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The Secret History of Star Wars
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed May 21, 2008 11:48 PM
from the george-shot-first dept.
from the george-shot-first dept.
lennier writes "How exactly did George Lucas develop the script for the first Star Wars? Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good? Did he really have a masterplan for six, nine, or even twelve episodes, and why did the official Lucasfilm position keep changing? And just how big an influence were the films of Akira Kurosawa on the whole saga? Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition is a free, thoroughly unauthorized, e-book that brings together a huge amount of literary detective work to sort fact from legend and reveal how the story really evolved. Download it or have your nerd credentials revoked."
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nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
I like programming in my spare time, when I'm not programming at work. But I hate Star Wars. I guess I'm just not nerdy enough.
I will have to hand write some PostScript to print my own nerd credentials and post them on my cubical wall.
Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
124937? It's just sad what passes for impressive these days. Have you all become so jaded?!?
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
Listen up, you whipper snapper! What you are witnessing is a very sophisticated and nuanced art of gamesmanship that is only understood by people with uid's less than 10,000.
So go back to sleep and let the real men get on with their business.
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
...mostly because they're unlikely to be impressed by an in-depth discussion of the origins of Star Wars, or the reasons why vi is superior to emacs or vice versa.
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who are you? I am the new Number 2.
Who is Number 1? You are Number 6.
I am not a number, I am a free man!
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hooray for cos-play Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Insightful)
By your jargon though, there still is a deep relation between nerds and dorks, since both of them are "systems" people. D&D is just another complex system to play with, just like math, code, and circuits. As is, oddly, the various nerd friendly mythologies. Both groups, by your classification, are equally likely to get the chicks... Not very. Neither math nor D&D impress many of the chicks I know.
So where does arguing over the semantics of nerdery put one?
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Informative)
NERD. n. slang.
(1) A foolish, inept, or unattractive person.
(2) A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.
I would argue that (1) is the more traditional usage, but that today definition (2) is the one generally associated with the word. The earliest known usage of the word, apparently, is from Dr. Suess's "if I ran the Zoo."
DORK. n. slang.
A stupid, inept, or foolish person.
GEEK. n. slang.
(1) a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp. one who is perceived to be overly intellectual.
(2) a computer expert or enthusiast (a term of pride as self-reference, but often considered offensive when used by outsiders.)
(3) a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken.
Definition (3) is the original, (1) is pretty common, and in this forum, (2) is the most common definition.
In summary: nerds have limited social skills, but intellectual or technical skills which partially make up for this. Maybe we can't get a date, but we can do your homework. Geeks have intellectual and technical skills, and may or may not have social skills. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are both geeks, even though Jobs has charisma and some social skills, and Gates has little of either. Dorks have neither social skills, nor any other sort of skills or talents that make up for this. The word "geek" has undergone something of a transformation in the past 15 years to be an a somewhat positive term. I'd say that the change started around 1994-1995, when web browsers started to become widely available and Windows 1995 was released. The reason is not that Americans suddenly came to appreciate technical savvy and intellectual pursuits, it's that Americans started to realize that there was serious money to be made in computers. They started to realize that the guy who helped you out with your homework might also be the guy to start a billion-dollar company; suddenly, being a geek wasn't quite so lame.
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
But the way things are going it would end up with only Window's users being the cool kids. With the OS X users being the leper colony, and all the rest being the modern equivalent of untouchables, though we might get a badly supported plug-in someday.
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can be a geek or a nerd or anything you like AND still have social skills...
I prefer the term geek for myself, but hey, don't get too bogged down with terms for god's sake, we all pursue things of a cerebral nature, be they maths, be they D&D, you getting so uppity with possibly being called not a nerd because you don't like Star Wars... that just shows you're just as big of a dick as the jocks who look down on all nerds and geeks and dorks, you're just refining down your scorning of people into finer subgroups.
That doesn't make you any better than the jocks, and in fact probably just a hypocrite.
Learn to be comfortable in yourself and don't mind what bucket you get thrown in this week, it doesn't matter... if you're happy with who you are and with your friends and family who gives two rat's fused arses what people call you?
