EPISODE 126 - The Star Wars Holiday Special

[jarrycanada 2483]

But, but..

 

 

I didn't make this but i wish I could say I did.

[DoodyKnife 2]

Did anyone else think Lumpy was a special needs Wookiee? I think that is why Chewie is always hustling to make money while Itchy and Mala are home doing their best to take care of him even though they are clearly overmatched.

[RyanSz 3140]

Maybe it's me but what if Jedi are just guys with a lot of magnets in their clothes and they call it "the Force."

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Maybe it's me but what if Jedi are just guys with a lot of magnets in their clothes and they call it "the Force."

You mean they take their robes off, and all four limbs are just coated in these?

 

[RyanSz 3140]

You mean they take their robes off, and all four limbs are just coated in these?

 

I think that's a better idea than mitochlorians.

[Lando 2019]

 

I would hate for that to happen. I think, and here's some wild speculation (and I'm probably wrong),

I could see Finn being Luke's son. Just because he's Black, doesn't mean both his parents were. I could see a scenario where Kylo Ren, when slaughtering the Jedi, stole Luke's baby. It would explain why, of all the Stormtroopers, Ren seems to have a "connection" to this one trooper in particular, and why he would call him a "traitor"--not a traitor to the First Order, but to the Skywalker bloodline. It would also explain Kanata telling him, "You HAVE a weapon!" I mean, Wedge Antilles is cool and all, but I wouldn't expect him to fight with a lightsaber, which Finn does pretty well considering he's never had any training. As you said, he holds his own against Ren...at least for a little bit. Furthermore, it would explain why he was able to break the Stormtrooper conditioning.

 

 

Yeah, I think they should have just come out and say who was related to whom. It seems like there are just so few options that the reveals are either going to be anticlimactic with reactions of "I knew it all along" and "so obvious" or obscure and appeal to only the most die hard of fans and leave the bulk of people with blank stares.

 

ETA: An, yes, I recognize I am now "Correcting and Omitting" The Force Awakens.

 

At least it's somewhat on topic.

 

A few more rambling TFA thoughts:

 

 

 

Another thing about Kylo that didn't sit right with me was his fixation on Vader, or at least how it is explored. Vader had been dead before he was born and he has a 30 year old burnt skull that he takes with him wherever he goes? That's pretty weird and gross. Why not another helmet from Vader's wardrobe or why not some other keepsake of his grandfather? It just seemed too on the nose.

Plus, how would he know so much about Vader? I am not saying it's impossible or even unlikely, but I would assume that his parents would have told him about Anakin and used Vader as a cautionary tale. We only really ever see anything from the side of the rebels, so it makes me wonder if there were a lot of people that approved of the empire and were nostalgic for it once it fell? Once the USSR dissolved there were a lot of Russian people nostalgic for Stalin. I would be interested in seeing the interim period where Vader is made a hero in some Empire planets. It would be interesting to explore.

 

This is really more an issue with the clumsy mythology that Lucas tried to put together and how it limited the other films, and I am sure that there is something explained in material that I have not seen. I have read that there is a sith "law of two" which means that there are only ever two sith at once, a master and an apprentice, but I think that is stupid. It means that after Darth Maul dies, Palpatine has to go out and recruit old man Dooku to be his apprentice late in his life--which seems dumb. Plus it means that once the only two sith die in ROTJ, somehow with no recruitment two new sith come in out of nowhere and follow the laws of the sith laid out before them. It just seems like the sith could have been a small and nimble organization like a terrorist cell and not said that there are always exactly two.

Now, where I had said I thought that Ren felt underwhelming, and less threatening than Vader. Aside from the upgraded death star it just didn't feel like the stakes were raised from the original trilogy. I think they could have fixed it by having more than one sith, which would have been a possibility if not for that nonsensical rule of two.

 

Also, I noticed that everyone jumped to the defense of Kylo Ren, but nobody jumped to the defense of General Hux. Everybody seems to agree, he's no Grand Moff Tarkin.

 

 

[RyanSz 3140]

A few more rambling TFA thoughts:

 

 

 

Another thing about Kylo that didn't sit right with me was his fixation on Vader, or at least how it is explored. Vader had been dead before he was born and he has a 30 year old burnt skull that he takes with him wherever he goes? That's pretty weird and gross. Why not another helmet from Vader's wardrobe or why not some other keepsake of his grandfather? It just seemed too on the nose.

Plus, how would he know so much about Vader? I am not saying it's impossible or even unlikely, but I would assume that his parents would have told him about Anakin and used Vader as a cautionary tale. We only really ever see anything from the side of the rebels, so it makes me wonder if there were a lot of people that approved of the empire and were nostalgic for it once it fell? Once the USSR dissolved there were a lot of Russian people nostalgic for Stalin. I would be interested in seeing the interim period where Vader is made a hero in some Empire planets. It would be interesting to explore.

