#prequel trilogy funtiems

[kotorswtor]

re: “AU where Padme’s pregnancy isn’t a secret and the 501st propose baby names,” I understand that in writing the prequel trilogy, Lucas and Co were like “Okay, for the sake of continuity with the OT, we need to establish that it wasn’t common knowledge that Padme was peripartum when she died, and no one can know that she was having twins.”

And I hate all of those, because the implications that naturally fall out are “Padme received zero prenatal medical care, not infrequent/inconsistent, low-tech, or incompetent prenatal care but none, and all of the space wizards around her, including her husband the Space Wizard Ubermensch, are stupid.” Also there’s an unspoken assumption in there that there would be something weird or wrong with Padme being pregnant but keeping the details of that private.

“Yeah, Senator Amidala’s going to have an amount of babies. With whom? Fuck you, that’s with whom.” 

I don’t know why “Senator Amidala, who was very pregnant, died in the chaos around the failed Jedi coup and unfortunately her about-to-be-born kids didn’t make it either” would be a less plausible story than the one we got.

[kotorswtor]

This is spelled out explicitly in early drafts of RotS. I wonder what the motivation was for obscuring it in later iterations.

I usually don’t go in for heavy-handed teleological explanations for everything my Star Wars, but I’m good with this one. It goes a long way to explaining some of Anakin’s weirdness as a character and how his Start of Darkness never really makes sense or falls into place in the movies as released. I can get behind “Anakin was purpose-built as an Always Evil weapon pointed at the heart of the Republic and the Jedi; he was able to hold out and resist that programming at crucial moments because of who he was apart from Palpatine’s influence and because of the support of people who loved him.”

[kotorswtor]

Alternate possible prequel trilogy scenario, since my brain is horrible:

The Galactic senate authorizes the Clone Wars. After exhausting the few legal means they have to oppose it, a substantial fraction of Jedi quit the Order and continue their opposition to the war on [non-human-exclusive equivalent word to ‘humanitarian’] grounds as civilians or self-immolate in protest.

[kotorswtor]

"I have no idea where the Jedi baby-snatcher thing came from. We don’t have any examples in canon or legends material of Jedi forcibly removing children from unwilling parents." Mace was kidnapped from his parents. it was in one of the comics from Clone Wars, but i can't remember which one. but the baby snatching happened only in the prequel-movies-jedi-era

Huh! I stand corrected. I’ll have to see if I can go dig up some panels now.

[kotorswtor]

Rewatched the first half of Kagemusha while sewing last night. I wonder if that was what inspired Lucas to write about a head of state who always traveled with servants who did double-duty as body doubles.

I’m also now wondering how the prequels might’ve been different if Padme had been killed and Sabe or Dorme took her place for the rest of the engagement.

[kotorswtor]

I was looking up actor heights to figure out the probable height difference between Luke and Vader because of this cover, and noticed an odd thing.

Google supplies related actor vital stats when you ask about a given one.

So Hayden Christiansen’s 1.83 m/6′0″. Hold on though. Ewan MacGregor’s 1.78 m/5′10,″ and Anakin towers over Obi-Wan for most of the prequels.

Has Anakin been wearing rock-star platform boots this whole time? I am dying.

(And don’t even get me started on the thing where Jango, and consequently Boba Fett would be about 5′6″)

Here’s an even weirder, hilarious thing: A lot of Star Wars characters have designated canonical heights that are different than the actors who play them, even in situations where bionics or multiple actors aren’t in play.

*shrug*

[kotorswtor]

Other interesting visual things to notice about the interrogation scene in AotC:

We’re not only carrying through a prequels-and-SW:tCW-wide-trend of putting really strong overhead lighting on Obi-Wan, we’re jamming him into the middle of a lightsaber-like blue stasis field. Meanwhile, Dooku is lit from below (a super-classic technique for making people look unnatural/sinister/scary, carries an implication of hellfire) for a lot of the scene and mostly framed by murky red walls. HmmmMMMmmmmm.

[kotorswtor]

Michael Kaminsky’s website seems to no longer exist, but I got a lot out of the  (sometimes unstated-agenda-driven and insufficiently-edited but) super well-documented essays about the writing/production process of Star Wars and how certain ideas in it did or didn’t come together that he wrote alongside The Secret History of Star Wars.

One of those made me flail and make inarticulate noises because it said something I’d been struggling to put into words for a long time: taken without all of the supporting EU material and the great headcanons you all have offered, Anakin’s arc can feel pretty disjointed. There’s a good reason for that. The story introduces, but doesn’t address or reconcile two competing rationalizations for his fall:

Anakin was purpose-engineered from conception to cause suffering to others, and both Sidious’s control over him and his compulsion to harm and destroy were consolidated by the (literally, in the medical sense) addictive properties of use of the dark side of the Force

versus

Anakin was a basically normal, good person who ollied off the slippery slope out of fear of losing those he loved, and a resulting series of ill-considered choices.

From the looks of things, Lucas mostly operated on the assumption of the former. Having big, ambitious, mythologically-resonant ideas and then struggling to communicate them coherently is his self-admitted specialty. The latter angle in RotS was cut together almost entirely in post-production, when to a man, viewers of initial test screenings didn’t feel like they’d seen sufficient rationale for Anakin to go from merely moody and unpleasant to mass-murdering in the space of half an hour.

Your mileage may vary. I actually like the former a lot, even though I usually don’t go in for designated villains or meta that depends too strongly on a teleological view of the Force. I think it makes Anakin’s struggles toward compassion and empathy in the prequel material and his choice at the end of RotJ all the more heroic in retrospect.

[kotorswtor]

It’s “fixate on odd prequel trilogy stuff things” time, so here’s another thing I’ve wondered for a while: do we know what’s going on with the thing where the Jedi Council says “Wow we’ve got Sith under our noses and things are kind of going to shit; our ability to use the Force is diminishing.”

