Revenge of the Sith trailer speculation

[annathepiper]

So mamishka, spazzkat, solarbird, kingchiron, darthhellokitty, and I all went to see The Incredibles today. And that was major fun. This post, however, is about the Revenge of the Sith trailer we got at the beginning of the movie! And I'm torn...


Half of me is rather worried that the majority of what we actually see in this trailer is footage from A New Hope: specifically, Ben telling Luke the original version of the tale of Darth Vader's origins. "A young pupil of mine, Darth Vader..." Etc., etc. In fact, Alec Guiness' lines are the majority of spoken dialogue in the trailer. This all made me rather think, "Gosh... they're advertising this new movie by showing us footage from the very first one? That can't be good..."

On the other hand, I did think that the contingent of armed and pissed-off Wookiees was pretty cool. I must of course speculate as to whether one of those Wookiees will be Chewbacca; Dara says, "Given that the Star Wars universe has about 50 people in it, yeah, I'd say so."

One thing also makes me think. A while back there was a theory going around the parts of the Net I frequent about the possibility of a romantic involvement between Amidala and Ben being the thing that tips Anakin over to the Dark Side. The more I think about it, the more I think that this is the scenario we're going to see in the new movie. And the thing that makes me think this is that we see Amidala in a passionate embrace a couple of times in this trailer. We see her face--but I didn't catch the face of who she was hugging.

And I also get to thinking, exactly when does Anakin tip over to the Dark Side? It must obviously be before the babies are born and before he even has a chance to know that Amidala is pregnant, because we know from the original trilogy that Vader was less than completely briefed on his own offspring. We also know from the new movies two big things about Anakin: 1) he's had this great love for Amidala all his life thus far, and 2) that boy ain't exactly stable.

I am envisioning a scenario where Amidala, possibly spooked out by increasing instability in Anakin, starts getting more partial to Ben. And hell, he may even also get partial to her. I can totally see them not ever acting on it--since Ben and Amidala would have the same issue that Anakin and Amidala would, i.e., the Jedi are supposed to be celibate, so neither one of 'em would be allowed to have some royal nookie. (An issue that does of course bug me, as it leaves wide open the question of how the hell Jedi manage to make little Jedi if they ain't supposed to breed, but that's another issue entirely.)

And they wouldn't even need to act on it in the scenario I'm seeing. All it would take would be the possibility that Amidala might turn to Ben instead of Anakin--because then, enter Palpatine, who can point at Ben and Amidala and go "aaaaah! Fooling around behind your back, mmm, bad, yes!" And Anakin (who, as previously mentioned, ain't exactly stable) goes apeshit out of jealousy, egged on by Palpatine, who's quite happy to use that to turn him into his brand new right-hand Lord of the Sith.

We'll have to see if this is in fact the movie we get. It's a simple, obvious answer to the question of what tips Anakin over--and let's face it, Mr. Lucas ain't exactly famous for hard-to-follow, complicated plots. ;) This isn't exactly a bad thing--classic plot archetypes like this can be just dandy when handled with skill. I just hope we get that skill.

Guess we'll find out in May 2005.

Comments

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

I am envisioning a scenario where Amidala, possibly spooked out by increasing instability in Anakin, starts getting more partial to Ben. And hell, he may even also get partial to her. I can totally see them not ever acting on it--since Ben and Amidala would have the same issue that Anakin and Amidala would, i.e., the Jedi are supposed to be celibate, so neither one of 'em would be allowed to have some royal nookie. (An issue that does of course bug me, as it leaves wide open the question of how the hell Jedi manage to make little Jedi if they ain't supposed to breed, but that's another issue entirely.)

Maybe it's immaculate conception of the force kind ::shrug::.. Iono... I've been sorta turned off to Star wars since they messed up the originals... the new versions look too fake...

[annathepiper]

They've already done the Immaculate Conception Via the Force thing--you WERE watching Phantom Menace, right? ;) That was part of the whole point of Anakin's origin story; he didn't have an established father.

This does not seem to be the established thing with Jedi, though I'll also admit that we don't have any evidence for knowing one way or another. At least not from the movies themselves. The sample set of Force-users we have to work with are Anakin, Luke and Leia, Qui-Gon, Ben, Palpatine, Darth Maul, Yoda, and assorted other Jedi NPCs, and the only ones we have detailed story on are Anakin, Luke, and Leia.

It'd take a bigger Star Wars geek than me to get into the backstories of the other Jedi characters and verify whether we have established parents for 'em all. The only other ones I know about are Han and Leia's children.

