Hapax legomena of the saga (or lack there of) -- Debate!

No, that's true at all. You're simply reading things into my post that aren't there. I merely told Master Shaitan that things were confirmed about Sifo-Dyas. To me it doesn't matter if Sifo-Dyas did indeed order the army of clones. For whatever reasons it mattered to Master Shaitan so I thought I might have been helping him out. For all I know Master Shaitan knew full well that Lucasfilm confirmed that Sifo-Dyas ordered the clones and I was reading something into his post that just wasn't there.

I clearly stated in the final paragraph of that post that it didn't matter that Sifo-Dyas was never explained. For whatever reasons people simply fast forward over that last paragraph. Perhaps they're only interested in preparing their next post instead of listening to an opinion other than their own? What I said was that Sifo-Dyas was only in the story to explain why Lama-Su believes what he believes.

You are turning my post into something it was not and I don't need Lucas quotes, EU or anything else to explain my interpretation of the saga.

 

In terms of the films, yes it is. How was Sifo killed? Who killed him? What did he do exactly? Was he involved at all? Are these answered in the films? - no.

In terms of the films - yes he is.

Nope. The OS databank says this:

According to Jedi investigations, the clone army was apparently commissioned by one of their own, the late Master Sifo-Dyas, a decade previous to their introduction on the battlefield.

"Apparantly". Going by the EU, LOE suggests that Sifo Dyas made an enqiury about the clones but that the Sith took over from there and killed Sifo. Sifo was apparantly a close confedant of Dooku and perhaps sensed the growing problems. He enquired about a clone army to protect the Republic. But thats all he did - if he did that at all. Sidious could have been lying. The fact is, Sifo was just a red herring. The Sith were behind the whole thing. I have read every single source in this issue - so I know what is aid in the films and what is said away from them. And as far as the films go - Sifo Dyas remains a loose end.

Indeed. Like I said - implied in the films.

Uh, no. The dialogue is some of the worst I have ever come across. A for the Jedi - they do not appear corrupt at all to me. The politicians do.

But you see - you're wrong. It is witten that Sifo Dyas didnt order the clones. The only reference made is that he madee an intial contact. The whole thing about who ordered them remains a mystery - until we see that Sidious is behind it all. Its then apparant that he put the order through....or maybe Dooku. The Kaminoans never met Sifo Dyas - therefore, they dont know for sure who made the order. All they were interested in was getting paid. And it was the Republic that "commissioned the order".

This sums up your ignorance to the facts - from the films and the EU and

 

Okay, you win Master Shaitan. You're right I don't know anything about Sifo-Dyas and that's proof I never really cared in the first place. I tried reading "Labyrinth of Evil" but kept on falling asleep because the EU doesn't interest me.

Yeah, I know the devil made them do it all and that absolves them of all guilt, I know this because that's all you ever say. Which if that's the truth then that makes Star Wars as a six episode saga about the most retarded story ever since the characters are all just empty headed vessels that cannot question the moral dilemma of using slaves to fight their fight for them and therefore are not subject to cosmic concepts like karma and/or divine wrath. Okay, that does it, I'm officially a saga basher thanks to Master Shaitan.

Darth Poppy, zombie and Darth-Stryphe are now my heroes because the only episode worth a turd is the original movie and don't call it "A New Hope".

The thing is Darth Poppy if the opening post of this thread is sincere then it's a well thought out thread and I shouldn't have been so harsh on you. I'm Sorry, however, the word gundark still wasn't spoken in "Star Wars".

 

Uh...calm down.

 

No kidding, the dramatics are getting tiring, and if you think I only like "Star Wars" (i.e., ANH) then you really don't know me worth squat.

 

I guess I worded my opening post poorly, for which I apologize. I know "gundark" wasn't in Star Wars. I brought it in to show that other films in the series (particularly the OT) still had such hapax legomena (or as you accurately stated, this, in the saga is a dis legomenon, as it comes back in the PT). I believe I even said it might be useful to make a list of all of them from all of the films--I never said they were all contained only in the original; I merely said that the original had more of them and used, from my point of view, most successfully.

And for the record, my fandom is wider than you suggest; while Star Wars (1977) is my favorite film of all time, I have a lot of love for Empire Strikes Back (though I think it is flawed and sowed seeds that produced not so good fruit in Return of the Jedi) and, believe it or not, Revenge of the Sith, which I find to be a very compelling film that actually gives a lot of weight to the "saga" argument. I do not consider myself a fan of the other three films (including Return of the Jedi, not withstanding its place in the OT); and I really think TPM was the most dissappointing film I have ever seen (largely because it had a lot of potential and was the new beginning to a series that includes my favorite film of all time and, for my taste, diminished its centerpiece: the force). So now you know my opinion. Anyway, part of the appeal of the Star Wars saga, its constituent films and the whole GFFA is how broad the fan base is and how many different ways people can appreciate it, in its entirety, in parts, etc. And thanks to the internet we can all debate it, hopefully in a friendly, respectful way!

