Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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Leisher
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Post by Leisher »

Malcolm wrote:
I believe official canon is that Kylo Ren is a major fan boy of Vader.
It gives me shades of Jason building a shrine to his dead mom in Friday the 13th. It's hokey and the last vision we have of Vader isn't the towering, imposing bad-ass that lopped off Luke's hand. It's the emo, angsty, whiny little bitch who got played and racked up his high body count pulling a Jedi Sandy Hook.
I don't think it's hokey at all.

YOU saw the angsty Annie. Imperials didn't. The only weakness they would have seen is him being carried to an imperial shuttle before dying.
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TPRJones
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Post by TPRJones »

Leisher wrote:He has the helmet, and if you remember, Luke tossed it aside on the second Death Star.

The mask was back on down on Endor for the funeral pyre. He picked it up on the way out to put it back on the body, I guess.




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Post by Malcolm »

TPRJones wrote:
Leisher wrote:He has the helmet, and if you remember, Luke tossed it aside on the second Death Star.

The mask was back on down on Endor for the funeral pyre. He picked it up on the way out to put it back on the body, I guess.

Yeah. For some reason, I can totally see the helmet going up but I didn't think about it until now.

YOU saw the angsty Annie.

Yeah, I since I'm the dude in the audience, the antagonist seems to be a dude that looks up to a child killing wanna be goth who was such a pussy that he couldn't beat his old teacher and had to be rebuilt as the six billion credit Sith before he started kicking ass. He may as well have the warped, charred remains of Dark Helmet's helmet.

Image

Come the fuck on, give me a villain that doesn't need a martyr for inspiration. The Sith are supposed to be ultimate Darwinists, the student killing the master to assume power and all. I'm going to buy into them deifying someone that not only got dismembered by the light side, but got himself, the emperor, and the empire wiped out at once? I want a dude like this:

Image

I want the Michael Myers Sith. Hell, while I'm at it, we'll give Darth Nihlius a sidekick in Darth Sion.




Edited By Malcolm on 1445374779
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Post by Malcolm »

Just saw this fan theory: Luke is Kylo Ren.

Malcolm's theory: Luke trained Kylo Ren because it turns out balance is a bitch to achieve without some darkness. Proof? Where the fuck else does he get the mask? You think Luke just left that shit lying around? He grabs it before he leaves Endor, then some macguffin-ness happens, and he hands the mask and free lessons off to Kylo.

EDIT: Hah, I even have the macguffin-ness. Luke loses his mind after finally making it to Tosche Station and discovering they're not only out of power converters, but they never sold any to begin with.




Edited By Malcolm on 1445380130
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Post by GORDON »

Wasn't Vader's mask and helmet specifically shown on Vader's head in the funeral pyre on Endor?

Also, there may not be an answer to this, since all books were wiped out of canon.... but how do peeps in the imperial remnant armies get paid? You have 10k star destroyers out there with like 20k people on each of them, and suddenly the payroll department on Coruscant just got shut down. So how do you keep 200,000,000 people... in the star destroyer fleet alone... from just walking off the job when their direct deposit doesn't hit? I guess "fear of death" is one answer, but I can't imagine that could be done permanently. On pirate ships you had 30 guys able to share the plunder of a captured ship.... what about 20k guys each on 10k ships?
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Post by TPRJones »

GORDON wrote:You have 10k star destroyers out there with like 20k people on each of them, and suddenly the payroll department on Coruscant just got shut down.

How so? Do you think the Emperor was personally signing everyone's paycheck?

The head is gone, but the bureaucracy will flounder on until someone either takes over, purposefully disassembles it, or it eventually collapses after years of power struggles at the top. Which is yet another reason Lucas' redo of the ending of Jedi was retarded. Coruscant wouldn't be universally celebrating like it's the overthrow of an evil dictator, they'd mostly be either scared about the uncertainty of what is going to happen next or just plain indifferent. Only those rebel terrorists and their little teddy bear savage buddies would be celebrating.




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Post by GORDON »

Yeah, I think the emperor was signing checks, which is why I said payroll department.

The payroll money comes from an account, and I assume that all these planets just stopped paying their Galactic Empire Membership Fees. Banks aren't going to keep covering bad checks because they are nice. So where's the money coming from? Where are the million quartermasters buying all the beans from to feed these millions of soldiers, and what money is he using? I can see the broad strokes of the logistics it would take to run a navy of hundreds of millions of people.... and I can see how easy it would be to break the machine. I think the navy would need to focus all their attention on keeping remnants of its bureaucracy together just to keep the beans, bullets, band-aids, and axle grease for the star destroyers flowing on the regular. The government that was running the operation just collapsed.... I don't see why the entire imperial war machine didn't grind to a halt.

But then again, if only 10% of the Star Destroyer captains were charismatic and competent enough to keep their crews together, raiding planets and supply depots, I could see them eventually reforming... that would be a thousand star destroyers. That seems like a lot.

I hope they can figure out how to cover even some of this in the new movies... I find complex systems fascinating.
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Post by TPRJones »

The payroll money comes from an account, and I assume that all these planets just stopped paying their Galactic Empire Membership Fees.