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
(... who need their computers fixed.)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Informative)
(This feature was described in Scott Adam's blog.)
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Re:nerd credentials? (Score:5, Funny)
Well for lunch I had some beef ball soup at TK Noodle over in Cupertino. It was pretty good, cheap and the service was slow. But otherwise satisfying. And yesterday I had to change my password at work. Damn 60-day password rotations and crazy ActiveDirectory crap. I want my 10+ character random letter and number passwords to be something I can pass down to my grandchildren. Oh and some more information, I am considering going to Muir woods, but can't decide if the memorial day weekend traffic would be bad. (I didn't even realize Memorial Day was even coming up soon). I wonder if I should hang out a flag. I'd have to buy one first (made in china).
There, you learn something every day. And just like after seeing Episode I, I want that wasted portion of my life back.
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A child of Star Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
Seeing Star Wars as a child has had a lifelong effect upon me and my worldview.
i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:5, Insightful)
and you have the two bumbling fools, the noble princess, and the hero trekking across hostile territory, doing various good deeds and engaging in various skirmishes. the scope of the movie and the plot are completely different, but you can immediately understand why this movie was the jumping off point for the picaresque characters of C3PO and R2D2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picaresque_novel [wikipedia.org]
C3PO and R2D2, using their point of view, is really the most risky and rewarding aspect of star wars. now, i don't think lucas would ever admit it, but i think he was trying to conjure up the same sort of picaresque magic twice... with the character jar jar binks
except that character was a terrible failure, while C3PO and R2D2 are universally loved. i don't claim to understand why one worked and the other didn't, but clearly jar jar falls flat as a humours bumbling low life antidote to the otherwise deadly serious proceedings, while the two robots rocked in the same sort of role
which brings me to a final thought: movie magic isn't easy. i think a lot of fanboys need to cut lucas a break. he gave us star wars. did you forget that? ok, he fumbled with the final 3 movies. but holding him in scorn for that, while completely forgetting the first 3, is totally unfair of you. if, in your mind, you can't rise above your own frustrated expectations of the latter 3 movies to still cherish the guy for the first 3, you really are taking star wars way too seriously
oops
did i just suggest someone might take star wars too seriously? yikes, gotta run and hide now, i just awoke the rabid partisan fanboy beasts...
Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:5, Insightful)
Jar Jar has a high, whiny, irritating voice. He appears to be based on an incredibly offensive stereotype. He looks goofy at best. He's clumsy -- he may try to help, but if he actually does any good, it's only because of pure dumb luck. That's just off the top of my head.
Comparing him to R2 -- R2 is cute. He's got personality, despite being a machine (almost because of it), and initiative. He usually knows what's going on (moreso than 3PO), and is actually helpful.
I actually liked most of the prequels alright -- saw the first when I was young enough to enjoy it (even Jar Jar), and didn't have high hopes for the second and third (by then I was old enough to hate Jar Jar). There were a few really horrible moments, and also a few moments worth watching.
But it does say something when Ryan vs Dorkman [ryanvsdorkman.com] is more fun to watch than most of the lightsaber duels in the actual movies.
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Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose you could argue that C-3PO did some bumbling, but it was pretty quick and typically involved disassembly on his part rather than just getting hit on the noggin and mugging the camera.
And anyway, goldenrod was only even there to give a exposition for the mute clown*, R-2D2. *almost harlequin, if you read too much into it (you can map almost anything onto commedia dell'arte if you're not careful)
I think you're right though. In the prime-three, he polished some rocks and got diamonds. In the "first" three, he went looking for diamonds and found glass.
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Re:i recently saw "the hidden fortress" (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly have to ask you, how much more fucking "angst" did you want?!
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Cult of Lucas. I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
What I don't get is the obsession with how ti was made. Clearly for the first couple of films the right people were in the right place at the right time. I don't think it was all Lucas by any stretch of the imagination and it's only those 2 films that I'd call good at all, so this idea of Lucas as genius with grand plans and grand vision just doesn't appeal to me. In fact unless you're in the movie business I fail to see how it can hold more than a passing interest. I'd rather watch paint dry than read this ebook cover to cover. I just don't care. I accept that Lucas is a hack who had a miracle year (or two).
