Sundown

I don't think the structure of T-Rex's stubby arms allows it swing nunchaku effectively. -Al well... I meant as a person! Ninjas vs Pirates vs Dinosaurs! Think bigger! Pirates Vs. Ninja Dinosaurs!!

jeje = "hehe" as in the laugh I somehow thought "jeje" might have referred to a body part.

I don't think the structure of T-Rex's stubby arms allows it swing nunchaku effectively. -Al

Pretty true. I think what made Star Wars so fun and watchable is that Lucas lucked out on some of the casting-- he found folks that brought life to characters even when ambiguously directed, maybe because they were just such personalities themselves. Might explain why some of the PT acting seem so much stiffer, at least to me... most of the actors, however accomplished, seemed to be the type that needed more guidance than they got. The the ones that tended to be personalities ended up just being those personalities, so we end up with Sam Jackson as Sam Jackson, with lightsaber. -Al

You know it's a dream when a bunch of Japanese men show up in your house to make mexican food. I might actually have believed it if it were a bunch of Mexican men showing up to make you Japanese food. -Al

Isn't that "acting cynical"? Seems vaguely appropriate for a cynical smuggler sort... unless there are certain character expression that don't actually count as "acting" now, or the ability of a lesser actor to reproduce a reasonable facsimile automatically disqualifies any further similar work from being considered "acting" henceforth. -Al

Maybe... they just took very big strides. Very big and careful strides. You know, so not to hurt the noggin. Or perhaps they bounded fancifully from place to place. Careful bounding, of course. Not to the face! -Al

But it still stands that Ford makes great movies (a vast majority of them in fact) without Lucas. Lucas has perhaps made one decent flick, or 4, depending on where you stand on the Prequels, without Ford. And it's arguable whether Ford's stinkers are really all due to Ford's performance. I usually find his performance watchable in spite of a bad movie's premise. I think evidence tends to point to the fact that Ford is a much better actor than Lucas is a director or screenwriter. Not that it's particularly easy to do that sort of comparison, but I do think they have different standings amongst their peers. -Al

has it occured to you that SW and indiana jones is like the only thing hes put out. unless he did some B fims i missed, i love B movies. 3 Star Wars Films (w/out Ford) Howard the Duck Willow Young Indianda Jones Chronicles Tucker: The Man and His Dream RadioLand Murders Labyrinth The Land Before Time And that's only a partial list. . . American Grafitti! Also with Ford. And how can we forget THX-1138. Which is one of his only decent flicks without a Ford. But then again, he had Robert Duvall. -Al

No, no, and no. I found the new saber and space battle scenes pretty mediocre. Yes, the flash was pretty and neat in a sensory overload sort of way, but the pacing, flow, and emotion of the battles felt lacking. Seemed like most of it was flash for the sake of flash, rather than a battle or a fight that you could follow the highs and lows of. The ROTJ space battle was infinitely more meaningful and was much more compelling to me, because you could actually follow the battle, and wasn't mired in an excess of stuff blowing up constantly. Not to mention that CGI in most cases still looks like CGI to me, and I prefer models unless the CGI happens to catch all the elusive nuances of a real physical model that indicates it's really "there" to the critical eye. -Al

I would sooooo watch. -Al

And confirm their fears about us, and turn out to be the monsters that they only suspected us to be before. Neat. Plus, I dunno man. If I ever did that sort of thing "for my loved ones", most of them would probably gape and call me a disgusting, twisted freak. And they'd be right. -Al

The crisp, nonchalant salute and thumbs up at the end was priceless. -Al

I don't buy this at all, and I call shenanigans. There are such things as razors. I believe they are available to adults, too. In fact, the use of such is common to adult entertainment aesthetics. I mean, it wouldn't be a stretch for an artist to draw their subjects thusly while still asserting that they're of legal age. Drawing the same image and then claiming that they're 14... or sometimes just drawing what are obviously children seems to indicate some other motivation. -Al

