JediMaster said:

I never really got that there whole "ghost thingie"...

"If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Uh, yeah. He gets to flicker around and give Luke helpful advice. Like a good Intercom system couldn't have done that.

No, he becomes more powerful because he is one with The Force!

Likewise, Palpatine predicts that Vader will become even more powerful than Yoda or himself put together. Sure, he got the ability to strangle people without touching them and some apparantly low-level telepathic and telekinetic abilities exhibited in The Empire Strikes back. That's really powerful. Especially considering how he died because he was subjected to the Emperor's force beams for a much shorter length of time than Luke Skywalker, who didn't even get scarred and deform like the Emperor did when he was exposed to his own force beams. Now that's powerful, Luke!

Anakin's potential was greater BEFORE he was chopped up and fried on Mustafar like a bucket of the Colnel's extra crispy! His physical damage also impaired his ability to use The Force.

As for the Dark Side lightening killing him, it wasn't the length of time or the intensity that did him in, it was the damage they did to his life support suit, combined with their effect on his already damaged body

Anyway, what are the Jedi really but a bunch of Budhists who are really good at fighting with a sword?

There are certainly elements of Zen Buddhism, along with Shaolin Buddhism and Christianity in the Jedi Philosophy

Anyways, I take it the lesson of the first trilogy is that sexual desire is a bad thing?

No, the lesson is that the Jedi got so caught up in not forming attachments that they failed to see that someone falling in love could be a good thing if nurtured. Their repressive ways did them in.

Anakin desired Padme, but sexual desire was against the Jedi code (the bible) and lead him to the dark side (hell).

Again, no. The Jedi were so busy telling Anakin to tow the line that they failed to see that evil forces would be more than happy to accomodate his basic needs, and thus lead him down the wrong path (ultimately, Palpatine didn't want him to save Padme either, he just used it against him). If anything, the Jedi's denial of love was a major blunder on their part, and THAT is the lesson that these movies teach.

And that is why Luke Skywalker is single at the end of Return of the Jedi. Because he has no desire. He's a good Jedi (Christian) boy.

And whatever "EU" books and Dark Horse comics that are busy hooking Luke up and getting married to every other girl in the galaxy are but expressions of the authors' own, dark side desires. They are in no way written in the true spirit of George Lucas's Star Wars Universe, because there Luke is a monk while Leia, like her father, has fallen to the dark side by reciprocating the desire of Han Solo.

Actually, the marriage of Luke to Mara was endorsed by Lucas, to the point that he hired a model to "play" her in all the EU material. The idea of Luke being married and having children isn't oppossed to Lucas's vision at all.

Luke sees past Yoda and Kenobi's dogmatic view on non-attachment. When he flies off to Bespin to rescue his friends, Yoda and Obi-Wan both think he is just following in his old man's footsteps. The difference is that Luke never gives into the Dark Side to rescue them. When offered the chance to do so on the second Death Star, he refuses. He has faith in his friends, which neither the Emperor nor the Jedi see value in. This is ultimately why Luke triumphs, as one Jedi alone, when the entire Jedi Order did not.

In the EU books, a Jedi from the prequel era named Vergere meets Luke, and is appalled that he has allowed Jedi to marry and have families, but Luke stands firm in his belief that love and family are assetts, not hinderances. Luke does away with the "monk" lifestyle, because he recognizes the fact that love is entertwined with the Light.

In the EU books, a Jedi from the prequel era named Vergere meets Luke, and is appalled that he has allowed Jedi to marry and have families, but Luke stands firm in his belief that love and family are assetts, not hinderances. Luke does away with the "monk" lifestyle, because he recognizes the fact that love is entertwined with the Light.[/b]

How can he meet a prequel Jedi when they are all but extinct, hunted down and killed by Darth Vader?

I like the idea of Leia being the "Eve" of new generations of Jedi, assuming that the abilities of the Force are inherited, like Luke and Leia inherited the trait from their father.

And I like the idea of Luke being a monk.

And if not, he should at best be gay because he's got all the classic settings for that, particularly the distant father.

1. so what exactly is princess leia princess of? alderaan? a part of alderaan? was bail organa a king? some kind of duke? i wasn't clear on what his position was in episode III, exactly, other than that he seemed to be one of the founding figures in the rebellion.

2. and speaking of royalty, how exactly did padme go from being queen of naboo to being a senator? i'm sure this was explained in episode II somewhere, but so much in that movie went right over my head (thankfully, i just got a copy of it from netflix, and i'm gonna give it another viewing this weekend).

Anxiety said:

Something cut out of Ep III was dialog coming from Bail Organa that his wife was a queen on Alderaan. This was supposed to have been mentioned when he said that he and his wife, the queen, always wanted to adopt a baby girl. This would of course make Leia a princess.


