The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03 ◼   ► So I don't know how well this is going to work.

00:00:18 ◼   ► When's the last time I've had more than one person

00:00:20 ◼   ► on the show?

00:00:20 ◼   ► Probably when I was on stage at WWDC.

00:00:23 ◼   ► It'll work out fine.

00:00:24 ◼   ► You'll see.

00:00:24 ◼   ► We're doing a couple for 10 people.

00:00:26 ◼   ► It'll be fine.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I thought.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and John and I have talked enough before.

00:00:29 ◼   ► We get the gist in my basic gist though is let's shoot the shit on Star Wars for two hours

00:00:36 ◼   ► Movies so you know what's funny before you before you said this side

00:00:39 ◼   ► I wanted to tell you to do the Christmas spectacular again this year except then actually have a guest I thought about

00:00:46 ◼   ► we

00:00:48 ◼   ► And it's actually to screw people and it's actually Syracuse it well. That's what it is here

00:00:53 ◼   ► we are making up for last year where it was a total sham and

00:00:56 ◼   ► I got a

00:00:58 ◼   ► surprising amount of email from people who told me that in that we must have screwed up the editing because we cut it off before

00:01:04 ◼   ► John or Marco made it. Well, I mean they were a little bit in the back

00:01:07 ◼   ► They weren't really ready for the stage right now

00:01:09 ◼   ► Poor molt

00:01:13 ◼   ► His wife had to drive from home and that was not a pretty scene

00:01:17 ◼   ► So have you guys done John you're on the the incomparable

00:01:24 ◼   ► frequently frequently semi-frequently pretty frequently have you done Star Wars on the incomparable

00:01:29 ◼   ► You obviously don't listen to the show. I don't listen to anybody shows. Yeah. No, I we have done

00:01:35 ◼   ► all of the Star Wars movies the original Star Wars movies and

00:01:40 ◼   ► We've done episode 1 & 2 for the prequels and we did but the Star Wars holiday special

00:01:46 ◼   ► Well, see I've never seen that guy. Have you seen the Star Wars holiday special?

00:01:52 ◼   ► No, and I don't want to yeah, especially after listening to the uncomfortable. I don't watch it. Don't don't watch yeah

00:01:57 ◼   ► I I feel exactly the same way you did John like you were

00:02:00 ◼   ► You sort of took one for the team there and now to watch it

00:02:03 ◼   ► Yeah

00:02:03 ◼   ► if I can if I can possibly avoid this is Jason's revenge for me making him watch like hours and hours of anime and

00:02:08 ◼   ► play video games

00:02:11 ◼   ► special a couple of years ago one of the sites published a

00:02:14 ◼   ► like

00:02:17 ◼   ► What do they call him now explainers?

00:02:18 ◼   ► You know like this concept of an explainer which I kind of like it's sort of like a blog post

00:02:23 ◼   ► crossed with like a Wikipedia entry

00:02:27 ◼   ► Here's an exercise try to think of pretend the word explainer doesn't exist and then try to think of another phrase or

00:02:34 ◼   ► Summary or description of what we now know as an explainer

00:02:38 ◼   ► Because whenever I do it I come out with something that's insulting

00:02:44 ◼   ► What would it be? I'm not sure. I don't know. It's like I mean I'm falling back on like the four dummies things or whatever

00:02:49 ◼   ► Let me simplify this to the point where it seems understandable

00:02:54 ◼   ► But what you're actually coming away from the article with is not a true understanding of the subject because it's really complicated

00:03:00 ◼   ► Let me do it take a complicated thing and make it really simple

00:03:02 ◼   ► Let me like it just I don't know explainers. I

00:03:06 ◼   ► Understand why you but some people are attracted to the concept but the actual articles I've read that are described as explainers

00:03:13 ◼   ► just leave me angry. Yeah, like overview, maybe it's a good summary, executive summary overview,

00:03:20 ◼   ► like it's not much. I don't know, like whenever I read something that's described as an explainer,

00:03:25 ◼   ► it's just like, you know, because no one like if there's an article in the Atlantic or something,

00:03:29 ◼   ► nobody calls it an explainer. Like an article is supposed to explain things once you call it an

00:03:33 ◼   ► explainer. That's like code for, oh, we're not actually going to get the real anyway,

00:03:38 ◼   ► I'm unreasonably angry about explainer gone. I interrupt.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I remember I'd one that I remember that I appreciated was a one from Vox calm on I

00:03:47 ◼   ► Don't know if it was Benghazi or or one of these things where it it seemed like I would have had to read

00:03:53 ◼   ► 20 articles to catch up and it didn't make any sense and I read their

00:03:58 ◼   ► quote-unquote explainer and it kind of figure I

00:04:01 ◼   ► Figured the whole thing out because you know in the gist of the explainer there like this is really nothing

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's really just political with you see well

00:04:09 ◼   ► they just did us call that the news that you would watch and it would tell you a summary of what's going on and

00:04:14 ◼   ► Well, anyway, somebody wrote an explainer on the Star Wars holiday special and they had a just enough screen caps where I was like

00:04:21 ◼   ► Holy cow, it really is worse than the terrible reputation would have you believe and so I knew I never had to watch it

00:04:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and not only that as I said in the uncomfortable thing

00:04:30 ◼   ► It's not even the type of thing if you care about Star Wars at all that you can watch and be like haha laugh at

00:04:35 ◼   ► It's so bad. You know what I mean. You can't even do that. It's just it's just bad. It just it's not fun

00:04:40 ◼   ► It's not interesting and if you care about Star Wars, it will hurt you and it was shot on video

00:04:45 ◼   ► It's so bad how shot is the least of its problems so we're having a holiday special

00:04:51 ◼   ► We're talking about Star Wars, but it has nothing to do with the star ways Star Wars holiday

00:04:55 ◼   ► Spectacular or whatever they called it

00:05:00 ◼   ► Not yet at least.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Alright, and also I only want to talk about the movies.

00:05:05 ◼   ► The whole expanded universe thing is a pile of crap as far as I'm concerned.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't mind the cartoons as much but I don't.

00:05:12 ◼   ► They're a different thing. You know what I mean? Like if the movies are like a good steak dinner,

00:05:17 ◼   ► they're kind of like a beef jerky that you'd buy at a corner store.

00:05:19 ◼   ► You know what I mean? They're meat, but you know, not really the same kind of thing.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Have you watched all of the cartoons, Clone Wars and now the Star Wars Rebels?

00:05:30 ◼   ► I have and there's some there's some things to commend them to some Star Wars II stuff, but I

00:05:35 ◼   ► I don't see how they could possibly fit into the to the story that the movies are telling in any sensible way

00:05:42 ◼   ► I mean, I actually feel the same way about the prequels

00:05:45 ◼   ► So, you know, but it's you know, every now and then they light up a lightsaber and fun stuff happens

00:05:50 ◼   ► There's spin-offs in the traditional sense where it's like, alright

00:05:54 ◼   ► We'll make a TV show out of the movies and it's in the same universe and it's more or less fits in the same timeline

00:05:59 ◼   ► But there's no specific expectation that they feel or behave exactly like the movie because they're not.

00:06:06 ◼   ► They're an animated television show as opposed to movies.

00:06:10 ◼   ► And for what they are, they're actually pretty decent.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Wasn't the original premise for Star Wars Rebels, though, that it would be live action?

00:06:17 ◼   ► There was talk of a live action Star Wars TV series a very long time ago.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Around about the time I think the prequels were either in the process of being made or before they were made.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And that seemed to fall by the wayside it just didn't it didn't didn't work out for whatever reason

00:06:33 ◼   ► I forget what the actual situation was and more recently I've heard the idea of it coming back up again

00:06:39 ◼   ► I'm not opposed to such a thing. I think it would be cool, but

00:06:42 ◼   ► Clone Wars the the computer animated one was kind of weird because there was another

00:06:48 ◼   ► Animated thing called the Clone Wars that was cell animated as opposed to CG

00:06:54 ◼   ► Which was great.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it was very interesting.

00:06:57 ◼   ► All of them very different stylistic choices than the movie.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Wait, when was this?

00:07:03 ◼   ► Around about the time of the prequels, around about the time of maybe I guess episode two

00:07:06 ◼   ► or something.

00:07:07 ◼   ► It was cell animated.

00:07:08 ◼   ► It was before episode two.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Very stylized, kind of looked like Samurai Jack.

00:07:12 ◼   ► I don't know if it was the same guy.

00:07:13 ◼   ► It was the same guy.

00:07:15 ◼   ► And it was great.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And you know what?

00:07:19 ◼   ► It ends with the opening scene from episode two.

00:07:24 ◼   ► The end of that arc, of that animation arc, ends with the invasion of, or the assault

00:07:28 ◼   ► on Coruscant from the bad kids.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Grievous's army.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Grievous's army.

00:07:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it shows up and they kidnap the chancellor.

00:07:38 ◼   ► That's the final episode.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Is it in the cel-shaded one or the CG one where you learn why General Grievous is all

00:07:43 ◼   ► wheezy and everything?

00:07:44 ◼   ► It's the shell shaded.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Oh yeah, keep trying.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Cell shaded.

00:07:49 ◼   ► So are these things about...

00:07:50 ◼   ► How come I'm not aware of this?

00:07:51 ◼   ► How could that possibly be?

00:07:52 ◼   ► Your kids are kind of the right age. I don't know the cel-shaded one. I don't I don't think Jonas was born yet

00:07:57 ◼   ► But I saw that it wasn't it certainly wasn't as big as the clone but Clone Wars my son watching. What was it called?

00:08:03 ◼   ► Clone Wars. Yeah, that's the problem. They're both called

00:08:06 ◼   ► And I think well, here's the thing. I think you actually had to be a bit of an animation nerd to get into it

00:08:11 ◼   ► Or to hear about it

00:08:13 ◼   ► That's right. Like how did you hear about it John?

00:08:15 ◼   ► From when those quicktime movies came but that's how I

00:08:19 ◼   ► Do you think I'm gonna be able to get these on iTunes or something? I doubt it

00:08:23 ◼   ► I would have found it by now right the CG Clone Wars has got to be available. Oh, yeah CG is I've

00:08:28 ◼   ► Seen I I I to him. I'm completely caught up. I've seen every episode of the Clone Wars

00:08:33 ◼   ► I saw the theatrical release which is really just a two-hour episode of the movie or the TV show

00:08:40 ◼   ► And just recently caught up Jonas and I caught up on the I guess I think there's only seven episodes so far as Star Wars rebels

00:08:46 ◼   ► right? Yeah, I believe so. Well if that's the case then I'm caught up.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I like the way that the Rebels TV show is doesn't feature any of the characters from the feature

00:08:56 ◼   ► films. Yeah but it's very clearly in the world and it's creeping up on a new hope timeline so

00:09:01 ◼   ► you start seeing TIE fighters look like TIE fighters and you know the kind of rebels in the

00:09:06 ◼   ► Empire in more or less the shapes that you would have expected but you know it's a totally different

00:09:11 ◼   ► thing it's a you know different cast of characters doing different things within the same universe.

00:09:15 ◼   ► There's a bit of a weirdness in that there are Jedis running around.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Whereas as of New Hope, we know that there's, well, at least Yoda believes that there's

00:09:26 ◼   ► no other Jedis.

00:09:28 ◼   ► In hiding.

00:09:29 ◼   ► I mean, you're gonna have a Star Wars show, it's a good idea to have some Jedis and some

00:09:33 ◼   ► lightsabers in it.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Oh yeah, in terms of the narrative device, yes, for sure.

00:09:36 ◼   ► But I mean, it kind of goes against what we heard of Luke being the last Jedi, right?

00:09:41 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what Yoda says on his deathbed.

00:09:43 ◼   ► or no wait is it Empire or is it return of the Jedi when he's dying it might be return of the Jedi when he's

00:09:48 ◼   ► dying and he says something to the effect of

00:09:50 ◼   ► You know in ten seconds from now when I die he laughs last of the Jedi you will be

00:09:55 ◼   ► He'll ask the it'll be the last accredited

00:09:59 ◼   ► So I there's something new that I

00:10:07 ◼   ► Have to learn but to see I don't know my way around the the underground internet

00:10:12 ◼   ► So I don't know how I'm gonna get these cell-animated. Yeah, let's try made it once it there

00:10:16 ◼   ► So I said I haven't been quicktime movies. They're probably like 320 by 200. I know

00:10:21 ◼   ► postage stamps, you know, like what cook time used to look like I remember when that was the big size I remember when 160 by

00:10:27 ◼   ► Yeah

00:10:29 ◼   ► 120 was the was the regular so it's cinepak compression is high fidelity though. So to look great

00:10:33 ◼   ► Well, I'm surprised though that that didn't wasn't like a bigger deal

00:10:41 ◼   ► well anyway, and what I understand is with the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm and the

00:10:45 ◼   ► Archive and I talked mentioned this with Weskis a couple weeks ago that they're they're more or less saying with this movie all those

00:10:52 ◼   ► Novels and shit that you've been reading for 20 years. That's all out the door. We're not looking at any of that and

00:10:57 ◼   ► You know, none of that's canon anymore

00:11:00 ◼   ► Yeah

00:11:01 ◼   ► They have to do that because if they're gonna make it chronologically after return of the Jedi the expanded universe has like told all those

00:11:06 ◼   ► Stories like 20 times over like we know what happens to all the characters that we love and there's two whole other bad guys and

00:11:11 ◼   ► Good guys and like they just rung it out

00:11:14 ◼   ► So if you can't put anything chronologically after jai unless you either do exactly what happened in the books

00:11:18 ◼   ► Which would probably be a bad idea or put it way way way past where the books go or something and then say okay

00:11:24 ◼   ► It's the distant distant, you know, it's way past. So and it was always called expanded universe

00:11:29 ◼   ► So I think this is the only possible way to make a movie with the original actors. You just gotta say forget about the books

00:11:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I read I think there's a there's a problem with fetishizing the cannon right like it's gonna hamstring your story

00:11:42 ◼   ► Just go tell good movie stories and just don't worry about the rest

00:11:45 ◼   ► Doesn't mean you can't meet those books and have fun, but you know you don't need them to be in the exact same

00:11:51 ◼   ► canonical universe really

00:11:54 ◼   ► Yeah, and I only read the first of those books the first one with the Grand Admiral Timothy's on yeah

00:12:02 ◼   ► It was and it was so bad that you know, it it kept me from ever reading anymore

00:12:07 ◼   ► But I at least am enough aware of what happened that it and one and I you know

00:12:12 ◼   ► I saw the headlines that in one of the novels Chewbacca gets killed and you know

00:12:16 ◼   ► There's no way they're not bringing Chewbacca back in the new movie

00:12:19 ◼   ► No, everyone dies eventually

00:12:22 ◼   ► Yeah, but if they're gonna kill him they're gonna kill him in the movie. They're not gonna they're not gonna just say well sure bist Chewbacca

00:12:30 ◼   ► Like they did in like they did in last crusade where they just kind of panned over to a picture of Sean Connery on on his

00:12:37 ◼   ► desk

00:12:38 ◼   ► Yeah, because they couldn't get him to do the movie

00:12:40 ◼   ► You mean indie for Oh indie for any for?

00:12:43 ◼   ► What

00:12:48 ◼   ► I always

00:12:50 ◼   ► I like to pretend that that movie didn't happen. Yeah, it didn't happen. I don't know it

00:12:56 ◼   ► Happened in the same screwed up universe at the prequels. Well, so episode 7 potentially

00:13:01 ◼   ► is in the same kind of danger zone because everyone was excited about in d4 for a long time and they couldn't get the

00:13:07 ◼   ► Principles together to do it by the time they did Harrison Ford was really old and it was like hmm

00:13:12 ◼   ► You know, I don't know if they can pull this off. So here we have

00:13:14 ◼   ► It works out a little bit better here because I think

00:13:17 ◼   ► Chronologically speaking everyone is more comfortable with the actors being the age. They're supposed to be in episode 7

00:13:22 ◼   ► It's like how many years of passing the Jedi?

00:13:24 ◼   ► Well, that's exactly how much older you're supposed to be. So you're fine. We don't need any makeup

00:13:27 ◼   ► This is what you look like when you're this age fine

00:13:29 ◼   ► and and the other thing too it can the same point is there's clearly gonna be a cast of

00:13:37 ◼   ► 20 to 30 something heroes and villains who will be in major roles to do that sort of

00:13:45 ◼   ► Running and jumping and falling stuff that you need who are not Shia LaBeouf

00:13:51 ◼   ► Right right so that the you know the classic characters can all sort of take on the roles of like obi-wan's and grand Moff Tarkin's and

00:13:58 ◼   ► Just be there be there that fear though like when they said I guess what everybody's coming back

00:14:03 ◼   ► It's like oh geez everybody's coming back, and you start to worry that like it's going to be like their last hurrah

00:14:09 ◼   ► And yeah, they'll be these young actors

00:14:11 ◼   ► But like it'll be a movie for the oldsters, and they'll transition to the youngsters during the movie

00:14:16 ◼   ► That that was the fear like you're gonna make us old guys run around for as long as you've got them

00:14:20 ◼   ► and you'll kill some of them off or they'll kind of you know pass the baton and the next movie will

00:14:25 ◼   ► be really about the youngsters but like what they like what they did with obi-wan in uh the phantom

00:14:30 ◼   ► menace yeah kind of i mean like well it it's like you're we're going to introduce um what's going to

00:14:36 ◼   ► be one of the flagship characters of the whole six movie series obi-wan kenobi and then we'll just

00:14:41 ◼   ► spend the entire middle hour of the movie with him waiting on a spaceship in the desert yeah or like

00:14:48 ◼   ► I mean, you just didn't know who the-- because we know so little about-- at least I know

00:14:51 ◼   ► so little about the movie because I've been avoiding spoilers-- that just based on the

00:14:54 ◼   ► casting alone, you say, "Well, given this cast, I can make a movie mostly about the

00:14:58 ◼   ► old people and about the idea of, like, now they're past their prime and they're passing

00:15:01 ◼   ► the baton on to a new generation, but this is their, like, one last heist or whatever,"

00:15:05 ◼   ► you know, if you want to use another movie cliche.

00:15:08 ◼   ► Or you could do a movie entirely about the young people, and these guys are just in supporting

00:15:12 ◼   ► roles and there are brief glimpses of them or whatever.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I still don't know what kind of movie it's gonna be, but based on the trailer, there's

00:15:18 ◼   ► no old faces in the trailer at all.

00:15:19 ◼   ► So there's a clear signal right out of the gate that says, "I know we've got all these

00:15:22 ◼   ► great people, but this is a movie about these youngsters, and here they all are on the trailer,

00:15:27 ◼   ► and we're not even gonna show you any of the other people."

00:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah, who's flying the Falcon?

00:15:31 ◼   ► Yeah, somebody.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Well, I'm gonna...

00:15:33 ◼   ► Somebody.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Good answer.

00:15:35 ◼   ► It's gotta be either Han or Lando, right?

00:15:37 ◼   ► Chewie flies the Falcon.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Han just gives orders.

00:15:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Fly casual.

00:15:44 ◼   ► It's a great line.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Yeah, so I mean, starting out with our anticipation of The Force Awakens is as good a place as

00:15:55 ◼   ► any, because it's really what motivated me to do the show, you know, to get me excited

00:15:58 ◼   ► about Star Wars again, too.

00:16:00 ◼   ► And the severe letdown.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I would describe Indy 4 as more of a letdown than even The Phantom Menace.

00:16:10 ◼   ► I would not disagree.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I disagree.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:14 ◼   ► You would not disagree?

00:16:14 ◼   ► You think anything's moving?

00:16:15 ◼   ► - I would not disagree.

00:16:16 ◼   ► No, episode one is the biggest cinematic disappointment

00:16:21 ◼   ► of our generation because of just the massive anticipation.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And like, it was promised, it was foretold, right?

00:16:31 ◼   ► We wanted to know what happened in this whole, you know,

00:16:33 ◼   ► how did Anakin turn into Darth Vader?

00:16:36 ◼   ► What's the whole deal?

00:16:37 ◼   ► You know, like we wanted to know.

00:16:38 ◼   ► We were promised like a nine movie arc

00:16:40 ◼   ► in the fan magazines for so long.

