Star Wars:The Clone Wars S3......so far

[Admiral_Young]

I think the only lines Fett had in Empire Strikes Back is his short conversation with Vader over Han.

Darth Vader: You may take Captain Solo to Jabba the Hutt after I have Skywalker.

Boba Fett: He's no good to me dead.

Darth Vader: He will not be permanently damaged.

Boba Fett: What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a lot to me.

Darth Vader: The Empire will compensate you, if he dies. Put him in.

That's all I remember.

 

[Christopher]

So all of two lines, and then he falls into a sinkhole with an appetite. Why the hell does this faceless bit player hold legendary status in fandom while a major antagonist played by the great Peter Cushing is regarded as a "redshirt?"

 

[Admiral_Young]

I've always wondered about Boba Fett myself. Although to be fair Tarkin kind of has a greater role in the EU...not the same know I know.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Honestly, I've never understood how [Boba Fett] got built up to such mythic importance in fandom (and subsequently given a major role in the prequels).

This article provides an explanation for this.

Maybe it's because of his role in the capture of Han, but Fett didn't actually do that; Vader was the one who captured Han and had him frozen, with Fett being merely the guy who delivered the package to Jabba.

Actually, only Boba Fett expected to find Han Solo hiding the Millennium Falcon in the garbage dumped by the Star Destroyer Avenger before it went to light speed. It was Boba Fett who tracked the Falcon to Bespin.

 

[Gepard]

So all of two lines, and then he falls into a sinkhole with an appetite. Why the hell does this faceless bit player hold legendary status in fandom while a major antagonist played by the great Peter Cushing is regarded as a "redshirt?"

Because Boba got cool armor, I guess. Fans are far more likely to want to dress up as the mysterious guy with the cool costume rather than the British guy in a kockoff SS uniform. Same principle goes for Darth Maul's popularity, despite him not having any personality either. The Star Wars fandom has always seemed to gravitate towards the mysterious badass loner character with a cool outfit.

 

[Christopher]

Honestly, I've never understood how [Boba Fett] got built up to such mythic importance in fandom (and subsequently given a major role in the prequels).

This article provides an explanation for this.

Oh. So it was basically clever marketing, building up the character in advance publicity. But still, he's all hype and little actual substance.

 

[Set Harth]

In hype terms, it helps that they released the action figure well before the film ( a factoid which allows certain references in That 70's Show to actually make sense ) and that the original version could actually shoot your eye out.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Oh. So it was basically clever marketing, building up the character in advance publicity. But still, he's all hype and little actual substance.

I agree with this view up to a point, but I think it overlooks some subtleties. Boba Fett was the first sequel character introduced, and as such had a place in the hearts of fans like no other. In 1978, he was the sole face of future Star Wars.

The hype was just as much driven by the demand of fans, ravenously hungry for a sequel, than by any push down from author. The fans lapped up the first and sole available symbol of the future, Fett, and filled in the blanks themselves, soon pondering the nature of his Mandalorian armor. Speculation in fan circles appeared immediately that he was a supersoldier left over from the Clone Wars, which given his attire was a logical assumption. Therefore, hype is not exactly the right word. If Boba was a trial balloon to test the success of comics and what was to become EU merchandise, then that balloon was more than successful. But to say that it was only hype overlooks the reality that the fans were demanding much more merchandise than the market supplied for many years.

 

[Christopher]

^Okay, I'll take your word for it. I wasn't aware of what was going on in early fandom. All I know is that this minor character in the films seemed to be a big deal to the fans in later years, and that always seemed odd to me. I guess he was just the convenient blank slate on which the fans pinned all their hopes and curiosity, and so that elevated his importance as a symbol in fandom, and what Lucas actually did with Fett in the second and third films didn't live up to that.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I guess he was just the convenient blank slate on which the fans pinned all their hopes and curiosity, and so that elevated his importance as a symbol in fandom, and what Lucas actually did with Fett in the second and third films didn't live up to that.

Hard to say it better, except to add that what happened in Episode VI was a total slap in the face. Han sending Boba careening into Jabba's sail barge sent the series well south of the low water marks of Episodes IV and V. Only in Episode III did it manage to crawl back up there.

