Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 422: Revenge Discussion Thread

No it doesn't. It's not really implausible that someone could hang on for their life. Further, he doesn't "get tossed down a few miles" he gets pulled into a tube, slides a few hundred feet, and comes to a stop. He then slides another few feet before being literally thrown onto an antenna around which he could wrap both his legs and arms. That's quite survivable, especially given that his amputated arm isn't bleeding. It is, in any case, several magnitudes more survivable than being cut in half. If you don't think so, you really need to brush up on your basic understanding of human health. Because, from a factual standpoint, you are just radically wrong to say that someone's as unlikely to grab something while falling and hand on for a few minutes as they are to survive being sliced in half.

It's a pretty huge difference in degree. By providing an explanation, you are acknowledging that there is a "way things work" albeit one that is perhaps different than the world we are used to. You are asking viewers to maintain their suspension of disbelief. By refusing to provide an explanation, you are insulting viewers, by presuming they wouldn't wonder how someone survived being chopped in half.

Obi-wan and Anakin both physically died, and came back as ghosts. I wouldn't have any problem if Darth Maul came back as a ghost. Because the story established you can do that. What's bizarre is him never having died in the first place, in spite of the fact that he got cut in half.

I have no problem with Mother Talzin. Nor do I particularly mind the technique you are describing. But there is an important difference between this and those things. In the other cases, while the audience may not understand what's going on, the characters in-universe do. We just have to keep watching to catch up with them. Here, neither the audience nor the characters have any clue about how Maul could have survived, because he should by all rights be dead. The characters even admitted this in the last two episodes, while simultaneously showing no interest in actually figuring out how it happened. There's a difference between hinting at a larger, untold story, and simply refusing to say anything.

This is the part of your position that I feel is most ridiculous. Do you really believe that suggesting someone who got cut in half should die is being "fanatical" in asking for consistency? Really? Fanatical??? You don't think

 

You know....if would have been great if Maul died in this episode...from SUFFOCATION. Right when Ventress and Obiwan escape, of course air is escaping into space.....BUT...the controls to create that protective force field...are FRIED. Though Savage is able to get himself into another part of a ship where another door is....Maul is sucked out....and eats the coldness of space.

And although Maul is pissed that Obiwan escape...and has SO MUCH HATE. Not even Hate fueled by the darkside could save him from freezing/running out of air.

However since it was ludicrous to have Maul somehow survive because of his strong hatred....then maybe he creates an air bubble around his body....fueled by HATRED.

 

Found this on the wookipedia.


"According to Ashaa, the Mother Machine, the Twi'leks originated as a synthetic lifeform she created under orders from the Rakata, as part of experimentation they hoped would give them insight into the loss of their connection to the Force. [7] This would place the origins of the species c. 25,200 BBY.[4] However, despite the fact that it is known that the Mother Machine's creation of her "children" on the planet Belsavis postdates the fall of the Infinite Empire,[8] an advanced Twi'lek civilization was already present on Ryloth in the year 36,453 BBY, when a visiting Tho Yor starship took a group of Force-studying mystics to Tython."

So if all the Twileks were made by the Mother Machine, then Twileks shouldn't be in Dawn of the Jedi.

So this leads to 2 possibilities.

1. This whole idea of the Mother machine creating twileks is false.

2. It is true...to a certain extent. It just created another "race" of twileks. There are the original alien twileks, and hybrids created from the Mother Machine.

 

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/DarkEmpire.jpg]
[image=http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2605/4220939637_714298232a.jpg]

 

Frakking different. Palpatines original body DIED. Palpatine ACTUALLY DIED, unlike how Maul said he never actually died. He came back in SPIRIT FORM (similar to Obi-wan), and then possessed a cloned body. Quite different from Maul.

If Palpatines resurrection was like how they did Maul. Then in "Dark Empire" we find out that Palpatine never died in ROTJ....he somehow survived, and has been hiding out regaining his strength. That would be retarded....though him coming back how he actually did, is not, because it makes more sense with what we have been given about dead force users returning in some spirit form.

And Boba Fett is different as well. In ROTJ, it says that the sarlacc enjoys its food alive, and that it takes a long time to digest said alive food. Therefore, even if you discard all the EU after ROTJ, it is still a fact that Boba Fett did not die the moment he fell into the Sarlacc, but it took a long time....and he died slowly. I mean, if the creature enjoys its food alive, why would its mouth kill everything that fell into it instantaneously?

Because Boba Fett had the equipment (armor and a jetpack), and was not bisected by Luke (if he did, then i would think his return would be retarded), and did not die right when he fell into the creature, then it is not implausible for him to escape said creature.

 

Of course they're different. One is wrinkly and withered, the other has a cool helmet. That's not the point. The point is that both, for all intents and purposes, were killed in the films and were brought back in other media - like Maul.