I'm not sure I see that with Anakin. I mean I can understand his motivations... but a man's gotta draw lines somewhere. There's a difference between trying to save his wife... and killing children. It almost seems to me that Anakin bumped into the perfect motivation to allow his baser and more evil characteristics to flourish... and towards the end, it almost appeared as if he was mostly hiding behind the excuse of "saving Padme". I mean the guy almost kills her-- his entire "motivation" for doing all that he's done in the first place. Many of us might do something similar, turning to the lesser of two apparent evils to save a loved one... but would we in the next moment start killing children and then come dangerously close to killing our mate? His transition is abrupt and non-sensical if we're talking about normal, sane, decent people, which I assume you're one of. It's either really bad character writing or Anakin's got an evil streak a mile wide. I'm betting it's a bit of both. Yep. Evil's best trick is appear to be "good". Or at least neutral, the new "good" in this spring's fashion lineup. -Al

Whoa there, buddy. I'm not sure how following we think should be done, even despite our personal preferences and gain is automatically selfish. Just because we adhere to what we think is right for the sake of others doesn't mean we're serving ourselves... especially when it causes us loss and suffering. Yes, morality makes us selfish when we do it in order to be "better" people in our eyes and in others' eyes, and to be able to think of ourselves as such. But if morality guides us into acting for the sake of others alone, then it remains a selfless act. Furthermore, just because we want something doesn't automatically mean it's selfish. It becomes selfish if we make it only about ourselves, our pleasure, our avoidance of personal pain, and make it all about pushing off all this suffering and harm onto someone else-- or many someone elses. Unless we're arguing that there's simply no such thing as a selfless act... but I'm not quite sure I'd buy that. It's actually pure, hard, and cold logic that states that a stranger is just as deserving of being saved as your loved one. One in fact has to be very rational and be able to see things from a bigger perspective to be able to make this sort of decision. Decisions made by personal preference and impulses aren't ones made purely by logic per se. In fact, they usually cloud our thinking. But still, I'm pretty much sure most of us would choose a loved one over a single stranger. A billion strangers, however, starts to weigh the costs involved in this choice differently. And lastly, there's a difference between choosing between our loved ones and others... and actually taking the sword ourselves to off a million people for loved ones' sake. Someone else quoted Jesus earlier, and his words seems to fit here too. He had a rather simple solution to all this mess. Love everyone. Everyone is your neighbor and brother. From your best buddy to the homeless guy on the corner... and especially your traditional, cultural, and ethnic enemies. There are no real strangers. Jesus actually exposes and takes away our last refuge that allow us to cause others to suffer-- that we don't love and that we don't know them-- and puts the responsibility of loving and knowing others squarely upon us. Apathy for others is no longer justification and excuse for the things we do... it's actually central to our guilt when we cause harm. Yeah, seems pretty impossible to love everyone, or even just a few more strangers by our own efforts, but I guess that's what Jesus's earlier quote is supposed to come in. -Al

I'm not sure subjective "love" is something that justifies us when we choose to harm many others to save a few we personally prefer. Protecting them is one thing, as certainly is defending them. But the wholesale harm of many who don't pose an intentional threat to our loved ones' well-being-- even though their living might mean our loved ones' dying in some convoluted way-- that's a whole 'nother ball game. It's only under this sort of twisted "love" that killing children can even be humored as being vaguely justifiable. I'm also not quite sure our lack of love and the fact that we don't happen to know folks makes harming them any more acceptable. It makes it easier for us to commit harm and live with ourselves, yeah... but this phoenomena is exactly what allowed folks like Hitler and Stalin to kill millions. They neither loved them nor knew them, and well, that seemed to work just fine for them. But see, it's arguable here that Anakin "truly loved" Padme. Some definitions of love go beyond more than physical attraction, attachment, longing for that person to satisfy ones own needs and desires, and the fear of pain in their possible absence. And certain definitions of love would actually deny and refuse to act upon all of these things. I mean, if we define "love" as being looking out for a person's good, comitting ourselves to their best, perhaps even forgoing our own sake to ensure that-- then it casts doubt on whether choosing to harm many others for the sake of our own favorites is really "love" at all. I mean, if we sacrifice many for their sake, then we make their lives mean little more than this in the scope of the universe: They were the object of selfish and arbitrary favoritism that in turn lead to the unjustified and preventable suffering of many. And I guess I just can't think of condeming them to this fate, just because we wanted them around for another few decades, as being for their "good", really. -Al