Incidentally, the idea that Obi-wan and Vader fought an epic lightsaber duel around a volcano, and that Vader getting hurt by lava then was why he wears the suit and mask, has been around since the late 1970's. But so far I have been unable to trace it on the Internet. I heard it directly from a friend well before Empire was released, and I doubt there is any way now to trace where he got it. Perhaps some magazine ran it as a rumor, or maybe Lucas even dropped it himself in an interview somewhere.

 

[Christopher]

Incidentally, the idea that Obi-wan and Vader fought an epic lightsaber duel around a volcano, and that Vader getting hurt by lava then was why he wears the suit and mask, has been around since the late 1970's. But so far I have been unable to trace it on the Internet. I heard it directly from a friend well before Empire was released, and I doubt there is any way now to trace where he got it. Perhaps some magazine ran it as a rumor, or maybe Lucas even dropped it himself in an interview somewhere.

The way I always understood it from the beginning was that Vader had fallen into a lava pit in his last battle with Obi-Wan. If that wasn't stated onscreen, then I'm pretty sure I must've gotten it from the novelization of the original film. I've found over the years that there are a number of things established in that novelization that a lot of SW fans apparently weren't aware of until the prequel trilogy, like the term Sith or the fact that the Emperor was named Palpatine. I guess it's not a book that SW fans consider required reading.

If it wasn't the novelization (though I think it was), it must've been either one of the sequel novelizations, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the NPR radio adaptations, or the first 2-3 issues of Marvel's comic-book adaptation of the first film. Those and one or two of the Brian Daley Han Solo novels were my only sources of Star Wars info back then, and I was definitely familiar with the lava pit story. (I recall we had a special oversized magazine edition of the Marvel comic, and I know it didn't tell the whole story, probably just the first half of the film, which would've been the first three issues of the comic.)

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The bad penny first dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes, I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form, and I guessed that one day they would explode.

That's great! Guiness should have written Anakin, he's got the right idea.

As for Boba Fett, I've never understood what the big deal was with him. It's only in TCW that he's become a potentially interesting character for me - a young kid, cast adrift in a cruel galaxy, with good reason to hate the Jedi for destroying his life. He's like an evil version of Oliver Twist. That's far more intriguing to me than some guy who hides behind a mask and acts cool.

Once again, this show doesn't hold back when it comes to violence. We might not have seen the clone be cut in two but that has to be the most disturbing death thus far. And that's saying something on this show.

I'm happy anytime they ratchet up the violence to depict war as it actually is, not as some sanitized video game. I'm usually not so pro-violence, but the PT really irritated me by insisting that the bad guys can only be robots, which evades all the messy moral issues of the Jedi chopping some guy in two.

I don't get it - Luke blew up thousands of presumably ignorant imperial draftees who weren't really to blame for their situation, at least not so much that we could be sure they should all be sentenced to death. But in war, shit happens. The OT was honest about it, lots of kids watched the OT (more than was healthy or sane), what changed? Lucas is being way too much of a hand-wringing liberal.

What's even nastier about it is that droids are not simply "robots" but do show signs of intelligence, yet there's never a suggestion that they should be treated as equals with flesh & blood critters. Maybe they're not at that level, but at least there should be some debate.

 

[Christopher]

^I'd hardly say the original trilogy was honest about the violence of war. The Stormtroopers were intentionally dehumanized by putting them in face-concealing, robotic costumes, and the film totally ignored the fact that Luke blew up not only thousands of innocent techs and maintenance workers, but a whole detention center full of prisoners. It wasn't trying to be a gritty acknowledgement of the horrors of war, it was trying to be a fluffy space fantasy for kids like the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s, and so it completely glossed over any concerns about the consequences of violence. Realism was absolutely the last thing on Lucas's mind at the time.

The use of droids in the PT is in exactly the same vein as the use of faceless, interchangeable Stormtroopers in the OT. In neither case were we intended to care about them as people or give even the slightest thought to the moral questions involved in destroying them. The only difference is that now cinematic technology makes it easier to do with robots what could formerly be done with depersonalized spear-carriers.