On Naboo, queens are elected officials. I'm guessing that perhaps Alderaan had a similar government structure since Bail was not a king but his wife was a queen.

TMPletz said:

so women are elected queens but men aren't considered kings? is this something that lucas got from kurosawa or campbell, or is this just his way of compensating for the alarming lack of female characters in the star wars movies?

Oh, opening up a whole can of star wars related prince songs like...

Hoth Thing

Thieves In The Jedi Temple

(Han) Solo

Obi-Wan Doves Cry

Little Red Landspeeder

When You Were Mynock

Scarlet Wookie

Jar, Jar, Jar, He, He, Hee

One Nite A Clone...

Baby I'm A Star Destroyer

BorisFishpaw said:

POST OF THE FUCKING YEAR!!!!!

Vergere was out on the outer rim of the galaxy and was taken by the Yuuzhan Vong long before the Jedi scourge, unknown to them that she was a Jedi.

Luke's still kinda monk-like, but definitely not gay. He has relations with Callista before he ended up marrying Mara and having a child by the name of Ben. I'd say he's more like a minister in a religion where marriage is allowed.

BananaCologne said:

Just for "One night a clone".....

Did you notice that it took Padme shorter to fly from Coruscant to Mustafar than it did for Anakin to fly from the Jedi Temple to Cancellor Palpatine's aid against the evil Mace Windu.

i have two really stupid questions, posed to me by my boyfriend, neither of which i was able to answer:

1. so what exactly is princess leia princess of? alderaan? a part of alderaan? was bail organa a king? some kind of duke? i wasn't clear on what his position was in episode III, exactly, other than that he seemed to be one of the founding figures in the rebellion.

2. and speaking of royalty, how exactly did padme go from being queen of naboo to being a senator? i'm sure this was explained in episode II somewhere, but so much in that movie went right over my head (thankfully, i just got a copy of it from netflix, and i'm gonna give it another viewing this weekend).

Who's the Yuuzhan Vong? I don't remember seeing them in any of the Star Wars movies.

But that's just fan fiction and has no more validity than, say, my ideas.

And as long as my ideas don't contradict anything in George Lucas' movies, then my ideas are valid.

Not true. These books and comics are OFFICIALLY ENDORSED by Lucas, so therefore they are hardly "fan fiction". Several things in the films have actually come from the EU: Quinlan Vos, from the Dark Horse comic series, was mentioned in ROTS; Dash Rendar, from Shadows of the Empire, had his ship featured in the Special Edition of ANH; Coruscant, the capital planet featured heavily in the prequels, came from Timothy Zahn's novels; General Grievous's cough in ROTS was the direct result of his encounter with Mace Windu in the Clone Wars cartoon; the databank entries on the official site feature tons of plot points from the EU in each character's entires.

JediMaster said:

Not a big fan of the spin-off books etc, but 'Shadows of The Empire' kicked ass.

scififilmnerd said:

Not true. These books and comics are OFFICIALLY ENDORSED by Lucas, so therefore they are hardly "fan fiction". Several things in the films have actually come from the EU: Quinlan Vos, from the Dark Horse comic series, was mentioned in ROTS; Dash Rendar, from Shadows of the Empire, had his ship featured in the Special Edition of ANH; Coruscant, the capital planet featured heavily in the prequels, came from Timothy Zahn's novels; General Grievous's cough in ROTS was the direct result of his encounter with Mace Windu in the Clone Wars cartoon; the databank entries on the official site feature tons of plot points from the EU in each character's entires.

JediMaster said:

Yes, well... Dark Horse Comics' Alien-series were officially endorsed as well, but the movies followed their own continuity rather than what was done in the comics. Like, intially the Aliens in the comics all looked the same despite hatching in various animals, and then Alien3 came along saying they took the shape of their hosts.

Not the same, since LUCAS HIMSELF has declared the books and comics to be cannonical. The Aliens series are really a different deal anyway, since you don't have a single creator approving storylines, etc.
I imagine that if Episode 7 to 9 were made, they wouldn't necessarily follow any continuity established in a book written by someone other than Lucas himself, as Star Wars is Lucas' creation and I'm sure he has his own ideas and an artistic integrity he doesn't want limited by what someone wrote in a book inspired by his creations.

As for Shadows of the Empire and the Clone Wars cartoon, it only stands to reason that they are set in the continuity of the movies as they are basically Lucasarts productions. Shadows of the Empire being their multi-media epic set between Episodes 5 and 6 of which I only read the comic book series. But I liked that.

All of them are Lucas productions. Hell, the comics and novels all bear the Lucas Books logo, and all the authors have to meet with Lucas's people to get approval on all storylines

I haven't read Zahn's books. I read the comic adaptations, but got rid of them because the story bored me and Zahn's own characters bored me and the story bored me to the point where I could read an issue and not remember any of what I had just read. That's how much of an impression they made.