Likewise with the actors. I don't mind Harrison Ford (even if he's getting worse not better as he gets older...Airforce One? What was he thinking!?) but Mark Hammil and Carrie Fisher weren't exactly any good.
As for continuity? Please! One minute Luke and Leia are about to get hot and heavy, and the next we're told they're brother and sister. Vader as Luke's father was unlikely though plausible, that is until the pathetic explanation that was Episode 3.
Re:Cult of Lucas. I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The next minute, THEY are told they are brother and sister. Big difference.
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"Prequels" not good? (Score:5, Insightful)
because those prequels are actually sequels. You know, they were actually made *after* the originals. Like all sequels, they are attempts to milk the cash cow created by the original franchise, i.e. ensure money will be made on the sequels just by vertue of the movie's name. And in many cases, the moviemaker thinks the name alone is enough, and forgets to make the sequel original or exciting because he has cold feets he didn't have when he made the first incarnation.
Examples of good movies with bad sequels:
Matrix
Rambo
Rocky
Re:"Prequels" not good? (Score:5, Interesting)
And not really in the same league, but I don't think anyone would call Serenity worse than Firefly.
Chronicles of Riddick -- it's not as if Pitch Black was a particularly good or well-known movie. It wasn't even promoted as a sequel that way. Not saying Riddick was great, but it was better than Pitch Black. But that defies stereotypes anyway -- there was a kind of ok anime, but the best was the videogame.
One more, while I'm at it: Star Trek. Even numbered movies vs odd.
Trim down the absurdly long action scenes, trim down the rambling dialog, and they could actually be good. Want to see the original be bad? Play the Path of Neo videogame.
Then again, the biggest problem is that it's exactly the same story they told with the original -- The One slowly wakes up, discovers a bigger world, gains new powers, and in the last few minutes of the movie, he has an epiphany and simply solves the problem, Deus Ex Machina style. (The Machine swarm consciousness is even credited as Deus Ex Machina.)
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Star Wars; breakable like Firefly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Star Wars; breakable like Firefly (Score:5, Interesting)
This was a very new thing for space films - this was no Flash Gordon show.
Still, when you look at the remake of Episode IV, check out the stormtroopers who were added in on Tatooine. They really lose that 'used' feel. Now check out Episode I. When did we ever see a glossy mirror-like spaceship in the original trilogy? Everything looks contrived - even the planet of Naboo looks far too pristine to be a credible part of the Star Wars universe.
The characters are the same way. Where are the grungy smugglers and seedy characters which gave Star Wars its intrigue and appeal? Sure, there were some obvious attempts, but they just didn't come close.
But having said all that, I agree with you. Firefly was a noble attempt to bring back some of that rustic grubby swashbuckling fun that made Star Wars so fascinating.
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I don't know if its the writing style or what... (Score:5, Funny)
Lucas was like Roddenberry, great ideas, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Story wise, Episode 1 needed cut down to about 15 minutes of intro for Episode 2, which is now Episode 1. This is a common problem with movies and TV shows, in that too many writers think we need to be introed to our characters at the dawn of time. It's much better when we join the story already at a decent pace and get the background filled in along the way. This lets the viewer/reader get interested in what's happening without having to spend time in school learning about the history of our characters first. If we wanted school, we'd read a textbook. Also, kill the midichlorian crap, excise JarJar Binks. Midichlorians stole the wonder from The force and JarJar wasn't taht great a merchandising tool anyway, as I STILL see Ep1 crap at the local Big Lots.
Episode 3 is now Episode 2, except for the last 15 minutes or so. This should end when Kenobi leaves Whinykin, er, Anakin, truncated on the volcano. Ep3 picks up there and we spend the next 2 hours seeing the creation of Darth Vader and how he builds the Empire and WHY. Only knowing that can we truly appreciate him turning on the emperor in Ep6, and what it means for him to look on his son with is own eyes.
