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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Saga SW Saga In-Depth In-Depth Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Star Wars Saga In-Depth' started by only one kenobi, Dec 23, 2013.

  1. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    In AOTC, Palpatine claims to be "reluctant" to accept the emergency powers proposed by Mas Amedda. Might Lucas have written that line with the ANH novelization's description of Palpatine in mind?
     
  2. only one kenobi

    only one kenobi Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 18, 2012
    It may very well be a nod to the idea that - to all outward appearance - Palaptine was reluctant to take on this power... as if the novel had been written to obscure the truth.

    In terms of the timing of the lines themselves...they follow from Palpatine being seemingly very keen that somebody should make such a proposition. Luckily, though Padmé took her role as Senator very seriously, she'd left Goofy in charge ....I mean, this is literally the plotline here, that a character is sooo lacking in smarts that he is fooled into believing Padmé would endorse this - and this same character was consciously left to represent her in the Senate....
     
  3. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    According to the Legends lore, Reeks (the triceratops-looking animal in the Geonosis arena) are herbivores unless starved, in which case they became omnivores. Similarly, bulls in nature don't charge at people without provocation, but centuried of bullfighting has created the perception that bulls are violent.
     
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  4. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    People say that the events of ROTJ were supposed to happen over the course of VI-IX at the time of ESB's release, but ESB reveals an awful lot for part 2 of 9. Yoda, Vader being Luke's father, and a hologram of The Emperor are all revealed.
     
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  5. oierem

    oierem Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Mar 18, 2009
    Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. By the time Empire was made, ROTJ was designed to be the conclussion of that trilogy.
    The only possibility (and this is JUST possibility) is that "the other" was meant to be revealed as someone important for the third trilogy, and then Lucas changed it to Leia instead. But even if that was true, that doesn't meant that somehow the ST plans were incorporated into ROTJ.
     
  6. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 28, 2001
    The story that's been told is that the confrontation in ROTJ would only be between Luke and Vader and that from the story would then evolve to Luke meeting up with his sibling and from there, going into a final confrontation with Palpatine. But as Lucas also said, he was more concerned with getting through the two stories that he wanted to tell and get all those ideas out there.

    “There are four or five scripts for Star Wars, and you can see as you flip through them where certain ideas germinated and how the story developed. There was never a script completed that had the entire story as it exists now. But by the time I finished the first Star Wars, the basic ideas and plots for Empire and Jedi were also done. As the stories unfolded, I would take certain ideas and save them; I’d put them aside in notebooks. As I was writing Star Wars, I kept taking out all the good parts, and I just kept telling myself I would make other movies someday. It was a mind trip I laid on myself to get me through the script. I just kept taking out stuff, and finally with Star Wars I felt I had one little incident that introduced the characters. So for the last six years [1977-1983] I’ve been trying to get rid of all the ideas I generated and felt so bad about throwing out in the first place.”

    --George Lucas, "Icons" by Denise Worrell, 1989.

    So from that, whatever ideas that he had, but didn't have solidly laid out, were condensed into one film.
     
  7. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    The TPM novelization says, "The Sith had come into being almost two thousand years ago." I wonder: Did Lucas say "almost two thousand years" to Terry Brooks or was that how Brooks interpreted "thousands of years"?
     
  8. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    According to some EU material, the Republic expanding distracted people from the Republic's domestic issues, and as expansion halted, the issues seen in TPM began to arise. This parallels how in 19th-century America, westward expansion distracted people from slavery, and after the Mexican-American War placed what's now the 48 continental states under American control, tensions over slavery rose.

    EU material also suggests that business like the Trade Federation became so large and powerful thanks to the Republic's expansion. This parallels how Westward Expansion paved the way for the Gilded Age.
     
  9. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    Inspiration for Lott Dodd?