Likewise, I wasn't particularly fond og Dark Horse's Dark Empire trilogy, so I would really hate it if Lucas started incorporating crap like Dark Empire and Zahn's books into his movies or TV-series or whatever...

I agree. I thought both stories sucked balls. However, it should be noted that Coruscant came out of the Zahn books.

Anyways, Star Wars books are published on a monthly basis. Does anybody really read each and every one of those things? I hven't read any of them. I don't even read Dark Horse's comics anymore because they became really crappy. Tales of the Jedi was awful, too.

I read quite few. Some are crappy, but the vast majority are quite good. The CLone Wars comics have been fantastic.

I bought Shadows of the Empire because it was an official Lucas-project. That's all.

Arrrgh! THEY ARE ALL OFFICIAL LUCAS PROJECTS!!!!! ARRRRRGH!!!

Besides that, I've got all of Marvel's issues and the Classic Star Wars series because they bring back fond memories from my teenage years, as well as Crimson Empire because it was drawn by Paul Gulacy.
I too have a fondness for the old Marvel stuff, even though its non-cannonical, and pretty darn cheesy.

I too have a fondness for the old Marvel stuff, even though its non-cannonical, and pretty darn cheesy.

scififilmnerd said:

I agree. I thought both stories sucked balls. However, it should be noted that Coruscant came out of the Zahn books.

The EU stuff is NOT GL approved, just Lucasfilm endorsed.

This line seems to get continually blurred by EU fans. Even when GL has embraced EU, he's ended up trampling all over it with the next movie.

They make sure they include the odd reference, as it adds to sales, but they have NEVER declared it the official line.

Some projects are slightly different. Shadows Of The Empire being a good example. This WAS a Lucasfilm and Arts project, not just an endorsement. But it is an exception to the rule.

A lot of the EU stuff is great, buts its basically fiction within fiction. To pull an EU response out in answer to a movie question is simply wishful thinking.

Basically, there is no full universe, because Gl hasn't written it. Writers are simply filling in the holes as they imagine it, and some people view it as gospel.

scififilmnerd said:

Arrrgh! THEY ARE ALL OFFICIAL LUCAS PROJECTS!!!!! ARRRRRGH!!!

JediMaster said:

Are you kidding me?! That is the cannonical stuff for me!

Can't be. Too many contradictions with ESB & ROTJ.
It's all classic! I love the Michelinie/Simonson/Palmer issues. They are masterpieces!

And the issues drawn by Cynthia Martin are really fun and entertaining. I was very disappointed when the series got cancelled.

Me too. I still enjoy it, its just apochryphal.

And the Classic Star Wars (newspaper strip) by Goodwin and Williamson fit perfectly between Episode 4 and 5. How can they not be cannonical?! They're pure genius!

And the Russ Manning strip introduced Boba Fett. You can't tell me that's not cannonical.

Never said it wasn't. In fact, the newspaper strips are bona fide canon. Part of the reason the Marvel stuff isn't canon is they contradict way too much stuff from the newspaper strip. Actually, there are a FEW stand-alone stories in the Marvel series that are considered canon as well.

scififilmnerd said:

Can't be. Too many contradictions with ESB & ROTJ.

The EU stuff is NOT GL approved, just Lucasfilm endorsed.

This line seems to get continually blurred by EU fans. Even when GL has embraced EU, he's ended up trampling all over it with the next movie.

They make sure they include the odd reference, as it adds to sales, but they have NEVER declared it the official line.

Some projects are slightly different. Shadows Of The Empire being a good example. This WAS a Lucasfilm and Arts project, not just an endorsement. But it is an exception to the rule.

A lot of the EU stuff is great, buts its basically fiction within fiction. To pull an EU response out in answer to a movie question is simply wishful thinking.

Basically, there is no full universe, because Gl hasn't written it. Writers are simply filling in the holes as they imagine it, and some people view it as gospel.

SquirrelMeat said:

I agree. That is the way things must be.

Lucas has said, several times, that the EU stuff is canon, unless it contradicts a plot point in the films. The official site is filled with details from the EU. Hell, Obi-Wan talked about an EU story in ROTS, when he was arguing with Anakin over how many times he's saved his ass!

JediMaster said:

But of course. He gets a percentage of every book sold and if they were all acknowledged as what they are, fan fiction, then they'd probably sell less.

Anyways, whatever.

Lucas referencing commisioned fan fiction in his movies wont make me read the fiction. I chose to only read and see the actual Lucasfilm stuff as I really couldn't care less about Zahn's and whomevers personal Star Wars fantasies.