 

I just put your name in there because you don't like the changes made to the OT. Don't take it personally and I just don't see how my post was out of control in the least. In fact I told Master Shaitan that he was correct and I apologized to Darth Poppy, but I guess that was out of control?

 

No, you don't need to apologize for anything. I brought a prejudice from way back to the table when I was reading your opening post.

And you're right about hapax legomena like Luke's T-16 was never explained in the original but what's interesting about the movie is we see Luke using his T-16 small scale model to visualize real world maneuvers but the audience doesn't know that that's a model of his T-16 and the actual T-16 is sitting right there in the Lars' garage so we were visually introduced to the T-16 but Luke never talks about it until the end of the movie but we still don't know that the model and thing in the garage is what he's talking about.

 

Don't meant to interrupt the current exchange, but it occurs to me that some of the "unexplained" references in the PT actually are references to EU stuff, and while there's nothing wrong with that necessarily, it dampens the impact. One of my favorite exchanges in ROTS is when Obi Wan references "that business on Cato Nemoidia." I loved that the line was a seeming reference to nothing we would ever learn anything else about, much like the "bounty Hunter at Ord Mandell." I was slightly disappointed to learn that the "business on Cato Nemoidia" is in fact a reference to an EU Clone Wars novel, I forget which. Not a huge thing, but worth noting, as there are a few of those types of things in the PT.

 

It is, but "The Bounty Hunter on Ord Mandell" was fleshed out by the early EU in 1981.

 

True, but that was after ESB. The Cato Nemodia line was in referenceto an already published work.

 

Immolated, what I said was "the dramatics are getting tiring".

wcleere, that's a good point. GL did kind of dump on pre-May 1999 EU with the PT, but at the same time he also went out of his way to reference post-1999 EU. The line in AOTC about Anakin and Obi-wan returning from a mission was also in reference to a published EU work.

 

Yeah...that was in Labyrinth of Evil wasn't it?

 

Approaching Storm.

 

But if you're like me and don't care at all about the EU, then it is an interesting reference to the bigger picture. I don't know what happened there except that Anakin had to save Obi-Wan yet again, but Obi-Wan jokingly says that one doesn't count. All I know about Ord Mandell is that Han and company ran into a bounty hunter there and he decided he had to get rid of the price on his head as a result. I know there is a Master Vos, I know many Bothans died to get the information about the Death Star II to the Rebels, I know Bespin isn't a part of the Mining Guild, but these throwaway lines serve just to illustrate the bigger world the characters exist in. I don't need to have it explained to me or fleshed out because they aren't important to the story except as throwaway lines.

 

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"Attack of the Clones":
Obi-Wan tracks Slave 1----Slave 1 goes into a hole in the ground----Anakin takes his first step into the darkness

"The Empire Strikes Back":
Slave 1 tracks Han---Slave 1 flies away into a beautiful sunlit sky---Vader takes his first step towards the light

This is one of the big issues you and I differ on. Where some see deep philosphical meaning, I merely see good good art design and composition, created for the purpose of being good art design and enhancing the look of the film. I really don't think GL was trying to put that deep a level of meaning into the Saga.
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George Lucas is an editor. That's where he truly excels.

I agree he does a good job of composition and of finding people who excel in this department to carry forward his vision in terms of art, but in instances like the one above I disagree that it is to serve a deeper philisophical meaning. More that it is designed to serve an artistic function.


That's EXACTLY the point! Boba was a victim of the machinations of the Sith and the actions of the Jedi. He was forgotten and left to fend for himself. The point is that we shouldn't forget about people or treat them like meat. Actions have consequences. The seed sown in the second episode of the "Republic" trilogy came back to haunt the characters in the second episode of the "Empire" trilogy.

Not really, not in turns of the Fett factor, that is. He's going against neither the Sith nor the Jedi. He's carrying out Jabba and Vader's dirty work. From what we see in the PT he is following his father's career path, so if Jango had lived or died, he'd still probably be on the bridge of the Executor in ESB either way.


Yes, that's a fair point. But maybe it can also be said that the PT transcended the OT's approach to hapax legomana -- moving from unexplained elemental references to unexplained philosophical conundrums.

