Comment Re:There are plot holes in both directions. (Score 1) 538
Quoth the poster:
What I got from Brin's article is that the whole point is that Obi-Wan is a bad guy, and that he and Anakin (and perhaps a few other jedi such as Yoda) are in league with one another to corrupt the force and generally wreak havoc like any nearly-immortal superpowerful beings eventually would.
This does seem like a terrific plot to me, and it makes the order of the entire series make sense. (Hence resolving the currently valid protest that the prequels and the original trilogy seem to be unrelated.) As it is, if Episode III just ends with Vader rising up and killing people and all that, we really won't have a movie with an ending at all, will we? The bad guys win. So what? We knew that from the beginning. How can Lucas possibly make such an ending into something we'll want to see?
Obviously the bad guys can't be stopped; we already know that won't happen until Episode VI. Therefore, it seems the only ending which could make it all come together in EpIII would be if something is revealed to us which shifts our entire perspective on the entire history of the saga, including (and particularly ihcluding) the last three episodes. In other words, the only way I can see where a movie can end with the bad guys winning is if we in actuality don't know who the bad guys are.
Just think about it. What if Anakin and Obi-Wan do stop the bad guys in Episode III. What if they slay Tyranus and Sidious, (neither of whom appears -by name- in the original trilogy, although Sidious does bear a marked resemblance to someone) but in a magic twist, choose to assume the throne of power for themselves? What makes us so sure that Obi-Wan is a good guy, anyway? Because he helps Luke build a lightsaber? Because he speaks to him from beyond the grave? Doesn't Emperor Palpatine appear before Vader in much the same way?
If Episode I was any indication, Obi-Wan is exhibiting traits of a dark jedi. Remember how Palpatine told Luke to give in to his anger when they were fighting? Isn't that exactly what Obi-Wan does when Maul kills Qui-gon? (He goes all out; screaming and hollering like a madman and nearly gets killed in the process.)
I think Brin's point is a good one. The only way Lucas can end the prequels without making Episode III into a total flop with no sense is to twist the entire 6-episode legacy around. There are plenty of characters, motives and events in the Star Wars series which are ambiguous enough that we could be seeing them all completely wrong.
How do we know the people we've thought have been good all along are good? How do we even know that Darth Vader is Anakin? Because he says so? Isn't he a sith; a dark lord; master of deception; and all that bad stuff? What do really know about Obi-Wan? Do we even know who The Emperor of the later trilogy is under that hood? Why does Yoda let Luke run off and give in to his rage? It goes on and on.
There's a lot of wiggle room in the series' history for some big plot twists, even if that wiggle room is all from just a bunch of goof-ups on Lucas' part that have accumulated over the years. There's a chance that Lucas could cover up the mistakes and fix all the inconsistencies with a brilliant plot twist that could be very satisfying, so here's to hoping for the best and expecting the worst.
I mean, maybe he could have been forced to kill a couple of people just to convince the emperor he really was on the dark side. A tough moral choice but in the end he decided the sacrifice of a few was necessary to save the majority, sort of thing. But when the undercover agent kills more people than the godfather, then there's no way you can make him turn out to be a good guy after all.
What I got from Brin's article is that the whole point is that Obi-Wan is a bad guy, and that he and Anakin (and perhaps a few other jedi such as Yoda) are in league with one another to corrupt the force and generally wreak havoc like any nearly-immortal superpowerful beings eventually would.
This does seem like a terrific plot to me, and it makes the order of the entire series make sense. (Hence resolving the currently valid protest that the prequels and the original trilogy seem to be unrelated.) As it is, if Episode III just ends with Vader rising up and killing people and all that, we really won't have a movie with an ending at all, will we? The bad guys win. So what? We knew that from the beginning. How can Lucas possibly make such an ending into something we'll want to see?
Obviously the bad guys can't be stopped; we already know that won't happen until Episode VI. Therefore, it seems the only ending which could make it all come together in EpIII would be if something is revealed to us which shifts our entire perspective on the entire history of the saga, including (and particularly ihcluding) the last three episodes. In other words, the only way I can see where a movie can end with the bad guys winning is if we in actuality don't know who the bad guys are.
Just think about it. What if Anakin and Obi-Wan do stop the bad guys in Episode III. What if they slay Tyranus and Sidious, (neither of whom appears -by name- in the original trilogy, although Sidious does bear a marked resemblance to someone) but in a magic twist, choose to assume the throne of power for themselves? What makes us so sure that Obi-Wan is a good guy, anyway? Because he helps Luke build a lightsaber? Because he speaks to him from beyond the grave? Doesn't Emperor Palpatine appear before Vader in much the same way?
If Episode I was any indication, Obi-Wan is exhibiting traits of a dark jedi. Remember how Palpatine told Luke to give in to his anger when they were fighting? Isn't that exactly what Obi-Wan does when Maul kills Qui-gon? (He goes all out; screaming and hollering like a madman and nearly gets killed in the process.)
I think Brin's point is a good one. The only way Lucas can end the prequels without making Episode III into a total flop with no sense is to twist the entire 6-episode legacy around. There are plenty of characters, motives and events in the Star Wars series which are ambiguous enough that we could be seeing them all completely wrong.
How do we know the people we've thought have been good all along are good? How do we even know that Darth Vader is Anakin? Because he says so? Isn't he a sith; a dark lord; master of deception; and all that bad stuff? What do really know about Obi-Wan? Do we even know who The Emperor of the later trilogy is under that hood? Why does Yoda let Luke run off and give in to his rage? It goes on and on.
There's a lot of wiggle room in the series' history for some big plot twists, even if that wiggle room is all from just a bunch of goof-ups on Lucas' part that have accumulated over the years. There's a chance that Lucas could cover up the mistakes and fix all the inconsistencies with a brilliant plot twist that could be very satisfying, so here's to hoping for the best and expecting the worst.
