posted
He got thrown down an improbable well of infinite depth! Twenty years or not, that's hardly what I call an effective endgame. I think a reconsideration of some basic Sith strategies is called for.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
No obvious alternatives present themselves, though. If the Sith trains no apprentice, he'll have to fight his battles himself. That means no free afternoons, no long Black Sabbaths, and probably no time to masquerade as the leader of a Republic whose name he once read off a cereal box.
If the Sith trains an incompetent apprentice, he'll most certainly be thwarted by a bunch of meddling kids and their dog.
And if the Sith trains multiple apprentices who'll slug it out between themselves before going for the big guy, he's only delaying the inevitable, AND risking a gang-up. Not to mention the extra expenses, or the endless complaints of Darth Fernal getting a bigger saber and cooler name than Darth Competent.
posted
Palpatine wouldn't need Dooku's help in figuring out Anakin's status. As Supreme Chancellor, he'd no doubt have access to that info, either from the council or from the gibbering young Anakin himself.
posted
Timo's post about the Sith names got me thinking about the name we do know (from the movies) - Plagueis, Sidious, Maul, Tyrannus, and Vader. To me the only one that doesn't conjure up other imagery and doesn't seem to fit is Vader. Does that name mean anything to anyone else? (It's probably because I've heard that name almost my entire life is the reason it doesn't mean anything else to me. It's too familiar, I guess.)
posted
I believe it's Norse for something. I know I read somewhere that it meant something. They're obviously all supposed to sound e-vil. Plagueis = plague. Sidious = insidious. Maul = errr.. maul. Tyrannus = tyrant (unless you want to believe he was named after the library owner mentioned in the Bible). Vader = evade? I don't know... it's kind of dark sounding all on its own.
posted
Well, (In)Sidious and (In)Vader seem like a good match...
More generally, it seems to me that the names are not merely cutesy by coincidence. Rather, it's a "Universal Translator" thing: these Sith are indeed named suggestively, and the same magic that translates nearly everybody's words to English also translates these names into English almost-words.
So Darth Vader in Galactic is actually Horcha Moogu, "Horcha" being almost like "Horfha" which translates as Dark, and "Moogubav" translating as Invader. Luke Skywalker is actually Vuuk Johunagom, with "johunag" meaning "sky" and "om" meaning "one who does not own a hovercar". And so forth.
posted
He could just, you know, hire out an army. As things went, Maul and Dooku and even Anakin didn't really contribute much to the big picture. I've never seen those Clone Wars cartoons, but from what I hear he could have got the same Jedi-killing effect by commissioning a few more Greviouses to mop up straggling Jedi after the clones got through with the bulk of them.
(As far as actual physical battles go, Palpatine seemed to have no trouble dispatching a whole squad of some of the presumably best Jedi available all by himself.)
And anyway, manipulating your underlings into a constant state of competition with each other is a trusted and time-honored method for avoiding coups. Intentionally creating followers who are, according to prophecy, way more powerful than you, is not.
Though I do wonder if the Sith version of that prophecy might not read rather differently.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
He didn't 'commission' the original Grievous though, Grievous was made out of the leftovers of some deep-fried alien into a cyborg by the Banking Alliance, they're the really tall headed sniveling cowards in the Clone Wars series, I think one is visible amongst the separatist leadership in RotS aswell. General Kenobi leads the assault on their planet and forces their surrender in a few of the Clone Wars shorts.
In any case they had to go through some fairly convoluted procedure to actually make Grievous, I doubt Sidious would have gone to all the trouble when he could just have Vader do the mopping up, or any other force user he could find and brainwash.
Re: Sidious' strength, remember Mace dealt him a severe beating and face-melting, were it not for the ever-whining chosen one's intervention, Mace would have probably killed Sidious then and there. Was a bit odd how quickly the other 3 Jedi bought it compared to Mace, Saesee Tiin and that Zabrak dude barely got on screen.
-------------------- Garbled, confusing and quite frankly duller than an inflight magazine produced by Air Belgium.
Registered: May 2004
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posted
1.) I don't mean to imply that Palpatine personally built Grevious. Just that Grevious can obviously be built (ingredients: some dude, robot parts), by people already working for him, though they don't know it; and apparently he/it serves as a highly capable Jedi-killing machine once constructed.
