Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

[The Bad Astronomer]

My review of Star Wars: Attack of the CLones is now online. Enjoy.

[David Hall]

And so it begins.

I'm talking about the suffering I have to endure trying to avoid reading spoiler-filled reviews like this until the movie finally comes out in my neck of the woods--which won't be until July. And even then I probably won't be able to go to the theater until several weeks after it comes out.

I'm sure your review is top-notch, and the discussion will likewise be interesting, but until then, this thread is off-limits to me. Goodbye. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]

[Roy Batty]

On 2002-05-19 01:21, The Bad Astronomer wrote:
My review of Star Wars: Attack of the CLones is now online. Enjoy.

Liked the review. You might also like to link to this in it:
The Planetary Society's - Solar Sail Project

[SpacedOut]

I’m actually quite proud of my self – after reading TBA’s review I only misses one BAD (blast marks) and I went into the movie purposely not looking for Bad Astronomy –I just wanted to enjoy myself.

One thing I did notice was the correct use of parsec – actually the use was so in your face that I wondered if it wasn’t put in the movie to answer critics like TBA!

The other thing that was really cool about the movie was how much of what we see visually in Episodes IV,V, & VI is fore shadowed in this movie such as starship shapes, trooper armor, etc.

[fixed bbcode]


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SpacedOut on 2002-05-19 12:35 ]</font>

[diacad]

I enjoyed discovering today TBA and reading Plait's SW review. The main spoiler for me regarding such space operas is the idea of intersteller manned travel, which seems more preposterous (not less, as I had hoped when a child after seeing "Rocketship X-M") with each passing year. I firmly believe that popular culture here does a disservice to real science (and policy), when unmanned space exploration is evidently practical, safe, and cost-effective. The second spoiler, peculiar to SW, but also other "science" fiction, is the notion of telepathy, PK, and other miscastings of the mind's relationship to the brain and to other external reality (the "Force" in SW).

These spoilers, to my thinking, dwarf in significance most of the otherwise quite valid points made in TBA's review.

[Silas]

On 2002-05-19 16:07, diacad wrote:
I enjoyed discovering today TBA and reading Plait's SW review. The main spoiler for me regarding such space operas is the idea of intersteller manned travel, which seems more preposterous (not less, as I had hoped when a child after seeing "Rocketship X-M") with each passing year. I firmly believe that popular culture here does a disservice to real science (and policy), when unmanned space exploration is evidently practical, safe, and cost-effective. The second spoiler, peculiar to SW, but also other "science" fiction, is the notion of telepathy, PK, and other miscastings of the mind's relationship to the brain and to other external reality (the "Force" in SW).

These spoilers, to my thinking, dwarf in significance most of the otherwise quite valid points made in TBA's review.

The first point is, to my mind, a source of some sorrow... I, too, grew up with Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke and Bradbury, and the dream of manned exploration of the cosmos. Now, the best I can hope for is to live to see the *launch* of a good unmanned AI probe, with the sure knowledge that I'll never learn what it will find when it arrives at even one of the nearest stars.

I agree with your second point also. "Psionics" and "The Force" and all those cheesey feel-good magic gimmicks are disappointing. To begin with, they're unscientific; no one has even begun to describe a model by which the remarkably low wattage of the human brain and body could cause large actions at a distance. (Basal metabolism for an average person is about 50W. Peak activity is about 100W.)

But, worse, it's an affront to reason. This "magic thinking" sends the message that we don't need to study, to learn the basics, to know our stuff. All we have to do is "wish real hard" and everything will go our way. It would be funny...if it weren't so tragic. It leads a lot of good minds away from science and into pseudo-science and fantasy.

(Actually, I like fantasy... So... "Never mind...")

Silas

[Chuck]

I thought that "The Force" was all around us, not generated by the brain, and that the brain just focuses it. We might have something like it some day. Computer implants in our brains could radio our thoughts to larger computers which have more power at their disposal.