00:16:42 ◼   ► And we waited and waited.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Whereas Indy 4 was like, I suppose they can make another Indy movie, but if they never make another one

00:16:47 ◼   ► I feel satisfied that the arc of Indy, you know, he had three good movies

00:16:51 ◼   ► Well, two good movies and another movie that was okay

00:16:54 ◼   ► And that's fine. Like you weren't aching to know something that has been

00:16:58 ◼   ► Talked about or alluded to for the entire run of the series

00:17:02 ◼   ► So whether or not they made another Indy 4 you wouldn't satisfied with Star Wars was just massively anticipated with a huge gap in between

00:17:08 ◼   ► And the disappointment I think was even more crushing because I've only seen Indy 4 once but

00:17:13 ◼   ► But my recollection is it was not as incompetently made as Phantom Menace.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It's like the Johnny Dangerously joke.

00:17:20 ◼   ► I saw Nd4 once.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Once.

00:17:23 ◼   ► Once.

00:17:24 ◼   ► God, we're all making that joke.

00:17:26 ◼   ► So you and Whiskers were talking about excitement about the new Bond or the new Star Wars.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And hands down, it's gotta be the new Star Wars.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Yeah, for next year.

00:17:36 ◼   ► As much as I like Bond.

00:17:37 ◼   ► But I mean, come on.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Like, new Star Wars?

00:17:39 ◼   ► There's what, 25 Bonds now?

00:17:41 ◼   ► Yeah, the Bond has the out that it's like, "Alright, there's gonna be some bad Bond movies,

00:17:45 ◼   ► there's gonna be some good ones, we're currently in an upswing because everyone loves Daniel Craig."

00:17:49 ◼   ► And like, no matter how big a Bond fan you are, you're like, "Well, this is a bad Bond, but I'll wait."

00:17:53 ◼   ► Like, it's evergreen, in the same way we were just mentioning Zelda before,

00:17:57 ◼   ► in the same way that the Zelda franchise is.

00:17:58 ◼   ► You're like, "Well, I don't like this Bond, I like it different."

00:18:00 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about continuity, you don't have to worry about actors aging out,

00:18:04 ◼   ► they'll just-- or like Doctor Who, they'll just rotate in a new guy,

00:18:06 ◼   ► there'll be ups and downs and it's fine.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Whereas Star Wars is a defined continuity in story with specific actors playing specific characters that doesn't have that out

00:18:14 ◼   ► So it's like it's got oh, it's got a count. You don't get a million shots. Well, even if specter ends up stinking

00:18:19 ◼   ► We would get just as excited next time when whatever they cast is just over

00:18:24 ◼   ► Yeah, like it would just be reset you like any expectations would be fine like oh cool another new one

00:18:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's safe to say I think I forget exactly when Goldeneye came out

00:18:33 ◼   ► But I would say in the last 20 years we've had four pretty good Bond movies

00:18:37 ◼   ► We've had GoldenEye and then the three Daniel Craig ones. So in 20 years, we've already we've got four good ones under our belt

00:18:43 ◼   ► So it does a dud, you know next year wouldn't weigh us down. Yeah, like a swing and a miss is not weird

00:18:49 ◼   ► I don't understand your attraction to GoldenEye, but I'm willing to concede that we've had a

00:18:53 ◼   ► Pretty good set of Bond movies sprinkled throughout the bad ones and even the bad ones are like well, whatever, you know, right?

00:19:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't love gold Star Wars on the other hand. We're drawing in. Yeah. Yeah

00:19:07 ◼   ► Well, but I do think the long term, and this is another reason I thought to convene this,

00:19:13 ◼   ► and you know, I've done specials on Bond back in the day with Dan, and now we're doing Star

00:19:18 ◼   ► Wars.

00:19:19 ◼   ► I do think though that ultimately, like 20, 25 years from now, we'll look back at Star

00:19:23 ◼   ► Wars as a sort of Bond-like franchise where I think we're going to see an endless series

00:19:29 ◼   ► of trilogies.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Well, we hope so, because when it was tied up in Lucas, like Lucas is the one who waited

00:19:34 ◼   ► 16 years or whatever to give us episode 1 and it was all because he controlled everything no

00:19:39 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say no cooperation would ever have waited that long because it'd be like you're sitting on this cash cow

00:19:44 ◼   ► What are you doing right?

00:19:46 ◼   ► And turning it into a franchise frees it from the constraints and I suppose by the time this new trilogy is over

00:19:53 ◼   ► We'll also free it from the constraints of those characters that we know and love because they'll all be too old or dead

00:19:58 ◼   ► Certainly the actors will and then you're free to do whatever you want within this universe

00:20:02 ◼   ► Which you could have done all along but because Lucas didn't want to do that that never happened, right?

00:20:06 ◼   ► so I have I have a weird take on that maybe that I

00:20:10 ◼   ► So I obviously love the universe

00:20:14 ◼   ► I like stories being told in the universe

00:20:16 ◼   ► but I'm kind of of the opinion that the universe exists in order to tell us like the you know, the

00:20:22 ◼   ► Vader redemption story and the Luke becomes a hero story and

00:20:26 ◼   ► While it's fun to go play in that playground, I don't know if

00:20:32 ◼   ► I don't know if the value of the universe is worth it.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Like maybe you can have another universe

00:20:42 ◼   ► to tell other interesting stories.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Do you know what I mean?

00:20:44 ◼   ► Like it seems like just because you've got this well-defined

00:20:47 ◼   ► sort of universe that's being laid out

00:20:49 ◼   ► to tell this particular story,

00:20:51 ◼   ► the fact that you can shoehorn other stories into it

00:20:53 ◼   ► is cool, but maybe not the best use

00:20:58 ◼   ► of your storytelling skills.

00:20:59 ◼   ► - It's not really shoehorning.

00:21:01 ◼   ► It's kind of like in the Star Trek universe where like the story of Captain Kirk and the

00:21:05 ◼   ► Enterprise is one story and but what you're left with when you're done with that story

00:21:10 ◼   ► or you set it aside is essentially a sci-fi a fleshed out sci-fi universe with a built-in

00:21:15 ◼   ► audience and it's really just an excuse to make sci-fi movies like I'm looking for anything

00:21:20 ◼   ► that will that will let sci-fi movies be made where they don't have to be constrained by

00:21:25 ◼   ► world building because everyone understands the Star Trek universe that's why I mean they

00:21:29 ◼   ► it for TV, you know, Deep Space Nine and all the next generation. It's like next generation

00:21:33 ◼   ► is not Captain Kirk again, right? But it is the Enterprise or whatever and all the way

00:21:37 ◼   ► over to, you know, the, the more, you know, Voyager and stuff like that. I mean, I'm not

00:21:41 ◼   ► saying that those are all great examples of what you can do. But the idea is once you

00:21:44 ◼   ► have an established sci fi universe, you can do lots of interesting sci fi things in it.

00:21:49 ◼   ► And I want to see more sci fi. I think there's not enough of it. And every time someone wants

00:21:53 ◼   ► to do something sci fi ish, they are faced with the problem of I have to describe the

00:21:58 ◼   ► the sci-fi world before I can even tell my story.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah, you spend 30 minutes establishing the world.

00:22:04 ◼   ► 30 minutes if you're lucky sometimes to spend the whole movie doing it.

00:22:07 ◼   ► I think what you need is exactly what you said, Guy, but it lets the writer just concentrate

00:22:12 ◼   ► on just give us a handful of really interesting protagonists and antagonists who have an arc,

00:22:21 ◼   ► you know, and then you have a world to put them in immediately.

00:22:24 ◼   ► But give them a different, you know, just give them, give us somebody, don't give us

00:22:27 ◼   ► a new version of Vader for God's sake don't just you know yeah in a way it's

00:22:31 ◼   ► like yeah like all of these superhero movies sort of fault because they end up

00:22:35 ◼   ► telling the origin story over and over again well that's because they don't

00:22:39 ◼   ► have a universe they have like each if superheroes universe in and up to itself

00:22:42 ◼   ► it's not like we've established universe now we can just tell stories it's like

00:22:44 ◼   ► well I have a new character who the heck is Iron Man well I've got to tell you

00:22:48 ◼   ► Iron Man is no new Captain America wait a second who is Captain America each

00:22:51 ◼   ► character is a universe the universe they're in is just normal there's

00:22:55 ◼   ► nothing about like, whereas the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, you have rules about like, how do people get from place to place? How is the system of government organized? How do the alien races get along roughly? And the beauty of Star Wars is that these stories, the original story that's told within the universe, so many things are hinted at and touched on, that may be interesting that are already there. Like you just want to have an entire story about the, you know,

00:23:19 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, what happened to Nord Bandale?

00:23:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually really want to find out like and and you can take that you can end up with like I'm gonna do a bounty

00:23:26 ◼   ► Hunter story not Boba Fett

00:23:27 ◼   ► Maybe something else if you're lucky and you give this to the right people you can end up with a new mini franchise where say there's

00:23:32 ◼   ► Some bounty hunter that uses a very charismatic actor that becomes like a cross between

00:23:36 ◼   ► Indiana Jones and Han Solo but in the Star Wars universe and

00:23:40 ◼   ► They get a series of movies and like you don't never know which one is gonna hit in the same way

00:23:44 ◼   ► You never know which one of these the superhero movies is gonna hit but there's lots of things that have been touched upon

00:23:49 ◼   ► They could say, "Oh, we could try that as a movie."

00:23:51 ◼   ► And the stakes are low.

00:23:52 ◼   ► You're like, "Well, this is mostly going to be...

00:23:54 ◼   ► You can make a Star Wars heist movie, or you can make a sort of...

00:24:01 ◼   ► Like the Clone Wars did a lot, like a Rebel Academy type movie, where it's more like Top

00:24:04 ◼   ► Gun and they're jockeying to be the best X-wing pilot.

00:24:07 ◼   ► So many movies you can make in this universe with things that are already established that

00:24:11 ◼   ► can just be plain old science fiction space movies.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Okay.

00:24:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:16 ◼   ► I feel better about it now.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:18 ◼   ► protagonist bounty hunter is a little bit more like a

00:24:20 ◼   ► Privateer well like a real bounty hunter though who's looking to bring people in alive not never really an assassin

00:24:27 ◼   ► You know, it's let's face it would like Boba Fett

00:24:29 ◼   ► Some of the other like those guys no no disintegration, right?

00:24:33 ◼   ► Who's maybe like Han, you know or like like Indy the way that Indy kept losing out to Belloq everything

00:24:39 ◼   ► He went for Belloq at first like a guy who's you you want to root for because he's you know, he's not evil

00:24:45 ◼   ► He just you know, he's just a bit of a rogue, but he keeps losing out to IG 88 or something like that

00:24:49 ◼   ► And IG 88 keeps disintegrating it's his bounty

00:24:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean they are doing like so then you have the three

00:24:57 ◼   ► Episode seven eight and nine that they're doing right and there's also going to be

00:25:01 ◼   ► Stand-alone movies and dispersed to them in my understanding and the standalone movies will feature

00:25:05 ◼   ► You know one of them will feature like Boba Fett and one of them, you know with the well-known characters

00:25:09 ◼   ► But that's trying starting to establish the cadence of like art. There's a trilogy

00:25:13 ◼   ► There's an arc here for these three movies that's gonna be a main story

00:25:16 ◼   ► But then we're gonna start having these standalones to get people used to the idea and I bet you if any one of those standalones like

00:25:22 ◼   ► Really catches like oh that standalone

00:25:24 ◼   ► You know those characters that set or that conflict or whatever now spins off into its own little mini arc like

00:25:29 ◼   ► It's giving you the freedom to try a bunch of things see which one sticks without people being upset of you know

00:25:35 ◼   ► They're like, oh, yeah

00:25:36 ◼   ► There's the only three chances we get episode one two and three and one episode one stinks

00:25:40 ◼   ► Well, maybe episode two will be good episode two sucks off forget it now

00:25:42 ◼   ► There's no hope for episode 3 and that's it. Yeah. I'm actually really excited about

00:25:46 ◼   ► 8 and 9 because it's it's

00:25:49 ◼   ► Fender the show every on Johnson, right? Well, at least writing we don't know. I don't think you're buying you pronounce it, right? Yeah

00:25:55 ◼   ► I don't think I think he's directing an 8 and then he's doing the

00:25:58 ◼   ► Sort of the treatment for 9 I thought but maybe I'm confused. I I'm not quite sure what's

00:26:05 ◼   ► Official on that but either way, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome

00:26:11 ◼   ► Because episode 7 is going to set up the conflict that I assume will play out over the course of the next three movies.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I do think that's the strength of J.J. Abrams though. He does a great setup.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I just hope it's a strong arc because that like...

00:26:23 ◼   ► In, you know, so the original trilogy had such a strong thing of like an iconic villain and an iconic hero, a young hero.

00:26:33 ◼   ► The hero gets to evolve over the course of the thing, but it's such a clear conflict.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Rebel Empire Luke Vader a little bit of twisting some Yoda, you know

00:26:41 ◼   ► Yoda stuff in there and I am your father and all this stuff like that is such a good satisfying sturdy simple arc

00:26:47 ◼   ► And modern movies I find tend to over complicate things with like too much

00:26:53 ◼   ► I don't know

00:26:56 ◼   ► Not gonna say too much nuance

00:26:57 ◼   ► but like

00:26:58 ◼   ► It's that the bones are not as sturdy like there always has to be a lot of a lot of things in the mix and

00:27:04 ◼   ► It's it's just Star Wars for me seems to be

00:27:06 ◼   ► be more about clarity, simplicity, and sturdiness of, you know, archetypes.

00:27:12 ◼   ► And you have to do it well.

00:27:14 ◼   ► And that's what you can hang your three movies on.

00:27:17 ◼   ► I don't want to duplicate it.

00:27:19 ◼   ► The talk show research department has just beat me.

00:27:22 ◼   ► According to IMDB at least, Rian Johnson has been named as the director for both episodes

00:27:27 ◼   ► 8 and 9.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Oh, cool.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:27:30 ◼   ► So that is good.

00:27:31 ◼   ► That's good, because I like Looper a lot.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Now, I do agree with that, and I think what John just said is in a nutshell, and I feel

00:27:35 ◼   ► like we can continue on for most of the rest of the show and sort of compare the

00:27:39 ◼   ► first trilogy versus the prequel trilogy in detail and in broad strokes but in

00:27:44 ◼   ► broad strokes the single biggest problem between the two well it's hard to say

00:27:48 ◼   ► it's the single biggest because there's maybe three or four enormous problems

00:27:51 ◼   ► but one one of them is the simple lack of clarity over who's the good guys and

00:27:56 ◼   ► who's the bad guys in the first one right before you ever see anything it

00:28:00 ◼   ► You see the logo, you hear the fanfare, and it's already very exciting because it's a cool logo, and it's really cool

00:28:07 ◼   ► Fanfare to start the theme song and then boom you get the scroll and the scroll says right at the beginning of the scroll

00:28:14 ◼   ► There's these good guy rebels who've just won their first victory against the evil

00:28:20 ◼   ► Galactic Empire and there that you've already got the basic gist of it

00:28:24 ◼   ► You could if you're a little kid and you can't even read that fast if you could at least get that first paragraph

00:28:30 ◼   ► Rebels win first victory against evil Galactic Empire. Just right there, evil.

00:28:35 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden you miss the rest of the words and then you see a

00:28:38 ◼   ► little tiny spaceship being chased by an enormous badass looking spaceship. You

00:28:43 ◼   ► know exactly what's going on. You've already got it. Good guys, outgunned, bad

00:28:48 ◼   ► guys, enormous resources. And that's the whole three movies right there.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Yeah, the prequel setup, like the type of movie it would have to be to

00:28:59 ◼   ► use that type of setup is like it would have to be kind of like not even this even this

00:29:05 ◼   ► is simpler like like like Rome on HBO or like you know it's all about political intrigue

00:29:10 ◼   ► and the fall of a decadent empire and that is a much more complicated story than you

00:29:15 ◼   ► know underdog rebels versus oppressive empire you know like it's it's it's a different story

00:29:22 ◼   ► it's like it's like turning it into a political thriller it's like well that's not really

00:29:26 ◼   ► what Star Wars is and then you fail to confidently execute a sort of geopolitical thriller because

00:29:34 ◼   ► geopolitical thrillers don't have a lot of spaceship chases and gunfights like they're

00:29:37 ◼   ► all about backroom dealings and and you know it's like what is it House of Cards in space

00:29:43 ◼   ► like they just it's not no one involved in that movie was equipped to do that the script

00:29:47 ◼   ► didn't support it the characters didn't support and that's not the story we wanted to hear

00:29:50 ◼   ► we wanted to hear hey this Darth Vader guy who supposedly was nice turned into Darth

00:29:54 ◼   ► That's what we wanted to hear you got three movies to tell me that and you're just like actually I want to tell you about

00:29:58 ◼   ► The the fall of the decadent Jedi and I'll do a really crappy job of it. No not interested and you did a bad job

00:30:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's yeah, it's two levels deep or one you didn't want a political thriller anyway, and two the political thriller

00:30:12 ◼   ► That George Lucas wrote and made zero sense whatsoever

00:30:15 ◼   ► And I don't mean that in a small sense and like to exaggerate how little sense it make it just it just doesn't hold any

00:30:21 ◼   ► water at all. I can see the story he was going for because you it's sort of like this is he tells you

00:30:29 ◼   ► flat out like this is you know he has characters say things that are basically like the text of

00:30:33 ◼   ► the movie you know and went with the emperor saying stuff it's like that I can imagine a story

00:30:41 ◼   ► like that as like a side story or as like maybe one of the expanded universe novels describing

00:30:46 ◼   ► the fall of the republic and why the republic fell but it would have to involve entirely different

00:30:50 ◼   ► characters and it would have nothing to do with Darth Vader or anything we cared about

00:30:55 ◼   ► knowing in these prequels.

00:30:57 ◼   ► I always think it's a mistake to tell the backstory of your most intriguing villain

00:31:01 ◼   ► or anti-hero. Because all you can do is lessen them. Like, a lot of their power comes in

00:31:08 ◼   ► there from being mysterious.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Well, no, you can, because here's the thing with Vader. Vader is a cartoon villain in

00:31:12 ◼   ► the first movie and by the final movie you sympathize with him. So that's the arc of

00:31:16 ◼   ► his character.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's it. You're done. That's what I mean.

00:31:19 ◼   ► But you still want to know how did Vader get to the place where he is in A New Hope?

00:31:23 ◼   ► How did this supposedly sympathetic person come in?

00:31:27 ◼   ► I always compare it to the best case scenario of this is the Godfather series, not counting

00:31:31 ◼   ► movie three, where you take Michael Corleone, who is a good person, smart, he means well,

00:31:39 ◼   ► he's thrust into a difficult situation, and he tries to do the right thing in every time

00:31:44 ◼   ► he's presented with a decision, he tries to do what he thinks is the right thing for himself

00:31:47 ◼   ► and his family and a series of what he thinks are good decisions lead him to the place where he is at the end of

00:31:52 ◼   ► Godfather 2

00:31:54 ◼   ► It's how can a good person make a series of moves they think are right end up in a super dark place

00:32:00 ◼   ► And the Godfather is obviously this is a high bar right you know, but if you want to say

00:32:04 ◼   ► Goodfellas does the same thing in a way, right?

00:32:06 ◼   ► Bad place is being witness protection like yeah, that's more like how do things fall apart whereas what you want to know in Vader

00:32:14 ◼   ► Is how do things come together?

00:32:15 ◼   ► How do they come to a head where you are just this net, you know?

00:32:18 ◼   ► Where you are the one of the the top people in the Empire and eventually with the end of the Death Star by the time

00:32:24 ◼   ► Empire strikes back you are you know, the the fist of the Empire crushing everybody else

00:32:29 ◼   ► You're like this was a good person. How'd that happen? And so we catch it at the end, right?

