Attack of the Clones gets the RLM tratment at last!

[Garm Bel Iblis]

The only thing I donlt like about this reviewer is the un-funny copycats he is going to spawn.

 

[Kegg]

But we saw dozens and dozens of aliens in the OT, and, so far as I know, only one black human. That's a significant difference.

As I pointed out, there are only a handful of species we saw many members of, and two of those - Ewoks and Jawas - were primitive societies.

The amount of blacks and the amount of wookiees in the OT is identical.

The OT does indeed present that possibility, but the PT Coruscant seems far too diverse to support such a hypothesis. Instead of aliens being the occasional exception, they seem to be a sizable majority.

I think the PT still backs that up if you simply take in the numbers we see of any given species. How many Cereans did we see, for example? Lanniks? Quite a few Gungans, true, but it seems the human population of Naboo was just as populous and that was a single planet.

The onscreen evidence does point to humans probably outnumbering any given alien race by a sizeable margin.

 

[O'Dib]

The guy sounds like Doctor Zoidberg.

 

[Delta1]

It should be remembered that the areas of Coruscant we saw were decidedly cosmopolitan--the Galactic Senate, the chancellery, the Jedi Temple, a refugee transit point, an opera house, and a nearby entertainment district. It would be inappropriate to extrapolate the planet's population from this sample. The other 99% of the planet's surface could be miles-deep in humans.

And there are still other human-dominated worlds including, depending on your view of canon, Alderaan, Corellia, Kuat, Eriadu, etc. Even if we limit our observations to the G-canon, humans are the most widely distributed species and frequently hold positions of power over non-humans.

 

[Gaith]

^^ Okay, but that's going a bit out of one's way to account for the numbers of nonhumans, imho...

The onscreen evidence does point to humans probably outnumbering any given alien race by a sizeable margin.

Any single race, certainly. But it seems to me that humans - especially if we don't count humanoids - are less than all the nonhumans put together, making it significantly less likely that a program such as COMPNOR could be successfully executed.

 

[Delta1]

I'm sure untermenschen outnumbered the Aryans, too, but the Aryans had a pretty good run. Numbers don't mean much when the right people hold all the levers of power. Look at what we've got in the SW universe:

Old Republic
Supreme Chancellor Valorum (human)
Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (human)
Palpatine's blue major domo (non-human, disappears after birth of Empire)
Practically every non-cloned military member (human)
Separatists (mostly non-human, conquered)

Galactic Empire
Emperor (human)
Every Moff (human)
Every General (human)
Every Admiral (human)
Every other officer, NCO, and EM (human)
Emperor's advisors (humans)
Imperial Senate (probably included non-humans, dissolved)

Alliance to Restore the Republic
Alderaanian influence (human)
Generals Dodonna and Rieekan (human--probably Alderaanian)
Generals Solo and Calrissian (human--Corellian?)
Mon Mothma (human)
Admiral Ackbar (token non-human, takes orders from Calrissian)
Manny Bothanz (non-human, sacrificed to deliver information to humans)

In every era, humans are central to Galactic power structures, and a certain type of human is unquestionably supreme in the Galactic Empire. If you don't like COMPNOR, just ignore it and look at the outcome of the Clone Wars. The Clone Wars were an aliens vs. human war. The Republic grew out of the Core Worlds, the culture of Coruscant, and humanity. The Separatists were an alliance of non-humans, non-Coruscant culture, arising in other regions of the galaxy. The suppression of the Separatists meant the legitimization of human culture and human hegemony over the non-human worlds. This hegemony is foreshadowed in Revenge of the Sith, when the non-human "Great Weapon" is inspected by a human Emperor and his all-human Star Destroyer crew. Non-humans are never again seen in a position of high power.