The Marx Brother Syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
The Marx Brothers are old and boring today. A person having never seen them before will sit down in front of one of their classics and know all the jokes and nuances and just walk away.
If they were so great, why is this so?
It is because the were great, one of the greatest! Everyone in the business learned their tricks, copied their jokes, and expanded and improved on their dialog and themes. Now the Marx Brothers look diminished in comparison to what has developed after.
The same is true for Star Wars. It was great when it came out. It covered new ground. It did things that people had never seen before. In a lot of ways Star Wars was "dreadful." Today, I watch it and think Luke is such a whiner and C3PO shouldn't be an uptight english comic book character.
I think the episodes 1,2, and 3 suffered from the Marx Brothers Syndrome because the story, dialog, and "film making" of "Star Wars" has always been fairly flawed and needs to show us something new to allow us to overlook the weaknesses. Unfortunately, the cutting edge for special effects is irrelevant. Once you crossed over the "miniatures and props methodology" to CGI, improvements are now only incremental.
Star Wars fails because we already know it. We've seen it before in a thousand different ways since 1977. We already know the special effects. We have seen enough space opera, complete with bad dialog and acting, that there is almost nothing that would surprise us.
IMHO, Star Wars was ground breaking, but the space opera is as depleted a genre as the american western.
I'll sum it up in a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
2. He wrote tons of different drafts for Star Wars, all universally awful, even the better parts he stole from better stories.
3. George Lucas had enough success to get $10 million to make a movie but he was nowhere close to being the Beard. He says "Fuck you, I'm George Lucas," they say "George who?" So he couldn't do everything his way, he had to listen to the input of others.
4. The genius of the whole Star Wars project is that Lucas served as a catalyst to bring hundreds of talented people together to make good movies. As Harrison Ford told him, "George, you can write lines like this but you sure as hell can't say them!" He hated, absolutely hated the way Empire turned out. But because he didn't have enough money to reshoot the material, he had to accept what he was given. And it was arguably the strongest of the original trilogy.
5. Because he had to listen to others, his best ideas were polished up to be brilliant, his worst ideas discarded, and good ideas from others were welded into the structure that is Star Wars. And it was good.
6. After all that success, the Beard is seen as having made it happen. And for the new trilogy, he felt he could do it on his own. And like the egotistical singer from a rock band who thinks the rest of the act is holding him back, he finds out in his solo career that he really doesn't have the chops to stand on his own. But in this case, the fanbase is so uncritical, so slavish, that he still has massive success even as he's shoveling steaming feces down their throats; they just smack their lips and beg for more.
That's Star Wars in a nutshell.
Re:Does anybody really care? (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not like the movie, but to say it's "just a movie" is like saying "the Bible is just a book"--perhaps in some literal sense it's "a book," but it's one that has shaped the course of human history.
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Re:Does anybody really care? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the Jedi as religion was a bit of a joke (similar to a protest vote) done for censuses. I'm not sure if people really and truly consider it as a religion.
When I was 8, Star Wars came out. I went crazy for it just like most of my friends. We really wanted to see it and queued up for hours in the rain when it finally came to our cinemas. We bought the toys, played at Star Wars in the playground, and lived and breathed it.
But finally, after a few years, we just grew up a bit more and got into other things like other movies, girls, books, drinking, working, etc. My younger brother was mad keen on the return of the jedi a few years later; for him, it was his formative film, but since then, he also has grown up and sold off his toys.
We both have soft spots for our formative films and have happy memories of watching them and playing them, but to revere them as one of the biggest global cultural events is a little bit silly. It really is just entertainment with a bit of pseudo-religious babble mixed in there. People might recognise the Darth Vader sound, but it doesn't run their lives. They don't do things like quake in terror and get shocked like I a saw a elderly French woman do when she suddenly saw a dummy dressed in an SS uniform during an exhibition once.
In all of my travels, Star Wars has changed the world only for a small handful for people. For most, it really is just a movie and nothing else.
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Re:Oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and there's a military laser project named after it.
And frankly, it's too early to tell. We've had the Bible for at least a millennium or two. We've only been able to make movies for a little over a century -- and only in color, with sound, for about half that time.
