Star Wars

[version]

I've got the book, but I haven't been able to face 800 pages of that voice yet. He's a short book guy to me.

 

[william_kent]

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but I love winding up Star Wars fans by pointing out that the original film that kicked off the franchise is an exceptionally poor rework of Hidden Fortress ( pedantically: 隠し砦の三悪人 )

for some reason they get angry but fortunately their glow stick has never been a match for my fist

 

[craner]

Where's this Attack of the Clones essay we were promised?

 

[Clinamenic]

He’s just a farm boy, slave boy, sure, but he’s nowhere near the fields. His fate is outside this desert metropolis with its steel and concrete and flaky paint. He’s a born pilot: You can't trust the sand, he says, but you can trust the oil of an engine, spinning wheels, mornings down by the racetracks.

@version

 

[version]

 

[sus]

Anakin and Padme go off on their little honeymoon, their week in the lake district—Anakin slumming it with a stained rag of a tunic, a prince of darkness in a pauper’s disguise, and with their pet-child R2 in tow, this is the closest they ever get to being a family together. If you remember this—if you keep in mind the scope of their lives—tortured despite their relative privilege; warped by duty and obligation; shrouded in confusion and hurt; streaked by the pangs of betrayal and loss—then the lighthearted exchanges, the childlike naivete, the pastoralism to follow takes on an underlayer of sorrow. It’s not even a true vacation—it’s a work assignment, a flight from danger. But it’s the closest you’ll seem them happy, across the films. Neither has ever been so free; neither has even been so outside the institutions which demand everything from them.

 

[sus]

Dex is an old prospector of the provinces—jetsetting round the Outer Rim, associating with pirates, swapping information with spice traders and fur trappers—all of which qualifies him, now, for consulting on the provenance of foreign objects. In his previous life, he lived on the periphery, the frontier, the avant-garde. Now he sells coffee in the capital, tells stories from his former life. It’s a credit to Kenobi that he knows someone like this, that he can be friendly with a grease-stained ex-prospector, that he’s not just the straight-laced, by-the-book personality he plays—that he feels forced to play—around the loose, intuitive, irreverent Anakin. Skywalker and Amidala aren’t the only ones imprisoned by their duty. Obi-Wan gave a promise to his dying master—to his own surrogate father—to raise and train Anakin. Everything since has been in service to that promise.

When we talk about the way interpersonal love imperils institutional pledges, we are also talking about platonic and familial love. Everything in this story works on the basis of love-based betrayal, individuals rebelling against the mandates of their order out of love. Anakin’s training as a padawan begins here—with Kenobi, willing and offering to leave his Order if he must, to fulfill the promise made even against the Council’s wishes. Anakin’s system-hopping journey across Clones—first to Tatooine, then to Geonosis—the trips that take him into desert hell; that permanently change him; his first steps toward darkness—is similarly spurred by love, first his love for his mother, then Padme’s love for Kenobi. And when the Temple burns with the bodies of innocents, in Sith, it will be for love.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@sus do you like Rebel Moon Part Two? (correct answers only please @Ian Scuffling )

 

[sus]

Never heard of it! Do you like it Mixed?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Never heard of it! Do you like it Mixed?

People hate it but it sounds good

 

[Ian Scuffling]

Haven't seen Rebel Moon, no interest in it.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Haven't seen Rebel Moon, no interest in it.

Only referred to you because of the idea of there being a correct answer to a question of taste.