The General Star Wars Thread

Ironically, the Boba Fett who appears in the Holiday Special is so radically different from the character as he came to be defined that he may as well be someone else entirely.

In regards to the intruder effect and Vindicated by History stuff mentioned above, the former is definitely something I've observed before, though I also feel it sometimes gets exaggerated. The latter is also something I've noticed and I think it's just a natural result of people obviously comparing a follow-up to what came before; the Sequels came out and that gave people reason to look at the Prequels again to compare and contrast them, which led to people noting what the Prequels did better than the Sequels and vice versa.

As for Phantom Menace doing baller numbers in theaters after it's re-release that's easy, it's the same reason the original trilogy did great whenever it was re-released in theaters; a mixture of nostalgia and the older generations wanting to introduce their kids to the series. And while TPM isn't a great or even especially good movie by just about any metric, it is fun to watch. Both for the few things it does right, like the action scenes, and just for the kind of fun you have when you watch dumb movies with your friends Mystery Science Theater-style.

Just watched the cartoon and I don't think Boba is too different, though there are certainly differences in the character. I like canon Boba, but think I might actually prefer the Boba in the Holiday Special, his voice is so cool (not that Morrison's isn't mind you).

Also, I really like the animation, except for Luke and Han's faces. Luke looks stoned, while Han looks... not like Han. I think this might have been Mark Hamill's first voice acting role, and he does pretty well here, but it's funny to think this was the start of what his main type of acting would be later on.

x6 Okay, so they start smashing up his store, presumably holding him hostage while they do this, so he doesn't make any sort of comm call for help. So he yells and screams, and his droids try to obey him and go get help (as maybe does Anakin, after all, he doesn't know these guys and they're trying to steal him—and his mother isn't actually present to be freed, right? Or are we doing this after they've gone off to meet her, so the next day?) and need to be stopped. I think his shop is probably far enough away that no one can actually hear him, but he runs a junk shop and has mechanics working for him, the very mechanics that the Jedi want to take away.

I think his response remains 'nah, screw you guys.'

ETA: Now I'm also curious about the existence of insurance in the Star Wars universe and Hutt space...

ETA 2: I also sort of assume he has a security system of some sort? After all, he's doing business on Tattoine.

Edited by ECD on May 6th 2024 at 9:17:05 AM

We have a trailer for a new Lego What If type special:

Darth Jar Jar.

I'm already sold.

I’m making a sandbox for it: Sandbox.Lego Star Wars Rebuild The Galaxy

x4

I don't think Watto had droids or even other mechanics. We never see any in the store and the only laborer we see him use is Anakin. I also don't think Tattoine is the type of place where most people would care if someone was screaming for help unless they already cared about the person in question. This is the same place were death races happen constantly, children are beaten in the streets (deleted scene), and ruled by a crime boss.

We also know that Obi and Quigong are the type to negotiate with both parties first because that's what they do in the movie. They meet Watto, Anakin, and Shmee and try to work something out regarding the slaves and the missing part.

Honestly, they also don't have to even touch Watto. They just have to say, hey we would also like you to free Anakin and Shmee and diffuse their bombs. If he says no, then Obi just smashes something to show they are serious and says that he'll keep smashing stuff until Watto lets them go. Watto just doesn't have an answer if Obi and Quigong offer any pushback.

Edited by Freshwater on May 6th 2024 at 10:54:12 AM

And then, because Watto runs a successful business in a crime ridden hell-hole, he pushes a button and an alarm goes on with either the Hutts, or his own security and they've got a problem.

His other possibility is just to say 'no' or say 'stop or I blow up Shmi's/Anakin's head,' he's got two hostages, after all.

Also, note that slave societies are almost universally very nervous about slave revolts and escapes. Unless they kill him after taking them, he calls up the local gang/Hutts and says 'these guys, in this ship, just stole my slaves, what do I pay my protection money for?' and they've got a problem.

Edited by ECD on May 6th 2024 at 10:56:18 AM

I feel like you are giving Watto a lot of handicaps here. Like, lots of people run successful businesses on Tatooine it doesn't mean they are immune from getting strong armed by two Jedi.

I doubt Watto can just call the Hutts or Hutt security. He's a mid tier mechanic/shop owner. He even says there are other stores like his on Tatooine just without the part they need (and we don't even know if that was true or just him trying to make them desperate).

Watto threatening to blow up Anakin and Shmi's heads also kind of falls flat because is it worth his own life? If he pulls the trigger Obi will kill him for the sake of protecting anyone else from a murderer.

