It's all the same -- if pre-Vader Anakin sires Luke, THEN helps the Empire rise, then it's the same timeline.

It should have been, Empire already exists, Anakin was resisting it, sired Luke, turned to Vader, etc.

What basically ruins it (structurally) is making Vader instrumental in the founding of the Empire -- because the over-arching plot is built upon his fall and redemption.

We could have had young Luke, but not young Empire.

(And yes, the dialog of Star Wars makes this inevitable in hindsight. Just didn't really analyze it).

I think we might have been able to live with the Empire being a borg-like political entity that swept through the galaxy, and it caused the last "good guy" enclave to fall kind of recently (the good guy enclave being the last of the Jedi).

But having it spring up from the Senate of the Republic? 19 years ago? Not. Ancient. Enough.

This is something that diminishes the implied grandness of Star Wars and reduces the Empire to nothing but a sneeze in that Galaxy's history.

I'll probably get yelled by this, but that was Lucas' intention all along.

I feel like all this talk about 1993 diminishing things is a veiled insult against Nirvana and the grunge movement. Uncool, you guys.

.... from a certain point of view.

How many different ways are you going to say that? I know -- that's why I hate it now. It was always there. The things I thought I liked about it were an illusion.

I was wrong to like it.

(Plus, I legitimately criticize it for being an artistic contradiction -- Lucas' story choices don't really cohere with his artistic choices, in terms of design, mood, and feel).

Reality Bites, now that's a movie.

(My generation is so lame -- that movie was basically about me and my friends).

How did your generation come to be so lame?

A prequel about your childhood would clear this up.

I am the kind of person who notices that kind of thing. I've been probably been Hanzoed when I mention how I think it's stupid how Daredevil didn't broke every bone in his all-too-normal-human body when jumping from rooftops in the movie. But with something with more fantastical elements like Star Wars I'd rather not think "Whoa, that's stupid and impossible" but "Ok, that's impossible given our understanding, but if it weren't, what would it take for it to be true"



I hope you're not taking about me because that's not true. If it were, I wouldn't even be in any Star Wars related thread ever.

Hey that's my generation too. We gave you all sorts of great stuff.

And Kurt Cobain was our age.

What are you even talking about? Tarkin is talking right there in Star Wars about how he's just gotten a dispatch that the Emperor has JUST NOW FINALLY dissolved the Senate, the last vestige of the Republic. It is crystal clear from the get-go that the Empire is a phenomenon of a single generation, whereas the Republic and the Jedi existed for long ages before it.

See? I GOT YELLED.

And it's different. That stuff wasn't even in the movies. I was just making a general comment but you're so touchy sometimes.

Aren't you older, Ted? I feel like I'm young and hip, like Ethan Hawke.

You're sort of way old, like James Spader or Craig Sheffer. You would be the guy with the car who doesn't realize that he's "over."

If Stephen doesn't get yelled at, I will hold a grudge against Jay.

Didja ever see Dazed and Confused? 'Cause that was me and my friends in high school (except I never used drugs, but all my friends did).

Eh? Heck, no.

Star Wars is great.

I was yelling at Jay in exchange for his yelling at you.

We should form an alliance against Jay.

A rebel alliance.

You invalidate your entire point, and perhaps your very existance, by bringing up something so laughably ludicrous, even as an example made in jest.

Leave. Now.

How many times do I have to say that I HATE it. It's right there -- the Empire is a flash in the pan, not ancient, literally just came into being.

I thought it was something that had existed for some time, and somehow recently cemented its status against the good guys -- whoever had a "Princess" named Leia.

I didn't know the Emperor was a Senator in that same Senate, either. I figured he was and old figure like Yoda's opposite number.

Basically, think how the Sith and the Jedi go way back -- I thought the struggle with the Empire went way back.