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

Lit The (Im)Possible Survival of Mace Windu

Discussion in 'Literature' started by KamNale, Nov 14, 2018.

  1. spicer

    spicer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2012
    The key difference between Maul and the characters you mentioned is that all (except the cloned Emperor) were concieved as characters that have survived horrific injuries. Maul wasn't, and there is yet to be an official explanation as to how he survived getting cut in half, falling down a deep shaft, getting transported to a garbage planet and surviving there completely on his own (hate, the Dark Side and magic are lazy cop out answers even for Star Wars standards IMO). Also, the examples you gave are of characters that received medical attention almost immediately after their incidents, something Maul never got.

    Admitedly, the Maul episodes in both TCW and Rebels were some of the best in the series and it showed that the teams did their best to use the resurrected character wisely.
     
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  2. JediBatman

    JediBatman Jedi Master star 4

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    May 3, 2015
    That's like saying "Why does everyone complain about Indiana Jones surviving a nuke when he's survived being thrown through a window without being cut to ribbons by the glass"? Both situations are unlikely, but one is clearly more extreme than the other. There's a clear difference in degree if not in kind. While in works of fiction we'll accept characters surviving improbable or impossible events for the sake of the plot, there's a point where it stretches credibility and becomes ridiculous. But of course everyone will have different breaking points for their Suspension of Disbelief.

    For the characters you mentioned: Vidian, Grevious, Vader, and Trachta are run of the mill cyborgs. Their injuries may have been extreme, but like Spicer said they were treated right after horrific injury.The two most extreme examples you listed are Brand and the Emperor. Nobody cares about Empatojayos Brand, and Palpatine's Clones are almost as controversial as Maul's survival.

    While they did do good character work with Maul, resurecting a character who'd been assumed dead for so long was a mistake. I still half suspect that one day it will turn out that when Tarkin scoffed at the idea of evacuating the Death Star, off-screen he quickly changed his mind and took an escape pod at the last minute.
     
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  3. Coherent Axe

    Coherent Axe Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Dec 20, 2016
    That's not the same either, because we see Tarkin still on the bridge a second before the station explodes (even with a handy countdown timer to boot), so there's no wiggle room for him to have escaped off-screen.
     
  4. JediBatman

    JediBatman Jedi Master star 4

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    May 3, 2015
    And in The Dark Knight Rises we saw Batman in the cockpit of the vehicle carrying the bomb, and then cut to a shot of the countdown timer with only a few seconds left, and yet Batman escaped off screen anyways . . .
     
  5. Coherent Axe

    Coherent Axe Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Dec 20, 2016
    Well sloppy writing and editing in another series don't mean that anything goes in Star Wars. Besides, it'd be a lot easier for Batman to escape a cockpit in a few seconds than for Tarkin to get from the Overbridge to an escape ship in the space of a second.
     
  6. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Sep 7, 2012
    There were actually two early suggestions for bringing back Tarkin: the early ideas for what became Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and the Kenner proposal for their post-ROTJ toys.
     
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  7. JediBatman

    JediBatman Jedi Master star 4

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    May 3, 2015
    I don't want to get too off topic here, but the point is that Maul's improbable survival (after years of being listed as dead in official sources) sets a precedent for other "dead" characters to come back no matter how certain their death seemed at the time. As much as Sam Jackson coming back to Star Wars would be cool, them pulling that same trick again and again could risk character death and resurrection seem cheap.
     
  8. Coherent Axe

    Coherent Axe Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 20, 2016
    Maul contributed to the precedent sure, but Clone Palpatine and Indigestible Boba Fett beat him to the punch, as did plenty of other characters. It's a fantasy series, so cheap resurrections are always a possibility regardless of how intent a creator might be about not resorting to comic-book storylines.

    I'm glad that Rian made sure to show us Snoke's supremely-dead corpse, complete with sticky-out tongue, just to really hammer home how very, really dead he was... and people are still speculating all the myriad ways he'll definitely be back for IX.
     
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  9. Jeff_Ferguson

    Jeff_Ferguson Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 15, 2006
    Those are some very key points. Conceiving of a character who is a horrific injury survivor is apples to the oranges of resurrecting a once-popular character who's been dead for more than ten (real-life) years. And yeah, him being bisected at the waist and then being kept alive by his "hate" is a laughably pathetic explanation even by EU standards.

    Boba Fett surviving the Sarlacc is a closer analogy, but the explanation given --- he detonated a bomb inside the Sarlacc, flew out with his jetpack, and even then was discovered by Dengar in an almost-dead state --- is miles better than the explanation for Maul. I will grant that those details came from later sources and not from Tom Veitch, who originated Boba's survival, but even at that, Veitch's "The Sarlacc found me indigestible" line is open-ended enough to warrant further details, whilst "His hate kept him alive" ... isn't.
     