I also don't think the Hutt's or anyone really cares about Watto's slaves, his shop, or even his life. Watto pays protections money because otherwise they would break his face. That's part of living in a terrible area. The "protection" aspect is just to make it sound nice. If Watto had the option to call them up and say they took his slaves, why didn't he do that in the movie? Nobody knew about the bet except him and the Jedi. He could have just lied and said that they forced him.

Edited by Freshwater on May 6th 2024 at 11:07:41 AM

I think it's pretty telling that this entire argument is boiling down to debating if the Hutts would give a shit if anybody killed or robbed Watto because that's the best justification that can be offered for nobody doing so. And while I don't necessarily disagree with the people saying "yes", I will point out that there seems to be presumption I've noted that Watto is a much bigger deal with much more clout than he comes off in the movies themselves, as well a presumption that the Hutts are lot more keen on protecting people under their thumb and keeping the law than is ever suggested in any fiction.

Again, not inherently disagreeing and certainly one could argue Qui-Gon feared as much, but literally anytime Hutts show up, their attitudes to their "citizens" or employees having trouble tends to be "lol sucks for you". It's very hard to picture a scene where Watto tries to get the Hutts to back him up over Qui-Gon robbing him not ending with him being laughed at and thrown out, fed to the rancor if he was especially annoying about it.

Edited by immortaleditor on May 6th 2024 at 11:10:28 AM

I just assumed Qui-Gon wanted to attract as little attention as possible.

As for why he didn't go to anyone else...it may be that no-one else but Watto had the parts they needed. And as for why he never tried to steal it, he's still a Jedi, even if he's not much for following the Council. And also stealing might have drawn that attention he was trying to avoid.

Of course, he had no way of knowing Maul was tracking them, but not wanting to get anyone looking too closely still makes sense.

He may also be following the will of the Force, since they happened to land on a planet with a child with more potential than anyone, and that child just happened to be skilled at something that would help them get off the planet.

The Force works in mysterious ways and all that.

Plus, when he meets Anakin, he realises that he can kill two birds with one stone: get his ship moving and collect the chosen one.

The force also gave Anakin those visions that ended up making it easier for Palpatine to turn him to the dark side.

Maybe Kreia is right that the force only wants to keep the conflict going forever between the Jedi and Sith.

Is it ever confirmed how Anakin got those visions? Like, they seem to come from the force (especially in regards to his mum dying, and there's not even the angle of self-fulfilling prophecy to that, if he hadn't seen those visions she's still have died), but Palpatine certainly seems to know about them and uses the Padme vision to manipulate Anakin. He was playing the long game since before AOTC to try and get Anakin on his side, so he could have either been opportunistic (taking advantages of visions he didn't have anything to do with) or have created the visions.

Anakin's not the most stable person at the best of times, so maybe that could actually work (probably not, but wouldn't surprise me).

Edited by king15 on May 6th 2024 at 6:44:26 PM

Do you think Palpatine snuck into Anakin's room while he was sleeping and whispered into his ear: "Padme will die Padme will die." to give him those visions?

I don't think it was Palpatine because then how did he know about Shmi? I guess he could have gotten lucky and it just turned out that she was dying at the same time.

...Actually considering how ruff Tatooine can be that might not actually be much of a stretch to say she was always very close to getting killed.

Edited by Freshwater on May 6th 2024 at 11:45:53 AM

Or maybe the vision of Shmi was genuinely from the force, but Palpatine found out and, at the right moment (the end of the Separatists), decided to fake some visions of Padme dying (or genuinely take some form the future, I don't know) to get Anakin onside.

If you want to give the force the benefit of the doubt when it comes to force visions you can say that looking into the future is always a gamble due to how many possibilities there are and a persons mind can't actually comprehend them all so they rely on their emotions to be an anchor for them and are drawn to possible futures that match what they are feeling. Anakin was worried about Padme so he was ironically drawn to a future where she dies. Which still makes it seem like people would be better off with out force visions.

I always assumed this was more or less what happened.

It's always been really noticeable to me that while the Shmi vision and the Han / Leia on Bespin vision Luke got were both visions of suffering that was currently / about to happen, with the Jedi having the choice to respond to it or not, the Padme vision breaks the mold by being a far off and vague Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

There's just something... off about the Padme visions in comparison to all the others we've seen that always felt strange to me. Like they were targeted specifically at Anakin's fears.