00:32:34 ◼   ► I would like to see the story of how does this good person fall into that because that can be a variant

00:32:39 ◼   ► I like that story. It's kind of like I don't know what you would call it. It's a it's a tragedy

00:32:43 ◼   ► It's the downfall of a great person

00:32:45 ◼   ► It's a person who you care about who you identify with is it through all through the godfather moves you feel for Michael Corleone you

00:32:50 ◼   ► Identify with him you you you feel like he is the the protagonist that he is the good of which is why godfather 2

00:32:56 ◼   ► Is so brilliant like this is the good guy like it it takes you through that journey and realizes

00:33:00 ◼   ► Makes you realize along with everyone else in the movie that this this arc has bent in a particular direction

00:33:05 ◼   ► I would like to see that movie about Anakin so I so I agree with you. I would like I'm sure

00:33:11 ◼   ► You know since I was a kid. I've always been curious about how

00:33:13 ◼   ► Anakin like Luke's father turned to the dark side that that's fascinating

00:33:19 ◼   ► but I think the degree of difficulty of telling that story in a satisfactory manner is

00:33:23 ◼   ► So high that you basically just run the risk of ruining

00:33:27 ◼   ► The character well you could rate is basically ruined if you pay attention to this the prequels Vader sucks

00:33:34 ◼   ► Basically, I just associate them

00:33:37 ◼   ► Yeah, you have to you have to write because you can't believe that that's the same guy and you don't

00:33:42 ◼   ► You don't root for him. Really? I mean, yeah

00:33:45 ◼   ► Michael Corleone is a good example because you do root for Michael and you sympathize with his decisions

00:33:51 ◼   ► Like I mean, I think clearly probably the biggest decision, you know that starts him on a path

00:33:56 ◼   ► He's never gonna get out of his when he volunteers to

00:33:58 ◼   ► I don't remember its name, but he's oh, yeah kill so lots

00:34:03 ◼   ► So is you know all of a sudden he's not you know up until then on the on paper. He is clean

00:34:10 ◼   ► He's a war hero

00:34:11 ◼   ► He's you know I think he's college educated

00:34:14 ◼   ► You know his father said blood all over your Ivy League shirt or something like that

00:34:17 ◼   ► Yeah, is you know he's he's set up for a career in politics and where maybe his family isn't clean

00:34:22 ◼   ► He is like somebody could look at whatever he's done, and if they knew the truth

00:34:26 ◼   ► They'd find out that you know he was a good kid from a you know gangster family

00:34:30 ◼   ► Whereas once he pulls the hit on Salazzo that's you know

00:34:33 ◼   ► He's got to keep that secret and it's motivated by love of family love right there like so here's the thing they could you know

00:34:39 ◼   ► He said I go it's very difficult to tell that story

00:34:41 ◼   ► One of the the videos that John sent around that he wanted us to watch before this was the kid bash thing

00:34:46 ◼   ► Where they were trying to show some of the influences that George Lucas has been intercutting those influences into the the video of a new hope

00:34:56 ◼   ► like like George Lucas was inspired by you know these Carrasa movies and westerns and Flash Gordon and

00:35:01 ◼   ► He just pulls nose and puts the movie and the modern example that I love the best is look at Quentin Tarantino

00:35:06 ◼   ► All the movies all the genres of movies that he loved particular movies particular scenes particular images that he grew up with

00:35:12 ◼   ► he repurposes and and

00:35:14 ◼   ► remixes and filters through his own mind and imagination and make something

00:35:18 ◼   ► Greater than the whole if you wanted to tell the downfall of Darth Vader story and you didn't have any better ideas

00:35:24 ◼   ► You can do that same appropriation and remixing directly from gangster movies the Godfather or like you said Goodfellas or any

00:35:30 ◼   ► there are so many sources for you to

00:35:32 ◼   ► perform the same creative function of saying I mean you could you could just pull that story straight out and

00:35:38 ◼   ► Use that as the bones to have with and use particular scenes and like, you know

00:35:42 ◼   ► Just there are there other examples of this type of story from cinema and it is essentially a tragedy and even when we know the ending

00:35:49 ◼   ► That makes it all the more poignant because the first few movies you'd really wanted to have us identifying

00:35:54 ◼   ► With and rooting for Anakin and then at the end it would be all the all the worst for the audience

00:35:59 ◼   ► They would feel terrible that they know what's coming kind of like Titanic me

00:36:02 ◼   ► You know the boats gonna sink right but you just got you got a build-up

00:36:04 ◼   ► And then have the sinking be meaningful because now you've become attached to these characters, right?

00:36:09 ◼   ► Well, you know, there's even like historical precedent like I don't know Caesar and Rome like where he goes and basically becomes the Emperor

00:36:15 ◼   ► That's it seems like a decent model for

00:36:18 ◼   ► For the takeover of the Republic, right and you know, it's gonna happen to him too

00:36:23 ◼   ► They've told that story many times exactly. No, it's not gonna happen to Caesar

00:36:26 ◼   ► You just gotta how can I tell that story so that I care when it happens?

00:36:29 ◼   ► Yeah, knowing that knowing knowing the ending is actually a very well

00:36:33 ◼   ► It's a well trodden path for for especially I think tragic fiction

00:36:40 ◼   ► I mean Shakespeare all the shit most of so many of Shakespeare's plays were not original stories. They were either historical

00:36:47 ◼   ► Or they were these you know parables that had been passed down by spoken word for a hundred years people knew the gist of them

00:36:55 ◼   ► All he did was do them really really well with really clever dialogue and really crisply defined characters

00:37:03 ◼   ► But the fact that people knew where they were going

00:37:05 ◼   ► Emphasizes the tragedy of it. Mm-hmm. It's like the Hitchcock thing where the Hitchcock thing was

00:37:09 ◼   ► Have the bomb under the guy's chair the character doesn't know the bomb there's but show the audience the bomb under the chair

00:37:15 ◼   ► So the audience knows ahead of time that there's a bomb in the chair by the characters don't know

00:37:18 ◼   ► So when you know Anakin's gonna turn if you're rooting for Anakin everything Anakin does that brings him closer to the dark side

00:37:24 ◼   ► You're like the audience knows like no Anakin is a bomb under your seat

00:37:26 ◼   ► You're gonna turn don't you see you know what I mean?

00:37:28 ◼   ► Like you this is ample precedent for how to do this

00:37:31 ◼   ► Well, this is it wasn't done. Well doesn't mean it couldn't be right you you lose the surprise and you gain

00:37:37 ◼   ► Tremendous tension tension that lasts whereas like and I think in that the other side of that Hitchcock

00:37:43 ◼   ► Parable, you know his advice on show the audience the bomb under and put it under a little girl's seat

00:37:48 ◼   ► I have it a little girl eating a piece of popcorn and you show the bomb that's under her seat

00:37:51 ◼   ► He said, you know everybody's first instinct though

00:37:55 ◼   ► if they're making a thriller is to make the bomb a secret and

00:37:59 ◼   ► We don't find it goes off until it goes off and that makes us the real audience no different than the audience in the theater

00:38:05 ◼   ► Where the bomb is and he says it's you know

00:38:07 ◼   ► You you surprised you can surprise the hell out of the audience that way but there's no there's no tension

00:38:13 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, you know the tension is what what makes cinema interesting

00:38:17 ◼   ► I think that it there

00:38:25 ◼   ► Yeah, there's there's there's just no arc with Anakin in the in the prequel trilogy

00:38:31 ◼   ► it's all just

00:38:34 ◼   ► Annoying annoying annoying annoying annoying and then all of a sudden with 45 minutes to go flip to the dark side

00:38:40 ◼   ► So I don't for no good reason I mean we'll talk about this when we do the episode 3 and the incomparable

00:38:45 ◼   ► I'm sure but it's like you've got three movies to explain why this guy's gonna turn and just the movie

00:38:50 ◼   ► hours are ticking by and you're talking about the Emperor and you're talking about people running around shooting each other and

00:38:55 ◼   ► other

00:38:57 ◼   ► Insequential things and at no point you're like so so why is he gonna suddenly turn evil?

00:39:02 ◼   ► Oh because the script tells him to like god. I guess and now I kill children sure that comes yeah, right that fits perfect

00:39:08 ◼   ► It just doesn't make any sense

00:39:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I was so shattered after the like the original teaser trailer for Phantom Menace

00:39:15 ◼   ► There's one shot of Anakin

00:39:18 ◼   ► Standing and everybody's cheering him and Anakin the little boy

00:39:22 ◼   ► And I totally had this weird

00:39:25 ◼   ► Like my interpretation was that he's just so force powerful that everybody thinks he's awesome

00:39:30 ◼   ► And he and it basically is his ego is gonna end up eating him and turning him to invader

00:39:34 ◼   ► And then it turned out it was whatever because he ran a goofy

00:39:38 ◼   ► Padres which

00:39:40 ◼   ► What'll let down like there's so many rich things that they could have done with that character

00:39:44 ◼   ► That is a simplified way to go like oh, he's super powerful

00:39:46 ◼   ► It goes to his head like that's more of the Marvel villain type of thing where if you're super yes

00:39:51 ◼   ► And you're just like you know what I'm such a super genius everyone else on earth. They're just like ants to me

00:39:56 ◼   ► I should rule over them, and they're crap you know that's one way to go

00:39:59 ◼   ► It's a little bit more cartoonish villain

00:40:01 ◼   ► It is definitely not a sophisticated as a micro core

00:40:03 ◼   ► the only thing is that's what you want to happen because the arc promise in the original trilogy is that

00:40:07 ◼   ► Vader is actually a

00:40:09 ◼   ► thinking feeling sympathetic person who finally connects with Luke and has a you know

00:40:14 ◼   ► Cares for his son repents for his sin dies for them

00:40:18 ◼   ► and you know has like that's the person that you're promised and

00:40:23 ◼   ► The the crazy egomaniac it's difficult to reconcile that was say

00:40:28 ◼   ► I think you have to go kind of a Marco Carl Jung where it's like he did want to do the right thing and they

00:40:32 ◼   ► tried you that it's like

00:40:33 ◼   ► Anakin is whiny and annoying and the romance angle, there's no chemistry there.

00:40:38 ◼   ► There's... romance is a way you can kind of go bad, but that's more like...

00:40:42 ◼   ► leads you into a crime of passion. It doesn't lead you to become...

00:40:46 ◼   ► you know, rule over a giant empire and kill all the Jedi and start by slaughtering children.

00:40:50 ◼   ► And then it's like, well, I really didn't want my mom to die, so I guess now I should

00:40:53 ◼   ► kill these children because some guy promised me I'll be able to help people stay alive.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Like, if you want people to stay alive, you're not gonna be killing children.

00:40:59 ◼   ► I don't know. It doesn't make any sense.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Yeah. There's some other disappointing stuff there where they advertise him as being incredibly

00:41:10 ◼   ► powerful, more powerful than you know. And he doesn't do anything powerful. I felt that

00:41:16 ◼   ► they sort of lost an opportunity in the second movie when, first of all I don't like any of

00:41:22 ◼   ► this, but when the Sand People have captured his mother and he loses it, I kind of just wanted them

00:41:27 ◼   ► to just force destroy this city you know the the encampment like just tear it apart with his mind

00:41:34 ◼   ► if you want to go with that angle like the he that he's super powerful then you can start pulling

00:41:39 ◼   ► from child prodigy movies you know exactly where they're child prodigies who are very good or you

00:41:44 ◼   ► know you can do like a bobby fisher type thing like they're yeah a chess genius or like you know

00:41:48 ◼   ► an ender's game type thing where they're they're a child and they have amazing powers but they're not

00:41:53 ◼   ► not emotionally ready to deal with them and you know but that wasn't played up

00:41:57 ◼   ► like he was he was but it wasn't about his strength otherwise he was just like

00:42:02 ◼   ► it's pretty good Jedi seems fine yeah he seems I mean he's seems to equivalent

00:42:07 ◼   ► power to Obi-Wan yeah he's not as wise he's stupid he doesn't listen to

00:42:11 ◼   ► instructions but he's not super like the Jedi powers are kind of like the Marvel

00:42:15 ◼   ► powers and that depending on the scene especially in the prequels there there's

00:42:19 ◼   ► There's no real arc to the Jedi powers, and it's not clear what they're able to do or

00:42:24 ◼   ► not able to do.

00:42:25 ◼   ► Like, whereas in the original trilogy--

00:42:26 ◼   ► >> CHIP/JASON Yeah, it's whatever the writer needs at the time.

00:42:28 ◼   ► >> MIKE Yeah, in the original trilogy, it's like the Force is mysterious and weird and

00:42:31 ◼   ► pretty weak, and by the time Yoda is pulling next wing out of swamp, it's genuinely impressive.

00:42:36 ◼   ► Whereas in the prequels, it's like sometimes we're moving to giant rocks, sometimes we're

00:42:40 ◼   ► pushing one dude away, sometimes we're moving to salt shaker or an apple.

00:42:45 ◼   ► Sometimes you've got lightning, but you can block the lightning, but it's like, the rules

00:42:49 ◼   ► Are all worked out whereas in the original trilogy there was a clear arc across three whole movies

00:42:53 ◼   ► They made an arc of force powers lightning doesn't appear until the third movie and when it does you're surprised

00:42:57 ◼   ► And it's clearly a higher echelon of power and the prequel sits all over the map

00:43:01 ◼   ► Yeah

00:43:01 ◼   ► I thought that the other lesson that was very very clear in the the original trilogy from all three movies

00:43:09 ◼   ► But in a growing especially in the second two where Luke is, you know more and in

00:43:15 ◼   ► training to be a Jedi or and then in the third one be you know be

00:43:19 ◼   ► growing as a young Jedi was this this point of

00:43:23 ◼   ► you

00:43:25 ◼   ► If you're gonna be a Jedi you cannot you can't touch the dark side

00:43:29 ◼   ► Like once you go it's it's all corrupted like you can't just dip your toes in the dark side

00:43:33 ◼   ► You're you know, once you touch it, it's it's it's gonna corrupt you

00:43:37 ◼   ► So I have a theory on that. I think I'm gonna talk John offline some of the time

00:43:43 ◼   ► Um, I think so. I mean, Vader's supposed to bring balance to the Force and effectively he does that by murdering everybody who's got a Force powers except for Luke.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And I think the thing with Luke is that he does touch the dark side.

00:43:58 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:59 ◼   ► He uses a Force choke on a guard. That's not cool. No other Jedi has done that. But he just walks into Jabba's palace and strangles a guy.

00:44:07 ◼   ► uh he's dressed all in black in jedi um and he beats he defeats vader by just getting really

00:44:15 ◼   ► really angry yeah and beating the crap out of him but that's not i think i think the balance is where

00:44:21 ◼   ► when he tosses his lightsaber aside uh and decides that like no i can like luke uniquely can pull

00:44:28 ◼   ► back from the dark side right i'm so i'm so willing to reject the dark side that i'll leave

00:44:32 ◼   ► myself defenseless. But the balance thing is he did it but he accepted it right yeah isn't that

00:44:37 ◼   ► entirely a creation of the prequels the whole entire business yeah entirely right and that's

00:44:41 ◼   ► why i think it's bs because it's like it's like saying well we need to have a balance between

00:44:45 ◼   ► like you know uh murder and and safety we need to have a balance between robbery and having your

00:44:51 ◼   ► goods be secure we need to have some robberies but then sometimes things are stolen and we need to

00:44:55 ◼   ► have some murders mostly not murders like we need to have some uh you know anger and hatred but not

00:45:00 ◼   ► No, I disagree. I think, if anything, ham-fistedly, the Jedi Order is depicted as being emotionless

00:45:11 ◼   ► and detached, and ultimately that kind of leads to their downfall.

00:45:17 ◼   ► But that's not the type of balance you're talking about. You're talking about dark side

00:45:20 ◼   ► balance. You're not talking about emotional detachment. That's like Zen versus...

00:45:24 ◼   ► But I think dark side is embracing the passion angle of it.

00:45:28 ◼   ► They're the only people, they're not passionately loving anybody.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Uhh...

00:45:34 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like I know what you're saying, like there's the emotional detachment depicted, again, this is all dependent on their prequels.

00:45:39 ◼   ► If you pretend their prequels don't exist, the arc is clear. The dark side is using your powers for evil.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And Jedi have tremendous powers, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

00:45:48 ◼   ► That's the dark side. And the whole idea is, "Look, we're going to give you these powers, and it's going to be really tempting to use these powers to essentially get your way."

00:45:54 ◼   ► And even if the way that your way is the good like well

00:45:57 ◼   ► I really wanted to feed the Empire you still should be careful because it's really easy to slip into like, you know

00:46:02 ◼   ► using your emotions to you to tell you what you should do with these powers and his whole arc is like

00:46:07 ◼   ► I'm gonna try he's a hothead and we're gonna try to stay away from the dark side

00:46:12 ◼   ► But you know by the second movie that you know

00:46:14 ◼   ► His father had problems dealing with this and he's a hothead too and he really wants to defeat Vader and Vader does terrible things

00:46:19 ◼   ► And you as the audience you're like pound him Luke kill him or whatever

00:46:21 ◼   ► But in the end as I've talked about in the episode we did about trying to die and the added story of pacifism where is

00:46:26 ◼   ► The only movie hero ever to embrace pacifism in the climactic scene

00:46:30 ◼   ► Yes, he gets away with it because Vader who's already completely, you know corrupted has no problem killing the Emperor

00:46:36 ◼   ► But he's like I would rather die

00:46:38 ◼   ► Than fall to the dark side because it's a personal victory for him

00:46:41 ◼   ► He essentially says I've he's had his victory his whole victory was like can I master the forest? Can I master myself?

00:46:47 ◼   ► Can I not give in to my hatred and everything and in the end he does and that is his victory and even if he?

00:46:51 ◼   ► had been killed by the Emperor and by Vader he still would have won and Yoda

00:46:56 ◼   ► would have been proud of him but we still get the happy ending because Vader

00:46:59 ◼   ► does. That's his arc it's not like well I had to I had to choke that

00:47:03 ◼   ► Remorian guard I had to get angry to defeat Vader you didn't have to do all

00:47:07 ◼   ► that stuff that was his battle against himself and when when he's doing that

00:47:10 ◼   ► when he's wailing on Vader the sad music is playing not the happy music there is

00:47:13 ◼   ► no balance in him there's no balance in him using his anger to beat up on Vader

00:47:17 ◼   ► That is his slow defeat the balance angle coming from the free pull

00:47:21 ◼   ► I think you'd have a better argument for the balance being that the Jedi have to you know

00:47:27 ◼   ► Sort of be more in touch with their emotions and not be you know

00:47:31 ◼   ► It's kind of more like it arguing for that priests shouldn't be celibate in the church. Yeah

00:47:35 ◼   ► I don't think that's coming away from this. Yeah, but I don't think Luke walks away from Jedi squeaky clean right like

00:47:41 ◼   ► he's

00:47:43 ◼   ► He's gone to the dark side and he's come back. Well. Yeah, he's gone to the brain

00:47:47 ◼   ► Let's put it that way because he stopped himself

00:47:50 ◼   ► And the thing is like he was not trained for his entire life to be a Jedi like like the other and the part of the

00:47:55 ◼   ► Training it's like you know

00:47:57 ◼   ► Like to answer these or like priests or whatever where you were denying in our parlance because we just that map humans and everything you're

00:48:03 ◼   ► Denying a part of your humanity. You know if you're gonna be celibate because you're a monk

00:48:06 ◼   ► It's like well

00:48:07 ◼   ► It's important for your spiritual and a life and so on and so forth but the number of humans who deal well with being celibate

00:48:12 ◼   ► is very low because it's a strong, you know, urge that we have and so wouldn't it be better if there

00:48:16 ◼   ► was a philosophy that embraced everything that it means to be human and just took the good from that

00:48:20 ◼   ► and that's what the Jedi are in a bubble and never mind that they're aliens and it doesn't really

00:48:23 ◼   ► make any sense in that context anyway. Yeah.

00:48:25 ◼   ► And never mind too though, also that like let's say with the Catholic church where priests are

00:48:32 ◼   ► celibate, there is no argument within church doctrine that what makes somebody a good priest

00:48:40 ◼   ► an inheritable

00:48:42 ◼   ► quality like genetic

00:48:44 ◼   ► whereas with the Jedi even in not even going to the second trilogy where they

00:48:48 ◼   ► Backwards, you know rewrote in a million. Yeah the medical or the I was gonna call it the m-word

00:48:54 ◼   ► But even even in the first trilogy they say, you know, the force is strong with the Skywalker's and stuff

00:49:00 ◼   ► They even admit then that it's you know

00:49:02 ◼   ► Why in the world with the Jedi Order

00:49:07 ◼   ► Have everybody be celibate if like the best the best source for new Jedi would be their offspring

00:49:13 ◼   ► The celibacy angle makes sense in this in this respect and that because priests don't have super magical powers, right? So

00:49:20 ◼   ► these individuals have tremendous power and it seems if I had to describe what the whole purpose of the Jedi would be is like look

00:49:29 ◼   ► Some percentage of people in this universe or have have this amazing magical power. They're just like super dangerous

00:49:34 ◼   ► so we need to get these kids young and we need to

00:49:37 ◼   ► Tamp down some aspects of what you know human nature essentially we need to get their tempers under control

00:49:42 ◼   ► We need to make it because it's very easy

00:49:44 ◼   ► You know if you give if you give like a five-year-old, you know the ability to use the force and learn to you know

00:49:50 ◼   ► By the time they're 13 year olds

00:49:51 ◼   ► They will have built up an amazing ability to use this force and they'll just be they'll be very destructive and we like we need to

00:49:57 ◼   ► Act as a balance against the the worst parts of human nature because if we don't we're gonna have a bunch of these people running

00:50:03 ◼   ► around with, you know, that their power would corrupt them, that they may have been good

00:50:08 ◼   ► people, but we need to get them early. And what we need to do is give them more of a

00:50:11 ◼   ► monk type mindset because if we don't, we'll have a bunch of hothead teenagers running

00:50:15 ◼   ► around with superpowers and that is a really bad formula for peace. And so there is some,

00:50:21 ◼   ► I could come up with a justification for why it's really important to find force sensitive

00:50:24 ◼   ► kids young, get them into the program and teach them to, maybe they took it too far

00:50:30 ◼   ► of like total detachment and celibacy and whatever like that I think is too far but

00:50:34 ◼   ► have them in a program that lets them deal with their emotions and understand that they

00:50:39 ◼   ► have, you know, with great power comes great responsibility to pull a line from another

00:50:43 ◼   ► movie.