It's simply physically impossible for a movie to have had as much of a chance to become as world-changing (for better or worse) as the Bible is -- it's simply had more time.
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Re:Oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
One of George Bush's favorite movies is supposed to be High Noon, a 1952 Western starring Gary Cooper. It's about a town marshal awaiting the arrival of a gang of criminals, coming to take revenge, who are arriving on the noon train. The townspeople are cowardly and don't want to stand up, but Cooper's character stands resolute even when everyone else tries to talk him out of it, and everyone else turns their back on him and abandons him. It's a morality tale about standing your ground and sticking to your principles when you're right, regardless of what other people think. And there's a lot to be said for that... but you could also imagine that someone watching that movie might find inspiration to stick to their ground and stand by their principles, even when they're *dead wrong*. For instance, if you were the President of the United States of America. It's not hard to picture Bush in his office, as the entire nation is telling him to change course in Iraq, imagining that he's the lead character in High Noon, steadfast, doing the right and moral thing even as the cowards around him try to tell him to alter course... who says movies can't alter the course of history?
Oscar Wilde once quipped, "Life imitates art, far more than art imitates life". After "Top Gun" was released, enlistment in the Navy soared. Shows like "CSI" have resulted in huge enrollment in criminology and forensics courses. Goethe's novel "Sorrows of Young Werther" ends with the suicide of its lovelorn protagonist, and was followed by a rash of suicides across Europe. Interrogators in Iraq try methods they've seen on "24" because they haven't received adequate instruction from the army. The novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" helped fuel the tensions that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the American Civil War. Our behavior is to a very large degree shaped by our role models, and we can either imitate real people like our parents, teachers, or celebrities, or fictional characters in novels, TV, and film.
The next President of the United States is likely to be Barack Obama, born 1961. Star Wars was released in 1977- when he was 16. Odds are good he saw it then. Who can know what kind of effect the movie had on him as an impressionable teen? When that 3:00 A.M. phone call comes to tell him that the terrorists/Iranians/aliens have attacked America, how do you know he won't be imagining himself in an Incom X-wing, spoilers locked in attack position, with a trusty R-2 unit as copilot, barreling down a trench as laser bolts fly past?
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Re:Oh please (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the White House official who comes closest to Palpatine is Dick Cheney. He's scheming, he's manipulative, he's secretive and rules from the shadows... and you can totally imagine him sneering with maniacal glee as blue lightning shoots from his fingertips to torture puppies, baby seals, Cub Scouts, whatever. Bush is more like Anakin Skywalker: well meaning, but naive and easily manipulated such that his good intentions end up doing great harm.
Hrm. Scratch that. Bush is more like Jar Jar: easily manipulated, dumb, problems with the English language, huge ears nobody can stand him for long.
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Re:Does anybody really care? (Score:5, Insightful)
And don't even mention the bible. It's a bigger piece of cruft than all versions of windows multiplied together.
If you like it or not, the bible (or any other religious book) is still a piece if human history. Just because someone (ok, I think too it's bad, but:) thinks that something is bad does not revoke it's status as history.
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Re:Does anybody really care? (Score:5, Funny)
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We'll never know (Score:5, Informative)
We'll probably never know that. It's influence wasn't just in its moral precepts (which may or may not have actually have had any influence on the people that mattered), or stuff like the Crusades.
But without the Franks converting to Christianity, for example, we wouldn't have had the Holy Roman Empire. (Which wasn't holy, roman, nor had more than a forgery as a claim to call itself an empire, but there we go.) Nor stuff like the investiture controversy later, which did decentralize that big of a chunk of Europe. We wouldn't have had the Byzantine conflicts with Armenia or with the Syriac churches, which conflict ultimately put it border to border with the Seljuk Turks and thus the disastrous war at Manzikert against Alp Arslan. (The resulting internal conflict is widely recognized as the beginning of the end for the Byzantines.) The Armenians knew how to deal with the turkish troops, Byzantium had no clue. Etc, etc, etc.