[Hale_Bopp]

At one point, Amidala says another planet is "less than a parsec away" Although there is nothing inerhently bad about this, the closest known star to Earth is more than a parsec away. Just thought that was interesting.

Rob

[Russ]

On 2002-05-19 19:02, Hale_Bopp wrote:
At one point, Amidala says another planet is "less than a parsec away" Although there is nothing inerhently bad about this, the closest known star to Earth is more than a parsec away. Just thought that was interesting.

Rob

IMHO, I don't think this really counts as BA. We live in a pretty sparsely populated section of the galaxy. If we were in a spiral arm or near the core of our galaxy our nearest neighbor star could be less than a light year away. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Hale_Bopp]

Yes, I wasn't saying that was BA...just noting that they were closer than stars around us. In clusters, even open clusters, the average distance between stars could be less.

Another thing that at least is consistent with the novels is the height of the buildings on Coruscant. I can't remember the number, but they are on the order of several kilometers tall, so they actually could free fall for quite a while.

Rob

[Firefox]

My only minor quibble with the review was about the solar sailer. Evidently, it has a hyperdrive, and sublight engines, apart from the solar sail. How else did the thing get off the ground before deploying the sail in orbit?


-Adam

[Chip]

On 2002-05-19 16:07, diacad wrote:
"...I firmly believe that popular culture here does a disservice to real science (and policy), when unmanned space exploration is evidently practical, safe, and cost-effective..."

Hi there,
I think also that robotic probes offer ever growing exploration potentials. As far as the idea of a classic "big spaceship" with a human crew goes, I think we could in fact actually have a kind of "Starship Enterprise" in this century, though we would have to narrow our focus a bit. No "warpdrive", but instead, a large scientific vessel who's "five year mission" is to seek out new discoveries within the vastness of our solar system. Who among us wouldn't want to be on that crew? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Ben Benoy]

On 2002-05-20 00:03, Chip wrote:

a large scientific vessel who's "five year mission" is to seek out new discoveries within the vastness of our solar system. Who among us wouldn't want to be on that crew? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Ooh.. ooh! Not me! If there's one thing I've learned from the movies, it's never to get into a spaceship that's intended to stay inside the solar system. Bad stuff always starts going down, and usually soon. Must I remind you of Mission to Mars, or Red Planet, or Apollo 13?

And look what happened to those poor, hapless miners in Armageddon. First they stop to refuel, an eminently sensible idea, and the space station blows up! Then they drop off on their "final destination" (sounds terminal to me!) and there's all these geysers of who knows how poisonous gasses and stuff. Yick! It doesn't look safe at all.

Or, even worse, 2001: A Space Odyssey. That was simply the scariest movie I've ever seen. It was so intense, like when Dr. Haywood is talking on the video phone to his daughter, and she's possessed by demons, and he has to throw holy water on her with the old priest, and then she walks down the stairs backwards like the creepiest spider since... well since ever. Shiver me timbers I almost peed my pants. And the projectile vomiting. Blech.

And then Haywood gets on the spaceship to the moon, and not only is the engine apparently dead, either that or the music just drowned out the sound effects, but the gravity somehow gets turned off too! Who wants to take a trip on a spaceship so unreliable they don't even have gravity? Lest I spoil the end for anyone, let me just say in parting that if going into space makes me all old and wrinkley, it's totally not worth it, thank you very much. But the lightshow would be good. You know what would be cool? If like, bands had cool lightshows while they played music. Man, that would totally rock.

Ben Benoy

[coding. grr...]


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ben Benoy on 2002-05-20 01:51 ]</font>

[Aodoi]

Big ole' Spoilers in this post:





Random nitpick that's only sorta astronomy related... Mace Windu (Sam Jackson) takes the Jedi to go bail out Obi Wan's butt. Yoda heads off to the disappearing/reappearing planet to play with the clones. Mace and friends show up and start a lengthy process of being shot at. This takes about 10 minutes of screen time, and we can probably assume they had a bit of time to land, then get to the arena, so I'll generously give them a couple hours on planet before Yoda shows up to bail them out.