Ack?! The only one who claims this and forwards this line of thinking in the movies is Palpatine, who is obviously less than reputable. I think the movies are blatantly stating that there are definite goods and evils, even though certain events might be up for interpretation as to their specific meaning. It doesn't mean that the nature of evil can be chalked up simply to perspective. Anakin's whiny delivery of "evil is relative, Jedi are bad!" on Mustafar is less than convincing and laughable... because it's supposed to be. It's obviously poppycock. It is then that Obi-wan pronounces Anakin as being lost, now for certain, to the Dark Side. Unless we start arguing about whether there really is a Dark Side... I don't think for a moment the movies are suggesting that the Star Wars epic is just a case of subjective human misunderstandings and conflicts in perspective. When the obviously "evil" antagonists are the only ones pushing this morally relativistic drivel, and when a protagonist buys into this drivel for obviously selfish, twisted, unreasonable and specious reasons, and then procedes to parrot the drivel unconvincingly (right after killing kiddies and choking his beloved wife, I might add, which makes him a pretty bad judge of things in general in my book), we are probably supposed to be suspicious of their claims. -Al

Well, depends on the motivation. And I'd think most motivations that tend to pick our personal favorites over others tend to be inherently selfish-- at least when it comes to allowing massive harm to come to numerous others... just so we can spare ourselves the grief of having to see that happen to folks we're fond of. Well, I suppose "love" might make it all seem justifiable, but the cynical me has seen that sort of self-absorbed "love" cause plenty of blatant selfishness and insensitivity in lots of folks, myself included. There's this CS Lewis quote I love that goes something like, Selfish pride is always lurking in us. First we might hug or embrace a person for our love of them and feel the pleasure of the embrace as a reward. The next time we hug them, we do it for the pleasure it brings. Anyway, it isn't long before we've made everything about our desires and our wants, even in things that were once pure and selfless. -Al

I wonder if it's the fact that Palatine's assertion-- that morality is subjective, that no moral truths exist, and that everyone acts upon personal interests alone... and that it's all a matter of "perspective"-- ring too close to what we hear daily in our postmodern culture. It sounds so familiar and we've been so programmed to accept this line of thinking that we just take it to be truth, even when the source is less than credible. But it seems that the film is trying to show that one of evil's bag of tricks is confusing the moral issue, blurring the distinction between good and evil. But being able to recognize this requires being able to recognize evil in the first place-- something that our personal desires and fears can make difficult, as blatant as it might actually be. -Al

Yes, caught that right away, and found it pretty annoying. A little droid going "look at me!! Aren't I neat?!" when the attention should be fully focused upon Anakin and Obiwan. Was definitely a little distracting to the mood and atmosphere of the scene. And I was expecting an intense duel on the pipe, except no such luck. -Al

I didn't miss that part. Vader was being manipulated, as was Luke. And Luke did beat Vader eventually, whether it was because of Luke for a moment giving in to his passion, Vader being hesitant in the undecisiveness of what exactly to do with his son, or I suppose Luke just at that moment finally becoming more than His father, whether due to age, skill, or mechanical body... or a combination of all those things. But Vader being beaten only because he had a mechanical body is overstated in the extreme. And to assume that Palpatine's manipulation of both of them automatically supports the assertion that Vader is a dissapointing robotic cripple is a little specious. Let me ask... was that your immediate impression when watching ROTJ the first time, when Luke finally beats Vader-- that it was only or even mainly because Vader was in actuality a gimp? That forces us to forget everything else we ever saw of Vader in all three movies, based on a 10 second scene of Luke being provoked to a frenzy. That scene was meant to highlight how proficient Luke had become, along with the power of anger, passion, and the Dark Side-- and finally the tension and drama between father and son that allowed a victory that at first seemed unlikely. Not to show how crummy and crippled Vader was. I might go as far as to agree that his age and body might have been a factor in how and why he was beaten, and that even as they fought, Palpatine was evaluating his choices and opportunities. But I hardly think Vader was so inept that he was looking to be replaced from the get go 20 years prior... at least that's not the OT seemed to imply. Besides, it makes absolutely no sense that Palpatine would create in Vader, his most promising subject, this slow Frankenstein cripple when the technology was obviously around to create an even more agile and deadly servant in Grevious. For storytelling purposes, it isn't necessary for Vader's transformation to result in a loss certain fighting abilities. And even if that were true (and it appears to be so), it's still not necessary for the suit to render him less powerful overall than he used to be. The story hinges upon the fact that Vader experiences loss simply because he is now less human, that his only connection with others is by means of fear-- that he can't even function without wearing a mask that makes him a monster... and that he's not much less of a monster without it. Even if Vader is more powerful than ever, he's still a prisoner, having lost his humanity until he finally gains it back in his final act of self-sacrifice. But to say that his suit must force upon him some gimpiness is to assume that power is still his ultimate concern. It seems to me more powerful storytelling to allow him to keep much of the power that he sought, but with a grave, grave cost. A Vader who is just as deadly, albiet in different ways, but who is constantly conscious of his pain, his imprisonment, and his actual weakness seems a lot more compelling to me than one that goes, "Aw. I suck now. And master thinks so too. I guess I had it coming... I should just mope around and be good. Maybe help my son and turn back to a blow glowie of my fresh young self. Yeah, that's it." In some ways it makes some sense... but I didn't at all care for how that was liberally applied to every character, even if they were 800 years old and still 800 years old 20 years prior. We would of course imagine Obiwan being a little more mobile than the 70 year old Guiness we get to see. However, Luke himself wasn't all that fast compared to Vader. A little more sprightly, yes. But not ridiculously so. Yet Palpatine considered him a promising prospect. From what we've seen, if we assume flashy = power and speed = uber, he'd be kind of a gimply Jedi. But I doubt anyone would claim that's what the movies were telling us. -Al