     
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  10. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    In the Alan Dean Foster 1976 novelization, Obi-Wan mentions Vader serving "the later corrupt Emperors". I'm assuming this is left over from the first draft. It wouldn't be the only instance of the novelization including things from earlier drafts that GL had discarded by the time he completed the revised fourth draft. For example, Tarkin says that he's informing the Senate that he destroyed Alderaan, which comes from the unrevised fourth draft. The revised fourth draft introduced the Senate's dissolution.
     
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  11. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    The novelization mentions "dissolution" but with a caveat:


    The sound of the single doorway sliding aside and the guards snapping to attention cut him off. His head turned, as did everyone else's.
    Two individuals as different in appearance as they were united in objective had entered the chamber. The nearest to Tagge was a thin, hatchet-faced man with hair and form borrowed from an old broom and the expression of a quiescent piranha. The Grand Moff Tarkin, Governor of numerous outlying Imperial territories, was dwarfed by broad, armored bulk of Lord Darth Vader.
    Tagge, unintimidated but subdued, slowly resumed his seat as Tarkin assumed his place at the end of the conference table. Vader stood next to him, a dominating presence behind the Governor's chair. For a minute Tarkin stared directly at Tagge, then glanced away as if he had seen nothing. Tagge fumed but remained silent.
    As Tarkin's gaze roved around the table a razor-thin smile of satisfaction remained frozen in his features. "The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us, gentlemen. I have just received word that the Emperor has permanently dissolved that misguided body."
    A ripple of astonishment ran through the assembly. "The last remnants," Tarkin continued, "of the Old Republic have finally been swept away."
    "This is impossible," Tagge interjected. "How will the Emperor maintain control of the Imperial bureaucracy?"
    "Senatorial representation has not been formally abolished, you must understand," Tarkin explained. "It has merely been superseded for the—" he smiled a bit more—"duration of the emergency. Regional Governors will now have direct control and a free hand in administering their territories. This means that the Imperial presence can at last be brought to bear properly on the vacillating worlds of the Empire. From now on, fear will keep potentially traitorous local governments in line. Fear of the Imperial fleet—and fear of this battle station."

    Later:

    "The defense systems on Alderaan, despite the Senator's protestations to the contrary, were as strong as any in the Empire. I should conclude that our demonstration was as impressive as it was thorough."
    Tarkin turned to him, nodding. "The Senate is being informed of our action at this very moment. Soon we will be able to announce the extermination of the Alliance itself, as soon as we have dealt with their main military base. Now that their main source of munitions, Alderaan, has been eliminated, the rest of those systems with secessionist inclinations will fall in line quickly enough, you'll see."
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  12. Tosche_Station

    Tosche_Station Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Feb 9, 2015
    I used to think that the novelization - and the Marvel comic adaptation - adhered pretty closely to the shooting script* (revised fourth draft), so was a bit surprised when I learned that the novel even included things from even drafts.

    *Lucas as director even shot the film pretty close to the shooting script; it was primarily in the editing room where the big changes in structure were made (scene sequence order, cut scenes, etc).

    Re: the Emperor:
    It struck me how even as late as the story/script meetings for ROJT (1981), Lucas was calling the Emperor a politician and not a Sith, 'Dark Jedi', Dark Side Force user, etc. Though, he does somewhat make him to be analogous to Yoda, i.e. the way Yoda relates to the Jedi as a "guru".
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2018
  13. Biel Ductavis

    Biel Ductavis Jedi Master star 4

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    Aug 17, 2015
    It's interesting that how the death star destroys planets isn't described in the book. In connection with the passage of the defense systems of Alderaan it could hint at the possibiity of (a) different kind of weapon(s) being against the planet instead of the superlaser may have been originally planned or at least thought about by Lucas.
     
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  14. Martoto77

    Martoto77 Jedi Master star 5

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    Aug 6, 2016
    I think that, originally, things like rescuing the Princess were supposed to take place on Alderaan before Lucas decided to have everything happen on the Death Star.
     