 

This is really more an issue with the clumsy mythology that Lucas tried to put together and how it limited the other films, and I am sure that there is something explained in material that I have not seen. I have read that there is a sith "law of two" which means that there are only ever two sith at once, a master and an apprentice, but I think that is stupid. It means that after Darth Maul dies, Palpatine has to go out and recruit old man Dooku to be his apprentice late in his life--which seems dumb. Plus it means that once the only two sith die in ROTJ, somehow with no recruitment two new sith come in out of nowhere and follow the laws of the sith laid out before them. It just seems like the sith could have been a small and nimble organization like a terrorist cell and not said that there are always exactly two.

Now, where I had said I thought that Ren felt underwhelming, and less threatening than Vader. Aside from the upgraded death star it just didn't feel like the stakes were raised from the original trilogy. I think they could have fixed it by having more than one sith, which would have been a possibility if not for that nonsensical rule of two.

 

Also, I noticed that everyone jumped to the defense of Kylo Ren, but nobody jumped to the defense of General Hux. Everybody seems to agree, he's no Grand Moff Tarkin.

 

 

 

In regards to Kylo and the skull, he might have snagged it from the Jedi temple Luke was training him at, as a final "fuck you" to the man who killed Kylo's idol. As for only hearing from the rebel POV, there is a lot in the expanded universe that covers the propaganda from the Empire, specifically the Ewok genocide after the battle in Return of the Jedi which basically was the Empire saying that the Rebels caused the death of thousands of Ewoks by destroying the Death Star so close to Endor that basically the debris hit the planet and laid waste to all that was there. Then there are various games and comics from the POV of the Empire or Stormtroopers, so it would make sense that Kylo might have been privy to some of this propaganda regarding Vader.

 

 

[Cam Bert 8145]

Did anybody read any of the lead in novels of comics to The Force Awakens? As much as I am loving the Star Wars comics I didn't want to read it out of fear of spoilers, but am curious now of it or the novels fill in and of the gaps that we all are speculating on.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Did anybody read any of the lead in novels of comics to The Force Awakens? As much as I am loving the Star Wars comics I didn't want to read it out of fear of spoilers, but am curious now of it or the novels fill in and of the gaps that we all are speculating on.

 

I just subscribed to Audible, and so far, I've downloaded A New Dawn and Aftermath. I can't say that they really spoil anything or really give any new details. However, I do listen to them at night in bed and tend to fall asleep with them playing. The result being I end up 6 chapters past where I last remember and have to keep going back--so I'm probably missing a lot of details. Also, despite having great production values, I seem to have trouble retaining information through Audible (something I'm very good with when "regular" reading)--I'm not sure if this an Audible issue, the books are just boring, or if it's due to the fact that I listen to them when I'm already tired...

 

Once I catch up with the podcasts I missed from last week, I may try relistening to them at work and see if that's any better.

 

EDITED TO ADD--BAD FATHER STORY:

 

Last night I was listening to Aftermath, and there was a teenage character that was incredibly annoying. So, off hand, I said, aloud and jokingly, "That kid is a real jerk." The problem was, my son had just come in and I happened to be looking at him when I said it. Holy Shit...If you could have seen the look on his face as it scrunched up and the racking sobs that came out of him. I had to console him for like an hour and assure him that I was snarking on a stupid character in a stupid Star Wars novel and not him. It broke my fucking heart. I'm really just relaying this as a cautionary tale to all of you out there who don't have kids and hope to have them one day. Toddlers not getting jokes and context is really something nobody prepares you for. I've found myself putting my foot in my mouth more times than I'd like lately, not realizing how much he can suddenly understand and still not understand. Don't be like me, people. There are so many parenting landmines you can never be prepared for.

[Lando 2019]

 

In regards to Kylo and the skull, he might have snagged it from the Jedi temple Luke was training him at, as a final "fuck you" to the man who killed Kylo's idol. As for only hearing from the rebel POV, there is a lot in the expanded universe that covers the propaganda from the Empire, specifically the Ewok genocide after the battle in Return of the Jedi which basically was the Empire saying that the Rebels caused the death of thousands of Ewoks by destroying the Death Star so close to Endor that basically the debris hit the planet and laid waste to all that was there. Then there are various games and comics from the POV of the Empire or Stormtroopers, so it would make sense that Kylo might have been privy to some of this propaganda regarding Vader.