Now, Yoda left at approximately the same time as Mace, maybe earlier if Mace had to round up the Jedi. So, he managed to fly from Coruscant to the planet repeatedly mentioned as being outside of Republic space, get the clones, and head back to wasp world (forgot the "real" name) to arrive in the nick of time.

So... just how far away is the clone planet from waspworld? Yoda would have had 2hrs + however long it took to round up the Jedi to go farther out, get the clones, then get to waspworld to arrive in the nick of time (rather than the nick of time that Mace showed up in). Somehow, the timing seems distinctly off to me.

And the planet with the rings, did that look like a gas giant to anyone else? Or just me? I'll ignore the whole "how would a planet with no plantlife have a breathable atmosphere."

Just curious, I didn't notice the blast mark thing on Obi Wan's ship at the time, could simply acceleration account for it? Even without atmosphere he was accelerating and moving around a lot, maybe that could account for it? Not that I'm gonna give Lucas the benefit of the doubt at this point [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

The Solar Sail thing... I saw it, said "that's kinda cool... makes no sense whatsoever, but kinda cool." Which is most likely exactly what Lucas thought. I rationalized it by saying maybe it wasn't a solar sail but instead some kind of cloking/stealth device to keep the other ships from seeing him... but that's not a real good explanation either, given the angle at which it is deployed.

Rather sad that I thought Dooku gave the best performance in the whole movie... and his total screen time was maybe 5 minutes.

Totally non-astronomy, but how stupid does Fett have to be to use a weapon that can be traced back to one particular world? I certainly hope that he was told by the psychic Darth Sidious to do so, cause otherwise he's an idiot. I mean, sheesh, you've got a blaster, why use a stupid dart?

Just to sum up, there's was something in pretty much every scene in this movie to annoy me. I sorta wish I'd managed to go in thinking it would be awful since that usually helps me get over the mediocrity of most movies, but I went in thinking it would be decent. Oops. Did rather like Jar Jar helping out in the destruction of the republic. Finally a stupid character whose stupidity is actually taken advantage of!

er... sorry for the non-astronomy bits. Felt like venting a bit.

[Simon]

*sigh...* I haven't visited this board in too long... I can tell, because when I saw the movie, my only thought about the solar-sail was "My god, that must have taken so much computer power to render".

[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[Mr. X]

Think about all the cities... all the fogging, lighting, polygons volumetric thingamajigs and whatnot! It's mind boggling that this can be the work of humans, but there it is!

I'm pretty sure that boba fett is going to be somehow messed up after that whole battle debacle. I don't think that in the other movies he has reused his father's armor, bu it seems like a similar "mandalorian" armor at least, and it could be the same, only very used up. And I can't believe we saw the mystery man's face (the same as his father's... DUH!). But who knows what sorts of exciting and innovative wounds may ravage his face! To me Boba takes off his helmet a lot less than his father, but it just might be me...

And the movie was enjoyable! It IS good aside from the terrible love scenes which SUCKED! (can I say suck in here?) And what does Scumbag X aka Tony Waxman say about movie critics in Hollywood ending? I don't remember but it feels about right! They must have some small hole in the back of their heads they use to insert a needle in and wiggle it through their brains. Only THEN can they become successful movie critics.

Bah, I enjoy "The Force" and "Telepathy" in movies, hell I even enjoy the MANA that allows fantasy people to cast spells and it hasn't driven me to become an astrologer or a moon hoax believer or anything. Now lift damn pencil, lift! And it's not because I say "You do not need to see my identification" to every police officer I see that I am messed up because of my movie preferences! Blah!

Anyone have any Episode 3 theorizing? Methinks Padme will have the babies, give one on Alderaan, the other to Owen and Beru Lars, is going to be captured and killed by the infamous Dooku, at which point Anakin will find him and fight him like Luke did Vader, only now the Emperor's tactic will be successful and off comes Count Dooku's head.