It might have also had more subtle implications for the Roman empire, and its eventual demise, as it was an anti-Empire religion of the oppressed. The crucifix as a symbol wasn't just about Christ. It was a symbol of roman oppression, recognizable by everyone. It was an execution reserved only for non-citizens in occupied territories. Eventually the Empire _had_ to adopt this new religion, or be weakened from within by it. There also was at least an internal war in the Roman Empire, east against west, based on it.
The changes and influences are too many and too far reaching, to make that kind of pronouncement.
Would history have been better without the HRE and everything? We don't really know. That one religion pretty much sent the whole history of a continent, down an entirely different trouser leg of history. So different, that we can't even guess what was ahead down the other trouser leg.
Would we have still had slavery, for example, if the Roman empire continued as it was? The transition to feudalism was largely caused by the collapse of trade, order, and the centralized state, as Rome was no longer able to control its provinces. Even in Italy itself, Justinian's disastrous war of reconquest and the plague it brought, ensured the almost total collapse and made it easy prey for a tribe as primitive as the Lombards.
Was Christianity the worst religion possible, in the long run?
Well, Confucianism in China, for example, may not have had an Inquisition, but ensured almost total stagnation past a point. The imperial examination ensured that everyone who even hoped to have any official or teaching job at any level, had to learn by heart the same norms and precepts. There wasn't much room for trying anything new, and even conquerors like the Yuan dynasty (Mongolians) or Qing dynasty (Manchu), found it easier to just continue the system than try to change it. Sometimes with disastrous results, like the actual technology and military regression during the Qing dynasty.
I'll stick to China as an example for now, just because I can't be arsed to write a tome about every single zone and religion on Earth. Some would maybe make even better examples, but, eh, bear with me.
By contrast, Christianity never had that tight a grip on everything, and had to find some way to accomodate different scientific approaches. E.g., before it could pick on Galileo in the name of the Aristotelian system, it had to accept the Aristotelian system and let universities teach it in the first place, mostly because it couldn't do much about it.
Or we look at the Crusades and other internal wars, and think "OMG, look at all the carnage that Christianity caused." Well, China had for example the Three Kingdoms period, where internal warfare, where they lost something like 70% of the population in war. Not estimate, but actual difference between census numbers. And again, 70% of the total population, _not_ of the army. Mind you, some as a result of famines and other effec
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Re:Does anybody really care? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I consider an objective standpoint, btw, the prequels were every bit as good story and acting-wise as the originals. Everybody hates Jar-Jar but I don't see the various cutesy robots and critters in the originals to be a lot better, and the Ewoks beat the universe part was, is, and always will be embarrassing.
Brett
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Re:Does anybody really care? (Score:5, Informative)
The prequels didn't shoot for instant gratification. The Good guys vs. Bad guys formula was thrown out. The "Villains" in TPM were weak and cowardly. They weren't bent on conquering the galaxy, but securing trade rights. Trade rights?! It was a bold move that alienated many fans. But the real story was what was happening behind the scenes: Palpatine manipulating the Neimoidians, the Naboo, and the Senate to prepare for his War. The blockade of Naboo was just the first pawns being moved. Many themes of moral ambiguity were pervasive in the prequels. The Jedi were the "good guys", but they were flawed and arrogant. The CIS were the "Bad guys", but their grievances with the Senate were quite valid. The Republic was a bastion of freedom and democracy, but it was mired in corruption. Anakin was the personification of this dichotomy. He wasn't the superhero that Luke (and the OT audience) imagined him to be, but a very flawed, very "human" character. In the noble effort to save his wife and child he, like Lady Jocasta, inadvertently *cause* the very events that they dedicated themselves to prevent.
It's easy to drill no deeper than the awkward dialog or Jar-Jar fart jokes in the prequels. But by doing so, you're missing the point entirely. The best storytelling in the prequels is what lies between the lines.
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Re:But does it explain... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lucas should have taken advantage of the JJ hatred and turned him into an accident-prone character who gets his tongue caught in food processors, gets hit by meteorites or low-flying ships, etc.; sort of like the intergalactic Wiley Coyote. People would cheer everytime he got it.
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