 

[Hyperspace05]

^I'd hardly say the original trilogy was honest about the violence of war. The Stormtroopers were intentionally dehumanized by putting them in face-concealing, robotic costumes, [snip]

The use of droids in the PT is in exactly the same vein as the use of faceless, interchangeable Stormtroopers in the OT. In neither case were we intended to care about them as people or give even the slightest thought to the moral questions involved in destroying them. The only difference is that now cinematic technology makes it easier to do with robots what could formerly be done with depersonalized spear-carriers.

While you have a point, there is a difference. We knew in the OT that there were people behind the masks, although the mask did de-humanize them. But we heard some small talk, etc.

The droids in the PT just ratches that up to the next level. BUT - there is a significant difference between actual robots and people in masks/costumes.

 

[Icemizer]

I believe I originally read about the lava and the volcano back in the old Starlog magazine but which one I couldnt say.

 

[Christopher]

While you have a point, there is a difference. We knew in the OT that there were people behind the masks, although the mask did de-humanize them. But we heard some small talk, etc.

The droids in the PT just ratches that up to the next level. BUT - there is a significant difference between actual robots and people in masks/costumes.

Yes, we know the difference when we stop to think about it, but my point is that narratively, for the purposes of a story that was simply meant to be a mindless adventure romp, the fact that the heroes were killing human beings left and right wasn't meant to be acknowledged or contemplated. It's the same way in Indiana Jones or James Bond movies -- we're not supposed to think about the grief of the sword-wielder's family when Indy pulls out his gun and kills him in cold blood, we're just supposed to laugh at the funny action beat and not worry about the loss of life because it's just a silly movie. So the distinction between robots and faceless human guards is narratively irrelevant in this kind of story. If we stop to worry about the lives that are being lost, then we're not playing along the way the filmmakers want us to. This is the whole reason why so many works of fiction put the villains' footsoldiers in uniforms or all-concealing armor -- in order to dehumanize them and make it easier for the audience not to care that they're being killed. Using droids in the prequels was merely an alternative way of achieving the same narrative goal as using face-concealing Stormtrooper armor in the originals.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

^I'd hardly say the original trilogy was honest about the violence of war.

Well no. But it wasn't egregiously sanitized for the kiddies.

If we stop to worry about the lives that are being lost,

We didn't stop to worry about it in the OT. But it jumps out at you in the PT because the sanitized intent is too obvious. That's why they should have stuck with regular human beings wearing stormtrooper uniforms - not droids, not clones, just common conscripts. By overdoing the sanitization, they called attention to it.

BUT - there is a significant difference between actual robots and people in masks/costumes.

The Separatist droids are deliberately depicted as interchangeable and disposable, despite seeming to have personalities and survival instincts. It's supposed to be hi-larious when they start to panic right before getting blowed up real good. Urgh.

That's the stupidest part of all this: despite the obvious intent to sanitize everything, when you think about it, the PT and TCW both demonstrate a depraved indifference to the suffering of apparently sentient beings - both droids and clones!

I'd be okay with the notion of exploring the implications of this, a war in which both sides are manufacturing intelligent beings and using them as cannon fodder. But the good guy characters show no awareness that there's anything troubling about this, which means the human beings writing this stuff are oblivious as well. That's downright chilling. It also destroys their credibility for making any moralistic statements with the political aspects of the story. TCW may be reasonably well written, but it has the morals of a Sith.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Also, every single person we saw on the Death Star was categorically EVIL, don'cha know.

We never saw anyone in the detention block except Leia, and no dialogue supports anyone being there besides her. And why would there be? The Death Star is brand new. They hadn't DONE anything yet except fly to Alderaan and blow it up. IF there were anyone in those cells, I'd much rather assume they're just officers sleeping off a night of overindulgence down at the Death Bar, celebrating the first victory for their fully armed and operational battlestation.

So yeah, Luke is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people. But they were, like, BAD and stuff. So it's okay! They had it coming!

Mark

 

[lennier1]

What are Moffs, anyway? Some kind of title of nobility like dukes? And if so, is it a hereditary position? That is, do they have heir-Moffs?

Well as Zahn writes them, arrogant SOBs who think they're it

A greasy politician stuck inside a high-ranking military uniform.

 

[Mr Light]

According to wikipedia, the first Death Star had 1,179,293 people on it.

So Luke Skywalker killed 1.18 million people in cold blood