00:50:44 ◼   ► But they have to deal with that in a certain way.

00:50:45 ◼   ► So make some sense that the program for Jedi would be like, dude, chill.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Like not otherwise you've got – can you imagine teenagers with the Force?

00:50:54 ◼   ► It would be a bad scene.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:57 ◼   ► Let's take a break and we'll come back to that.

00:51:00 ◼   ► I'm going to come back to this question of the Jedi Order.

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00:52:46 ◼   ► slash daring fireball Jedi Order see this is one of those things big picture

00:52:56 ◼   ► big picture Star Wars to double trilogy the thing that has always stood out to

00:53:02 ◼   ► me even I thought even with the original trilogy by the time we got to return of

00:53:07 ◼   ► the Jedi that Lucas didn't really have all this shit worked out at the

00:53:10 ◼   ► beginning I mean not even by a long shot but then with the the second trilogy it

00:53:15 ◼   ► It just it just reeks to high hell of stuff that he made up on the fly.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Like almost everything in the prequel trilogy to me shows it and it almost

00:53:27 ◼   ► wrecks the stuff in the original trilogy.

00:53:28 ◼   ► So I think it was great.

00:53:30 ◼   ► I think it was, I think it worked really well when you're doing star wars, because

00:53:36 ◼   ► you can just say stuff as throwaway lines and people can fill in the background

00:53:40 ◼   ► because it's not particularly pertinent to the, to the tale of destroying the

00:53:44 ◼   ► Death Star, right? And Empire kind of builds on that a little bit because there

00:53:52 ◼   ► was a flimsy enough sort of shell before that it could build into it a

00:53:56 ◼   ► bit. Return of the Jedi just kind of goes a little bit off the rails, like I don't

00:54:00 ◼   ► understand what's going on so much. But the prequel trilogy makes no sense at

00:54:05 ◼   ► all. I don't understand the Jedi Order. The Sith seem like the most ineffective

00:54:09 ◼   ► like really? There's only ever two of them? What? I don't get it. I don't

00:54:13 ◼   ► I don't understand the rationale for that at all.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Or how that can be a legitimate threat.

00:54:20 ◼   ► To a Jedi Order of thousands.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Yeah, well, turns out they were, because they took them out, but still.

00:54:26 ◼   ► I'm sure it's explained in the Expanded Universe that I haven't read, but it makes sense to

00:54:29 ◼   ► me that kind of in an evil organization, where might makes right, if you are mighty enough,

00:54:40 ◼   ► there is no reason to have a bunch of henchmen hanging around.

00:54:43 ◼   ► And so if the Sith all kill each other until there's only two left, I mean I didn't listen

00:54:47 ◼   ► to the talk show with Whiskas yet, but the title "Leads and Relieves" you came to the

00:54:51 ◼   ► same conclusion.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Like why have an apprentice then?

00:54:53 ◼   ► Because the whole idea with the apprentice isn't going to kill you, but it's like a wolf

00:54:55 ◼   ► pack where like eventually the lead wolf gets old and some other wolf challenges into a

00:54:59 ◼   ► fight and wins and then he's the head wolf, he's the alpha wolf, right?

00:55:02 ◼   ► That type of model where the strongest survives and the Sith tradition, you can hang a lot

00:55:08 ◼   ► of stuff on tradition because tradition is like "Well it doesn't make any rational sense

00:55:11 ◼   ► It's just the way it's always been done.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Like, the biggest bad is the big bad,

00:55:15 ◼   ► but you always gotta have someone who's an apprentice,

00:55:17 ◼   ► because eventually you're gonna get old and die or get defeated,

00:55:20 ◼   ► and we need someone to replace you.

00:55:21 ◼   ► What we'd rather have happen is you train some guy up,

00:55:23 ◼   ► and eventually he gets stronger than you and defeats you,

00:55:25 ◼   ► and it's kind of like, that's an honorable way for you to go out,

00:55:29 ◼   ► and it keeps the Sith going, and so it's not an entirely crazy system.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Okay, fair enough.

00:55:34 ◼   ► But, you know, two against the entire Jedi Order is weird.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And also the way the Jedi Order sort of sits next to the Republican government.

00:55:46 ◼   ► That's exactly what I think is a huge mistake.

00:55:49 ◼   ► I felt like...

00:55:52 ◼   ► Being in exile makes some sense, where, you know, because of the Empire, Yoda and Obi-Wan

00:55:57 ◼   ► are both old and they kind of have to hide.

00:55:58 ◼   ► But I thought that the way that the Jedi were set up in the first trilogy was that they...

00:56:06 ◼   ► that they were all in hiding but that they weren't centralized. There was an

00:56:12 ◼   ► or-- They were like knights or like samurai. Yeah, well samurai is exactly what I'm

00:56:17 ◼   ► thinking. Where there's not like one central like samurai headquarters where

00:56:20 ◼   ► all the samurai come out of, there's a tradition and there's a code,

00:56:23 ◼   ► clearly there's a code, and the training might be, what would you call it,

00:56:29 ◼   ► regularized? You know, there's a systematic training to become a new one,

00:56:32 ◼   ► But then once you do you're all sort of lone wolves, you know, and you know

00:56:37 ◼   ► But you're serving they're serving the

00:56:41 ◼   ► Good government or like the Republic essentially like they would you know, they would be the sort of benevolent enforcement arm

00:56:47 ◼   ► I did like I think you could make again you can make an interesting sort of geopolitical thriller about look at this weird system of

00:56:52 ◼   ► Government, you know where they have a kind of weird Jedi Order with these magic people. It's an uneasy truce with the

00:56:58 ◼   ► democratically elected non magic people like

00:57:01 ◼   ► that could work out as a different kind of movie and you can see how a

00:57:05 ◼   ► Government could get into a really weird shape, especially if there's legitimate magic running around you're like well who should run the show?

00:57:11 ◼   ► Should it be those magic people or should we like vote for people and they were voting for a queen and then she's a teenager

00:57:15 ◼   ► And like there's all sorts of government ends up in all sorts of weird distorted shape

00:57:20 ◼   ► So I'm willing to to believe any weird galactic government shape could work out

00:57:25 ◼   ► But if your movie is gonna be about that then that's what your movie is about

00:57:28 ◼   ► It's about like well, how do we reconcile this thing?

00:57:30 ◼   ► And what if the magic people started to go crazy and what if the political people started to become a correct?

00:57:33 ◼   ► What are the checks and balances here and how do empires fall and so on and so forth?

00:57:38 ◼   ► Not the story. I was interested in hearing I wanted to hear about Vader and Anakin but that's that's a story

00:57:42 ◼   ► You know right from the start in a phantom menace where the first thing we see is Qui-Gon and his you know

00:57:49 ◼   ► Padawan obi-wan, you know being sent by the Chancellor to to do something, you know fix a trade dispute or whatever

00:57:57 ◼   ► It's just that just didn't seem to me and what the Jedi were about it

00:58:01 ◼   ► It didn't seem to me like the Jedi were people who did the bidding of the government like cops, you know

00:58:05 ◼   ► Well, I mean like Knights serve the king, right? Yeah, like samurai serve their their feudal masters

00:58:12 ◼   ► Well, I loyalty to that man. I think they were Ronan I think is the right word

00:58:16 ◼   ► I thought I always imagined the Jedi is as a sort of Ronan, you know that they didn't serve a master

00:58:21 ◼   ► They served the force was their master and like a natural sense of just truth and justice

00:58:26 ◼   ► Yeah, that would make sense and I mean and then you don't have the Jedi Council at all

00:58:30 ◼   ► But then you have basically a government you could still do the government angle if they really into that was like well

00:58:34 ◼   ► You've got through public

00:58:35 ◼   ► But what's the deal with these Jedi that don't serve any master that are super powerful that are running around we just supposed to trust

00:58:40 ◼   ► That they're gonna be like

00:58:42 ◼   ► Benevolent or whatever you can the other angle you can go is like Merlin serving King Arthur

00:58:46 ◼   ► it's like well, there's not that many of these guys, but they are running around and

00:58:49 ◼   ► We would like to have one in-house, but there's other ones out there. How do you deal with wizards?

00:58:54 ◼   ► How do you deal with people who can who are not not constrained by any government and

00:59:00 ◼   ► have powers that you don't understand it but that are significantly powerful?

00:59:04 ◼   ► Yeah, well, and then you could have something like that where maybe one or so a very small

00:59:11 ◼   ► handful of Jedi could volunteer to be the handful of ones who serve the Chancellor of

00:59:18 ◼   ► the Senate or something like that but not the whole order.

00:59:21 ◼   ► I feel like how you know they were they were like a sort of quasi independent police force

00:59:25 ◼   ► which I thought was just way off for the tone that was set by the original and they did

00:59:30 ◼   ► once they bring in the whole youngling and like the kids and everything I mean that that

00:59:35 ◼   ► the presence for that was set in the movie when Luke shows up and a go by it's like he's

00:59:38 ◼   ► too old yes too old to begin the training it's like well I remember when I watched the

00:59:41 ◼   ► movie like what do you mean too old he's not too old he's like he's just just barely an

00:59:45 ◼   ► adult like it's that's isn't that the perfect time to that's like when you would go into

00:59:49 ◼   ► the army or be trained or whatever but the that comment from Yoda and the prequels make

00:59:54 ◼   ► clear that the whole idea was like it get them when they're young get them like pull

00:59:58 ◼   ► them away from their parents either get when they're toddlers bring them in here and that

01:00:01 ◼   ► again my explanation for that and my head can is like well you really need to get them

01:00:05 ◼   ► when they're young because if you left to their own devices you'll have a serious problem

01:00:09 ◼   ► so that the whole order and system is like that seems like it would be the most important

01:00:15 ◼   ► function of the Jedi order it would be finding these people and bringing them into art and

01:00:19 ◼   ► training them and they could disperse that though. They don't have to remain and become

01:00:22 ◼   ► a Jedi Council who sits around in a circle and makes pronouncements. You don't need to

01:00:25 ◼   ► do that. But once you've established that very young kids get the Force early and that

01:00:30 ◼   ► Yoda said that you need to be trained from a very young age, I think it's reasonable

01:00:35 ◼   ► to stick with that and say there's got to be like a school like Xavier's school for

01:00:40 ◼   ► gifted. Same thing with the X-Men. If you don't get them into Xavier's school, they

01:00:44 ◼   ► might end up falling Magneto and then you've got a problem.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Even with just the original trilogy even not even go into the prequel trilogy. I always thought that Yoda's

01:00:51 ◼   ► protestations in that scene were

01:00:54 ◼   ► He was just playing hard to get to make Luke work

01:00:58 ◼   ► I don't know no intention a minute because even in even from what we only know from the original trilogy

01:01:04 ◼   ► We know that Ben lived near Luke his entire life and that he'd sort of had a you know

01:01:10 ◼   ► and they met each other before he knew him as Ben and

01:01:14 ◼   ► You know, they'd met each other before it wasn't the first time that they met when when he rescued him from the sand people

01:01:20 ◼   ► So obi-wan Kenobi clearly purposefully for the first 20 years of Luke's life

01:01:25 ◼   ► Never even mentioned the force to him not even like it's like telling stories

01:01:29 ◼   ► Like Luke didn't even know what a lightsaber was

01:01:32 ◼   ► Yeah

01:01:32 ◼   ► That they have a timing problem with the prequels to this like you you you to tell me that these Jedi were around but then

01:01:38 ◼   ► Within one generation they're so forgotten that that just believe they exist like and Luke doesn't know what a lightsaber was if every kid in

01:01:45 ◼   ► Our world where the Jedi are fictional knows what a lightsaber is how in the world doesn't every kid in that galaxy

01:01:51 ◼   ► Yeah, like even if Vader had killed them all be just before you were born. You're still gonna know about it like they have

01:01:56 ◼   ► Right. We know recorded in the same the way that in the same way that we all know who the samurai were

01:02:02 ◼   ► Exactly, right

01:02:04 ◼   ► So that I mean that's timing wise that's a problem

01:02:06 ◼   ► but when when Yoda said he's too old the reason that always stood out to me because because he seems to be the perfect age and

01:02:11 ◼   ► The fact that Yoda would pull out the too old and that you know because it would be ridiculous like well

01:02:17 ◼   ► It would say like he's too short like it would be the same. What do you mean? He's too short?

01:02:20 ◼   ► He's like average height for a person seems fine. Maybe did I have to be super short, right?

01:02:23 ◼   ► So when he said he's too old he wouldn't pull that out and yes

01:02:26 ◼   ► He didn't want to train him who's trying to back out or whatever

01:02:28 ◼   ► But why pull up something so preposterous and the answer is it's not preposterous that

01:02:32 ◼   ► Jedi actually are trained from a super young age and

01:02:35 ◼   ► You don't usually get him by the time they're they're practically an adult because by then it's there

01:02:41 ◼   ► They're too set in their ways

01:02:42 ◼   ► it doesn't make much sense in the context of Luke because again my whole rationale of wanting them young is like

01:02:46 ◼   ► They should be feeling the force when they're very young and by the time they get that old

01:02:51 ◼   ► They'll just be like completely reckless force users

01:02:53 ◼   ► Whereas Luke has no idea that even has the force until I knew hope so that's well

01:02:56 ◼   ► There's two things there a I don't believe for a second that Yoda did not intend to train Luke

01:03:01 ◼   ► He's just saying that because he wants to see what how Luke reacts. That's my

01:03:05 ◼   ► He's testing him. No, he's

01:03:07 ◼   ► Arguing with obi-wan because he doesn't what's he gonna do not train Luke and then just let let the galaxy go on being the way

01:03:13 ◼   ► It is no, but he didn't like it. He's out of the game like he's on de go boys hanging around

01:03:18 ◼   ► He's looking at the animals and the lizards and stuff

01:03:20 ◼   ► He's kind of checked out and like he's trying to try and pull him back in like oh, he just can you train one?

01:03:24 ◼   ► I think I think it's a at best a protestation. Like I don't want to get out of bed fine

01:03:29 ◼   ► I know I gotta get out of bed and train this guy. That's how

01:03:32 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it is a legitimate argument and and this is where I back you up is that

01:03:37 ◼   ► Luke

01:03:41 ◼   ► Doesn't believe he can lift the x-wing and that goes to him being too old because he's got an experience and he's got

01:03:47 ◼   ► Like he he understands how heavy one

01:03:55 ◼   ► You can't you don't believe in this stuff enough. So it's like in the matrix when the little kid has no problem

01:04:00 ◼   ► You know, you know there is no spoon and when you're older you're like what you mean?

01:04:04 ◼   ► The spoon is totally there and it's harder because you're more set in your ways

01:04:07 ◼   ► That's the that's the other angle for him being too old

01:04:09 ◼   ► I think it's it's the least his age is the least of the problems with the chronology there. The boy is reckless

01:04:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know I mean the the the Empire just it should have been around for like hundreds of years

01:04:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it should not have been only 15 years old and in fact. They don't say that though well

01:04:27 ◼   ► They do say before the Empire because you could have had a benevolent Empire

01:04:30 ◼   ► But you don't know how old Obi Wan is he could you don't know how long life spans are in this universe

01:04:38 ◼   ► And he's a Jedi and Yoda is super old too and like there are many outs like that the chronology

01:04:43 ◼   ► Made sense when you just had the original trilogy

01:04:46 ◼   ► But when you when you connect it up in the way they did then you're like then you think

01:04:51 ◼   ► Everyone forgot about the Jedi. I know you're on Tatooine. It's far away and stuff. But seriously man, like you get TV

01:04:56 ◼   ► And like yeah, I mean what what's his name even calls tells Vader? It's an ancient. You're the last practitioner of that ancient religion

01:05:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not too ancient. It's like yeah, you know, yeah, it's like 20 years out of day. What are you kidding?

01:05:08 ◼   ► I have like computers that still work better that old right? Yeah, I always yeah, I always just had the vague sense

01:05:14 ◼   ► Just as a rough canology and whether it actually worked out or not

01:05:18 ◼   ► But that let's say like in that scene on the Death Star where the guy is saying, you know

01:05:22 ◼   ► You're the last practitioner of that thing that at least the the age of the Empire and the age when the Jedi were

01:05:29 ◼   ► either a dominant force missing or

01:05:32 ◼   ► reduced to just a handful hidden around the galaxy was around the length of those

01:05:37 ◼   ► Men's ages like that guy was born in a world where the Jedi were already decimated. Yes, you know like 35 40 years. Yeah

01:05:45 ◼   ► you know because if it wasn't, you know, it's sort of like for what for like people like us like the the the

01:05:51 ◼   ► World without TV like we know that there was a world without TV

01:05:55 ◼   ► We believe in a world without TV, but we don't we haven't experienced it which makes it because it predates our life

01:06:00 ◼   ► You know our us being born it seems ancient or even black and white TV black and white TV seems ancient to me

01:06:06 ◼   ► Yeah, it's intellectually fathomable, but kind of viscerally just you can't really picture it, right?

01:06:12 ◼   ► Right, whereas if I was maybe 10 years older then black and white TV would just seem like something from my childhood exactly

01:06:18 ◼   ► Yeah, the other angle you can go to explain the chronology is the backwater thing where yeah these things were around but information is not

01:06:27 ◼   ► Evenly distributed and so if you are really far away from all the action on some remote planet

01:06:33 ◼   ► Maybe you're not interested in the history of the Republic or any sort of

01:06:38 ◼   ► Galactic government or anything like that and maybe you just you know like the Jedi story that we heard the samurai stories because Japan's not

01:06:44 ◼   ► Too far away, and we had a war with them

01:06:46 ◼   ► And we know about Japanese stuff in their culture came over here how much culture about maybe it's how do we and they didn't get any

01:06:52 ◼   ► Culture about the Jai and it still doesn't as John said that all right well Ben is down the street

01:06:56 ◼   ► He's purposely not mentioning it

01:06:57 ◼   ► Maybe that's part of his strategy of keeping an eye on Luke put him in a backwater where they've never even heard of the Jedi

01:07:01 ◼   ► You can kind of explain it

01:07:03 ◼   ► But once you get like Han Solo supposedly been jetting all over the galaxy

01:07:07 ◼   ► And he's like I've never seen anything that made me think all-powerful for you never seen anything

01:07:11 ◼   ► Like you should have seen like movies of Jedi things with their mind and you'd be like, alright

01:07:16 ◼   ► Well, I guess that was a thing. Yeah, and then in the new trilogy, I mean again, he's supposedly super super powerful

01:07:21 ◼   ► But we see Anakin as a kid doing some things that would require the force

01:07:25 ◼   ► You know that if just because the Jedi are decimated doesn't mean that human beings who have force related powers

01:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, you know that you wouldn't run into him with what we can only assume to be the wide variety of action that Han Solo has seen

01:07:40 ◼   ► You know heretofore in his his adventures. Well, I mean Anakin's whole thing was like he's got Jedi reflexes

01:07:46 ◼   ► He's the only human who can podrace you could just be a child prodigy and have amazing reflexes at that point

01:07:50 ◼   ► You don't necessarily have to you know, he's not he's not moving salt shakers for his mind quite yet

01:07:54 ◼   ► I just I bet I just think that if a seven-year-old is showing those type of abilities that Han Solo would have seen

01:08:00 ◼   ► You know something a guy who could cheat at dice, you know in a casino because he can yeah

01:08:04 ◼   ► I mean, there's no explanation for Han not being so doubt

01:08:07 ◼   ► I mean other than the fact that it works in the context of the original trilogy

01:08:10 ◼   ► But as soon as you tack on the prequels with that timeline between them then all of a sudden

01:08:13 ◼   ► Everything in a new hope is just doesn't read is true. Yeah, you have to be willfully stupid at that point. Yeah

01:08:19 ◼   ► I

01:08:22 ◼   ► So I wouldn't I want to touch on some of the writing things that to me just clearly showed that it wasn't thought out in advance

01:08:29 ◼   ► advance.

