Why Exactly Do We Care About Star Wars?

[beastro]

Did the huns ever invade france and England?

I suspect that's a joke. The huns invaded Rome and most of middle Europe. They may have gotten as far as France at one point, but England wasn't Engalnd at the time. My knowledge of history is a bit sketchy, so you may want to fact check me, but I believe England was still under control of the Saxons at this point.

'Huns' happened to be British slang for the Germans during World War 1. The idea is that the eternal enemies of Europe, England and France, teamed up together and fought the expanding Germans.

So much ignorance here and in the rest of the thread.

It came from the Boxer Rebellion and Kaiser Wilhelm II's speech to the outgoing troops as they were loading up to leave: "When you meet the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! No prisoners will be taken! Those who fall into your hands are forfeit to you! Just as a thousand years ago, the Huns under their King Etzel made a name for themselves that make them appear awe-inspiring in tradition and myth, so shall you establish the name of Germans in China for 1000 years, so that a Chinese will never again dare to look askance at a German."

The only problem was that by the time the soldiers got to China the crisis was over, but they took his words literally (Willy was infamous for saying things on impulse) and began to rape and pillage. It wasn't something altogether unique during the Boxer Rebellion, but the fact that a European monarch had seemingly giving his men specific orders to behave in such a way left an impression on the rest of Europe that the Germans were no better than the Huns and were modern day barbarians.

The term was popularized by the founder of the German Social Democratic Party, a Communist who used news from what was happening in China to tar the Kaiser and the conservative base that backed him.

(that's what I thought Obi Wan meant by "Darth Vader helped hunt down and kill the Jedi Knights") rather than having almost all of them destroyed within about 10 minutes in a montage.

This is my major issue with how the trilogy went and it's because Lucas lost out on a huge chance to be dramatic and symbolical: It was implied that over years Anakin not only hunted down the Jedi one by one, but paid for it at times and was severely hurt which necessitated more life-support and that it continued until he'd finally killed almost all of them, but in turn was more machine than man.

It would perfectly reflect his fall. Each time he killed a Jedi, each time one managed to wound him before dying, he lost more and more of himself until he was little more than his breathe. Cold, lifeless, mechanical, devoid of the person he once was.

As for the article itself, he makes some excellent points. However, I am not sure why Yahtzee does not seem to realise that Star Trek is no less sci-fantasy than Star Wars. It has just as much reference to wandwaving magic powers with just as few concrete boundaries on their abilities and no more of a grounding in any real science than Star Wars.

Technobabble overtook Star Trek and it at least started out with much science fiction in it, even if it were impractical. There's a difference between technobabble (the random joining of scientific words to produce an explanation for a phenomenon) and borrowing cutting edge scientific speculation and handwaving into being practical and in common use in the hypothetical future.

Things like warp drive, teleportation and using light as a tractor beam were first popping up in scientific debate in the 60s, and even if all three are silly (warp requiring more energy to work than the entire universe will ever produce in its entire existence, teleportation being limited to only information or even not at that and the heat produced from the light of a tractor beam being more than enough to not only fry the object it's targeting but the ship mounting the tractor beam itself), they at least have some basis in scientific speculation for them to be worthy of being used in speculative fiction.

What it came down to with Star Trek was the push to pump out stories on a regular basis and it was easier, and more practical from a production standpoint, to use technobabble to explain plot elements than it was to canvas science for new ideas to flesh out and fit into both a story and production schedule they had to keep up with.

 

[GabeZhul]

(...) just as old enemies Britain and France put aside their differences in the face of the invading Hun.

Wait, what? Is that supposed to be a joke? Because if it is, I don't get it. -.-
The Huns came into Europe during circa 450 AD, and their empire collapsed by 469, which was almost 400 years before France came into existence and 500 years before England was formed (and yes, England, since "Britain" was formed almost 1300 years after Attila's empire disappeared).