Also Palpatine knew about his visions even though we never actually see Anakin tell Palpatine about them, which he probably wouldn't have since as far as Anakin knew Palpatine didn't know about his marriage.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 6th 2024 at 11:58:39 AM

x10 and x11 I think you're misunderstanding. The Hutts very much don't care what happens to their subjects. They do care about other people horning in on their turf and their victims/subjects. And any slave society is going to care deeply about someone coming in in order to either steal, or liberate slaves, because it's a massive threat to their entire social/cultural order.

I don't think given the nature of the location that 'Watto has some form of security, whether in the form of actual systems/people or deals with the local gang/Hutts' is an unreasonable assumption. Can those systems actually stop two Jedi from robbing him of stuff? No. Can they stop two Jedi from killing him? No. Can they mess up the Jedi's plan of 'let's quietly buy our stuff and get out of here?' Probably.

And if Watto, who is defiant to the Jedi at literally every point in the film, decides to just tell them to pound sand, either because he values Anakin/Shmi more than the damage they can do to his shop, or just out of sheer bloody-minded petulance, then they're screwed. This is a very high-stakes play to make when they're already on a mission to end a war and save a planet.

Edited by ECD on May 6th 2024 at 11:57:36 AM

If I recall, the Matt Stover novel of ROTS does imply Palpatine might have been causing the Padme visions with some kind of Sith magic as part of his manipulation of Anakin (making him fear for her safety, giving Palpatine something to offer him, and causing Anakin to not get any sleep for days or weeks on end, leaving him even more exhausted, stressed, and unfocused), but I don't think it's said outright. The Shmi visions have no such explanation offered. The best explanation I can figure is that because Anakin had a particularly strong connection to his mother that he felt her distress/pain in the Force, but that doesn't explain why stuff like that never happens for anyone else he cares about, Padme included ("she was alive, I felt it"). Luke does have such visions about what's happening on Bespin as others note, but that's the only time he experiences such things.

It's all one of the bigger examples of what I've mentioned before on here, both Lucas' mechanical "it happens because it needs to happen for us to get to the next scene" storytelling and the maddening inconsistency on what the Force and especially the Dark Side even are and how they work.

The latter leads me to another observation of how the franchise seems to increasingly have a "have your cake and eat it too" attitude with the Force, where it wants to have it as this vague, mysterious, ambiguous thing that nobody really understands completely and yet want it to also somehow have all these rigid rules and declarations attached to it and emphasize that the Jedi are totally right about everything with it. They're trying to say "there are many ways to interpret the Force, mortals cannot understand it's workings easily" and "actually it works in exactly this way and anyone who says otherwise is just a stupid evil Dark Side piece of shit who doesn't get that the Jedi are right" at the same time. This is probably to blame for, like, 90% of arguments about how the Force works.

Edited by immortaleditor on May 6th 2024 at 12:04:50 PM

Maybe Kreia should just shut her Trap and be a better teacher.

Apologies for that, but I'm kinda done with Kreia. She's the face of the Jedi are the real villains movement that's been a bit too strong in the fandom.

Plus, we've talked about her quite a bit by now. It feels like it's the same thing.

So long story short, Kreia sucks.

Not to spur debate, but in my experience with the fandom, I've frankly tended to find Jedi defenders far more obnoxious, confrontational, and generally rude than any Jedi critics. The latter usually seem to at least be trying to start genuine and interesting conversations, while the former just kind of jumps down everyone's throats at the slightest provocation and get livid when anybody even slightly criticizes the Jedi, sometimes outright accusing their opponents of being fascists.

Edited by immortaleditor on May 6th 2024 at 12:10:40 PM

Worth noting is Qui-Gon was trying to keep a low profile on Tatooine. If the Hutts learned Amidala was on the planet things could have gone sour very, very quickly. Also Watto flat out says he's the only seller with the part they needed and no one else would take credits either. Presumably Qui-Gon found that to be true offscreen.

Also, I do think Qui-Gon would have returned to free Shmi had he survived. He tried to free both her and Anakin at first but Watto wouldn't have it, so had to settle for only freeing Anakin.

Edited by PhiSat on May 6th 2024 at 1:14:25 PM

Just hire the prequel equivalent of Han Solo. If they've got a hyperdrive, they'll be able to accept republic credits. You might have to pay through the nose but passage for three people from Tatooine to Coruscant but it must be doable, it's a plot point in the first/fourth film that address something in the fourth/first film. They're even on the same planet.

Edited by dcutter2 on May 6th 2024 at 8:14:48 PM