[kent.livejournal.com]

I just took some screen grabs of the trailer and played around with the contrast, and I think it's Anakin in both of those hug/kiss scenes. Or at least it fits Anakin's Jedi outfit more than Obi-Wan's traditional Jedi robes, presuming he keeps wearing those for the entire movie. Obi-Wan is in a shot with Amidala, though.








And I have been avoiding spoilers as much as possible, but I did hear that Peter Mayhew was going to appear as Chewbacca at some point. Maybe we'll meet Mala (?), his wife in the Holiday Special!

[annathepiper]

Ah, you are quite right about Anakin in those shots; now that I get a good look at that hair, I can definitely tell that's Anakin.

I'm not convinced this tells me I'm off on my guess, though. ;)

And seeing Chewie's wife would be cool. :)

[morgie.livejournal.com]

Heck, she could just be going to Obi for understanding, and have good old Emperor twist it to hell and back. *grin*

[annathepiper]

Exactly! There doesn't actually have to be anything going on there. All it takes is the possibility. ;)

[janne.livejournal.com]

And I also get to thinking, exactly when does Anakin tip over to the Dark Side? It must obviously be before the babies are born and before he even has a chance to know that Amidala is pregnant, because we know from the original trilogy that Vader was less than completely briefed on his own offspring.

Hmm... There was this picture of the two of them together where she looks pregnant to me. Then again, I don't expect too much in the way of internal consistency in a story that keeps getting rewritten and reshot years after the fact. Or maybe that universe has a taboo on using medical means to check number and gender of babies in utero =)

[annathepiper]

That dress does look suspiciously designed to hide a pregnancy, yeah. Though she doesn't look too far along there yet, and I could kind of handwave and say something about Anakin not being exactly in a position to know a pregnant chick when he sees one. ;)

[avram]

When’s it ever said that Jedi can’t have sex? They’re not supposed to fall in love, but nothing’s ever said about lust.

“Celibate” is an interesting word. People currently use it to mean sexual abstention, but it originally meant not being married. The clerical vow of celibacy that Catholic priests take is a vow not to marry.

[annathepiper]

I can't actually look up the reference since I don't own a copy of the movie, but I'm almost certain that somewhere in Phantom Menace, something gets said about how Jedi aren't supposed to have sex. solarbird backs me up on this, and janne thinks it might have been when they were discussing the, *ahem*, 'immaculate conception' of Anakin.

But I'll defer to anybody who actually owns the movie. ^_^

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

We were talking about this at dinner after the movie - some people I know online have speculated that Amidala loves Anakin due to his force-whammying her, not on his own merits, and obviously this could lead to trouble.

I have trouble with the Amidala/Obi-Wan idea just because I'm so conditioned to think of Obi-Wan's soulmate being Qui-Gon.

[annathepiper]

Hrmm. I'm not quite sure I buy that theory--unless it's a theory that Anakin whammied her unconsciously. He's clearly got the potential for darkness in the first two movies, but at least there, I can't see him consciously exerting his power to make a girl love him while he's still on the side of the Light.

And heh. Qui-Gon may well have been Ben's soulmate, but that doesn't necessarily mean he can't be susceptible to a pretty girl in trouble. ;)

[wrog]

and before he even has a chance to know that Amidala is pregnant, because we know from the original trilogy that Vader was less than completely briefed on his own offspring

Clearly he didn't know about Leia and thus wasn't present at the birth, but where are we getting that he didn't know about Luke? i.e., that he didn't know about the prenancy at all? Just because it took him until Empire for him to figure out where/who Luke was doesn't really say much about this one way or the other.

(then again, if the point was to actually hide Luke, you'd think Obi-wan/Yoda/whoever would have picked someplace other than Tattooine; it's a big fucking galaxy after all. That's the big problem with the Star Wars universe; the logic breaks down too quickly for us to really be able to conclude anything...).

[annathepiper]

I wasn't assuming he didn't know about Luke at all--I was assuming he was just less than completely briefed. ;) 'Cause he clued in faster about Luke than he did about Leia.

That said, I'd assume that he didn't know about the pregnancy at all, just on the grounds that if he knew Amidala was carrying a child by him (or two), then surely he would have done something about it long before Empire. I can kind of only buy him not moving in to try to take his own kid if either a) he didn't know about the kid or b) Palpatine ordered him off of it for some reason.

And I can't buy Palpatine NOT being interested in training the offspring of the most powerful Force-user he'd ever scarfed up. So I'd have to assume Palpatine didn't know about Luke either.