My Thoughts During RotS [SPOILERS]

[bodhi]

Wow- What kind of master plan involves getting yourself kidnapped and trapped on a ship that's about to crash planetside? Time to shoot your strategist, methinks.

I was thinking the same thing, then I thought this might be something Palpatine has foreseen. A (very) risky situation, but one which moves Anakin that much further down the path to the Dark Side. A gamble he had to take to trade up his apprentice. Or maybe not much of a gamble, if he's foreseen how it all happens.

So, princess, do you always wear your makeup to bed?

I thought the pearls on her shoulders had to be uncomfortable.

 

[bodhi]

Every individual clone trooper is a replica of the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy (who by himself manages to off a Jedi in Ep. 2), whereas storm troopers are little more than brainwashed grunts.

I was waiting for the analog tape/photocopy metaphor. You make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, and quality goes to hell.

 

[Welverin]

Some of my thoughts:

... That was a very conveniently placed runway.

More importantly, WHY THE HELL IS THERE A BLOODY RUNWAY! You know, when every ship in star wars ever shown is clearly vtol capable.

And what does the Republic do with all that Military Hardware they seem to mothball every 3 years. I mean the big ships in Episode 2 what happened to them all? Why did they change them?

What I find odd about it is how the technology level is static, but yet they keep coming up with new technology, but it's not more advanced so why was it created?

Why does lame stuff like this bother me?

Can't help you with this one.

And it seemed to me that when they trained Luke, Obi-Wan and Yoda constantly talked about feelings and the need for feelings ... like they had realized that their former approach was a failure, and they wished a more well rounded approach to the Force (as the Emperor might say.)

Or Qui-gon, for that matter.

I thought the pearls on her shoulders had to be uncomfortable.

I kept wondering how she slept in that thing myself.

 

[Michael Tree]

Does Taoism advocate being non-emotional about everything, the way Yoda councilled Anakin to be?
...
Could someone explain Taoism to me, and what it espouses? How the Jedi subscribed to it? How they did, or did not subscribe to it for Luke in Episodes 4, 5, and 6?
Did their belief in Taoism take them down? What happened?

The Jedi code seems to be based much more on Buddhism than on Taoism, though the two are similar in many ways.

Taoism teaches a person to go with the flow, to accept and embrace change. Too much intellectual thought, too much striving, and too much stubbornness, force and desire make a person lose contact with the Tao. Two of Taoism's fundementals are intuition and flexibility. It uses water as a prominent symbol: Water flows around obstacles, rather than trying to force its way through them, yet it is the strongest element, able to erode anything given time. The Jedi "letting themselves go" and giving in to the force is very Taoist, as is their trusting in their feelings, rather than trying to intellectually work through everything.

There are also very strong elements of Buddhism in the Jedi. One of its core tenets is that desire and attachment inevitably bring pain, confusion, and conflict, and blind you to the world. Rise above desire and attachment, and center yourself to clear yourself of all your preconceptions and emotional blindspots, and think and feel clearly. The aim isn't to become a coldly logical vulcan, as some have suggested on ROTS threads, but to become a calm and peaceful person who acts according to his wisdom and clear perceptions, unlike people who struggle with their conflicting desires and respond in knee-jerk reactions according to their preconceptions.

These are gross simplifications, of course, and there are a lot of different forms of Taoism and Buddhism that differ, but these should be sufficient to understand the origins of the Jedi anyway. (They're oversimplifications, but Lucas based Jedi on oversimplifications, so they fits. )

 

[Hopping Vampire]

when Padme dies after giving birth. She lost her will to live, the droid said. thats a pretty lame death excuse, IMO. Not because a girl who looks to weigh about 98 pounds soaking wet just gave birth to 2 humongous twins after being force choked and thrown down, but she lost her will to live. They shouldve checked her pockets.

 

[demiurge1138]

when Padme dies after giving birth. She lost her will to live, the droid said. thats a pretty lame death excuse, IMO. Not because a girl who looks to weigh about 98 pounds soaking wet just gave birth to 2 humongous twins after being force choked and thrown down, but she lost her will to live. They shouldve checked her pockets.

I say it was incompetence on the medical droid's part. Damn MD unit couldn't diagnose, so it made up some story about "losing the will to live". Or something like that.

I gave it an 8. Much better than either previous prequel, but still flawed, especially when it came to Padme's character and some of the dialogue.

Demiurge out.

 

[Michael Tree]

when Padme dies after giving birth. She lost her will to live, the droid said. thats a pretty lame death excuse, IMO. Not because a girl who looks to weigh about 98 pounds soaking wet just gave birth to 2 humongous twins after being force choked and thrown down, but she lost her will to live. They shouldve checked her pockets.

Losing the will to live is a perfectly acceptable event in Star Wars melodrama. What bugs me is that Lucas hits us over the head with it by having the droid say it!. A simple "she'd fading" would have said exactly the same thing, in a much more dramatic and unstilted way. "Show, don't tell", Lucas, "Show don't tell."

 

[Thotas]

On the "Only Sith deal in absolutes" subject ... dividing the Force into a dark side and a bright side is an absolute. Any sentence that starts with "only" is an absolute.

 

[haakon1]

Clone Trooper army are those jedi hunters everybody was wondering about. Then how come in Episode 4-5-6 the stormtroopers can't hit anything.

I SO have an answer for that question.

In 3, the officers are clones. Commander Cody, for example.

At the end of 3, the officers are regular humans. In 4, 5, and 6, the officers are humans. The stormtroopers do NOT all have the same voice. And there are imperial humans who don't appear to be officers, or are at best junior officers -- for example, the guys who give clearance to shuttles and the guys who work the guns on the Death Star.

And Leia says to Luke: "Kinda short for a stormtrooper, aren't you?" Implying that, while most stormtroopers are big guys, she's not shocked at the concept of them not being identical.

Also, we know that Biggs and Han Solo went to the Academy -- admittedly, I'd guess the Academy trains officers, not grunts.

My answer nevertheless: in 4, 5, and 6, the Emperor has (mostly, perhaps) replaced clones with regular humans. The way I played it, in the old West End Games SW campaign I played in as a scout trooper, stormtroopers and other imperials are volunteers, out to exercise humanity's Force-given rights as the dominant species in the galaxy. We need to keep those rebel scum down, or the Wookies and Mon Calamari and Jar-Jarians will take our jobs and ravage our livestock! Ever see a non-human in the imperial military in 4, 5, or 6 -- AKA The Empire -- nope, I thought not.

 

[haakon1]

We could assume that when they wiped C3P0, the tech on Alderaan said "Hey boss, did senator Organa wanted that astromech wiped too ?" to which the chief tech could answer "I don't remember... sure, why not. For good measure", but then I guess the tech also wiped Artoo's memory of how to use his rocket boosters...

Darn, and I was getting all excited at the continuity fix of remembering that they had to fix some things about C-3PO:
- him not remembering Tatooine
- him not remembering Darth
- him saying: my first job was working with Binary Load Lifters
- him saying: my owner was Captain Antilles

Well, I'm glad they fixed all that, and I don't really care that R2 forgot he earlier had CGI that let him fly.