2.) I guess this is a matter of opinion, but it seemed clear to me that Palpatine took a dive for Anakin's benefit. I'm not saying he was sure to beat Mace Windu if Anakin hadn't intervened, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't beaten yet.
1a.) I kind of resent the fact that I have to bring all this stuff that wasn't in the movie into the movie with me in order to appreciate it. Like, not totally, because I am not really against on the idea of supplementary stories and stuff, but, like, as far as I can tell, if you have never heard about those cartoons Grevious basically makes no sense at all. Who is he? Why is he coughing? How come he has living organs? What's with the lightsabers? All explained somewhere that isn't this movie.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
It seems to me that the "droid leader has four lightsabers" thing is explained in the movie well enough - he himself says it's a trophy collection. And the discovery that he's an extreme cyborg is a sort of an early introduction to Vaderization, and works nicely outside the Clone Wars cartoon context. The cough could be a proto-Vaderlike thing, too...
Overall, it seems plausible that there would be Jedi-haters all over the galaxy, them being the galactic cops and all. And the continuing resistance would mean that some would be very good at opposing the Jedi, like this Grievous dude. He wouldn't have to be a Dark Side drone or anything, story logic wise; indeed, for those who had forgotten most of the plot points of AotC by the time of RotS, his communion with Darth Sidious serves as a nice reintroduction to the whole Both-Sides-Palpatine concept.
Not that I'd disagree on the annoyance factor of tying movies too much to the surrounding franchise. Having Khan in ST2 was already stretching things a bit; using Sela in ST10 would have been even worse than building parts of RotS plot on a cartoon!
posted
"Having Khan in ST2 was already stretching things a bit"
See, I think this case is just the opposite. Khan's whole deal (genetically engineered dictator type, marooned by Kirk, eager for revenge) is laid out quickly and painlessly in the film, no prior "Space Seed" viewing required.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
It's not a counterproductive use of a TV show reference by any means, but it's not the dramatically best possible choice, either. I saw TMP and ST2 before seeing any TOS, and while the character dynamics in both were fairly straightforward and quickly outlined, most of my buddies were left wondering why Khan was so angry at Kirk. The concept of a space pirate thwarted by the hero fifteen years before opening credits, and now seeking a rematch, is quite acceptable; but it also makes the task of fleshing out the villain harder, since either there's too much exposition to be done first, or then too little is done and the villain is left "unfounded".
Khan was okay, and perhaps better than Kruge due to having a background - but Kruge could have been introduced as an "old nemesis" easily enough, too. I'd have had no big problems with that. The Borg were very smoothly used as familiar villains, too. It's the Sela scenario I was truly frightened about, and IMHO the use of a never before seen villain was a vital dramatic choice here, a saving grace in a relative dramatic disaster. More Romulans and less Remans would have been nice, perhaps - but NEW Romulans, rather than rehashes by Crosby or Katsulas or somebody else semi-notorious from the TV show.
quote:Originally posted by Timo: ...while the character dynamics in both were fairly straightforward and quickly outlined, most of my buddies were left wondering why Khan was so angry at Kirk.
{snip}
More Romulans and less Remans would have been nice, perhaps - but NEW Romulans, rather than rehashes by Crosby or Katsulas or somebody else semi-notorious from the TV show.
Timo Saloniemi
Firstly I'd only ever seen like Wrath and Search and Voyage Home for years. I had no problem with the story line and I was a kid. Maybe it's the fact the video had a blurb on the back which set the seen. Most people are going to know at least that much before they go and see a movie.
Secondly - best Romulan on TNG... Carolyn Semour. She did play 2 Romulans but both strong women and not too forgettable either.
"The Face of the Enemy" was just brilliant (and really Emmy-worthy) television all round.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
"1.) I don't mean to imply that Palpatine personally built Grevious. Just that Grevious can obviously be built (ingredients: some dude, robot parts), by people already working for him, though they don't know it; and apparently he/it serves as a highly capable Jedi-killing machine once constructed."
"Some dude" who's particularly proficient with the Force, I should think. All the metal bits do is let him fight with four arms, or stick to magnets, or whatever. His ability to not be immediately destroyed when fighting a Jedi is, presumably, something he already had before he was cyborgified.
As for needing to see "Clone Wars" to understand the movie... You also have to have seen the other movies. Why complain that one thing is prerequired viewing, but not another thing?
Registered: Mar 1999
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