Perhaps, but I'll leave that debate for another time. And as was pointed out, the EU factor comes into play with the PT to a degree, where it does not in the OT.

 

It's interesting what he chose to include, as well as what not to. Obviously Coruscant was Zahn's name for the Republic Home world, but there are dozens of similar other references that Lucas dumped, or simply didn't regard. I had forgotten that the line about Obi and Anakin's mission in ATOC was an "Approaching Storm" reference.

There is also the "Clone Wars" cartoon which I enjoyed, but also has a habit of explaining events in the movies that probably need no explanation, such as Grevious' cough.

 

It's interesting to note that where Lucas pays attention to the EU material, it has absolutely no impact on the story at all. He could have written that Master Jones was doing whatever instead of Master Vos or that Obi-Wan didn't consider that business at Las Vegas worth mentioning instead of Cato Neimodia. Those things are so minor that they are insignificant in any extreme. However, when he decides to ignore the EU, he does it in such a way that it requires some serious retconning and mental gymnastics: like with the whole cloning issue and Boba Fett's backstory.

 

I never said anything about deep philosophical meaning. You're putting depth into my statements that was never intended. I only laid out simple symbolism. And to say that Lucas never intended to put that level of meaning into the saga is a gross miscalculation especially when the guy himself says, "there's a lot there that people haven't come to terms with." I mean when Lucas states that Anakin doesn't know that what he's doing is bad because bad people don't know they're bad is beyond your typical good vs. evil story.

When did I ever say his role had anything to do with The Clone Wars? When did I ever say he worked for Vader?
All I ever said was that Boba was conditioned from birth to be a bounty hunter and that is why he probably never questioned whether what he was doing was right or wrong. I mean the whole idea of someone not being able to see beyond that lot in which they were born is not deep philosophy anymore. It may have been ground breaking deep philosophy 2400 years ago but it's pretty much just common knowledge these days. Boba's was born into his lot just like the clones and Jedi. They were all conditioned from birth to act and think a certain way and that's not a good thing to do to people.

 

Actually, Boba isn't like the Jedi or the Clones at all. He wasn't "bred" or conditioned. He was being raised. Boba Fett may have been a clone of Jango, but he was his own person, and was being raised by a father, something the clones nor the Jedi ever had. He may have been "Jango" genetically, but he was his own person, he was Boba. After his father died, he had no influence on his decisions, he didn't have any programming to tell him what to do with his life. His own actions took him down the course that led him to become a bounty hunter. The thing is, all of this for someone who isn't even that prominent in Empire Strikes Back, and many details and loose threads remain elsewhere. Boba was simply a red herring, and that's so unfortunate.

 

I don't know...

I think he ends up just like his father because he's literally a clone of his father.

 

I had thought it was dioxin which wouldn't need to be explained. But I could have been wrong.

 

You're thinking of the similar case of Cato Neimoidia being mentioned in ROTS.

IMO Stover's attempt ( in the ROTS novel ) to explain why "Cato Neimoidia doesn't count" doesn't actually fit with LOE, in which Obi-Wan doesn't really get rescued because, by the time the rescuers get to him, he's already taken out the last of his opponents.

 

Sifo-Dyas is a necessary fix for what otherwise would be a plot hole: the idea that the Jedi would so casually accept a previously secret new army cloned from a bounty hunter who had been trying to kill a Senator on behalf of the Separatists, without suspecting that the bad guys might have something to do with the army. Yoda, after doing some cybersleuthing or whatever (mentioned in LOE), knows that Sifo-Dyas did in fact place the initial order with Kamino. Who paid for it is a different story. It is important that the Jedi knew the initial order was placed by one of their own.

 

From what I remember, Fett's history was that he was part of a group of Imperial Shocktroopers that invaded the galaxy and these shocktroopers were clones...but the term "Imperial" referred to a different Empire.

Then I remember something about Boba Fett being the son of a clone.

In any case, Boba had a connection to the clone wars since the day he was created and the fact that his prequel origin turned out to be vaguely similar to his original history would tend to suggest that Lucas put Boba in AOTC simply because he was part of the story, not to cater to fans.

Besides, if Lucas was just trying to please fans, why on Earth would he make Boba 10 years old after the backlash he got from a lot of fans over the age of Anakin in TPM? It makes no sense. I think Lucas had some vague idea of a history for Boba which he adapted once he began seriously thinking about the prequels. Lucas has never been one to give in to what fans complain about when it comes to telling the story of Star Wars. So I doubt that Boba was put in the film just for us.