 

[Kegg]

Any single race, certainly. But it seems to me that humans - especially if we don't count humanoids - are less than all the nonhumans put together,

I'd still say no, actually. There are still more humans in any given film than there are aliens. ROTJ would come closest, but even here the aliens are, like the bulk of the aliens in the first film, confined to backwater areas - they're primitives on the moon of Endor or lackeys to to a crimelord. Only the jabbering Sullustan and the Mon Calamari crewmen - four guys in total, IIRC - are interacting with the larger universe. If the Rebel Alliance is no non-discriminatory, why is its fleet still overwhelmingly human?

 

[Ceridwen]

The only thing I donlt like about this reviewer is the un-funny copycats he is going to spawn.

How would they be worse than the un-funny original?

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

I thought all this was one of the more well done things in the PT.

In which case, as RLM says of the start of the original Star Wars, its so simple and ingenious that it probably wasn't Lucas' idea and he likely fought against its inclusion

 

[FalTorPan]

I've enjoyed all of the Red Letter Media reviews, but this one feels too self-indulgent and drawn out.

 

[doubleohfive]

^
Comparatively, I'd have to agree. There were a lot of valid, salient points RLM makes about Attack of the Clones, but it did seem to drag on and on.

About the only one review he's done that I don't care for would be that for the 2009 Star Trek reboot. It was just in poor, poor taste in my opinion.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

^Is that the 60 sec one where his childhood gets raped in an alley by STXI? Yeah, that wasn't fun.

Oh, and by the way, the token black Red Squadron pilot who helped take out one of the Executor's sensor globes and then was immediately killed ("It's gonna blow!") is offended you didn't list him with the other minorities.

The two (or was it three?) Black Bespin City Guards and Black Man Fleeing with Icecream Maker During Evacuation of Bespin share his offense.

There were at least two black men in Jabba's Palace kickin' it with the Gamorreans, as well.

That's like eight blacks to one Wookie in the OT.

Not to mention all the stormtroopers. They weren't all clones (height and voice variations throughout, fuck the Special Editions). No reason 3/4 of them couldn't have been black.

Now Asians, they got what? One guy. That Y-wing pilot who just happened to Kamikaze the Star Destroyer during the Battle of Endor. Real culturally sensitive there, George. America didn't fight Asia in WWII. We fought the Japanese. All Asians aren't Japanese, George. And all Japanese weren't Kamikaze pilots.

Seriously, though. I never noticed the thing about no one being married in Star Wars as a whole. The overall lack of women in the OT was always weird. They were a handful of leaders, slaves and corpses and that's about it. Oh and the Ion Firecontrol Officer on Hoth.

WAIT! Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were married right? Or were they still boyfriend and girlfriend? Common-law?

 

[Kegg]

That's like eight blacks to one Wookie in the OT.

Point conceded, (though that's still very marginal), however:

Not to mention all the stormtroopers. They weren't all clones (height and voice variations throughout, fuck the Special Editions). No reason 3/4 of them couldn't have been black.

No reason 4/4 could be black, or 0/4, or just one in every ten. Basically the Stormtroopers don't have their race addressed at all and can (and should) be treated as such. We're talking strictly about what we actually see in the movies.

WAIT! Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were married right? Or were they still boyfriend and girlfriend? Common-law?

They could be brother and sister...

Uhhh...

 

[Broccoli]

So, the interesting bloggers at the Star Wars Prequel Appreciation Society are starting to go crazy nuts over the RLM reviews (or at least the TPM one). I remember them not liking it (fair enough), having a rebuttal for it posted at another Star Wars themed site (good, constructive idea), and getting really upset and some juvenile remarks to said rebuttal (which is just sad).

However, where things get strange, in this post, is that the blogger is so upset on how people don't like the prequels that he is threatening not to go to Celebration V (yeah, that'll show 'em) and printing out the list of comments and mailing them to Lucasfilm (because they'll do what with them...?).

I am amazed at how some sections of fandom take their favorite franchises so seriously at times.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am referring to both sides of the pro/con prequel argument in regards to my above opinion.

 

[Kegg]

I remember reading an article on that website demanding that Lucasfilm go out of its way to rehabilitate the prequel films. Because if there's one thing they didn't get, it was advertisements.