Are they just speculating that because of their limited power to predict and address all the crazy things that are happening? Is Palpatine literally doing something specific to alter the Force or how Jedi interact with it? Is there something about Jedi doctrine/discipline drifting off the true that’s limiting their capacity, that they’ve only recently had occasion to evaluate? Is this a Dragon-Age style sympathetic magic thing where the Force is out of whack because the galaxy is out of whack (because war/death/suffering), not the other way around?

Hello I’m Jedibrarian and I take my throwaway lines in sci-fi franchise movies very seriously

[kotorswtor]

dyingsighs replied to your post: I wonder if Obi-Wan’s “She’s a politic...

I love Satine *breathes* She’s just… their contrast make them such a great pair & the fact that they kept feelings at bay (they try anyway) because they’re principled & yknow ‘keep it real’ augh *throws hands in air* if obi wan is to elope it would be with Satine and NO ONE ELSE #fightme There are days I imagine Obi-Wan in domestic bliss with Satine. At a table, cup of tea, reading the news, his kid runs up to him for a cuddle, Satine smiling at the scene from across him as she writes. Some political article on war or the other that she was due for a newspaper or something. //sorry for littering your reply *hides*

Oh my gosh, why would you apologize for this?!

I love that (Filoni has said this was 100% intentional) Obi-Wan and Satine are baldly, obviously on equal footing from the second they’re on screen together, and that even though they’re introduced on opposing sides of a conflict- I have no idea whether he volunteered or was assigned to that initial diplomatic mission to Sundari, but either way it was underhanded as heck, and her initial coldness is in response to that!- there’s such an evident basis of mutual respect between the two of them. 

Their relationship works as a contrast and a frame for a lot of other things that are going on- their decision to put their affection for each other on the backburner because their respective professional obligations are more important is in contrast to Anakin and Padme’s struggles, and they’re an interesting reversal/subversion of the ongoing trope of Mandalorians and Jedi as natural enemies.

One of my buddies shared some AU thoughts: the Maul arc of tCW never happens, Padme and Satine both make it to the other end of RotS alive, and Luke and Leia are raised out of the Empire’s sight by a mom, aunt, and uncle. *grabby hands* I want it

[kotorswtor]

Re: Padme's deleted AotC material, and the project to evacuate/emigrate children from a dying world, who later died themselves: There's no way that wasn't intentional foreshadowing. Both in the sense of "Entropy is inevitable, the options are adaptation or extinction," and "Sometimes you have the best intentions, the best resources, and make the best, hardest effort, and you still can't save people." Question is, about whom are we speaking?

[kotorswtor]

If someone wants to give me an Order 66 “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” though? 

...

Yeah

[kotorswtor]

Currently laughing because, given that there’s a pretty extensive list of anthropometrics that you have to meet to be considered to fly certain kinds of aircraft for various militaries in this universe?

Anakin Skywalker, who’s most of 1.9 m prior to being Vader, enjoying his extra reach when it comes to saber drills but panicking a little when his elbows start hitting the sides of strikefighters and the canopy almost clips the top of his head. Anakin eventually having to heavily modify anything smaller than a fighter-bomber that he flies in just to be able cram himself into the cockpit.

[kotorswtor]

Belated realization: “Qui-Gon Jinn” probably from Mandarin “Qigong” + “Jin (Japanese, “man,” or “war-camp,” depending)

[kotorswtor]

Random Star Wars in-universe textile headcanon:

Because of the new OT Star Wars costuming book, we’ve finally got clear, hi-res images of Obi-Wan’s ANH gear.

The kosode-style robe that he wears under his cloak looks like he’s been wearing it for a million years in rough environmental conditions. For that matter, since it evokes but is not the same as his RotS gear, there’s a solid chance that he made the entire set with his own hands. What’s surprising though, is his means of preserving it.

The rough areas that you see around the shoulders and waist? That’s hand darning.

*boggle*

Instead of patching, where you affix another piece of fabric to cover a hole, darning is literally re-creating the weave of the base fabric with a single needle. While I think it’s probable that Jedi handsew at least some of their own kit (more on that later) darning is an entirely different beast, takes a lot of practice and patience, and probably isn’t a super commonly-taught skill in the center of a galaxy where cloth production is highly mechanized.

So it’s entirely possible that Obi-Wan bought (I guarantee that rag merchants are a thing on Tatooine) or scavenged his ANH gear with those repairs already in place, but another couple of options are giving me life right now:

1. I mentioned that all Jedi probably learn basic sewing and repairs as part of their training. Obi-Wan may have extra training/practice in it, which has a nice archetypical dovetailing bonus with his role in the Jedi Order as a negotiator/peaceweaver.

2. Near-invisible darning was not a thing that he knew how to do prior to his exile on Tatooine. He charmed the pants off of a person or two in the course of his occasional runs to town for foodpaste and eopie feed, they insisted on helping Sir Jundland!Newb look slightly less like he was presently being chewed on by a Canyon Krayt, and he eventually learned how to do those sorts of repairs for himself.

3. *accidentally snipes self* Anakin, who grew up an enslaved person in a resource-poor corner of the ‘verse with limited access to off-world textiles, learned darning from his mother, and taught Obi-wan.

[kotorswtor]

Alternate hypothesis regarding the problem of "In RotJ, Leia and Luke claim to remember their mother, whereas Padme dies shortly after they're born in RotS (apart from the obvious out-of-universe thing where the two screenplays were written about twenty years apart)":

They're unconsciously sourcing their memories of her from those of others others who surrounded them growing up, Leia from Bail and Padme's other contacts in the Senate, Luke from Obi-wan, Owen, and Beru.