I like my theory but there's the problem that this would only account for one arm lost, not as many wounds as we know Vader to have. The only book I know that seems to have some sort of high Lucas-ian value for some reason is Shadows of the Empire (it got made into a game) (Episode 4.5, lol [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]), seems to say that Vader has no lower body to speak of. I wonder how he could continue to fight cut in half, but maybe he'll pull it off, although that would seem surprising since he DID pass out from a lost arm, so he might not have some suprisingly high pain tolerance (since there's only that, laser wounds aren't supposed to bleed).

Anyone thinks Stormtroopers are legions of modified Jango Fetts? How come they are so ineffective in episode 4 since they kick so much butt in episode 2?

Jango Fett seemed surprisingly effective against Obi-Wan, only to seem ridiculously underpowered versus Mace Windu, what's up with that? He should have had his missile, or was it destroyed with the jetpack? How about the rope? The blades on his wrists? Why doesn't he move more that just standing?

And Jango nailed a Jedi with his blaster. Lol, that was hilarious [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img].

We see the Death Star plans! Whoo! Wave!

And come on, Darth Sidious is Palpatine? Oh please! He is SO powerful that Jedis didn't sense him? Isn't that sort of a contradiction?

And everyone applauded and cheered in the theater when Yoda pulled out his saber. Gotta hand it to him, the little guy is strong! Who said size didn't matter? It does! Smaller IS better! A great one was that Dooku still had a lot to learn! I loved that one. Yoda sure is a Jedi Master!

My random ramblings. lol.

[Hale_Bopp]

Okay...potential spoilers here, so stop reading if you don't want to know...and I mean about Episode III [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]


In one of the books, they mention that Darth Vader fell into a lava pool while dueling with Obi Wan, who was trying to save him from the dark side. I don't remember which book. If it's not one of the "official" books, they may rewrite this part of the story.

I enjoyed the movie, but could have done with fewer Padme and Annakin love scenes (especially the flowery meadow...ahhhg!)

The Sith Lords have some funky powers...read the Jedi Academy trilogy for more info on them. Dooku must die somehow for Annakin to become the apprentice, probably killed by Annakin.

And Yoda kicks!

Rob

[The Bad Astronomer]

On 2002-05-20 20:58, Mr. X wrote:
Methinks Padme will have the babies, give one on Alderaan, the other to Owen and Beru Lars, is going to be captured and killed by the infamous Dooku

I was thinking about this. Anakin will need to be very angry to fall to the dark side, so I suspect he will actually see Dooku kill Padme (and we know she has to die). He may even be partially responsible, giving him overwhelming guilt as well.

This was never established in the movies, but perhaps Luke and Leia are twins? Anakin wouldn't be at the birth, then, and she doesn't tell him she's having two babies. Vader knew Luke was his son, but was unaware of Leia.

Hmmm. I'm straying off-topic. Oh well, it's my board. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Mr. X]

Yes Hale_Bopp, that's what I heard too... the injuries were inflicted by burning. No lower body, minus one arm, seems about right.

BA, I think it mightbe metioned somewhere that they are twins... wait a second... that OFFICIAL star wars website gives away a huge part of the whole damn plot! Look:

It was common knowledge throughout the court that Leia was adopted into the Royal Family. What wasn't common knowledge was that Leia was born to Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi pupil who succumbed to the dark side and became Darth Vader. She was one of a set of twins, born in secrecy and protected from Vader and the Emperor. The Jedi hero and general, Obi-Wan Kenobi, secretly transported Leia and her mother to the planet Alderaan, where she was to be raised by Kenobi's friend Bail Organa. The boy, Luke, was taken to the distant world of Tatooine. Leia has few memories of her true mother, Padmé Amidala. All that Leia can recall is that she was beautiful, but sad.

That sucks! Now we know they were separated for protection, they were twins (no loitering around for a second baby)

Ooops, again more plot revealed by the official website:

Sustaining grievous injuries at the hands of his former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vader required cybernetic enhancements and replacements to sustain him. His pure innocent self seemingly lost forever, Darth Vader cast a dark pall over the galaxy, as he was one of the foremost agents responsible for the elimination of the Jedi order.