 

Well said. This isn't the first time a character who "died" on screen came back to life. Still that doesn't justify bring Maul back to life; afterall bringing back Fett or Palpatine to life are quite bad ideas (although bringing back Palpatine is far worse).

 

True. It's all been done before, and worse; but that doesn't make this good.

 

Also, we were given very clear explanations for Boba Fett and Palpatine's comebacks. Not so for Maul. We got a handwavy, "Kept alive by my hatred!"

Not an explanation.

 

Personally I feel that's enough as an explanation. In the EU we have examples of Sith who kept themselves alive through a similar manner. As for how he got his legs, I don't really care nor do I need to know. I can see why some won't be happy with this (especially those who don't follow the EU) but it's enough for me.

Edit: Plus it's about the same amount of explanation as for Palpatine's return. "I used the force to move my spirit to a different body" isn't really any more explanation than "I used the force to keep myself alive".

 

Yeah, but Dark Empire was a story that revolved around Palpatine's ability to essence transfer. He goes on at lengths how the ultimate Sith Lord would not be defeated if his apprentice threw him down a shaft. It was a plan worthy of a Sith, and the writers gave such a weird concept the proper explanation and a logical thought process.

On Maul's end, he just says I was really pissed and I kept myself alive. No explanation as to how he kept his body together (even more explanation on HOW using his hatred allowed him to do this would have been nice), how he got out of what is clearly a pretty deep pit as part of a plasma mining complex, and how he got onto Lotho Minor and got his legs.

It's not the same, I'm sorry.

However ridiculous something is, if it's given adequate time to be explained this can make it seem less so. If you just have to roll with it, it gets worse and worse, and Talzin's magicks on top of that would probably really rub somebody who's not familiar with the EU the wrong way.

As for me if that there was mechu deru, I'm perfectly fine. If not, well then we'll talk otherwise.

 

Maul's survival is the least problem I had with this story. The magic solves everything and Savage apparently forgetting about how the Nightsisters treated him and the death of his other brother, bothered me more.

But my biggest problem is, where is Palpatine/Sidious in all this? Why wasn't he shown? If Dooku and Ventress can feel Maul, then Sidious should. And Maul doesn't even mention Sidious. Doesn't he want to report to Sidious that he is alive? In TPM and the EU, he seemed loyal to his master, and there was nothing to think Sidious wasn't loyal to him. Or as loyal as a Sith can be. Sidious could have honestly thought he was dead. It would be different if Maul tried to contact Sidious, and Sidious tried to kill him. My opinion, the show was stuck and dropped the character to try to avoid the issue.

Maul is a liability to Sidious. He would want to make sure Maul was under control or neutralized. Since the show wanted to go the "defeated villain who wants revenge on the hero who beat him", and the "two enemies who join forces against a third enemy" route, Sidious was removed from the plot. This feels of lazy writing and weakness of the writer. They went for the usually cliches, instead of going for the real meaty plot of how Sidious reacts to the news of this, and how he deals with this new problem.

Of course, the show could also go with the "Sidious already knows and this is all according to his plans" route.

 

Honestly, seems pretty similar to me. In DE, Sidious's essence transfer is never explained further than he used tohe force to do it. Sure, the plot revolves around the concept but I fail to see how that makes it any less "hand wavy". And the thing is I'm fine with it as we are talking about the Force, which is for almost all intents and purposes magic. It can do things like this and doesn't nee more explanation. Now yes, there is no explanation for how he got his spider legs but as for how he actually survived the bisection I find the force did it to be quite adequate just as I find it to be adequate for how Sidious survived and how Obi-Wan became a ghost.

 

I for one am glad people are discussing Maul's survival as fervently as they are. This is a big deal, and it should be treated as a big deal.

It just sort of disgusts me how condescending Sword manages to be towards Star Wars itself. It's a very weird way of defending the thing you love by trying to prove it's always been nonsensical, badly written, inconsistent, frivolous and inconsequential from the very beginning.

Yes, I do hold Star Wars to higher standards, specially when the maker is personally involved. If for a second I regarded it as this jumbled mess of random events I would be ashamed to frequent a forum dedicated to it...

 

Yes, you're right that both are magic, but I'd still agree with Cadeus. Star Wars has spent a lot of time establishing the fact that the Force is a sort of magic with a lot of potential. Also, as he points out, they spent a lot of time discussing how this was an actual technique/Force power. Therefore, I am willing to accept that this was just something about the Star Wars religion/universe that I didn't know about before. It's fine.

With Darth Maul, we see what very much looks like his physical death. Watch it here. His eyes roll into the back of his head. He falls apart in two pieces, with all his limbs flapping limp. He makes no attempt to keep his head from slamming into the wall. When his body ricochets off and goes on down the tube, there is again no response. He is not physically alive anymore.