  10. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    Palpatine did indeed die above Endor-though the concept of essence transfer and Sith spirits was an established one-he even spent time in the Star Wars version of hell. And he is the central villain of Star Wars so that never bothered me.


    Fett of course was insanely creative and resourceful, Sarlacc digestion takes a long time, and he had armour and other means of getting himself out and even then as said above he was nearly dead in the desert.

    Maul wasn't something I could accept though-Naboo's core is plasma and maul should have died once he reached the core, and he isn't as strong as palpatine to somehow transfer his spirit.

    To be sure Windu surviving is not impossible-he is the second most powerful Jedi in the order after Yoda during the prequels but I would prefer he did not come back.
     
  11. FiveFireRings

    FiveFireRings Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 26, 2017
    Well, there are some facts, and then there's what I personally glean/interpret from the evolution of the way Filoni has talked about TCW in interviews as more time has passed...

    We know that GL originated the return of Maul, and Filoni's team was charged with figuring out how to do it -- so at the very least we know it wasn't Filoni's idea, nor anything he and his team would have chosen to do.

    Now, Filoni, for reasons both professional and I'm sure also quite sincerely at heart, has always done nothing but praise GL for his mentorship. But the way he's talked about the creative process on TCW has changed over the years. When the show was airing it was all hype and excitement for whatever was happening (naturally). In later interviews he would cop to "we knew this idea would be a hard sell for some fans" and "we knew we were going to hear objections about this on the internet", and by the time of the recent anniversary panel he'd gotten to the point of even hinting that the writers had little eye-rolling "here we go again" moments with some of GL's more "out there" directives, and ways they'd developed to attempt to steer him away from going down some of those paths.

    That's absolutely just my interpretation, and I can't cite chapter and verse of any particular interviews, but I'd be surprised if there were very many interviews or BTS pieces that I haven's seen from the premiere of TCW until now, and that's definitely a trend I've noticed. It's not specific to the Maul resurrection -- this tone surfaces in discussions of other stuff, like the D-Squad episodes and a lot of deviations from now-Legends canon, of which Dave was pretty protective -- but Maul certainly seems like one of the big "well, the boss says we gotta do it whether we like it or not" moments.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2018
  12. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2005
    All those names and you forgot the greatest of all:

    [​IMG]

    I do think bringing Maul back was a mistake... but only because the moment to do so had passed. Do it in Episode II or not at all.

    As for Windu? If they ever want to make "SAMUEL L. JACKSON vs DARTH VADER: THE MOVIE" then I am not going to complain. Unless he kicks Vader's ass and survives the film, I suppose. [face_laugh]

    If they bring him back for a cartoon or comic or something, then meh.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2018
  13. spicer

    spicer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2012
    Hah, good point! Maw suffered the same injury as Maul. But, like the other examples above, Maw too was treated almost immediately after the bissection. And he didn't fall down a ridiculously deep shaft. So yeah, Maw had it easier than Maul.

    The Darth Vader Fan Film by Star Wars Theory on You Tube had concept art with Mace Windu and Vader fighting. The first part is supposed to come out next month.
     
  14. The Positive Fan

    The Positive Fan Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2015
    Why? Either way, we're being asked to accept what the character is and the circumstances of their having survived whatever they survived.
    So surely Palpatine's survival is even more laughable and pathetic, yes? He was altogether vaporized - the worst injury of all - and it was, quite literally, nothing but "hate and Dark Side" that kept him going for two years until he found his way to a clone body on Byss.

    In the end everyone has their own standards and to each their own, but we're in a universe that demonstrated long before cyborg Maul came along that surviving horrifying injuries via means best described as "silly" is a thing. Applying "he got immediate medical attention" to "logically" justify the survival of a character who's been reduced to nothing but eyeballs and a nose isn't particularly better than applying "it was the Dark Side" to Maul, if you want to get right down to it. I just can't help but feel like for some reason fans apply a different set of rules to Maul than to other characters I cited, and it's all the stranger given that in large part fans do agree on the quality of the story that was driven by Maul's return.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2018
  15. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Sep 7, 2012
    If Maul's hate can keep him alive, then surely Han's pure, selfless love for Ben can keep him alive after his own "death." Love trumps hate, after all.
     