Again, what happens to Luke and Leia:

Obi-Wan was instrumental in hiding Anakin's offspring, so that neither the Dark Lord, nor his master, the Emperor Palpatine, knew of their whereabouts. He took the young boy, Luke, to live with Owen and Beru Lars, moisture farmers on Tatooine.The young girl, Leia, was taken to Viceroy Bail Organa of Alderaan, whom Obi-Wan had served during the Clone Wars.

Sorry for destroying the third movie. Padme will die by Dooku's hand, Anakin will avenge Padme, "strike him down and you will have completed your journey to the dark side", Dooku dies, Obi-Wan fights him, Anakin falls into the fire depths of someplace, Anakin becomes Vader, mangled and angry, and starts extermination of jedis.

Pretty much sums up episode 3 I guess. Well sorry for wasting it for everyone. lol [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img].

[odysseus0101]

It has been known since Return of the Jedi that Luke and Leia are twins.

On Degoba-
Luke: "Yoda spoke of another."
Kenobi: "The other he spoke of is your twin sister."

On the Death Star-
Vader reads it in Luke's mind..."So, you have a twin sister. ... If you won't turn to the Dark Side, then perhaps she will!"

[The Bad Astronomer]

On 2002-05-21 00:25, odysseus0101 wrote:

On Degoba-
Luke: "Yoda spoke of another."
Kenobi: "The other he spoke of is your twin sister."

D'oh! I checked a copy of the script online. You're right.

... or maybe she's a clone. Females are easier to clone. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: The Bad Astronomer on 2002-05-21 00:55 ]</font>

[Hale_Bopp]

In "Shadows of the Empire", a novel which fills the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader removes his helmet, seeing how long he can go without his artificial life support. It is implied that his goal is to be able to remove his mask. That explains why we see the back of his head in the Empire Strikes Back (probably just a character motivation for a curious scene from the second movie).

Rob

[amstrad]

I would like to speculate on the title of the third film. Here are some that I have come up with:

<U>Fall of the Jedi</U> - I like this one because it has a double meaning. 1) The Jedi Academy must be destroyed in order for the Sith/Empire to thrive in the period leading up to Episode 4. This fits with the title of Episode 6, <U>Return of the Jedi</U> when the Jedi's reclaim their lost power after the two Sith lords die. 2) This also works well with the idea that Anakin falls to the dark side and then returns in ROTJ to help Luke destroy the Sith Master.

<U>Rise of the Empire</U> - fairly straight forward. This will be the story of the loss of power of the imperial senate as the emperor gains power. E3 may very well end with a large scaffold being built - large enough for the most powerful weapon in the imperial arsenal.

<U>The Clone Wars</U> - rest assured, they are not over. We will see Anakin suduced (after he kills Dooku) by the now revealed Sidious/Palpatine. Together they orchestrate the destruction of the remianing Jedi via the Clones/Stormtroopers. Remember when Luke asks how his father died in Episode 4, Ben answers, "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights."

[Firefox]

That, or if Lucas goes with the trend he's been following, "Revenge of the Sith" or "The Sith's Revenge" are fair bets, too.


-Fox

[CJSF]

Or, even worse, 2001: A Space Odyssey. That was simply the scariest movie I've ever seen. It was so intense, like when Dr. Haywood is talking on the video phone to his daughter, and she's possessed by demons, and he has to throw holy water on her with the old priest, and then she walks down the stairs backwards like the creepiest spider since... well since ever. Shiver me timbers I almost peed my pants. And the projectile vomiting. Blech.

Um, Ben.. I think you are confusing two different movies there! (I guess you COULD be joking, though.)

CJSF

[Matherly]

My vote for Ep 3 is "Revenge of the Sith". Reason is, the original title for Episode 6 was "Revenge of the Jedi" until Goerge realized that wasn't a good title (To quote Buzz Lightyear "Revenge isn't something we encourage on my planet"). However, revenge is right up the Sith's alley, not to mention one of Darth Maul's 2 lines "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have revenge."