01:08:30 ◼   ► And I'm going to say this, though, before I do that.

01:08:32 ◼   ► There's so many writing complaints that we can do

01:08:34 ◼   ► and should do, and I think it's fundamental to the prequels'

01:08:38 ◼   ► emptiness.

01:08:40 ◼   ► I'll say, though, I'll forgive Lucas

01:08:42 ◼   ► for those expositional problems, like Luke not knowing

01:08:46 ◼   ► what a lightsaber is or the Force is.

01:08:48 ◼   ► I'll forgive those completely because of the need

01:08:50 ◼   ► to explain to us, the audience, what those things are.

01:08:54 ◼   ► And yes, it was a little clumsy.

01:08:57 ◼   ► If you really think about it, it thinks a little clumsy.

01:09:00 ◼   ► But in hindsight, though, overall, it was a good scene.

01:09:04 ◼   ► I remember very fondly looking back

01:09:06 ◼   ► on that scene in Obi-Wan's house where he gets the lightsaber

01:09:09 ◼   ► and turns it on and hears about the Jedi and the Force.

01:09:12 ◼   ► That scene is perfectly acceptable

01:09:13 ◼   ► if the prequels don't exist.

01:09:14 ◼   ► It's perfect because he really wouldn't have known.

01:09:16 ◼   ► He's a farm boy.

01:09:17 ◼   ► How would he know about this?

01:09:18 ◼   ► Obviously, the farm boy shows up with the old man.

01:09:19 ◼   ► The old man shows him something from a box.

01:09:21 ◼   ► It's an ancient thing.

01:09:22 ◼   ► It's a device.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Yeah, you get someone who's naive,

01:09:26 ◼   ► And then you have the wiser person explain to them and you really explain to the audience

01:09:29 ◼   ► It works perfectly in the context of that story

01:09:31 ◼   ► I think it would be a little bit more elegant if it was a little bit more and I hate to say it but a

01:09:35 ◼   ► Little bit more like the scene in a phantom menace where young Anakin

01:09:40 ◼   ► Asks if he's a Jedi because he's you know, he sees his laser sword

01:09:45 ◼   ► He doesn't even know the name lightsaber, but it's like even if Luke had just said, you know

01:09:50 ◼   ► It just expressed some sort of I've heard of lightsabers, but never believed I'd see well

01:09:55 ◼   ► You want it to be more mysterious than that.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Like, you don't want Neo to know about the Matrix before I get--

01:10:00 ◼   ► like, you want him to be a complete neophyte,

01:10:03 ◼   ► because he's got a-- his arc is he's

01:10:04 ◼   ► a farm boy who dreams something more,

01:10:06 ◼   ► and then this wider world opens up to him.

01:10:08 ◼   ► So I'm perfectly happy with him not knowing at all.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And the explanation, as delivered by Alec Guinness,

01:10:12 ◼   ► was so laid back and not going into a lot of detail.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Like, sure as hell not mentioning midichlorians.

01:10:17 ◼   ► It's like two or three sentences of vague--

01:10:19 ◼   ► it's the type of explanation you would get if this guy's like,

01:10:22 ◼   ► I've decided that I'm going to bring you on board this thing,

01:10:24 ◼   ► But I can't explain it all to you now

01:10:26 ◼   ► Let me just give you the broad strokes and let's move on to the next scene because we gotta go to Mos Eisley

01:10:30 ◼   ► Right and it's a well, you know Luke is our you know, he's there for us

01:10:35 ◼   ► We see this we see that whole thing through Luke's eyes and up until that point in the movie

01:10:39 ◼   ► You know, it's actually it's not like this hybrid fantasy science fiction combo. It's more just science fiction

01:10:47 ◼   ► It's just spaceships and laser guns and then all of a sudden in that scene. We're we're explained that it's also a little magic

01:10:54 ◼   ► And that movie, A New Hope is not force heavy.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Like, it's like, alright, lightsabers, force, Jedi, I guess Vader's got one, it's an excuse to have a sword fight.

01:11:02 ◼   ► But like, really, Luke is like...

01:11:04 ◼   ► He's not so sure.

01:11:06 ◼   ► I think it's only the mind trick that is magic.

01:11:09 ◼   ► They don't even do the force move stuff.

01:11:11 ◼   ► Yeah, but what I'm saying is like, what Luke dreams about is being a pilot.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Like, he wants to fly a spaceship and he's interested in the rebellion.

01:11:18 ◼   ► You know about the rebellion? He's totally interested in the rebellion.

01:11:20 ◼   ► So he's a liberal, basically. Like, he's against the Empire.

01:11:23 ◼   ► He's for he's for the rebellion

01:11:24 ◼   ► He just wants it big since friend has gone off into war to join the rebellion and he's totally into flying things and be like

01:11:31 ◼   ► He's he's a young

01:11:33 ◼   ► Punk who you know wants to get off this stinking rock and do great things and none of that has anything to do with the force

01:11:39 ◼   ► Or swords or sword fighting or moving things with your mind or anything like that's totally the second movie gets him into that and then

01:11:44 ◼   ► The first movie he's just like, you know

01:11:46 ◼   ► It's like a coming-of-age story and going off to the war and even though he does a little bit of force stuff

01:11:51 ◼   ► It's like Obi-Wan says taking your first step into a larger world he has but that larger world does not yet interest him

01:11:57 ◼   ► He doesn't realize the importance of it until more or less

01:11:59 ◼   ► He sees obi-wan disappear in a puff of smoke and then starts talking to him through his you know

01:12:04 ◼   ► He can hear him in his mind. He's like, maybe there's something to this force thing and and that aspect of it

01:12:09 ◼   ► I do think was loosely plotted out by Lucas where here in this first movie

01:12:13 ◼   ► the force is really just for Vader and obi-wan and Luke gets a

01:12:18 ◼   ► Taste of it he gets a few drops on his tongue, you know

01:12:21 ◼   ► And it helps him is it helps him have final victory in the movie like in the end

01:12:26 ◼   ► His piling skills are not enough and he has to you know, use the force

01:12:29 ◼   ► That's the whole big takeaway from and that's the climax. No, but what has he done?

01:12:32 ◼   ► He's barely scratched the surface of like he didn't find anyone with lightsaber the whole movie, right?

01:12:37 ◼   ► He got shot in the butt by the little floaty ball

01:12:39 ◼   ► But in the end it was all I mean, this is why the movie resonated so much

01:12:43 ◼   ► It was you know, the the force stuff is like

01:12:45 ◼   ► It's a little bit of Luddite ISM of turn off your targeting computer

01:12:48 ◼   ► But like you know that that things that are inside you your emotions and feelings and thoughts

01:12:53 ◼   ► Are that feel so powerful inside you can actually have an external manifestation

01:12:57 ◼   ► manifestation of that power and it will lead you to victory and it'll be a good victory and the star will blow up and no

01:13:02 ◼   ► One else could have made that shot and so on and so forth. All right, I

01:13:05 ◼   ► Think and I know this is might be controversial. I think and I think John you and I have even talked about this

01:13:11 ◼   ► I think that when Lucas wrote

01:13:14 ◼   ► Star Wars or what I call Star Wars the new hope episode 4

01:13:18 ◼   ► And I think he thought if this is a hit and I get to make the rest of the trilogy

01:13:22 ◼   ► You know, that was the whole thing

01:13:23 ◼   ► I say I've got to make this first one and if it's successful, holy shit

01:13:26 ◼   ► Then I can you know worry I can write and finish, you know, that's planned trilogy

01:13:30 ◼   ► I think he wrote it with the idea that Luke was gonna be the guy who gets the girl. I

01:13:35 ◼   ► Think so, yeah, it's reasonable and the whole first movie completely supports that right

01:13:42 ◼   ► I don't think there was any plan at all for Leia to be his sister. No, he did plan on Vader being his father

01:13:47 ◼   ► I mean and there's the whole thing where Vader's I think the German word for father

01:13:51 ◼   ► I

01:13:53 ◼   ► Think that might have been there

01:13:54 ◼   ► Although I'm still not even convinced of that because when obi-wan tells him that Vader he was killed by killed by Vader

01:14:02 ◼   ► It it plays well in hindsight

01:14:06 ◼   ► But I can't help but think that in from what we know of Lucas overall like he's if that's what he thought overall

01:14:11 ◼   ► He would have overplayed it and it would have been like he killed your father. So if you watch a scene

01:14:16 ◼   ► I just well actually as it happens. I just watched that scene just before coming on this podcast and

01:14:21 ◼   ► There's two ways you can take it one way if you look at it with hindsight, it is acted perfectly to be like

01:14:27 ◼   ► He's thinking of like what he's gonna say

01:14:32 ◼   ► You know, how is he gonna say if he knows he's gonna lie, right in hindsight?

01:14:36 ◼   ► It can look like that the other way that the same

01:14:38 ◼   ► Performance from Alec Guinness can look is you don't want to tell kid what happened to his father especially his father died like

01:14:44 ◼   ► Don't ask me about your father. I gotta tell you that you know he was killed by Darth Vader, and it's unpleasant and

01:14:50 ◼   ► The same performance read like either one of those things reads on it perfectly obviously the one with hindsight

01:14:57 ◼   ► You're like oh, it's totally that performance, but it could also just as easily be a little kid

01:15:01 ◼   ► Just asked me about his father, and I know this father was killed. He didn't he didn't die peacefully in his sleep

01:15:07 ◼   ► He was killed by Darth Vader. Darth Vader's a bad guy. He's leading those people who are you know like it reads that way as well

01:15:13 ◼   ► I don't know if Lucas told Alec Guinness by the way when Luke asks about what happened to his father

01:15:18 ◼   ► You're going to be essentially lying even if I can't tell you what did happen to his father what you're gonna

01:15:22 ◼   ► Tell him isn't the truth so play

01:15:24 ◼   ► I get the feeling I get the feeling that Lucas made up Vader being his father in the second one

01:15:29 ◼   ► And I get the feeling that

01:15:31 ◼   ► He just went back in so many things in Jedi. I feel that he just went back to the well

01:15:36 ◼   ► He made another Death Star.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Like that, even as a kid, I found that kind of boring.

01:15:41 ◼   ► But it makes a nice circle.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Like, again, I was thinking of a new hope when 3PO is going to the oil bath.

01:15:48 ◼   ► And I forget, Luke is talking to him or whatever.

01:15:51 ◼   ► And he's like, you know, I'm just a protocol droid and not very good at telling stories.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Like, throw away lines like that that get paid off two movies later.

01:15:58 ◼   ► I'll give you that one.

01:15:59 ◼   ► I agree.

01:15:59 ◼   ► I agree.

01:15:59 ◼   ► But I do think that he shoehorned Leia into being part of the Skywalker family in Jedi

01:16:08 ◼   ► because I think he felt that he needed the reveal that was akin to the Wannian Empire.

01:16:12 ◼   ► - But yeah, but he did, in Empire, he said, "No, there is another." So he's got to pay off

01:16:17 ◼   ► "there is another." I'm glad he didn't leave that dangling. The fact that the another is Leia...

01:16:21 ◼   ► - That's true.

01:16:21 ◼   ► - Nah, it's mostly immaterial, unless they build on that in episode seven or something.

01:16:25 ◼   ► It's mostly immaterial. It's like basically, he says there's another, which means that like,

01:16:29 ◼   ► Basically that's there to let you know that Luke could conceivably die an empire and he came pretty darn close to dying like

01:16:34 ◼   ► To make you think guess what guys I'm willing to kill off a main character because there is another right and just so happens

01:16:40 ◼   ► It turns out that he lives and in a Jedi way find out who the other is

01:16:43 ◼   ► But it's mostly inconsequential because hey Luke is alive Luke again if Luke had died a Jedi then the other would be

01:16:48 ◼   ► What we would be hanging our hat on for the future

01:16:50 ◼   ► Well, I mean the concept the consequence is that it makes Luke go

01:16:57 ◼   ► Ballistic and ultimately defeated Vader through anger, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was it was worked into the movie

01:17:02 ◼   ► It's just like talk about making it up as you go along. I'm willing to believe that like having

01:17:08 ◼   ► Vader turn out to be his father fine that works but how many surprise familiar relationships are you allowed in a trilogy?

01:17:14 ◼   ► Right, yeah by saying oh and guess what another main characters also related to you really is everybody related to me

01:17:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it could have been it didn't have to be a sister

01:17:24 ◼   ► It could have just been that Leia was the the other one. Yeah

01:17:27 ◼   ► Late late and untapped force right and what's next when I say Darth Vader made c3p out come on. It's ridiculous

01:17:33 ◼   ► And actually he does exactly that yet don't listen. I talk about that

01:17:37 ◼   ► But he does he does like do the the Vulcan mind chat with with Leia as her escaping best man

01:17:44 ◼   ► yeah, no, I think this the who the other is and

01:17:47 ◼   ► The fact that they can have their relate that communication with each other is either

01:17:52 ◼   ► They related or the both Jedi's are both and either one would be semi-plausible because there's plenty of movies

01:17:57 ◼   ► You're like, oh, I just feel that my non magical movies like I have some somehow a feeling that my my brother is in a terrible

01:18:04 ◼   ► Car, you know people totally buy into that stuff especially

01:18:06 ◼   ► In this movie we have established

01:18:09 ◼   ► Telepathic links between people even when one of them is dead like the first movie

01:18:13 ◼   ► Ben is in his ear saying, you know use the force of the Kubernetes

01:18:17 ◼   ► So as soon as he's communicated telepathy with Leia like I guess she's the other

01:18:21 ◼   ► See and I think and if you look remember the original posters and it's like the even the Star Wars logo is a little different

01:18:28 ◼   ► It may be even a lot different. It's still got like the connected letters, but it's like in a different almost like a pyramid shape

01:18:34 ◼   ► And it's like there's it's a lot more stylized

01:18:39 ◼   ► It doesn't I don't know that any of the characters quite look like likenesses of the actual actors

01:18:43 ◼   ► But Luke is holding his lightsaber above his head his chest. He's got his big chest coming out. Yeah

01:18:50 ◼   ► Lay is wrapped around his leg it it to me that that poster gets authorized

01:18:57 ◼   ► Because it's a tale of this

01:18:59 ◼   ► Boy from a farm which is what it ended up being who goes on this grand adventure and gets the girl

01:19:06 ◼   ► Well, he rescues the princess. He rescues her I swing across the canyon on a rope together

01:19:11 ◼   ► Like she gives him a kiss for that for luck and then there's the famous kiss in on Hoth in

01:19:17 ◼   ► By that time you're doing actual romance and the first movie was so gentle

01:19:21 ◼   ► It's like yeah, even Disney even Disney movie has like Belle kiss the beasts and the lips at the end

01:19:26 ◼   ► There was nothing like it's Star Wars. There's no kissing on the lips

01:19:28 ◼   ► It's just like all kind of it's understood that Luke has saved the princess

01:19:33 ◼   ► Nothing is you know, nothing is as sexual though as that poster, right?

01:19:38 ◼   ► And you know because that was the way they did movie posters

01:19:41 ◼   ► like you had to promise even if there's no actual sex in the movie you have to promise there's gonna be a guy there's gonna

01:19:46 ◼   ► to be a girl and the girl is going to be a submissive princess who wraps herself

01:19:49 ◼   ► around the hero's leg and the hero's chest is gonna be gigantic I mean Mark

01:19:52 ◼   ► Hamill's chest is not gigantic but on those posters it's busting out of his

01:19:55 ◼   ► white tunic you know it's the way they advertise things. I'm looking at it now and and if

01:20:02 ◼   ► I'm correct and Han Han and Chewie I don't think are even in it it's you know

01:20:07 ◼   ► there's a big Vader behind him but it's Han it's it's Luke and Leia and the

01:20:14 ◼   ► droids yeah and it's a good call what they like if you're gonna if you're

01:20:17 ◼   ► gonna call an audible it's a good call it's the reason Empire is so great it's

01:20:21 ◼   ► because after the first movie you've got you know the childhood fairy tale we're

01:20:24 ◼   ► gonna save the princess Luke gets to swing across the canyon with her they

01:20:28 ◼   ► all get medals at the end Leia gives them a special smile during the medal

01:20:31 ◼   ► ceremony it's appropriate for like prepubescent boys who understand the

01:20:35 ◼   ► concept of getting the girl or whatever but once you're about to make the second

01:20:39 ◼   ► movie, you say, you know what? You know, Leia, actually, the

01:20:44 ◼   ► bickering Leia did with Han is a better indication of a budding

01:20:47 ◼   ► romantic relationship than anything that happened between

01:20:49 ◼   ► Leia and Luke. And that is a much more interesting

01:20:51 ◼   ► relationship. So why don't we go in that direction for Empire and

01:20:54 ◼   ► they did and it was smart. And again, it doesn't have to be

01:20:56 ◼   ► Luke's sister to do that. Because that that is the actual

01:20:59 ◼   ► relationship with chemistry. Right? chemistry between Luke

01:21:02 ◼   ► and Leia for the second movie to build.

01:21:04 ◼   ► You could, well, I don't know about at the time when I first

01:21:07 ◼   ► Probably not because I was very young, but you can tell when she kisses Luke that it's basically just to get at Han, right?

01:21:15 ◼   ► Like it's got very little to do with kissing Luke.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And Luke is not ready to handle it. Luke is like putting his hands behind his head going, "Oh, a girl kissed me!"

01:21:25 ◼   ► It's like that's, you know, it's, it's... And Han is, you know...

01:21:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but he plays it cool. He's like, "Yeah, take care, kid."

01:21:31 ◼   ► kid. Luke is not, Luke is, as far as we know, Luke hasn't even had a girlfriend here, whereas Han

01:21:37 ◼   ► is, you know, is worldly wise and, yeah, like he's wise enough not to... There is chemistry between the...

01:21:43 ◼   ► He doesn't, he's not even upset with Luke or anything, he's just like, okay, well, she wants,

01:21:48 ◼   ► basically he's resigned that she won that argument. Right, but it's still the two of them.

01:21:53 ◼   ► He still knows it's the two of them and Luke is just a bystander. That's exactly it, that's,

01:21:57 ◼   ► That's the way he plays as a guy.

01:21:59 ◼   ► - And Luke does not spend any part of Empire

01:22:01 ◼   ► pining over Leia or thinking about Leia

01:22:03 ◼   ► in as anyway, except for a friend.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Like when he's having these trances on Dagobah,

01:22:06 ◼   ► he's like, "Oh, Leia, like in terms of his friends

01:22:09 ◼   ► that he's gotta save, Han, Leia,

01:22:11 ◼   ► he's got to go save his friends."

01:22:12 ◼   ► He is not, he's not hung up on Leia at all.

01:22:15 ◼   ► - Right.

01:22:15 ◼   ► - Speaking about sort of the beginning part of Empire,

01:22:20 ◼   ► what I loved, 'cause I, you know,

01:22:22 ◼   ► after we decided we couldn't do this,

01:22:24 ◼   ► of course I watched them all over again,

01:22:26 ◼   ► The story of Han in the first one ends with him basically turning around and saving the day, right?

01:22:34 ◼   ► Or at least helping Luke save the day. And then we come immediately into Empire Strikes Back

01:22:40 ◼   ► and we keep building on that. As soon as he finds out that Luke is out in the cold,

01:22:46 ◼   ► he's willing to die to go get him. The character progression starts exactly where it ended.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Han had already decided that like no he's all in he's committed to saving like these people are his friends and he's gonna go help them

01:22:58 ◼   ► And we don't we don't we don't repeat the arc. You know we don't need to repeat the arc

01:23:03 ◼   ► It's like immediately. He's jumping on his taunt on and

01:23:06 ◼   ► Seeing people in hell there's a continuation of the arc of like he's being chased because he's got a price on his head like we know

01:23:11 ◼   ► There's there's that yeah, but he but he but we don't see him being that the scandal to his friends anymore like he's completely dedicated

01:23:17 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, no, he goes out he goes out he goes out for luke and when uh the imperials attack the base

01:23:23 ◼   ► He immediately goes to get leya and try to try to get it out

01:23:26 ◼   ► Like that's the first thing he does like there's and we've had time removed because the the end of a new hope and the beginning

01:23:32 ◼   ► Empire there's a substantial amount of time during which there's more skirmish like that. They've been to war together

01:23:37 ◼   ► So now they're essentially not just friends, but war buddies. Yeah, there's hijinks in there. There's a word mandel

01:23:43 ◼   ► Well, exactly, but that to me is like the brilliant that's like Star Wars at its best is the Ord Van Delft story where it's just

01:23:49 ◼   ► They just mention it. It's a cool sounding name

01:23:51 ◼   ► You know something happened, you know, there's just this in in the in the quickest way possible simply through dialogue

01:24:00 ◼   ► They just imply and it feels genuine that they've been through some shit in between the two movies and we haven't seen it

01:24:06 ◼   ► And it reminds you that bounty hunters exist in the universe which comes in later right and thereafter

01:24:13 ◼   ► Yeah, all right. I think I can't I could do a whole show just on Empire because I think Empire

01:24:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I think Empire is what what holds the whole thing together

01:24:22 ◼   ► I think Star Wars was clearly, you know, the original one was a huge sensation. It was the biggest pop cultural

01:24:28 ◼   ► You know

01:24:30 ◼   ► Movie of the whole series nothing is ever going to top that

01:24:32 ◼   ► But the one that makes it something that we're gonna keep hoping for sequels that are good is Empire

01:24:38 ◼   ► I mean how when when else has there been a sequel that is?