After that point there were only two other incursions that the west thought were huns (for a while); the Magyars, whom the western historians called Huns nevertheless (and thus this is why we are still called Hungarians to this day even though we have nothing to do with them), and the Mongols. However, the Magyars were stopped by the Germans at Lechfeldt with maybe a single Frank unit, but no Anglo-Saxons for sure, while the Mongols were stopped... wait for it... by the Magyars so far away from France and England that they probably didn't even know they existed (well, stopped is maybe a strong word, it would be better to say that they wasted too much time around here and their khan died in the meantime, after which their empire tore itself apart).

I wouldn't normally be so anal about this, but this looks like it was supposed to be a straight comparison, and yet it misses the historical facts by such a long shot that it's frankly embarrassing.

[edit]: Tch. I just looked into the other usages of the term "hun", and it turns out it was also used by the Entente coutries in WWI to describe the Germans... which makes absolutely no damn sense on any level, but hey, that's pretty much propaganda in a nutshell. Still, now that line make sense. Carry on.

 

[beastro]

[edit]: Tch. I just looked into the other usages of the term "hun", and it turns out it was also used by the Entente coutries in WWI to describe the Germans... which makes absolutely no damn sense on any level, but hey, that's pretty much propaganda in a nutshell. Still, now that line make sense. Carry on.

Always lovely not looking deeply enough into the meaning of a words usage (Or just eve reading the post made above yours)...

 

[GabeZhul]

[edit]: Tch. I just looked into the other usages of the term "hun", and it turns out it was also used by the Entente coutries in WWI to describe the Germans... which makes absolutely no damn sense on any level, but hey, that's pretty much propaganda in a nutshell. Still, now that line make sense. Carry on.

Always lovely not looking deeply enough into the meaning of a words usage (Or just eve reading the post made above yours)...

Yeah, it was kinda silly in retrospect. In my defense, I am an archaeologist (in training), so it didn't even cross my mind that when Yahtzee said "hun", he didn't actually mean the well-known Roman-empire-toppling nomads whose artifacts are all over the archaeological finds around here (aka. the meaning I am used to in my everyday life) but the derogatory term from 20th century wartime propaganda...

Also, I didn't read the post preceding mine because I only had a minute or two to scribble down that post, and by the time I returned to my computer a few hours later, I have already realized my mistake on my own. Serves me right for being hasty, I guess. -.-'

 

[achilleas.k]

Finally got around to reading this article. I rarely comment around here, but I found it weird that only one person had this opinion.

From the perspective of the owners, he's absolutely right. However, from the perspective of fans who were grinding up copies of the Thrawn trilogy and snorting it (figuratively!) before prequels or remakes were a glimmer in George's disturbingly Gammorean eyes... to us, the resurgence of massive popularity is the worst thing that could've happened to Star Wars. Much like every other aspect of geek culture that's gone mainstream... I'd like my niche back.

The Force Unleashed games and Clone Wars cartoons are what we got from the resurgence of Star Wars, both of which were mediocre at best. X-Wing Alliance and the Jedi Knight series were what I was playing when The Phantom Menace was announced. I adored every single Star Wars game that came out of the original trilogy. The quality of the prequels and the controversy around GL's faffing about with the originals did indeed help with the resurgence of the franchise, but is that what we needed or even wanted? I'm not sure.

Maybe keeping the franchise alive that way is good. Perhaps the new trilogy (or whatever) will be great and we'll get a nice big franchise with 6 great films and 3 bad ones. Who knows, maybe the noughties will be known amongst SW fans as "the ugly years" (I'm aware of how unlikely this is). It's possible (highly probable, I'd say) that without the prequels the franchise would have faded away and only the die hard fans would remain to give a frell. I'm still not sure how bad that latter outcome would be.

I agree with Yahtzee that the new films will most likely be mediocre, safe, just OK! I don't know whether it was preferable that the prequels be bad instead of mediocre or non-existent though. The fans were doing fine arguing about the morality of blowing up a space station that's under construction [http://youtu.be/iQdDRrcAOjA].

 

[Charles Phipps]

Star Wars forever.

Sorry, guys.

4-EVER!