  16. Jeff_Ferguson

    Jeff_Ferguson Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 15, 2006
    The difference should be easy to see. When a character is initially designed by a creator as being an injury survivor, then that's how the character was initially conceived. When a character is initially designed as being alive, healthy, and injury-free, and then they die, and then years later they're brought back to life, their state as an injury survivor is decidedly not how they were initially conceived. Empatajayos Brand was never a fan-favorite character who was killed when he was still walking around and backflipping. Maul was. Claiming that they're the same because fans are being asked to "accept the circumstances of their having survived" is willfully ignoring the out-of-universe circumstances that led to them being the way they are. That's why Boba is a close analogy to Maul but Brand isn't. Consider it from an out-of-universe standpoint rather than an in-universe one.

    Even though this is a bad case of "whataboutism," I'll still bite. Palpatine had clone bodies waiting for him, and the explanation of "He was so powerful with the dark side that he was able to transfer his essence to those clone bodies" is a hell of a lot less lazy than "Maul's hate kept him alive." Maul didn't transfer anything to another body. His literally cut-in-half body stayed alive because of hate. That's not the same as Palps.

    You may feel like fans unfairly apply a different set of rules to Maul, but I see it a different way --- honestly over the past few years the blind apologies on this forum have become way too much. I miss the days when more than a small handful of people here understood that they were allowed to be critical of something even though it had the name Star Wars attached to it.
     
  17. Fredrik Vallestrand

    Fredrik Vallestrand Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 15, 2018
    I don't know if anyone remembers the wise words of a dark lord of the sith. The darkside is pathway to many abilities some considers to be unnatural. It may not click in everyone, but trough hate and anger he could cling to life as unlike jedi there's no life after death for the sith and they fear it, and want stray fom death as long as possible. Love is powerfull but so is anger and fear, Yoda tries teach this to young anakin. And Han was never as stong as Maul, Maul is alpha male of his people and Han is just some average guy in galaxy. I'm sure darksiders can survive anything if strong enough as long as they have half upperbody. It's all about power in the darkside.
     
  18. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jul 24, 2005
    Eh kills jedis and doesnt afraid of anything.
     
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  19. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

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    Jul 8, 1999
    Mace Windu is a bad guy, so he could survive on his hate the same way Maul did.
     
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  20. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2005
  21. Darkslayer

    Darkslayer #1 Sabine Wren Fan star 7

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    Mar 26, 2013
    Mace Windu beat Darth Sidious, no way he would lose to Vader in his right state (if that film ever happened).
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2018
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  22. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2005
    Oh, hello 2005.

    EDIT-
    Seriously, though, I don't follow the logic at all. This isn't Top Trumps.

    Mace's victory over Palpatine does not outright preclude a story in which Vader goes on to defeat him. Why would it?

    Does Naomi Osaka's victory over Serena Williams make her unbeatable from now on?
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2018
  23. themoth

    themoth Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2015
    Anyone can come back if they really want them to. However Windu should stay dead. His death is a key moment for Anakin and a stone cold death cements the importance. I would like to see his body crashing down to the ground level, though, and the street reaction. And how his death was reported, etc.
     
  24. The Positive Fan

    The Positive Fan Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2015
    Yes, if there's one thing Lit is surely bereft of, it's critical opinions. :rolleyes: You do understand there are no "blind apologies" going on here, yes? I'm not arguing that Maul's survival is somehow more plausible than any of those others. I'm only pointing out that singling out Maul's survival as somehow more wildly implausible than that of other characters is a little silly, and does indeed require applying a different set of rules to Maul - as demonstrated by "it's okay for other characters because it's only part of their backstory" and some of the other justifications you and spicer have offered. I do disagree that it represents "lazy writing," but opinions and all that good stuff.
     
  25. Jeff_Ferguson

    Jeff_Ferguson Force Ghost star 5

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    May 15, 2006
    I think there's a disconnect going on here --- I don't care about the in-universe plausibility; I care about the out-of-universe creativity. I think that you're arguing based on IU logic while I'm arguing based on OOU decision-making.

    From an out-of-universe standpoint, if a character is created as an accident survivor, there's nothing lazy or non-creative about it. If a character is resurrected from the grave and suddenly becomes an accident survivor, then that's where laziness and a lack of creativity begin to enter the conversation. That's why the two are apples and oranges. Creating Snoke and giving him a scarred and burned face isn't lazy or non-creative, but if a TV show resurrected him ten years from now, it would be.

    A resurrection like Maul's could, I guess, potentially be good storytelling, but it would need far more than the lazy half-baked explanation it got. If there's a different set of rules, it isn't for Maul, but rather for belated resurrections in general. They need to be pulled off without looking silly. And Maul's failed at that.
     
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