01:24:42 ◼   ► You know as good or better than

01:24:45 ◼   ► The mine aliens aliens, here's the thing about maybe aliens, but here's the thing about Star Wars versus Empire

01:24:53 ◼   ► Empire took it to another level like it's not just because the Godfather one and Godfather two are at the same level

01:25:00 ◼   ► They're both the same kind of movie their movies for adults. They're serious

01:25:03 ◼   ► They are there

01:25:04 ◼   ► They're aiming for the same type of things and the fact that Godfather 2 was just as good and some people might say better

01:25:09 ◼   ► But they're still the same.

01:25:10 ◼   ► "Star Wars," "New Hope" is like kind of more of a kids movie.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Again, the romance is not real romance.

01:25:17 ◼   ► It's very simplified.

01:25:18 ◼   ► It's very sort of fairy tale.

01:25:22 ◼   ► It aged right along with the kids.

01:25:24 ◼   ► And "Empire" is like, actually, we're

01:25:25 ◼   ► going to take this even more seriously.

01:25:27 ◼   ► And not in a everything is gritty,

01:25:29 ◼   ► Tim Burton's Batman or Dark Knight or Batman begins.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Like, everybody's got to be dark and gritty or whatever.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Just say, we're going to have real emotional stakes.

01:25:36 ◼   ► We're going to have relationships

01:25:38 ◼   ► that read as true to adults, right? So it will, and kids will pick up on the fact that the

01:25:43 ◼   ► relationship between Han and Leia is a more legitimate adult relationship than anything that

01:25:49 ◼   ► took place in A New Hope. And that's why it stands out. It's like, it's taking it to the next level.

01:25:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I loved your observation, probably on the incomparable, in fact, I'm sure it was, that

01:26:04 ◼   ► Han and Leia kiss on the Falcon and then they get interrupted but when they end up in in cloud city

01:26:09 ◼   ► And she's think they're there. They're in that sweet that they're being hooked up on

01:26:14 ◼   ► It's kind of I never thought of it before but you had the observation that it's clearly that slept together by that point

01:26:21 ◼   ► This is just their demeanor together like there's so much more like

01:26:25 ◼   ► Relaxed around each other and a release of tension. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're just like pretty chill with each other and yeah

01:26:31 ◼   ► Yeah, the way they relate to each other is that finally so much more?

01:26:34 ◼   ► You know is will will they won't they the answer was that they will and they did and now they can relate to each other

01:26:40 ◼   ► Directly without because they're so guarded with each other before kind of like you know that they're trying to guard themselves

01:26:45 ◼   ► But not reveal too much of themselves

01:26:47 ◼   ► But show that they want to get together and like and eventually that settles down and they can finally

01:26:52 ◼   ► Relate to each other directly without sort of the artifice of like and it happens it happens off camera and all you see is like that

01:27:00 ◼   ► Just the familiarity and like that. They're still teasing each other, but it's so much

01:27:05 ◼   ► There's less tension going on, you know up until then nothing that they've said to each other is actually what either one is actually feeling

01:27:12 ◼   ► Exactly, right. Yeah, except maybe

01:27:15 ◼   ► The oh you you do have your moments not many but you do have them yeah

01:27:26 ◼   ► about the fact they slept together where they believe both me and Dan Morin as

01:27:29 ◼   ► Often happens had the same thought at the same time in that podcast

01:27:32 ◼   ► Yeah, but Hans whole take up until then is I could take you would leave you and

01:27:38 ◼   ► Which isn't true. He's obsessed and her angle is I'm not interested in you at all, which is not true

01:27:43 ◼   ► She's interested even though she knows she shouldn't be right. Like if there's a line that that is honest. It's her. I like nice men

01:27:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm nice man

01:27:55 ◼   ► But that's so basic

01:27:57 ◼   ► That brings us to to me. What was the great thing about Empire was that it seemed as though George Lucas

01:28:03 ◼   ► recognized his weaknesses and recognized everything that would could have been improved in the first one and

01:28:11 ◼   ► then did they either took action to rectify it or or

01:28:15 ◼   ► Delegated so for example stilted character dialogue. Guess what George Lucas very creative at making stories create a brilliant

01:28:24 ◼   ► Seriously brilliant world builder probably I would argue the most brilliant

01:28:28 ◼   ► Cinematic world builder we've ever seen like you could argue that the Lord of the Rings is a more fully realized world

01:28:36 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's big something but that's a novel. It's not cinema. You know as a purely cinematic world

01:28:41 ◼   ► I would say he's unparalleled. Guess what? He can't write dialogue. What was the Harrison Ford line George?

01:28:47 ◼   ► She can't say we can't you can write this but you can't say it. Yeah, you can write this but you can't say it

01:28:52 ◼   ► So he brings in two great screenwriters Larry Kasdan who I guess yeah did Raiders came first

01:28:59 ◼   ► did great work on Raiders

01:29:02 ◼   ► which is a fantastic story and has

01:29:04 ◼   ► fantastic dialogue and a fantastic relationship between Harrison Ford and

01:29:09 ◼   ► Marion yeah, well Larry Kasdan second and ladies

01:29:13 ◼   ► Right. Yeah. Well and with the talk about legend the Lee Brackett, right?

01:29:18 ◼   ► who wrote stuff for

01:29:21 ◼   ► for Humphrey Bogart and you know from that whole era from the 40s those 40s film noir

01:29:31 ◼   ► which is great and that's what you know now that I'm older I mean obviously in 1981 when

01:29:36 ◼   ► it came out I had not seen the Maltese Falcon you know I thought black and white movies

01:29:41 ◼   ► were for you know old people but now that I have like a richer film vocabulary and I've

01:29:46 ◼   ► seen movies like that. That's what The Empire Strikes Back crackles with.

01:29:51 ◼   ► They threw away most of that script though like and the spirit of it

01:29:54 ◼   ► still embodies it like but in the big Empire, Making of Empire book by what

01:29:59 ◼   ► Risner or something like that the big giant coffee table book about Making of

01:30:02 ◼   ► Empire which is great I recommend everybody reading that made me feel like

01:30:06 ◼   ► that Lucas picked these people who are amazingly talented who'd work with

01:30:10 ◼   ► before or new or you know like he picked he picked people who whose work he

01:30:14 ◼   ► admired. And then when they said about doing things, either he was disengaged from it, or if

01:30:18 ◼   ► he was engaged, the feeling that I got from him is like, guys, it doesn't have to be that good. Like,

01:30:23 ◼   ► that he would be fine with it if it was like, that they were, they wanted to make it the best

01:30:27 ◼   ► it could possibly be. And if it, up to him, he'd be like, you guys don't need to argue, just go home.

01:30:31 ◼   ► Like, what you've got is fine. Like, for today, yeah, that's fine. Whereas the people actually

01:30:34 ◼   ► involved in making the movie were just like, we're going to make this as good as we can possibly make

01:30:39 ◼   ► it. And they were arguing with each other about every little thing, right down to the actors of

01:30:42 ◼   ► Harrison Ford arguing about Hans' motivations and what he would say in the scene of like

01:30:46 ◼   ► very collaborative, very contentious, aggressive filmmaking on the part of actually making the

01:30:51 ◼   ► movie and that Lucas would be like, "It's just a kids movie guys, just chill." Like you don't,

01:30:56 ◼   ► it's not that like, if Lucas was more involved, he would not have been pressing people to,

01:31:01 ◼   ► and we see what happens when he did have the say over everything that gets involved,

01:31:04 ◼   ► it's like what he cared about deeply was like the design of the ships and the computer graphics and

01:31:11 ◼   ► stuff like that and what he cared less about was like dialogue, story, acting performances,

01:31:16 ◼   ► you know all that type of stuff. So anyway, I'll take a time out for a sponsor break but anybody

01:31:23 ◼   ► who's looking for some good older movies to watch could do worse than some of the ones that

01:31:28 ◼   ► Leigh Brackett worked on the screenplay for. Going backwards in time and just looking at her IMDb

01:31:34 ◼   ► credits, some of the ones that I've seen that I know or stand out. The Long Goodbye from 1973,

01:31:40 ◼   ► that was a

01:31:42 ◼   ► Robert Altman movie but to make a Philip Marlowe detective story set in the 70s starring

01:31:49 ◼   ► What's-his-name the guy from Oh Elliot Gould from

01:31:54 ◼   ► Young kids will know him from oceans 11

01:31:57 ◼   ► Like a 70s take on a 40s film noir, which was awesome

01:32:06 ◼   ► Probably my one of my favorite Westerns ever made Howard Hawks Rio Bravo you guys ever see Rio Bravo. Yeah

01:32:11 ◼   ► Oh my god. It's one of the best movies ever seen Dean Allen are nothing Alan Dean Martin plays alcoholic

01:32:19 ◼   ► Sheriff you don't say

01:32:22 ◼   ► But it's actually to me like a pretty interesting take on

01:32:26 ◼   ► alcoholism in a kid's

01:32:29 ◼   ► action movie, you know with John Wayne as his boss great great great movie and

01:32:34 ◼   ► the big sleep from 1946 with

01:32:37 ◼   ► Humphrey Bogart and

01:32:40 ◼   ► Lauren Bacall

01:32:43 ◼   ► Lauren come on

01:32:45 ◼   ► That's probably the wife. You're only gonna watch one of the ones I just listed watch the big sleep

01:32:48 ◼   ► And I know you're right they didn't use a lot large parts of her script, but it definitely infused the

01:32:55 ◼   ► dialogue of Empire Strikes Back

01:32:58 ◼   ► All right second sponsor let me thank our good friends at

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01:35:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and I know our friend Marco uses Fracture for his... he makes Fractures out of his app

01:35:32 ◼   ► icons. It hangs them on his wall, which I think is a nice idea.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Yeah, that's only useful if you come out with a new app every year, like Marco, and sell

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01:35:40 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's a cool idea. I like it.

01:35:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it is cool. I've heard other people say that, that they do that. Empire. We could

01:35:48 ◼   ► go on and on about Empire but it's there's almost no wasted exposition

01:35:52 ◼   ► you're just like you said you're thrust back in this world it feels like yes

01:35:56 ◼   ► some stuff has gone on but the characters are on this exact same arc

01:35:59 ◼   ► that they were before I always use this word I and to me it epitomizes the sense

01:36:05 ◼   ► of camaraderie between the heroes of the original trilogy it's this palpable

01:36:11 ◼   ► sense of camaraderie which I think is so hard to capture in movies I feel like TV

01:36:17 ◼   ► Shows do a better job of it because can do a better job of it because they have so much more time

01:36:22 ◼   ► Right if you watch Mad Men for six seasons

01:36:25 ◼   ► There's a camaraderie between Roger and Don because they've been through so much together because we've seen them through

01:36:32 ◼   ► You know, I don't know a hundred and forty hours of television

01:36:36 ◼   ► Whereas it for Star Wars to have gotten to this palpable sense of camaraderie between these characters that you truly believe

01:36:44 ◼   ► after just you know

01:36:47 ◼   ► two hours and 15 minutes of

01:36:49 ◼   ► Film so far when Han says, you know, they say you're never gonna survive the night and he goes well

01:36:55 ◼   ► Then I'll see you in hell and he goes out. You just believe it. I believed it as a kid

01:36:59 ◼   ► I'd still it chokes me up

01:37:00 ◼   ► I get a lump in my throat when not when he does that when I watch that because I feel to me like it's the

01:37:05 ◼   ► it's not just

01:37:07 ◼   ► Serving the story. It's that's what this guy would do. Yeah, of course. He's going of course

01:37:11 ◼   ► He's like what else is he gonna do?

01:37:13 ◼   ► And the way you build that camaraderie is you have to have the people, the ensemble cast, you have to have them

01:37:19 ◼   ► not sort of

01:37:22 ◼   ► come together and just be friends from the beginning and go through. You need to have them be like at odds

01:37:27 ◼   ► over certain things and have them butt heads about those things and come, not so much resolve those things,

01:37:33 ◼   ► but come to an understanding about those things. Whatever things they disagree on.

01:37:36 ◼   ► I'm totally into the force and think it's great. You think it's hokey. I'm with the rebellion

01:37:42 ◼   ► you're not so sure about it, I'm a hothead, I'm more calm.

01:37:47 ◼   ► Whatever personality traits that don't mesh,

01:37:51 ◼   ► you have to show them clashing,

01:37:53 ◼   ► and then you have to show that they,

01:37:54 ◼   ► through the other things that become more important,

01:37:57 ◼   ► they come to an understanding about those differences

01:37:59 ◼   ► and become friends.

01:38:00 ◼   ► And then you also need to have them go through things,

01:38:02 ◼   ► like John said about madmen,

01:38:03 ◼   ► you have to have them go through the moment

01:38:05 ◼   ► where they succeed in business, fail in business,

01:38:07 ◼   ► where one person is vulnerable because he's drunk

01:38:09 ◼   ► and says something, the other person to have

01:38:11 ◼   ► one or two true moments between people and have like,

01:38:14 ◼   ► you could even have on a TV series,

01:38:16 ◼   ► you could have a misunderstanding or betrayal

01:38:18 ◼   ► that eventually, you know, they figure out how to work out.

01:38:21 ◼   ► Like you have so much more time to have those things,

01:38:24 ◼   ► but in Star Wars with the ensemble cast,

01:38:25 ◼   ► in the first movie, you throw these guys together.

01:38:28 ◼   ► They don't know what to make of each other.

01:38:29 ◼   ► They probably never seen anybody like each other.

01:38:31 ◼   ► And there's other characters in the mix and that, you know,

01:38:33 ◼   ► that Obi-Wan is there and Han is just, you know,

01:38:36 ◼   ► gonna do a job, but you know,

01:38:38 ◼   ► it kind of feels for these people.

01:38:40 ◼   ► The old guy's weird and he dies and they're both there when the old guy dies

01:38:43 ◼   ► Like you have to have that right?

01:38:45 ◼   ► I think the problem with a lot of ensemble movies the more modern ones is you throw together this group of attractive personable

01:38:50 ◼   ► Well-adjusted smart witty people and they just kind of walk parallel to each other side by side through the plot and that does not build camaraderie

01:38:58 ◼   ► Yeah, like hon

01:39:00 ◼   ► It's very clear out because I just watched a new hope recently and it's very clear, huh?

01:39:04 ◼   ► Hon when he first meets them, he just doesn't even believe him

01:39:08 ◼   ► He doesn't believe he doesn't know what the hell kind of trouble they're in

01:39:10 ◼   ► But he it's just his his cynical self thinks whatever problem whatever it is

01:39:14 ◼   ► They want me to take them to Alderaan for it's no big deal. They're telling me it's the Empire. I trust me

01:39:19 ◼   ► I've seen trouble with the Empire. This is bullshit. Yeah, he doesn't believe I'm gonna until the two starters for show up and he's like

01:39:24 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, okay

01:39:25 ◼   ► actually did you know in the cantina all he's thinking about is ripping them off right and

01:39:30 ◼   ► vastly overcharging him

01:39:36 ◼   ► episode about Empire. So Han is doing the thing where he's talking to them and you know negotiating the price and Luke is being not a

01:39:42 ◼   ► good negotiator and Obi-Wan's trying to you know, tell him to calm down and work it out, right?

01:39:46 ◼   ► They both leave the table. What you're left with at that point, I think at that point you had seen Han

01:39:50 ◼   ► I forgot if you've seen him with Greedo or not yet

01:39:52 ◼   ► But anyway, you saw Han dealing with these guys as like I've got a fast ship here or whatever as soon as they leave the table

01:39:57 ◼   ► He talks to Chewie person to person with his true self

01:40:01 ◼   ► These guys must really be desperate and at that point when you see him talking to Chewie with his true self

01:40:05 ◼   ► you realize this guy's not such a hard ass, right? He clearly cares for Chewie, they have

01:40:11 ◼   ► a real relationship with each other. He doesn't talk to Chewie like hired help, he doesn't

01:40:16 ◼   ► have this bluster and everything with Chewie, so you know that there's a heart of gold inside

01:40:20 ◼   ► this scoundrel. So that's set up from the very beginning, and that's how it works out.

01:40:25 ◼   ► It's not like this guy is a hard ass and then suddenly turns over a new leaf. The whole

01:40:30 ◼   ► movie he has this conflict about, "I have to show that I'm tough on the outside, but

01:40:34 ◼   ► the inside I'm a sensitive soul.

01:40:37 ◼   ► There's a great--go ahead, John.

01:40:39 ◼   ► Well just also the sense that he's in some financial trouble to some bad, you know, some

01:40:44 ◼   ► bad people.

01:40:45 ◼   ► And he's scared about it.

01:40:46 ◼   ► Yeah, Guito comes almost immediately after this, after the stormtroopers show up and

01:40:51 ◼   ► then the next time we visit Han, Guito's there.

01:40:56 ◼   ► There's a great scene like that.

01:40:57 ◼   ► And then he does the indie thing in that scene where he's like, "Don't have it with me."

01:41:00 ◼   ► That's kind of the sarcasm.

01:41:01 ◼   ► Indiana Jones and Han Solo blended a lot in my mind as a kid because there's a lot of crossover in terms of Harrison Ford playing

01:41:07 ◼   ► the kind of

01:41:08 ◼   ► You know gonna talk his way out of a jam type of thing

01:41:12 ◼   ► Like he'll fight his way out of a jam and he'll talk his way out of jam and he's able to do both and he'll switch

01:41:15 ◼   ► Between them based on the needs of the situation

01:41:18 ◼   ► So eventually he doesn't have to shoot Greedo, but he tries to talk his way out of it first

01:41:20 ◼   ► And if that doesn't work, he's setting up his shooting the way

01:41:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think what I'm getting my own self off point

01:41:26 ◼   ► But I think that's why it's okay that that Han shoots first

01:41:29 ◼   ► is that he really did try to get out of that without any trouble and only when it became ultimately

01:41:34 ◼   ► Really clear that Greta was just gonna shoot him

01:41:37 ◼   ► and as

01:41:38 ◼   ► storm say that sets up his moral journey in like that he is slightly more amoral the beginning of the movie because he's like I just

01:41:44 ◼   ► Care about he's trying to he's trying to put up a front that says I'm tough. I only care about myself

01:41:49 ◼   ► It's not true, but that's the front he's trying to put up. See you later

01:41:52 ◼   ► I don't care about your rebellion

01:41:54 ◼   ► He can't actually stick to that but he's totally willing to shoot first because that's what a tough guy

01:41:58 ◼   ► He's he's play acting the tough guy that he wishes. Yeah, he's cut his paints himself into a corner by being a tough guy

01:42:03 ◼   ► They didn't have to shoot the guy and so they should screed Oh like greed Oh a scum and like indie

01:42:07 ◼   ► Yeah, you know Indy shoots the guy with the sword in the street

01:42:10 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't feel a little bit of a hard ass because he's survived this long doing this job exactly

01:42:15 ◼   ► I think there's one

01:42:16 ◼   ► Just two seconds. There's one scene in Empire that I think really speaks to this

01:42:20 ◼   ► Aspect of Han which is he's already saved Luke and Luke's being

01:42:25 ◼   ► rehabilitated in that and it backed a tank and Luke is about to go out in this snow speeder to

01:42:29 ◼   ► You know try to slow down the the Imperial assault

01:42:33 ◼   ► Meanwhile Han is on top of the Falcon trying to patch it back up and

01:42:38 ◼   ► Luke says goodbye to Chewie and Chewie gives him a big hug

01:42:43 ◼   ► And then there's just no words spoken between between Han and Luke. They just kind of smile at each other and nod and it's

01:42:51 ◼   ► still it's it's

01:42:54 ◼   ► Luke kind of accepting Han's tough guy, outer shell.