That's a big assumption, and one that I think is probably incorrect. Keep in mind that only the rebels were strongly against the Empire. The rest of the populous - including local governments on most of the planets - were either supportive of or indifferent to the Empire. Sure the Emperor is evil, but it's not like he was a public figure with his posters all over the place and ruled openly. Most galactic citizens only know the Empire from their local governors and the occasional patrol of storm troopers, and they didn't all just disappear overnight. Hell, it's likely that most people below the rank of Admiral were only vaguely aware of who was actually in charge of everything, and many of them might have even assumed it was Vader. Sure those on the actual Death Stars knew the truth, but they all died. Twice.

It would really come down to how each governor and admiral handled the situation individually. Most probably wouldn't even tell the people they were in charge of that anything unusual had happened. Just another unfortunate and costly rebel attack that must be dealt with just like the last time. Most governors would still collect taxes, and as long as there are still star destroyers around they'll probably send them on to the Empire. Most admirals would probably keep right on following the orders from whatever fleet admiral was previously giving them orders. Some few will split away, but most will be pulled back in again. It will take years before things start to seriously fall apart.

If someone blew up Washington D.C. would you expect all the individual states to immediately declare themselves independent nations and stop all taxes to the feds?




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Post by TPRJones »

I must admit your version is more in line with the romantic adventure tone of the movies. Kill the main bad guy and now everyone can be happy. But I prefer something closer to reality. :p
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Post by Malcolm »

Hmm. Luke trains Kylo after the alliance death squads kill a room full of imperial orphans during Operation Purge the Empire.
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Post by GORDON »

TPRJones wrote:If someone blew up Washington D.C. would you expect all the individual states to immediately declare themselves independent nations and stop all taxes to the feds?
These days, I could see that. I can see a lot of individual challenges to the IRS. I could see quite a few states taking the opportunity to break away.

What do you think the overall impression of the empire blowing up Alderaan was? It was a pretty nice planet I heard.
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Post by TPRJones »

I think the general reaction in the core worlds was "meh". Some planets on the outer rim that were already close to revolution went for it. Rebel recruitment probably increased a bit all around. But on the whole it wasn't that big of a deal.

And that analogy about DC was probably not quite right. That'd be more like if the rebels blew up Coruscant. This was a major military installation that was blown up while the Emperor was there for a visit, but it's unlikely that the Emperor advertised his movements all that much. Someone on the inside with enough clout with the few admirals that know the Emperor is actually dead could probably just get a cloak, start talking with a croaking voice, and stand a reasonable chance of fooling most people into thinking the Emperor is still alive and in charge. After he was force-zapped into ugly town no one ever got much of a look under that hood, after all.

EDIT: I think the difference of opinion here comes from how much inertia we think there is in these systems. If we stipulate for the moment that word got around about the Empreror I suspect most people would still keep going to work as long as the paychecks kept coming. And that the paychecks would keep coming for a while since most people went in to work as usual. Of course it would eventually break down into chaos if no new strong leader emerged, but I think that would take some time.

But I don't think it would even come to that because why would the remaining leadership of the Empire let everyone know what had really happened at that secret military instillation? The rebels will tell everyone, sure, but unless you are already a rebel you probably think they're full of crap.




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Post by GORDON »

The more you talk about the ambiguity of who run Bartertown, I see your point. But I am still wondering how it all works without money in the bank, and I can't see the rebels letting the banks keep paying on imperial accounts... assuming these banks are on Coruscant. I dunno.

Again, I hope the movie addresses this a little.
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Post by TPRJones »

Of course the real ambiguity here is that Lucas can't write a realistic political or economic situation to save his life. :p Star Wars is a lot of fun, but it's hardly strong on details about that sort of thing.

Just look at Ep1: why in the world would a trade federation want to set up a secret blockade to stop trade? Supposedly it was something about Republic taxation, but what would that have to do with Naboo? It makes no sense.

I, too, hope we see some of this stuff in the new movies. But if we do it'll mostly be around the edges of the action, not shown center stage.

And what about the destruction of Endor due to all the Death Star debris deorbiting? Think that will get a mention?
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Post by TheCatt »

TPRJones wrote:And what about the destruction of Endor due to all the Death Star debris deorbiting? Think that will get a mention?
Despite being 150km across, the Death Star exploded into tiny little fragments that all burned up in the atmosphere.
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Post by TPRJones »

So instead of bombardement, it just had it's ecology collapse after 2×10^14 metric tons of ash are added to the atmosphere. Same difference.

EDIT: Hmm, I wonder if they'll use that to slip a message about the dangers of climate change into the movie....




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Post by GORDON »

TPRJones wrote:So instead of bombardement, it just had it's ecology collapse after 2×10^14 metric tons of ash are added to the atmosphere. Same difference.
Yep, The Endor Holocaust was mentioned in this thread.

http://www.dtman.com/cgi-bin/ib3/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=6293;st=20

Two closed accounts in that thread... one was an accidental duplicate of mine, and the other was the guy who was an abusive dick... Darhma?
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Post by GORDON »

Also, it looks like it is snowing when the dude picks up Vader's burnt mask. Hello nuclear Winter on the forest moon.
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Post by GORDON »

TPRJones wrote:I, too, hope we see some of this stuff in the new movies. But if we do it'll mostly be around the edges of the action, not shown center stage.
Yeah, they MUSTN'T put the bureaucracy center stage... but shining light in those shadowy corners could be a great seasoning for the sauce.
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Post by TPRJones »

omg ... I had completely forgotten about "An Exercise in Xenophysiology".
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