 

 

 

I am not surprised that it has been explored in some of the other material. I remember reading a while ago that George Lucas explicitly stated that virtually none of the books were canon, but that the video games were. I wonder if that is still true or if he authorized anything since I had read that. Still, I would like to see those explored in film.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

 

In regards to Kylo and the skull, he might have snagged it from the Jedi temple Luke was training him at, as a final "fuck you" to the man who killed Kylo's idol. As for only hearing from the rebel POV, there is a lot in the expanded universe that covers the propaganda from the Empire, specifically the Ewok genocide after the battle in Return of the Jedi which basically was the Empire saying that the Rebels caused the death of thousands of Ewoks by destroying the Death Star so close to Endor that basically the debris hit the planet and laid waste to all that was there. Then there are various games and comics from the POV of the Empire or Stormtroopers, so it would make sense that Kylo might have been privy to some of this propaganda regarding Vader.

 

 

 

One thing I want to point out about the EU is that, while it's not canon anymore, they're still clearly borrowing heavily from it. They just don't want to have to work around all these (sometimes contradictory) histories that have been set up over the last 30 years. So I could totally see them using some of the EU propaganda stuff.

 

Also, people know about Luke and Han and Leia and the Force and all of that shit without being told specifically by someone who was there. These are all legends to them, so it's not unfathomable that Ben Solo heard the story of Anakin and interpreted it differently. Think about things that happened in global politics 30 years ago and how they are perceived today. Both Iran Contra and the arming of the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War were roughly 30 years ago, and there are still people that completely condemn the actions of the Reagan Administration and others who unwaveringly support those actions. Now, I'm not here to debate either of those things, but I'm using them to illustrate that our perceptions of history are quite varied. So it's not too big of a stretch to think that, even when fed the Anakin/Vader story as a cautionary tale, a student might question it and start down a different path.

 

[DanEngler 5249]

 

Both Iran Contra and the arming of the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War were roughly 30 years ago, and there are still people that completely condemn the actions of the Reagan Administration and others who unwaveringly support those actions. Now, I'm not here to debate either of those things, but I'm using them to illustrate that our perceptions of history are quite varied.

So what you're saying is, in arming the Ewoks, the Rebel Alliance inadvertently created Galactic al-Qaeda?

[DanEngler 5249]

Hey, Dan when does baby new year post another exciting new episode of HDTGM?

Never. Show's cancelled.

 

[FisterRoboto 7499]

So what you're saying is, in arming the Ewoks, the Rebel Alliance inadvertently created Galactic al-Qaeda?

That's 100% the point I was making.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Never. Show's cancelled.

 

[Cameron H. 23786]

Never. Show's cancelled.

 

 

[DanEngler 5249]

[Lando 2019]

 

Also, people know about Luke and Han and Leia and the Force and all of that shit without being told specifically by someone who was there. These are all legends to them, so it's not unfathomable that Ben Solo heard the story of Anakin and interpreted it differently. Think about things that happened in global politics 30 years ago and how they are perceived today. Both Iran Contra and the arming of the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War were roughly 30 years ago, and there are still people that completely condemn the actions of the Reagan Administration and others who unwaveringly support those actions. Now, I'm not here to debate either of those things, but I'm using them to illustrate that our perceptions of history are quite varied. So it's not too big of a stretch to think that, even when fed the Anakin/Vader story as a cautionary tale, a student might question it and start down a different path.

 

 

I am not saying it's unlikely or unreasonable, it's just that it's taken as a given in TFA and it would be interesting had they explored it (at least for people like me that are Star Wars fans, but don't explore anything outside of the official movies other than a couple of video games). How and why he became Kylo could be really interesting, especially since he clearly doesn't look in a mirror and yell "NOOOOOOOO"

[FisterRoboto 7499]

 

I am not saying it's unlikely or unreasonable, it's just that it's taken as a given in TFA and it would be interesting had they explored it (at least for people like me that are Star Wars fans, but don't explore anything outside of the official movies other than a couple of video games). How and why he became Kylo could be really interesting, especially since he clearly doesn't look in a mirror and yell "NOOOOOOOO"

I agree, but I have a feeling that's something they're going to explore more in Ep 8. Or at least, I'm hoping they do.

 

Also, I'm pretty sure Dan just started a gif war with taylorannephoto.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Also, I'm pretty sure Dan just started a gif war with taylorannephoto.

[DanEngler 5249]

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Fuck I almost conceded right there cause that is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!

 

[jarrycanada 2483]

how about a nice pillow.

 

[DanEngler 5249]

Fuck I almost conceded right there cause that is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!

 

I tried so hard to find a kittens-playing-with-BB-8 GIF to compete with the baby chicks, but they were all insufficiently cute. Fuck it, I lose.

 

[Lando 2019]

 

Only the first frame of that image loaded for me and I was like "I don't get it, what's so funny? Am I missing something? Am I going to ruin my space cred if I ask?" but when I clicked view image it the whole thing loaded up. Nerd crisis averted.