The Star Wars Thread

[SeanDMan]

So Jedi's are not allowed to have kids/sex, but, they have all those Younglings at the Temple with them.

...Oh Yoda, no! Not another child-sex scandal!

They buy them at the shops.

[Mick]

It only says they can't love, it says nothing about sex

The love thing is stupid. I get where they're going with it, but there's the problem of the paternal and later fraternal relationship that will undoubtedly develop between a master and apprentice.

[Benjamin]

Honestly, that was a really stupid addition to the mythos. "Oh, Jedi aren't supposed to love! We're supposed to give ourselves over to Christ Yoda and live for the benefit of others. Selfishness is the way of the dark side."

Okay, no. Making love to someone isn't inherently selfish. Making her wear that leather BDSM outfit and making her call you a Star Destroyer when you're shafting her, that was selfish, but inherent emotion for another human being IS A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF BEING HUMAN. This is the problem when we let George Lucas keep writing these movies. The guy is a goddamn robot, he understands human emotions about as well as he understands microcellular biology, AKA NOT AT ALL SO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP TRYING TO TALK ABOUT THEM.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who remembered that outfit

[TKz]

My favorite Star Wars conspiracy is that the Emperor wasn't spending all those resources creating crazy superweapons like the Death Star and the Sun Crusher and putting together gigantic fleets of Star Destroyers wasn't to stop the Rebel Alliance, but rather in preparation of the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion that would happen about a quarter century after RoTJ ended.

Now the Emperor is a pretty smart guy. I mean, he got himself elected to Chancellor of the Republic, started a war, earned himself absolute control on both sides of the war, then managed to turn the galaxy against the guys who for a millennium had served as icons of peacekeeping, justice, and democracy. And that takes some serious strategizing! But here's the thing:

At this point, the Republic was falling apart, with or without a Sith-led Separatist movement to nudge them in the wrong direction. The senate was a clusterfuck where nothing ever got done. Corruption reigned supreme. Even the Jedi Council wasn't doing it's job properly. Ideally, Jedi are supposed to act as bastions of compassion and moderation. The way the Jedi would be tasked to deal with a situation is as a balancing influence between, say, two conflicting nation-states, or a particularly quarrelsome trade agreement. Everyone respected and would listen to a Jedi, and even without acting on behalf of the Republic, they should be able to arrive on a scene and be able to allow discussion and bureaucracy to flourish. Instead, the Jedi Council of the waning days of the Republic had grown inward and conservative, spending all their time meditating on the state of the galaxy and not enough time heading out there and fixing shit. This held throughout the war, when Jedi were surprisingly quick to jump to open combat as opposed to discussion.

In short, the Republic was completely and utterly unprepared for a real invasion, from a force that wasn't being controlled by a puppetmaster who was preventing either side from gaining an advantage until the moment was right. The kinds of fleets that were commonplace in the Empire would have been impossible for the Republic to even agree to create, let alone have the wherewithal to actually build. What Palpatine did was take a failing system and tear it out by the roots, replacing it with a brutally efficient, military-industrial focused society - one that could adequately prepare for an invasion of the scale of the Yuuzhan Vong were already beginning.

Second of all, if you think about it, creating a weapon that can destroy planets doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you're fighting a war against a well funded, but decentralized and scattered rebellion. The Rebel Alliance wasn't fighting a war of planets or borders or resources, they were fighting a war of attrition. What good is the ability to destroy a planet when your enemy doesn't even officially control any? The destruction of Alderaan, the only notable use of the Death Star, was a move made by Grand Moff Tarkin, whose Tarkin Doctrine, though it heavily influenced the way the Empire kept a tight grip on even the furthest systems, was not the ultimate purpose of the "ultimate weapon". Tarkin was convinced that the Death Star was his tool, one of intimidation and despotism, that he could use it to keep the Alliance, the biggest threat to his power, at bay. And we all know how that venture turned out.

No, the real purpose of the Death Star was to be able to fight a force that could completely terraform an entire planet into a gigantic, organic shipyard in a matter of months, and was backed by dozens of 100+ Kilometer acrossworldships. In fact, without the timely arrival of the seed of the original Yuuzhan Vong homeworld, Zonama Sekot, and a Jedi-influenced heretic cult that spurred a slave uprising, it's very unlikely that the denizens of the galaxy could have survived the war at all under the leadership of the New Republic. In fact, it's not really even fair to say that they "won" the war in any sense, with a sizable portion of the population of the galaxy eradicated, Coruscant, the former shining jewel at the heart of every major government for millennia, captured and terraformed beyond recognition, and the New Republic forced to reconstruct itself as the Galactic Alliance. Undoubtedly, for all it's flaws, the Empire could have hammered out a far less Pyrrhic victory over the Vong. And if Palpatine hadn't underestimated the abilities of both the rebellion he never considered a comparable threat, and one young Jedi, perhaps the galaxy could have avoided the deaths of uncountable sentients during the Yuuzhan Vong war years later.

