution is ordered.

Now, since that falls under the heading of internalized character motive, it doesn't appear in the film. Does that make it any less part of the story? There's plenty of "official" material approved by LFL that's all part of the story, even if it doesn't come straight out of Lucas' mouth.

You're talking about internal character motivation, I'm talking about plot points. Dooku being the force behind Anakin's mother's death is not in the film, not even hinted at it. If it's in the novelization, fine, but it's not in the film and the film is all that 95% of people will see/know about. It certainly makes a difference to Anakin if Dooku had his mother killed, or if that was just a random act of violence, so if that is part of the story, it needs to be in the film. A discussion about setting a trap for Obi-Wan and a test for Anakin--well that's implied in the scene anyway since everyone knows (or will soon know) that Palpatine orchestrated it all. An additional scene explaining that set up would be redundant, but a scene where Palpatine tells Dooku "good job with those tusken raiders and ms. skywalker" would essentially change (possibly enhance) the story.

Okay, but your argument is moot since the novelizations don't get into contradictory plot points. It's like Stephen King's explanation of the unabridged version of The Stand. The characters aren't doing "different" things, they're just doing "more" things.

The idea that Palpatine had a contingency plan in case Anakin couldn't kill Dooku is itself a plot point, but for obvious reasons, there was no way to present that in the film. That said, just because it wasn't present in the film doesn't mean that it isn't part of the story.

I'm not taking anything away fom the novelization... I'm just pointing out that it's a different structure from LOTR where you have a definitive first source of the story that is not the movie, and then you have the movie that adapts varying amounts of that story. The novelization is an embelishment on the movie in the case of Star Wars, so that's why most people don't take it as the story itself. The primary source of the narrative is the movie, not the other way around.

What I'd like to see for this and maybe other movies of this ilk, would be a scenario where the filmmakers make the story they need to make, but take all the cool, extra, thought-out parts that are not ESSENTIAL to the story, but do help it, and add them in later. So far, LOTR is the only thing that really capitalizes on this. (Matrix/Animatrix is another possible example, and that's still different)

With Star Wars, it'll never work because Lucas constructs the story in a very backwards way, but for something like X-Men or Lemony Snicket or whatever, it'd be fun to have an extended cut for those who want more detail, providing the filmmakers take as much care as PJ's team did with that saga. Just typing that, it's clear that THAT's the problem--no one else seems to have that sort of dedication to depth and detail on these kinds of movies. The Lucasfilm crew does an incredible job with detail, but at the end of the day, it's not there to serve the story, rather the story is built from it.

Ok, I see where you're getting at. At the risk of branding myself as an EU apologist, I got the impression that you were discounting the events of the book as "not the REAL story". Basically, you're talking about the difference between creating an original story versus adapting from a previous work.

Either of the two can be made as you suggested, provided that the filmmaker provides enough good material, and can make it into a cohesive whole from the get-go. Without knowing as much of the behind the scenes stuff as Cunningham or the rest of the insiders, my guess is that Lucas either didn't create or maybe just didn't film that much story. He wrote somewhere between 140-180 pages of individual scenes, filmed what he wrote, and crafted his movie in the editing room.

Compare this to Peter Jackson's method of writing and filming a 3 hour+ film, and editing the "essential" story to release theatrically while leaving in the solid exposition scenes for the Extended Edition. It only works because PJ came up with all that great material to begin with.

It's not just with adapted works though. The Abyss had a ton of storyline that was eventually included in the director's cut and QT had so much trouble editing down Kill Bill, that he decided to split it into two films.

The common thread is that they all had a LOT of good material that, for various reasons, was not fit for theatrical release (or in the case of Kill Bill, a single release). Even though we as fans could probably envision an equally epic ROTS, it looks like GL only had his heart set on producing very little beyond what we're seeing on the big screen.

I don't agree that one needs to read the novels to understand the Star Wars films. I understand them fine and I would never consider picking up one of the books. Sure there are a few areas that are left mysterious, but all the main plot points are quite clear. It'd be pretty boring with no mystery at all, wouldn't it?

Also the LOTR movies do include a few elements that may not exactly confuse the viewer but cannot be completely understood without reading the books.

As for the plot holes exposed by ROTS, I don't think there are nearly as many as everyone here suggests. There are the issues of why R2's mind isn't wiped, and why the Emperor seems to find out about Luke before Vader, but I'm satisfied on most other points.

R2's mind isn't wiped because he can't talk.

Not English perhaps, but he can store data and he can talk, which he often does to C3PO.

The point is he isn't likely to say anything.

Why doesn't Artoo seem to recognise Yoda in ESB? Of course, they never actually met during the PT, did they? Never mind.