01:43:01 ◼   ► Like, they can't actually say anything, but there's just such a good connection between them then that I love it.

01:43:07 ◼   ► I love that there was an intentional choice not to provide any dialogue there,

01:43:12 ◼   ► because I think anything you could have said would have just ruined it.

01:43:14 ◼   ► Well, he stops him when he's walking away.

01:43:16 ◼   ► Like, Luke was walking away.

01:43:18 ◼   ► It's like, well, I've got my hug from Chewie, I'm going to walk away.

01:43:20 ◼   ► And then Han basically stops him by yelling, hey.

01:43:23 ◼   ► But then after after he's gotten his attention, that doesn't need to be a big, you know, exactly.

01:43:27 ◼   ► It's kind of that's a macho.

01:43:29 ◼   ► They just just not. But it's not even that macho.

01:43:31 ◼   ► It's more like I think there is a line there that could be.

01:43:35 ◼   ► But it's like the line is not the line is not what they would say.

01:43:37 ◼   ► The line is not what George Lucas would write for them, which is take care out there because you are a good friend and I like you.

01:43:42 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah. It's something like take these or something.

01:43:45 ◼   ► It's maybe good luck.

01:43:46 ◼   ► But it's so it's so minimal.

01:43:48 ◼   ► But the way that they're communicating, it's not a tough guy thing.

01:43:51 ◼   ► It's more of like a good friend thing.

01:43:54 ◼   ► Do you know what I mean?

01:43:55 ◼   ► It's not like, yeah, like fist bump.

01:43:57 ◼   ► It's not that it's,

01:43:58 ◼   ► Well, no, it's the, it's the slight reveal of like bringing down that wall ever so slightly.

01:44:04 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:44:04 ◼   ► So they are communicating without that wall being in the way.

01:44:08 ◼   ► But if people looking on the outside, they don't see it's still a little bit of a macho thing because you can't show your emotions.

01:44:12 ◼   ► Yes, I take that.

01:44:14 ◼   ► But it's yes.

01:44:15 ◼   ► And it's an interesting contrast with Chewie, who is, I think, the actual toughest of the heroes.

01:44:21 ◼   ► and, you know, the one with the boars temper, and he's the one who just lets the hug fly.

01:44:26 ◼   ► He's in touch with his emotions when the doors close.

01:44:30 ◼   ► He wails because his friend is out there. He is much more able,

01:44:34 ◼   ► he's much more in touch with his emotions, does not feel the need to tamp them down like Macho Man.

01:44:38 ◼   ► Right, he always lets his emotions fly.

01:44:40 ◼   ► As Lato finds out.

01:44:41 ◼   ► I

01:44:43 ◼   ► Was just gonna say to me

01:44:48 ◼   ► Circling all the way back to earlier in the show when I said that I found indie for more disappointing than Phantom Menace

01:44:54 ◼   ► I agree with your assessment that the Phantom Menace had more

01:44:58 ◼   ► The hope that it would be good was bigger than the hope that indie would be good

01:45:03 ◼   ► My thought my line of thinking on that was simply though that Spielberg is still a very talented filmmaker

01:45:09 ◼   ► And I thought that meant you know, there was a good chance

01:45:13 ◼   ► It could still be a good movie. Whereas by the time Phantom Menace came out because of the special editions. I was already so

01:45:19 ◼   ► deeply pessimistic because

01:45:21 ◼   ► Almost everything I would say like nine out of every ten changes in the special editions was for the worse

01:45:27 ◼   ► Yeah

01:45:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and I just made me think this man George Lucas has lost his fucking mind and now he's gonna make a whole movie and I

01:45:35 ◼   ► To me everything that I thought would be go wrong because of the special edition to the original trilogy was exactly what went wrong with

01:45:42 ◼   ► the whole

01:45:43 ◼   ► Original trilogy so I will say this about Empire Strikes Back

01:45:46 ◼   ► It is the only one that survived being special edition and I think came up better for it in many ways

01:45:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the changes they made to Empire and special edition were pointless

01:45:56 ◼   ► They did not need to be made but because Empire was so perfect

01:46:00 ◼   ► So what can you do to it? Like, he had to fight to even find things to put in.

01:46:05 ◼   ► Like, "Well, when Vader leaves Cloud City, how does he get back to his starter store? We should see that."

01:46:09 ◼   ► So wait, that's stupid, but the running around--

01:46:11 ◼   ► That's the level of crap you see.

01:46:12 ◼   ► That is stupid, but the running around in the hallways of Cloud City makes it look nicer, because you can see outside.

01:46:17 ◼   ► I kind of like it when it was all white. But that was Lucas's whole thing, is like,

01:46:20 ◼   ► "What could I not do because of budget or technology or time or both?"

01:46:23 ◼   ► Like, "Well, I couldn't have things through the windows. I had to paint them all white, so I'll put stuff in the windows."

01:46:27 ◼   ► in the windows. I didn't like the stuff in the windows. I liked it being all white. When

01:46:30 ◼   ► I was a kid I didn't feel like, "Hey, why are the walls opaque?" I felt like this is

01:46:33 ◼   ► a weird futuristic looking set where everything is white. And when they changed it, it jumped

01:46:38 ◼   ► out to me.

01:46:39 ◼   ► Sure, but it didn't make it worse. It was the movie that didn't get worse for being

01:46:42 ◼   ► special editions.

01:46:43 ◼   ► It didn't get a pretty--because who cares about that? Like, it's a minor point. Like,

01:46:46 ◼   ► "Oh, we get to see them fly into Cloud City." Meh, it doesn't fit in with the rest of the

01:46:49 ◼   ► movie. It sticks out, you don't need it. But like, there was so little they had to do.

01:46:53 ◼   ► They weren't inserting entire new musical numbers, for example.

01:46:56 ◼   ► They weren't altering major plot points like having Greedo shoot at Han.

01:47:01 ◼   ► They didn't load up 20 more AT-ATs in the Hoth battlefield.

01:47:06 ◼   ► Right. They were like, "Oh, I wish I could have had more things going on in the Hoth

01:47:09 ◼   ► battlefield." No, the amount of things in the Hoth battle scene was appropriate. It was fine.

01:47:13 ◼   ► You don't need to have, "Oh, let's put a bunch of things in the background, too."

01:47:15 ◼   ► And then we have a whole other section where we fly around. It didn't need to be there.

01:47:19 ◼   ► Yeah, they cleaned up the mat lines. They added a few things here and there.

01:47:22 ◼   ► They showed the wamper arm getting chopped off.

01:47:24 ◼   ► The matte line thing that annoys me with that is, I don't know if you guys remember, but they redid the matte line.

01:47:30 ◼   ► So it wasn't called Special Edition, but they did a cleaned up effects version of it.

01:47:33 ◼   ► I don't remember what release it was for. Maybe it was for like VHS or maybe like, but they, they,

01:47:38 ◼   ► he did go back and clean up a lot of the worst of the optical matting.

01:47:41 ◼   ► And that was the approach, like, that's why I kind of had high hopes for Special Editions,

01:47:46 ◼   ► because it was kind of like, oh, it's going to be more of that stuff.

01:47:48 ◼   ► It's going to be like things that were limitations of technology at the time,

01:47:51 ◼   ► where the mat lines were super annoying or when there was something just clean that i don't know

01:47:55 ◼   ► if you remember better than the snow speeders used to be able to see through the cockpit into the

01:47:58 ◼   ► yeah yeah slightly translucent and you oh yeah make that if you can make it opaque now fine

01:48:03 ◼   ► because that's you feel like that's not changing the movie and it's a special edition and it's like

01:48:07 ◼   ► cleaned up but it's not like insert entirely new footage yeah yeah and i i remember and i believe

01:48:12 ◼   ► it too as i've read that uh with the mat lines on the spaceships like in the dog fighting

01:48:18 ◼   ► A new hope when it was theatrically shown originally they might it you might have able to squint and see them

01:48:24 ◼   ► But just because of the nature between projecting versus the home video transfer

01:48:28 ◼   ► They were nowhere near as noticeable a lot of it was really just that it was that the first home video transfer was too light

01:48:34 ◼   ► They blew out the blacks

01:48:36 ◼   ► Whereas everything looked it was a lot richer black. It wasn't like wow

01:48:40 ◼   ► I don't remember seeing those lines around the tie fader fighters when I was a kid West cuz you didn't really see him

01:48:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd buy that. Yeah

01:48:47 ◼   ► But anyway, that was my thing as I and to me nothing epitomizes it more than the Han shooting first

01:48:52 ◼   ► And I know it's a cliche. I know that it's like a super popular t-shirt, you know Han shot first

01:48:57 ◼   ► But I feel like it's one of those things that it it's a cliche because it really does it

01:49:03 ◼   ► It's a way to just put your finger on everything that's wrong with the special editions

01:49:07 ◼   ► because it seems to me it always and this is the way I put it is it's almost as though like if

01:49:12 ◼   ► George Lucas had sold Star Wars to Disney in 93 and then Disney did the exact same things

01:49:19 ◼   ► You'd be like, oh my god. This corporation doesn't know jack shit

01:49:23 ◼   ► It's like they don't even understand Star Wars and they're ruining this great thing

01:49:26 ◼   ► It's almost mind-boggling that it was all done by the guy who made it

01:49:31 ◼   ► Well, it's not my body. It makes sense to me because the guy who made it got older

01:49:35 ◼   ► It's the same thing that happened with the walkie-talkies in ET

01:49:37 ◼   ► It's like both people are like I'm I'm very well known for this famous movie now

01:49:41 ◼   ► Now I'm an older person and when I go back and look at the movie that I made when I was

01:49:44 ◼   ► a younger man, I feel differently about it.

01:49:47 ◼   ► And if I was making it today, I would make it differently.

01:49:49 ◼   ► And I feel it's too harsh for Han to shoot first because Han is a sympathetic character

01:49:54 ◼   ► and you start thinking of the children and I'm a father now or whatever.

01:49:56 ◼   ► And the whole lesson from this is fine, then make a different movie now.

01:50:01 ◼   ► This is the movie you made when you were a young man and this is a movie made by a young

01:50:06 ◼   ► man.

01:50:07 ◼   ► And when you go back and change that, that is the worst sin of the movies.

01:50:11 ◼   ► I know that you have changed.

01:50:12 ◼   ► If you have changed, make new art

01:50:13 ◼   ► that expresses where you are today.

01:50:15 ◼   ► But don't, and Spielberg,

01:50:16 ◼   ► the fact that his contemporary Spielberg

01:50:18 ◼   ► did the same thing with E.T.,

01:50:19 ◼   ► oh, it's too upsetting that the people chasing after E.T.

01:50:22 ◼   ► have shotguns, put a walkie-talkie in there.

01:50:23 ◼   ► That's how you feel now as a 50, 60 year old man,

01:50:26 ◼   ► it's fine, but you can't go back

01:50:27 ◼   ► and change the thing you made when you were a young man.

01:50:29 ◼   ► - Did he go back and change that back to guns at one point?

01:50:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, he was guilted into it

01:50:33 ◼   ► because he's also less stubborn than George.

01:50:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:50:36 ◼   ► He was like, yeah, that was--

01:50:36 ◼   ► - But it's the same impulse,

01:50:38 ◼   ► because the people who made the movies got older,

01:50:40 ◼   ► And they still had the creative control to say you know what I want to make a new version of this movie that better reflects

01:50:45 ◼   ► Who I am today, and it's like no make make a new movie for who you are today

01:50:48 ◼   ► That's the movie you made then when you were a different person, and it was a valid thing to be I

01:50:52 ◼   ► Agree with both of you. I think we're saying the same thing which is that you know the

01:50:57 ◼   ► You would have to write an entirely different scene to not have him shoot first because the thing if you if you've seen the film

01:51:04 ◼   ► Even once you can see that that he tries to talk his way out of it

01:51:07 ◼   ► He realizes he doesn't and there is no way out for him other than to shoot credo

01:51:11 ◼   ► Greedo is going to kill him right there over my dead body. Yeah, that's the idea

01:51:14 ◼   ► I mean and the thing is he's prepping for like he's he is a cagey person. He is prepping for that the whole time

01:51:20 ◼   ► He's like he's not gonna say

01:51:21 ◼   ► Oh after I fail to talk myself out of it then think of a plan B plan B is already ready plan B has to already

01:51:25 ◼   ► Be ready because that's how he lives this long in his business

01:51:27 ◼   ► It feels like a change that was mandated by like Disney corporate, you know

01:51:32 ◼   ► Like we we can't have a hero shoot first

01:51:36 ◼   ► Barely can be bothered to take out the blackface in their old movies

01:51:39 ◼   ► I would have just left the shooting first like that's fine. Well, I'm just upset about I'm just saying though

01:51:45 ◼   ► It feels like somebody outside the film who hadn't even seen it is just holding up a check lock a checklist

01:51:51 ◼   ► That says the heroes can't do this

01:51:53 ◼   ► It feels like it feels like somebody from like that. What is that thing the

01:51:55 ◼   ► Something parents Association people always write to the FCC to complain

01:51:59 ◼   ► It's like sort of like an old person who's like Oh kids these days and they're cursing and

01:52:06 ◼   ► baggy pants and we really need to quill this up and like it's that type of that

01:52:10 ◼   ► type of idea that older people who are uncomfortable with things that younger

01:52:16 ◼   ► people think are cool like because you know it's just it's just too harsh and

01:52:19 ◼   ► that character feels he was like Han Solo is is a lovable likable good

01:52:23 ◼   ► character and he would never do something that bad whereas a younger

01:52:26 ◼   ► filmmaker or anybody with more artistic integrity to say is good people do bad

01:52:29 ◼   ► things people grow the same reason you know that he grew he should have been

01:52:32 ◼   ► able to say this is what Han was like when he was younger and less wise and

01:52:36 ◼   ► you know and when I made the movie that's the character I made and now Han

01:52:40 ◼   ► is older and more wise and kinder and he has changed but you can't retroactively

01:52:43 ◼   ► go back and make yourself it's like retroactively going back in your own

01:52:46 ◼   ► life and making yourself not do stupid things when you're a teenager that's

01:52:48 ◼   ► part of who you are we haven't spoken much about return of the Jedi yet just

01:52:55 ◼   ► the opening where Luke you know it's sort of you know vaguely touching the

01:53:00 ◼   ► on maybe what a Jedi would do in terms of the dark side so that movie that

01:53:07 ◼   ► movie I think the more I watch it as I get older the more I like it really yeah

01:53:12 ◼   ► I don't love it and it's nowhere near it doesn't make me anywhere near as happy

01:53:15 ◼   ► as Star Wars or Empire does but I almost feel like I don't know how else I'm

01:53:20 ◼   ► nostalgic yeah okay well so I put it I put it above Star Wars for me just

01:53:26 ◼   ► because I feel like it is a more,

01:53:29 ◼   ► it's like, so Empire took it up to the next level.

01:53:31 ◼   ► Say here's a movie that's appreciated for all ages.

01:53:34 ◼   ► It has sophisticated story, emotion,

01:53:37 ◼   ► things for adults in it and also kids will love it.

01:53:39 ◼   ► So that brought it up to the adult level.

01:53:41 ◼   ► Jedi brought things back down a little bit

01:53:43 ◼   ► with the EOOC business,

01:53:44 ◼   ► but I feel like the culmination of the arc,

01:53:45 ◼   ► how this story ends, the whole angle of like Luke

01:53:48 ◼   ► doing something that movie heroes never do,

01:53:51 ◼   ► which is, you know, pacifism is the victory.

01:53:53 ◼   ► Like that never happened.

01:53:54 ◼   ► pacifists are wimps.

01:53:56 ◼   ► Nobody wants a pacifist.

01:53:57 ◼   ► You want John McClane to shoot the guy.

01:54:00 ◼   ► You want the cop who was guilty about shooting

01:54:02 ◼   ► a little kid. - And drop him off the roof.

01:54:04 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, and you want the cop who felt bad

01:54:07 ◼   ► or who couldn't pick up his gun again

01:54:08 ◼   ► 'cause he accidentally shot that kid to get his gun back

01:54:10 ◼   ► and say, "Now I'm confident enough

01:54:11 ◼   ► "that I can shoot people again."

01:54:13 ◼   ► Like, pacifism never wins.

01:54:14 ◼   ► Can you think of any other movie anywhere

01:54:17 ◼   ► where pacifism leads to victory?

01:54:18 ◼   ► Again, it's kind of a-- - Gandhi.

01:54:20 ◼   ► - Vader does a thing.

01:54:21 ◼   ► Maybe Gandhi, like, but that's, you know,

01:54:23 ◼   ► You gotta dig pretty deep down.

01:54:26 ◼   ► That is the struggle at the end.

01:54:27 ◼   ► It is a sophisticated struggle,

01:54:31 ◼   ► an emotional struggle between Luke not giving in

01:54:34 ◼   ► to his anger and fighting Vader,

01:54:37 ◼   ► and the moment when Luke is winning the fight,

01:54:39 ◼   ► which is what you want the good guy to do in most movies.

01:54:42 ◼   ► Kids are rooting for the guy, beat the bad guy.

01:54:43 ◼   ► Good guy, beat the bad guy.

01:54:44 ◼   ► Good guy may be down for the count.

01:54:46 ◼   ► Good guy may be on the ropes, but he's gonna come back

01:54:47 ◼   ► and he's strong and he's gonna beat the bad guy.

01:54:50 ◼   ► When that's happening in Jedi, that's the bad.

01:54:53 ◼   ► You're like no Luke don't do that you bring little kids along on that journey because all little kids want is the good guy to

01:54:58 ◼   ► Beat the bad guy to bring little kids along to the point where they are sad when the good guy is beating the bad guy

01:55:04 ◼   ► I think it's a nice message. I think it's a message that is never ever seen and I think the sophistication of that culmination

01:55:10 ◼   ► Yes, they do blow up the Death Star again, but the sophistication of the resolution of the Luke Vader story

01:55:15 ◼   ► Elevates the rest of that movie silly walks and all okay

01:55:19 ◼   ► So I totally agree with you in terms of Luke's arc and yes, that is the most satisfying thing and it's ultimately it redeems

01:55:26 ◼   ► Vader and and Luke and and the space battle is good too. Oh, yeah. Oh my god

01:55:31 ◼   ► They don't make space battles like that

01:55:35 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not just a bunch of ships flying around you care about Lando by that point because you know him you care that he's

01:55:41 ◼   ► Flying someone else's ship, right?

01:55:43 ◼   ► You care like the the three fronts thing people down on the planet people in the space station Luke and the Death Star

01:55:48 ◼   ► The coordination between those three lines of action is I think very well done. I'm tempted to do in many other movies

01:55:55 ◼   ► I think is it you know it's in a modern device

01:55:57 ◼   ► It's like oh we see that all the time the multiple lines of action culminating around one thing

01:56:01 ◼   ► But this was an early occurrence, and I think the balance between those three plot lines is just very nice

01:56:06 ◼   ► So sometimes when they're on the you walk planet

01:56:08 ◼   ► You're not that interested, but at least it's all connected in a way that you understand and in a way

01:56:12 ◼   ► But what I don't like about it is

01:56:14 ◼   ► Sorry, John. I think I cut you off, but just well

01:56:17 ◼   ► I was just gonna say that it makes sense not scientifically not like if you really try to think it through

01:56:22 ◼   ► But if you just go with the flow of Star Wars level logic, it makes sense that all three things are simultaneous

01:56:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean just as a narrative

01:56:30 ◼   ► They're relying on each other like this this this cast that we've come to know and they've been with each other their ensemble cast

01:56:37 ◼   ► They're friends

01:56:38 ◼   ► They are spread out to be different missions for this final battle here and they're all relying on trailer

01:56:43 ◼   ► If Han doesn't get that shield down, they can't do the attack.

01:56:45 ◼   ► And if Luke doesn't defeat the Emperor inside there, it doesn't matter because,

01:56:50 ◼   ► you know, if he gets turned, then they could blow up the Death Star.

01:56:53 ◼   ► But then they have a problem anyway because the Emperor will survive.

01:56:55 ◼   ► The only person who kills the Emperor is Vader.

01:56:56 ◼   ► So all they're all depending on each other and they're all leverage of each other.

01:57:00 ◼   ► Like the Emperor saying, oh, your friends out there, you think they're,

01:57:03 ◼   ► we know about their plan.

01:57:04 ◼   ► They're screwed.

01:57:04 ◼   ► Like it all, it all connects nicely.

01:57:06 ◼   ► So I, so I completely agree with you that I guess the, the last third or at least

01:57:11 ◼   ► the second half of that movie is great.