  15. Tosche_Station

    Tosche_Station Jedi Master star 2

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    Feb 9, 2015
    In the third draft of SW, the destruction of Alderaan happens 'off-screen'.
     
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  16. Darth_Accipiter

    Darth_Accipiter Force Ghost star 5

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    Feb 2, 2015
    Only one of them could probably answer that. I'm hoping really badly this time period is one of the settings future canon will explore. There is so much to make up for in the new canon where Legends had answers, albeit some of which that conflicted George's story (ie Sheevy declares the "first" galactic empire in ROTS despite there apparently being a sith empire a few millennia before)
    Its very possible George could have imagined the sith first popped up 2000 years before TPM, though I don't think he had that much backstory in mind when he made the prequels. All we have to go by is that the sith were believed to be wiped out since 1000 years before TPM. Through TPM. we have the time of their presumed demise, not when they began.
     
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  17. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    It seems like GL knew that Palpatine was never a Jedi and hadn't figured out the answer to, "Then who did teach him to use The Force?" Sometime in between ROTJ and when the Tom Veitch pitched the Tales of the Jedi concept, GL decided to make the Sith ancient rivals of the Jedi.
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2018
  18. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    Elaborating on my above post, I wonder if GL had come with the plot point that Palpatine was a secret Force-user rather than an open Force-user.
     
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  19. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

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    Dec 8, 2015
    Correct, but that was the Imperial cloud city prison named Alderaan before that became the Organas' home planet:

    [​IMG]

    (notice the Colin Cantwell TIE fighter prototypes and the "Corellian pirate ship" - still the Tantive IV body - about to enter 'Alderaan' above the second TIE fighter)

    Although the Imperial cloud city prison was replaced by the Death Star, it's nevertheless interesting that the concept of rescuing someone from a cloud city returned in ESB. ;)

    (and from a certain point of view in ROJ, too, considering Luke's efforts to get his father into the shuttle...)
     
    Last edited: May 3, 2018
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  20. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    When writing TPM, did Lucas use "Chancellor" instead of "President" to avoid comparisons to contemporary politics?
     
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  21. darkspine10

    darkspine10 Chosen One star 8

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    Dec 7, 2014
    Could be more of a reference to the title Chancellor, which Hitler used, eventually usurping the Presidential role.

    Hitler used the Reichstag fire to pass the Enabling act, giving himself full legislative powers, much like Palpatine and his Emergency Powers from a fabricated conflict.
     
  22. Biel Ductavis

    Biel Ductavis Jedi Master star 4

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    Aug 17, 2015
    I remember something Lucas apparently wrote during the production of the OT in Secret History of Star Wars, where he uses the term Chancellor instead of President. It's strange in this case, that the EU before the Prequels were released used President as a title for the head of state of the Old Republic.
     
  23. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    Palpatine had the title "President" in the novelization of ANH (Star Wars: From The Adventures of Luke Skywalker):


    Another galaxy, another time.
    The Old Republic was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. No need to note where it was or whence it came, only to know that ... it was the Republic.
    Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match.
    So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside.
    Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.
    Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.
    Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions.
    But a small number of systems rebelled at these new outrages. Declaring themselves opposed to the New Order they began the great battle to restore the Old Republic.
    From the beginning they were vastly outnumbered by the systems held in thrall by the Emperor. In those first dark days it seemed certain the bright flame of resistance would be extinguished before it could cast the light of new truth across a galaxy of oppressed and beaten peoples...
     
  24. Biel Ductavis

    Biel Ductavis Jedi Master star 4

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    Aug 17, 2015
    I know, but the novelization was also a part of the early EU. I wonder why Lucas or other people with this knowledge didn't inform the various authors about the real title if he already made up his mind about this at that time.

    IIRC Lucas already used the term Chancellor during the Production of ANH.
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2018
  25. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

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    Sep 30, 2012
    Is it true that Darth Maul's look was at one point going to be the look of a Senator?
     
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