And then George Lucas says actually he still was.

I don't care about magic or fantastical stuff in the series. I don't care about things that are technically scientifically inaccurate but the average person might not notice. I don't care that they use the conventions of action movies. I care that they locked the camera on what was obviously a corpse for some ten seconds straight, and then tried to say that it wasn't.

 

Why is it "condescending"? I think GL is a genius, but his gifts are not those of a great dramatist. Like Edgar Rice Burroughs, I appreciate his imagination and admire his business success. But between all the heavy experimentalism and his natural weaknesses as a writer, SW tends to be pretty inchoate and chaotic. I also explained in great technical detail why some portions of his work are not conventionally narrative; obviously I don't think he's stupid. People need to read my posts more carefully.

I love SW but it has serious weaknesses and faults. Fortunately, it doesn't bother me. Lucas isn't a novelist, his "prose" is images, and as a visual/media artist he is as visually "literate" as a great novelist is linguistically "literate". As I've said elsewhere, Lucas doesn't produce "eye candy" he produces "eye protein". If his skills as a filmmaker were as shoddy as his skills as a narrator, I'd've been gone a long time ago!

"Random" -- again, putting words in my mouth. It's obviously not "random" to the author, Lucas. He often tells stories out of sequence, or gives out vital information in unconventional story junctures. I don't know where all this is going, but I trust him enough to go along for the ride. He's generally good at endings, even if he cheats like crazy to get there, or simply neglects to include important elements. However, when he does cheat, it's nothing new, so I'm not surprised. People are acting shocked over the last episode - gimme a break!

Edit: There also seems to be some confusion about what has happened with Maul. Yeah, he died in TPM. But he's been brought back. In 1999, Lucas meant to show that the guy was most definitely d-e-a-d, so we have a very graphic death for him. But he wanted him back, so he created a loophole somewhere, perhaps to be revealed later. Is it realistic? Not much more than the stunt Obi pulls to actually cut him in half, which involves telekinesis (which is basically magic) & superhuman acts of prowess. I mean, if Maul had died in a hospital bed in a naturalistic drama, I'd have a problem with his eight-legged revival. Fortunately, his retconned "death" happens at the end of two solid hours of impossible stuff, under the very un-serious title "The Phantom Menace!" It makes accepting it all so much easier...

 

Very good points, but I think Sids already suspected he was alive, but knew nothing of his whereabouts. Maul seems to hold a grudge that he was not sought out by his master, because surely he must have sensed he was still alive.

 

I'm not putting words in your mouth. I never said you actually wrote those adjectives, those are merely how I sum up your description of Star Wars. That's my interpretation of what you've been saying. Since it doesn't bother you, you obviously don't classify those things this negatively. It's like someone saying "I love big women, your girlfriend is really my type", you might be praising, but you're still calling my girl fat.

To my tastes you're basically saying "Star Wars is crap, it's always been crap, but I love this kind of crap, why are people suddenly complaining?"

 

You see I very much agree that it was a very bad decision. Maul was clearly meant to be killed but than they decided he wasn't is bad storytelling. Yet, I fail to see how it's any worse storytelling than bring back Fett and Palpatine as both were meant to be killed as well. Basically, I don't see how people can be fine with those two returning but can't stand the thought of Maul surviving.

 

Well, generally people are NOT fine with Palpatine and Fett returning. It's always been a sore point with a vast portion of Star Wars fandom. People have just made their peace with it by now, one way or another.

I for one don't recognize Palpatine's rebirth. It just doesn't gel with the whole motif of the films. Fett returning doesn't bother me, because it's both inconsequential to the films, and doesn't strain believability in any way (Sarlacc doesn't kill immediately, guy was unharmed, armed, armoured and with a jet pack).

 

I don't see his eyes rolling into the back of his head. But I guess we see what we want to see, don't we. I see someone going into shock.

 

There's a world of difference between "great weaknesses and faults" and "crap".
Again, words in my mouth. I just called the man a "genius" what more do you want from me?
And heck, I'm the one defending the episode!! What gives?!?
Oh, and not one person has explained to me how one kind of flagrant unreality is somehow more offensive than another. Especially when it's all done in the same style by the same author. "He hit his head! He was cut in half!" And huge whales with flabby wings can't fly, but we didn't even blink at that in AotC!

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071231020441/starwars/images/6/6e/Aiwah.jpg

 

Is there, really? I don't really see how something with GREAT weaknesses and faults can be considered all that great.

That's exactly my point. I just found it very odd to defend the episode and praise GL by trying to prove that Star Wars has had terrible storytelling from the very beginning.

Several people have done so, it's just that you didn't find their arguments convincing.