01:57:13 ◼   ► We've got Akbar, he's amazing. The ship battle is great.

01:57:17 ◼   ► The surprise appearance of the bulk of the Imperial fleet, amazing.

01:57:22 ◼   ► The shield being up and all of those ships having to dodge, amazing.

01:57:26 ◼   ► Everything's great. I love it. And you're totally right about everything coming together.

01:57:30 ◼   ► Jedi for me starts out with the world's most inane Higgledy-piggledy plan of like,

01:57:38 ◼   ► like what the hell are you doing so you give you give the droids to Java and

01:57:44 ◼   ► you've got Lando embedded and then you hand over but then wait then you hand

01:57:52 ◼   ► over Chewbacca and then you try to get and solely released but here's what

01:57:59 ◼   ► hand but you back is already in the thing and then when it comes down to it

01:58:03 ◼   ► you you thought you were gonna get dragged over so like pit so that are too

01:58:07 ◼   ► DJ would be serving drinks and jettison at like a lightsaber to you so you can just had not as

01:58:12 ◼   ► It is the stupidest plan

01:58:15 ◼   ► They're outgunned right because the people are going after Han it's not the entire rebellion the entire rebellion is not coming down to me

01:58:21 ◼   ► No, no, no, it's just it's just it's right. And so they can frontal assault is not gonna work sure

01:58:26 ◼   ► So they seem to have planned ABC and D. So they have a lot of things going on here

01:58:31 ◼   ► They have people embedded there. They have the droids Luke goes there like he's planned

01:58:35 ◼   ► You know he's probably his primary plan is probably you know talk his way

01:58:38 ◼   ► We can get maybe we can get him out with these guys who are embedded if they can't send in Luke

01:58:42 ◼   ► But don't send in Luke with his lightsaber because if Luke gets screwed we need to have his lightsaber available so smuggle that into our

01:58:46 ◼   ► two right it's a lot of contingency plans and basically all their contingencies needed to be there because

01:58:52 ◼   ► everything goes wrong and they're at the brink of death and their final contingency was

01:58:57 ◼   ► Luke can get out of this as long as he has his lightsaber. We do have his lightsaber like yeah

01:59:01 ◼   ► I don't see them as contingencies. Yeah, so much as like we're gonna set up a bunch of things that may be useful and

01:59:07 ◼   ► Maybe it'll all work out like but that's a good opening scene. It's like a good bond opening scene. It's like yeah

01:59:13 ◼   ► That's exactly it's contrived. It's silly it goes on a lot longer than a bond opening scene

01:59:16 ◼   ► It is a little bit contrived

01:59:17 ◼   ► But you get to see first of all you've got to resolve the Han angle and get that out of the way

01:59:20 ◼   ► Yes of the movie and second of all it's it's like a series of fun action set pieces

01:59:25 ◼   ► It's it's like it's you know three bond ones you got the rank or you've got the the Sarlacc pit

01:59:31 ◼   ► And then you've got a lot of like intrigue with people in this guy Bob Bob affair sadly, sorry, John

01:59:35 ◼   ► I keep cutting you off. Well, the only Star Wars movie that doesn't have any scenes on Tatooine

01:59:40 ◼   ► empire, yeah, right and

01:59:43 ◼   ► Here they are back on Tatooine and instead of feeling at that time because at that point

01:59:48 ◼   ► 50% of all Star Wars movies had scenes on Tatooine just you know half just the one here

01:59:54 ◼   ► It is it felt like a you know, he started on Tatooine

01:59:58 ◼   ► He didn't know shit about the force now. He's back on Tatooine and he's a Jedi. Mm-hmm and it felt like a

02:00:03 ◼   ► Another loop you're not just closing the loop on Han being kidnapped and frozen in carbonite. You're closing the loop on Luke's

02:00:10 ◼   ► You know childhood and my that sets up the rest of the arc of the movie though because he you saw him at the end

02:00:17 ◼   ► Of Empire and he is defeated his hand is cut off. He's a mess emotionally. He just found out Vader his father

02:00:23 ◼   ► He is at his low you see him in Jedi

02:00:25 ◼   ► I hear like who is this guy cuz last time I saw him he was drenched in sweat with his hand cut off and looking

02:00:30 ◼   ► Like crap now this guy is confidently strolling into here. I'm strangling people

02:00:34 ◼   ► Confidently going in and he's like super powerful like wow Lucas super powerful

02:00:40 ◼   ► I guess his his arc is done and you find out his arc is not done because what he's got to deal with now is

02:00:44 ◼   ► Oh, so you think you're the master of the force everything

02:00:47 ◼   ► You don't even know what the actual battle is against your nature of not using your newfound power is for evil

02:00:52 ◼   ► And that is the actual battle and that's why he goes back to Yoda and is like, "Oh, you think you're a Jedi? No, you have to face Vader."

02:00:57 ◼   ► Why does he have to face Vader? It's not like some trial.

02:00:59 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, you have to..." The understanding of it being as a kid is like, "You have to face Vader because when you beat him that shows you're the best guy."

02:01:05 ◼   ► "Because the best is the guy." No, you have to face Vader because you have to deal with the whole dark side angle.

02:01:10 ◼   ► Like, remember your failure in the cave. You have to face Vader to show that you really are on the light side of the Force and not the dark side.

02:01:17 ◼   ► The only way to do that is to test yourself against someone that you totally want to kill and not do it.

02:01:21 ◼   ► I agree with you guy that it logically

02:01:25 ◼   ► Probably should just gone in with the lights. Yeah, you know that the whole idea that instead of going in with the lightsaber

02:01:32 ◼   ► I'll smuggle it in our - and I'll just assume that if and when I really need it

02:01:36 ◼   ► He'll be in but he can't go with the lightsaber because if he's got to kill every man woman and child in Jabba's Palace

02:01:42 ◼   ► It's not like he's gonna run race out of there with a gigantic car

02:01:44 ◼   ► No, but he but he grabs somebody's gun and tries to blast jab in the face

02:01:49 ◼   ► That is not that is not Jedi stuff that is he's improvising at that point because he's trying to shoot an unknown guy in the face

02:01:56 ◼   ► That is not he's trying to negotiate his way out of the thing and they're like, oh actually we're gonna send you into the pit

02:02:01 ◼   ► And he tries to use the force to get out of it

02:02:03 ◼   ► It's like things don't go well for him isn't isn't that the first time in the movies?

02:02:08 ◼   ► We've because we you know, the whole the whole original trilogy is relatively light on Jedi action, you know

02:02:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the first time we've seen the Jedi mind trick not work on somebody

02:02:18 ◼   ► And that's where we learn that it only works on weak-minded fools.

02:02:23 ◼   ► Well no, actually I think Kenobi says it, the force can have a powerful influence on

02:02:28 ◼   ► the weak-minded.

02:02:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean the original trilogy is really good at paying off things in ways that movies

02:02:35 ◼   ► are not patient about now.

02:02:36 ◼   ► Movies today have something in the beginning of the movie and they're going to pay it off

02:02:39 ◼   ► by the end of the movie.

02:02:40 ◼   ► Very rarely do you have something in one movie and pay off in a second movie and the Star

02:02:44 ◼   ► Wars trilogy has tons of things in the first movie that do not get paid off until two movies

02:02:48 ◼   ► Which nobody has the guts to do anymore except for maybe like the big Marvel arcs now that they have I mean

02:02:53 ◼   ► But even that is like you're much more assured like they set up so much stuff in a new hope even Jabba the Hutt himself

02:02:58 ◼   ► Is set up in a new hope would have been in the movie they had the time or budget they didn't put him in the second

02:03:02 ◼   ► Movie he's in the third movie, right?

02:03:04 ◼   ► Yeah pay off that the debt that we from we first seen we meet Han Solo 40 minutes into a new hope

02:03:10 ◼   ► We don't pay it off until the third movie

02:03:13 ◼   ► To an empire right like I've got to assume that the guy I know what Mandel is sent by Java. Yeah. No they say that

02:03:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a death. What does he say the general says like a death sentence? Yeah

02:03:22 ◼   ► Yeah, they don't mention Java by name, but it's clearly

02:03:27 ◼   ► And I think Luke's idea that hey, I'll try the Jedi mind trick on it. Maybe this would be easy

02:03:33 ◼   ► Who would that have been dissatisfied if Java was like, okay?

02:03:37 ◼   ► You have to end up puncturing Luke's confidence because he comes in as a star-coated figure

02:03:42 ◼   ► Who could this be and like he works any super confident you will give Han Solo to me and like gradually things fall apart

02:03:47 ◼   ► Well, he gets passed out. He's like how we doing, you know, same as usual. Is that bad, huh?

02:03:51 ◼   ► Like at that point like his his confidence in buster has been pierced and he's back to the old likable Luke that who's like

02:03:58 ◼   ► Well, he's more powerful now, but things really aren't going well anyway

02:04:01 ◼   ► No, cuz he does get past the butler with that the Jedi mind trick, right?

02:04:05 ◼   ► And that's what sets up jabber to be like, oh, yeah fool you idiot like yeah

02:04:11 ◼   ► get his right hand to help, you know? Yeah. Yeah, his twisty-headed consigliere. Yeah,

02:04:15 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a name in people yelling at us right now, but whatever.

02:04:19 ◼   ► My only problem with the opening scene, which I agree pace-wise, even more than the battle at

02:04:25 ◼   ► Hoth, which is almost more of like an opening act because it involves everything from Luke,

02:04:30 ◼   ► you know, getting captured by the wampa and Han rescuing him to the whole battle,

02:04:35 ◼   ► to me that the the the Java scene pace-wise feels like a bond opening yeah thing my only problem

02:04:42 ◼   ► with that whole bit is the ignominious way that Boba Fett yeah it's his end no that's not good

02:04:47 ◼   ► it's not it's not talk about it it's a sign of things to come yeah I don't know how you can do

02:04:53 ◼   ► that what I think they do give him a Wilhelm which is a little nod of respect but other than that

02:04:58 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I don't I just don't understand

02:05:01 ◼   ► You know

02:05:05 ◼   ► They knew how cool he was. Why would you do that?

02:05:07 ◼   ► There's a lot more slapstick in Jedi

02:05:10 ◼   ► There's a lot more humor and slapstick stuff which I think for the most part works

02:05:13 ◼   ► But the fact that Boba Fett gets wrapped up in a slapstick joke and that ends up being his death is a shame

02:05:18 ◼   ► He's the only guy that can go toe-to-toe with the Jedi and he looks like he's gonna win like it

02:05:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and normally he's crafty and waiting for his moment. Like he's established as

02:05:28 ◼   ► as not the toughest bounty hunter, but the smartest, the street

02:05:31 ◼   ► exactly. An empire that establishes his character.

02:05:34 ◼   ► And he doesn't even get taken out by purpose. He gets taken out

02:05:37 ◼   ► by what like, yeah, like a blind hand.

02:05:40 ◼   ► He either should not have been there at all and just leave, you

02:05:44 ◼   ► know, he's not there. Or he should have gotten away. Well, I

02:05:47 ◼   ► mean, I'm okay with Luke cutting his gun in half because like,

02:05:50 ◼   ► well, you're up against a Jedi. Yeah, that can happen. I'm not

02:05:53 ◼   ► okay with the way he died. That's garbage.

02:05:56 ◼   ► But they made him even worse by having him basically be all into that musical scene that they added.

02:06:01 ◼   ► Like, they just keep making Bompafette more and more sad.

02:06:04 ◼   ► Well, in the original run, he just gives the little nod to the sexy girl dancer, which is totally a Bompafette thing.

02:06:10 ◼   ► Of course, yeah. That's badass.

02:06:13 ◼   ► But, yeah. And let's not even get into Jango Fett and the whole...

02:06:18 ◼   ► God, what a waste of a character.

02:06:22 ◼   ► Well, I you know and the only other thing I'll say about return of the Jedi is that to me the weak spot is the

02:06:27 ◼   ► whole thing on

02:06:28 ◼   ► the

02:06:30 ◼   ► Endor moon that third moon event like the whole the middle bit with the Ewoks

02:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it just doesn't live up and it's it's partly just that the whole Ewok thing was where the merchandising started getting out of hand

02:06:41 ◼   ► Because it was like have you guys heard this?

02:06:44 ◼   ► There's the I don't know, you know

02:06:45 ◼   ► You never know how much of this is apocryphal and how much is true but that the toys had already been put into

02:06:49 ◼   ► production before they made the costumes and the costumes were like just incredibly hot and

02:06:54 ◼   ► Just and it really limited the actors ability to move. That's why they just sort of waddle instead of walk. I

02:07:01 ◼   ► Hadn't heard that. I had heard that eventually was gonna be

02:07:05 ◼   ► The Wookie planet Kashi. Yeah. Yeah. Well, which would have been a lot cooler

02:07:10 ◼   ► Yeah, but your work is taking on a strong troopers. You can believe that

02:07:13 ◼   ► Right, and there's just a silliness to it that these little furry, you know

02:07:18 ◼   ► fit tall creatures are beating stormtroopers literally with rocks.

02:07:22 ◼   ► I do like that.

02:07:22 ◼   ► I do like the...

02:07:23 ◼   ► There is a good insurgent angle, like native people insurgent type thing,

02:07:27 ◼   ► but the Ewoks are one of those characters that are mostly

02:07:29 ◼   ► made for kids and don't have much value for adults.

02:07:34 ◼   ► I do like the notion that the Ewoks represent nature,

02:07:39 ◼   ► while the Imperial troops represent like some kind of technological terror.

02:07:43 ◼   ► Yeah, there's that obvious angle and there's also the angle of like an insurgent force

02:07:46 ◼   ► against a much more dominant military force than the fact that insurgents could

02:07:50 ◼   ► Native Americans versus you know during the Indian war.

02:07:56 ◼   ► The same type of territory that was trod much more seriously in Ballastar Galactica.

02:07:59 ◼   ► Yes.

02:08:00 ◼   ► I think that was an allegory for the Iraq war.

02:08:02 ◼   ► Yes.

02:08:02 ◼   ► And I feel like the other thing that was evident with the whole segment is that they had these

02:08:08 ◼   ► characters Han and Leia who we wanted to see more of and would they just they so we got these

02:08:16 ◼   ► scenes with them, you know, having this assault on the shield generator. Whereas the real,

02:08:23 ◼   ► what really mattered, what was left to really matter in the story was the other two angles,

02:08:28 ◼   ► which was the big space battle with the fleet, the two fleets fighting each other. And, you

02:08:34 ◼   ► know, and then primarily the Luke Vader emperor. Yeah, I mean, so the whole Endor thing, in

02:08:38 ◼   ► addition to being silly, just because they're little Ewoks, it really felt a little forced

02:08:44 ◼   ► because it's like well we just want more Han and Leia and we're never gonna see them again.

02:08:48 ◼   ► That was the gorilla action supporting the larger thing it's like you got to deactivate the shield

02:08:52 ◼   ► generator which is in a remote place you're going to send a small strike team because this is your

02:08:55 ◼   ► stealth mission that's why Luke doesn't go on it he's endangering the mission he shouldn't have

02:08:58 ◼   ► come because they could sense him and all stuff you get to have a speeder chase through the the

02:09:02 ◼   ► redwoods that's also a nice action scene there. It's brilliant. Yeah well it fits a lot better

02:09:07 ◼   ► than like the pod racing scene which is just this whole giant digression whereas the the the

02:09:14 ◼   ► speeder bikes and the moon was just a really cool action and the speeder bike is like uh you know

02:09:19 ◼   ► the whole idea is that stealth and so it's jammed their comlink with just a little yeah script he

02:09:23 ◼   ► used to say we want to have a chase scene and the stakes of the chase scene are as if you let these

02:09:27 ◼   ► guys escape they're going to tell the whole empire that you're down here never mind the emperor already

02:09:30 ◼   ► knows you're down here at that point the audience doesn't know that but there's a reason for the

02:09:33 ◼   ► chase scene there's a reason for the desperation it's basically hide and seek we don't want

02:09:37 ◼   ► The Empire to know we're down here some people start getting us the whole thing

02:09:40 ◼   ► You think you got them all then you see two other guys get off on speeder bikes

02:09:42 ◼   ► Then you got to jump on a speeder bike and make sure they don't get out of here

02:09:45 ◼   ► So one thing that used to bother me as a kid and only recently have I come around to the thought that maybe Lucas actually

02:09:51 ◼   ► This is like his last hurrah and he knew what he was doing and it's actually pretty good

02:09:55 ◼   ► Character development and screenwriting is it always bothered me as a kid that in Empire

02:10:02 ◼   ► Vader doesn't really want to hit and not even really just doesn't want to kill Luke

02:10:06 ◼   ► He wants to turn Luke and doesn't want to turn him for the Emperor

02:10:09 ◼   ► I think he truly and sincerely means it when he says join me and

02:10:14 ◼   ► Totally he meant that an empire to possess the whole no. No, it's only an empire

02:10:19 ◼   ► He doesn't even make the offer in return of the Jedi

02:10:22 ◼   ► You know

02:10:23 ◼   ► He just takes custody of Luke and at that moment where he takes custody of Luke and he and he takes his lightsaber

02:10:29 ◼   ► he says he was carrying this sir and he gives him his lightsaber and

02:10:32 ◼   ► It's the little I've said this before on other podcasts

02:10:35 ◼   ► It's one of my favorite little moments in all of the whole series is what does Vader do when he gets Luke's lightsaber?

02:10:40 ◼   ► Well, of course, he turns it on and he tries it out a little bit just waves it around feels the weight

02:10:45 ◼   ► It's like that's what like when I used to ride a skateboard when I was a teenager you get somebody else's skateboard

02:10:50 ◼   ► What do you do you take you know, you may not take it all the way around the block

02:10:52 ◼   ► You just try it out a little bit see what it's like, you know

02:10:55 ◼   ► Well, so the whole father-son angle like you're coming in the beginning like an empire

02:10:59 ◼   ► It's like oh my you're identifying with Luke like oh Darth Vader is my father. What a dramatic revelation

02:11:04 ◼   ► and I'm upset about it and so on and so forth.

02:11:06 ◼   ► By the time Jedi comes around, you're looking at it from the other direction.

02:11:10 ◼   ► Vader is going, "Luke is my--"

02:11:11 ◼   ► Obviously he's known as "Luke is always his son,"

02:11:13 ◼   ► but now he's like, "I've seen my son. This is my son."

02:11:15 ◼   ► If your son made a lightsaber, you'd be kind of proud of like,

02:11:18 ◼   ► "Hey, my son made a pretty good lightsaber here."

02:11:20 ◼   ► - You know, like-- - Your training is now complete?

02:11:22 ◼   ► If you are internally a, you know, a thinking, feeling person,

02:11:26 ◼   ► and you meet up with your son, like, those feelings are going to be there.

02:11:29 ◼   ► Like, the fatherly feelings are going to be there,

02:11:31 ◼   ► and that is the feeling that Vader has in Jedi.

02:11:33 ◼   ► You know there is no conflict, but there is and the conflict is that you know my son is actually pretty cool

02:11:37 ◼   ► And I I wanted him to join me in the last one

02:11:40 ◼   ► But that was me rationalizing my I can still be evil and still have my son here when it's clear that my son is

02:11:44 ◼   ► I'll never join you right clearly. He's not gonna join me

02:11:47 ◼   ► I'm not too gung-ho and kill him cuz I actually kind of like my son. He's actually pretty cool

02:11:50 ◼   ► He does some great things and I feel ashamed of the things that I've done in front of my son

02:11:54 ◼   ► It's too late for me son blah blah blah that

02:11:56 ◼   ► Conflict is present and because Darth Vader wears a mask for all of Jedi you get to be like is Luke like

02:12:02 ◼   ► Wishing that was there and it's not really in Darth Vader, you know and like many times like, you know father

02:12:07 ◼   ► We can he tries it right there on the in the scene and on Endor

02:12:09 ◼   ► He's like come with me father

02:12:11 ◼   ► We can go and like you get nothing from Vader's face mask because it doesn't change expression and you know

02:12:15 ◼   ► Is Luke totally wrong about Vader or is he right?

02:12:18 ◼   ► And they is that what is that when he is that when he turns Vader in or at least starts to turn him like he

02:12:22 ◼   ► Walks off the ad ad and just calls him father immediately

02:12:25 ◼   ► Yeah, no playing up the angles. That's a superpower move right like hi dad

02:12:30 ◼   ► - Yep, yep.

02:12:31 ◼   ► - Like, boom.

02:12:32 ◼   ► - And Vader is resisting it.

02:12:34 ◼   ► - The hole that I always thought I saw as a kid