[Aodoi]

Well, since we're off topic anyway... anybody else think it's an awfully bad idea to give lightsabers to 6 year olds? And you thought a 6 year old with crayons could cause a mess! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[Firefox]

According to the AotC Visual Dictionary, the kids' lightsabers are tuned down, so they don't hurt one another. How you can "tune down" a lightsaber is beyond me.


-Adam

[Mr. X]

You think Boba Fett could have anything to do with successfully bringing Padme to Count Dooku, and maybe even the extemination of the jedis, because I think he might at least hold a grudge against Mace Windu. That would be very cool, to see Windu killed by Boba Fett. I don't know how much in the future Episode 3 will take place, maybe his growth could be accelerated so he may fit in his father's armor.

Or is it his father's armor? Killing a Mandalorian to get his armor seems to be a family trademark for the Fetts. Maybe some sort of "rite of passage". But knowing there are no Madalorians left...

It is my belief that Jango is not a Mandalorian himself, but rather a man who killed a mandalorian to get the battle armor as I said, even if there are no mandalorians left...

The idea of having a clone of himself as a son is also very cool I think. I mean, this should be every man's dream! There is no annoying romance and running around in fields for Jango and Boba, all business all the time.

Jango and Boba could really become new "heroes" in the new trilogy the way that Vader was in the old, and as no ones likes Vader anymore knowing that he is Anakin and that Anakin is a wuss... his idea of a good time is running around in fields of strawberries with Padme, having pic-nics in long grass by waterfalls, a little on the lame side, methinks. Plus he gets beaten by his son, son of the most powerful jedi ever, diluted with the blood of someone else and still gets beaten... plus he also gets beaten by Obi-Wan, hardly even a jedi knight seeing how he fights in episode 3.

On the other hand, Jango didn't last very long either, but he still popped a jedi with a blaster! At least he doesn't run around fields holding hands...

On an unrelated topic, what happened to force powers in battle, they hardly push, pull, jump and never throw their sabres? And what truly sucks is that the jedi mind trick seems to work on people with brain damage, drug addicts and other misfits.

You think he only said that about the mind trick to score with Padme? No one would ever pull a mind trick like that given that power, right *cough*.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Mr. X on 2002-05-21 14:44 ]</font>

[Aodoi]

Heh, thanks Firefox... at least someone thought about that. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Though, admittedly, the scene was filmed so goofily that I wonder why it was included at all. I think Lucas's direction to the kids was "stand still and twitch the lightsabers around, don't worry if it looks goofy, I'll just fix it digitally."

And I'm sorry, but how utterly moronic is Obi-Wan not to figure out the planet had been erased? Yoda I can justify as realizing the right answer and asking the kids to show Obi-Wan that he's a moron, but what's up with Mr. Jedi Master who can't grasp the utterly obvious? It's like if Watson is a moron who misses the obvious, Sherlocke doesn't look too bright when he's explaining simple things to him. A kid stating the blindingly apparent truth is hardly impressive. I think the scene was supposed to convey that Obi-Wan couldn't imagine someone erasing something from the computer (they said only a Jedi could), but the "hints" that the planet was really there were hardly subtle. Maybe more "dark side blinding." Sidious ex machina

Somehow the Jedi in this film came across as so incompetent to me that wiping them out would hardly be difficult. Hell, if Sidious hadn't created the clone army for Yoda to come up with he coulda wiped out most of the Jedi right there (unless large numbers of Jedi were elsewhere, which is possible but seems unlikely). Anakin wanting to be the most powerful Jedi hardly strikes me as ambitious, at this point. Yoda was the only one who could stand up to Dooku for more than about 30 seconds, the Jedi were misplacing entire star systems without noticing and (assuming Palpatine=Sidious) the man who's apparently responsible for everything that happens all the time is sitting right under their noses. Hardly an impressive group (though it's obviously necessary for them to be wiped out, so I guess it makes sense that they're rather inept).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Aodoi on 2002-05-21 15:15 ]</font>