Now I'm curious how you can watch the OT and think Vader anything close to a cripple. Unless in your experience cripples stride around powerfully, can beat young, agile Jedis in training that are powerful in the Force in a sword fight, and have the strength and coordination to toss a Sith Lord down a shaft while they're being struck by lightning. And Vader was doing vaugely decent against Luke even in ROTJ until he cheezed him off. We think Vader a complete gimp now only because Lucas chose to show Anakin prancing around like a ballet dancer in the prequels and because Lucas is now hooked on a type of swordfighting that emphasizes flash and speed over forms like Kendo. Even if Vader is no longer as fast as he was in his robotic body, it used to be apparent that he made up for it by his proficiency with the Force and his saber skills. The original films clearly showed that extreme agility was simply not necessary if one's power in the Force was great enough. But the prequels for all its kung-fu flash wrote all that away, and tries to ret-con everything into suggesting that everyone in the OT was just slow and weak and a shadow of themselves. Rather than losing a step but perhaps gaining in wisdom and power, everyone was just gimpy because of their infirmities. But I'd always saw OT Palpatine and Vaders' power in the fact that they didn't have to dance, flip, and spin like the Monty Python bunny. It's no secret that Palpatine wanted to recruit Luke for his abilities, and to sacrifice Vader if necessary in the case that Luke did turn out to be more powerful than his father-- but it was never remotely hinted in the OT that he was looking to get rid of Vader because he had already concluded that he wasn't up to snuff. Had Vader not intervened, it looked like Luke would have been easily killed by the Emporer... which makes him not so powerful to begin with, and which, if Lucas is to be believed, also makes Luke pretty unqualified as being someone "more powerful than he was to help him rule the universe." But like Hurin said, it had always seemed that if anything, Palpatine would have chosen Luke for his age and eventual potential, not because he was already dissatisfied with his own creation. -Al

Well, I suppose it's kinda neat to delve into who minor characters are. Background's nice. But the EU tends to make nearly every character the most baddest arsest bounty hunter evar just reeks of so much munchkinism to me. Happened to Fett. And happened to certain cantina characters who I thought were just regular alien schmoes-- which to me was their entire appeal. It was Cheers in space, except we didn't know their name. Not the gathering of the most baddest mofos of the galaxy coincidentally at some seedy backwater bar. The bigger problem I have with the EU elevating roles of characters is when they get worked back into the movies-- ie, Fett and family. Which happens to be just about everyone cool and intimidating in at least 6 movies that wears a plastic armor and a mask. "Combat" implies a fight. That was no fight on his part. Sadly, watching the trailers I expected that segment to be a fantastic fight scene. -Al

Would have been a nice gesture to let the Chinese empire, Native Americans, Zulu and whoever else in on where their capital was being built. -Al