TL;DR: The Emperor destroyed the Republic and built Death Stars to fight off an extragalactic invasion.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ubaqq/what_fan_theories_have_blown_your_mind_with_their/c4u00qk

Pretty fun theory about Star Wars and the Sith/Empire being for a greater purpose. Way too much thinking ahead for Lucas to have thought of it, but still fun.

[Mick]

Well, the only flaw with that theory was the incredible racism and sexism the Empire had, which uh...isn't what you need when you're planning to defend a big ass invasion.

[SeanDMan]

None of that is actually a theory; it's a plot from the EU.

The story goes, when planning to become Chancellor, Palpatine had a plan; stage an extragalactic invasion in order to force people to give him emergency powers so that he could combat them. Once he became Senator, one of his earliest tasks was to commission The Outbound Flight project; sending a group of Jedi to explore beyond the Outer Rim.

The idea was, the Chiss, a race the Emperor had encountered and learned to respect, thanks to their intelligence and tactical aptitudes, would take down Outbound Flight. Palpatine would then use the Chiss as a boogeyman to justify the creation of armies and the start of a war during which he could consolidate political power.

The capture of Vergere, a Jedi Knight, by the Yuuzhan Vong changed that. The Jedi began to support Outbound Flight as a sort of under the table rescue mission; they couldn't officially mount a rescue mission since Vergere was off the reservation when she was captured, but by sending Jedi aboard Outbound Flight, they could find her covertly without ever officially recognizing that she was missing.

Ultimately, the Chiss destroyed Outbound Flight as Palpatine planned but the details became lost in time as the kidnap of Vergere had alerted him to the threat of The Yuuzhan Vong. He couldn't have a war between the Chiss and the humans, as he now needed the Chiss millitary strength to help repel the Vong. Thus, his plans shifted towards the idea of creating a clone army.

Some of this information actually dates back to the first (successful) Star Wars novels penned by Timothy Zahn, and some of it was retconned in when, between prequel movies, they wrote a novel called Outbound Flight. It's not canon since there's no way to assume movie Palpatine had any such intentions, but some authors do enjoy the idea.

[Mick]

Funny you bring up the Zahn novels. It would have been nice in the prequels to at least see Jorus C'Boath....

[Ant]

Man i'd love to see the Thrawn trilogy on the big screen.

[GhostMachine]

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing some X-Wing Rogue Squadron as movies or a tv-series.

[Your Mom]

http://teamcoco.com/video/conan-highlight-harrison-ford-star-wars-bribe

[Crybaby Bunting]

I like how the criticism of Episodes 1-3 is the bizarre nonsensical plot and yet the Yuuzhan Vong War is supposed to make complete sense to those who've read the expanded universe.

[Ant]

I really need to get into some Star Wars novels again. I've read the Bane trilogy. Any others you guys recommend?

[livid]

So, looks like Chiwetel Ejiofor may be the first new actor cast in the new Star Wars.

He's not a household name by any means but he's a solid actor and may be riding high on a potential Best Actor nom for 12 Years a Slave so this makes a lot of sense.

[TKz]

So, looks like Chiwetel Ejiofor may be the first new actor cast in the new Star Wars.

He's not a household name by any means but he's a solid actor and may be riding high on a potential Best Actor nom for 12 Years a Slave so this makes a lot of sense.

That's pretty awesome. Loved him in Serenity and he's on the way to being a bigger name with 12 Years a Slave, so this is nothing but good news.

[Summers]

He was absolutely amazing in Serenity. Never seen him in anything else.

[Kaney]

He was also good in Children Of Men. He's really good.

[Jimmy]

Everyone was really good in Children of Men. I always forget how incredible that film is.

[TheSqauredCircleMessiah]

So, looks like Chiwetel Ejiofor may be the first new actor cast in the new Star Wars.

He's not a household name by any means but he's a solid actor and may be riding high on a potential Best Actor nom for 12 Years a Slave so this makes a lot of sense.

He's been very good in supporting roles in just about any Denzel Washington movie over the past 10 years.

[tristy]

I liked him in American Gangster

[GoGo Yubari]

We have gone this far without mentioning how great he is in Kinky Boots, so I'll mention how great he is in Kinky Boots. He can pretty much play anything so I'm excited for him in Star Wars.