True. But the lack of humor set a definite tone for the film and not a positive one at that.
Star Wars The Clone Wars Season Five News and Discussion
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Christopher;7335130 I really think you're underestimating how much of a sense of humor the original film had about itself. I was watching some of it just the other week said:
C3PO and R2 's screen time cannot compare to the neverending antics of Jar-Jar, wisecracking battledroids, and the endless aliens (that diner slob pulling his pants up in Attack of the Clones for one example) and robots played for laughs from the Prequels-forward. The interplay between the droids in the opening of A New Hope was secondary to the spectable of the overrun Blockade Runner and the appearance of Darth Vader.
On the flip side, by the time the prequels rolled around, Jar-Jar was a constant distraction, and worst of all, he was inserted into the field fight on Naboo as a 100% sight gag. Compare that to 3PO in Return of the Jedi, where he stays out of the way throughout most of the fight on Endor. R2--as always--was a functioning protagonist with only minor dips into the humor pool.
Audiences actually rooted for R2.
Jar-Jar was despised from moment one.
Thinking of Jar-Jar, there's a reason the character was near-universally criticized, which explains why Lucas toned him down in episodes 2 & 3: he was over the top, and no one was laughing.
^Again, the distinction there is in the quality of the comic relief, not the quantity. Your initial statements implied that any humor was an unwanted imposition upon something that was meant to be serious, and that's bull. The original film had plenty of comedy and was never meant to be more than a lighthearted adventure romp.
Christopher, at no time did I say or imply the original films were 100% grim, but the original films' comedic elements were incidental at best, and did not shape or lead major sequences. When the latter happens, it makes a scene pure comedy.
For example, the droids crossing a field of laser fire in A New Hope, or R2 bumping into a wall after getting overloaded on Cloud City in Empire (during the escape) are blink-and-you-missed-it moments, which is night and day to Jar-jar buffoonery throughout the Naboo fight (one of the key plots of the film), or jokey/wisecracking battledroids in the prequels and Clone Wars series, among other things, which are now more commonplace than incidental.
Star Wars is hardly some consistent series.
Looks like we haven't seen the last of the droids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ytCo29psGU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ytCo29psGU
Drago-Kazov
Fleet Captain
No Gregor.
Dammitttttt!!!!!!
Dammitttttt!!!!!!
Interesting visuals with the void, you could definitely see every bit of the CG textures for better and worse. When the droids first emerged from the downed ship it looked damned near real though!
Drago-Kazov
Fleet Captain
The episode is out?
I read that the episode's look was inspired by the art of the late Jean "Moebius" Giraud, but... what look? There was nothing much to see except a featureless salt flat. Maybe the comets at the beginning, the birds, and the town at the end, but I didn't see anything I recognized as particularly Moebius-esque (though I'd forgotten about the influence until after I saw the episode, so I wasn't really looking).
I'm still not enjoying the characters in this sequence. Didn't we see Col. Gaskon and WAC go through this exact same arc last week, the colonel starting out contemptuous of droids and learning to respect WAC? It wasn't very interesting the first time either.
And help me out here with the SW-verse hyperspace physics. Since when did a ship have to drop out of hyperspace because of an obstacle in their path in normal space? Isn't the whole point of hyperspace that you bypass such obstructions completely? I know from canonical dialogue that you have to worry about coming out of hyperspace inside a star or planet, but I figured it was only a problem if you came out -- that if you stayed in hyperspace, you could just pass "through" any such obstruction. So the setup for the episode made no sense to me.
In Star Wars physics (at least in the Expanded Universe), there's this thing called a "mass shadow," which is basically the influence a planet or star's gravity well has on hyperspace. They do bad things if you get near one. I haven't seen this week's episode, so I don't know if they made it sound like the ship would run into the physical planet itself, but what you're describing sounds like it was intended to be the other thing.
They've been part of the EU for a good decade or more, so the idea's been around for a while even though the movies never mentioned it.
That explains the scene.
Basically, during hyperspace travel the ship had to react to several objects in normal space (not just a planet's mass).
Couldn't they have just changed course?
If it's anything like Trek they'd probably need massive amounts of energy to divert a FTL jump mid-flight.
Umm, no; aside from a single pretty terrible Voyager episode (with the line "Faster than light, no left or right"), Star Trek has never depicted it as difficult to change course during warp travel.
Drago-Kazov
Fleet Captain
It was still a bad episode. i hope we will have Gregor show up in the next episode.
My impression from the Star Wars-verse (and mind you I've never given it any real thought) is that once the course is laid in that you are pretty much committed to it. Are there any examples of steering at all? Given Han's dialogue about the importance of properly plotting the course and the way hyperspace is depicted that's how I figured it worked.
That's a good point. SW hyperspace does seem like it's basically a "jump" type of drive, despite being non-instantaneous -- you set a course for a particular point and that's where you end up.
I guess WAC just wasn't that great a pilot and he set the wrong course. Or maybe that comet swarm was unanticipated because the system was uncharted.
I think that's the whole point of established hyperspace lanes in Star Wars, to avoid hazards like this and why it's extremely dangerous to explore unknown regions.
You fly more or less blind in FTL and it takes hundreds of years to establish a reasonably save rout which then gets shared with the rest of the galaxy.
At least those people in the galaxy you like, because they can also be a strategic advantage to move around warfleets as quickly as possible.
You fly more or less blind in FTL and it takes hundreds of years to establish a reasonably save rout which then gets shared with the rest of the galaxy.
At least those people in the galaxy you like, because they can also be a strategic advantage to move around warfleets as quickly as possible.
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