xanadian: I find your lack of leadership skills guardrails disturbing.

/This is what we call "attention to detail".

After watching the new ones, I can say the Old Republic deserved to fall and the citizens deserved the Emperor. They had no problem using slave labor to fight their wars for them so that they wouldn't have to get their hands dirty. They loved to pat themselves on the back about being a free society, but allowed slavery to exist all through their reach. Until the Emperor blows up a planet to prove a point, he commits less acts against humanity than the Republic does.

OK, that put a smile on my face.

Flawed from the start. Palpatine didn't get any "advice" from Vader. He mused out loud and allowed Vader to speak to him.

He had a secret council, though, not seen in the movies.

This is so awful of an idea and so surprisingly decent that it's great

To be fair, Darth Vader didn't seem like a big fan of the Death Star plan.

Well, that was... surprisingly interesting, insightful, and reasoned, actually.

What?... Oh, oh, "just rebuild it"? Oh, real farking original. And who's going to give me a loan, jackhole, you?... You got an ATM on that torso Lite-Brite? Now get your seven-foot-two asthmatic arse back here, or I'm going to tell everyone what a whiny biatch you were about Padama-may or Panda Bear or whatever the hell her name is!...

All the cutthroat officers, especially the ones that mouthed off to Vader, right to his face, undercuts some of the lessons here.

Still, most Empires have trouble with the succession issue. Caused an awful lot of trouble for the Roman Empire, and to a lesser extent, the Carolingian. Of course, when you are a powerful sorcerer, or Steve Jobs, you just assume you are going to run things forever and of course you want it to fall to shambles when you aren't around.

/just don't taunt underlings or their children when there is a well they can toss you in

Odd -

They failed to mention
- Cloning thousands of soldiers
- blowing up planets
- loosing track of your family
- loosing track of your enemies
- choosing a lava planet as your place of battle

Fano: Flawed from the start. Palpatine didn't get any "advice" from Vader. He mused out loud and allowed Vader to speak to him.

He had a secret council, though, not seen in the movies.

This is why you never write articles about star wars.

surprisingly Forbes failed to find one of their mistakes as "being evil".

/apparently that must have been a *good* business practice.

Nemo's Brother: After watching the new ones, I can say the Old Republic deserved to fall and the citizens deserved the Emperor. They had no problem using slave labor to fight their wars for them so that they wouldn't have to get their hands dirty. They loved to pat themselves on the back about being a free society, but allowed slavery to exist all through their reach. Until the Emperor blows up a planet to prove a point, he commits less acts against humanity than the Republic does.

This is pretty much true.

The sad thing is though, if you change a few words in your statement it's a fairly accurate description of the United States today. Outsourcing today is the legal equivalent of slavery hundreds of years ago.

And just like the Republic, the US shall fall (hopefully not to a Sith Lord though)

JohnCarter: Odd -

They failed to mention
- Cloning thousands of soldiers
- blowing up planets
- loosing track of your family
- loosing track of your enemies
- choosing a lava planet as your place of battle

That's unfair bringint that up. None of those things appear in the only 3 films made, New Hope, Empire, and Return. It's a shame Lucas has never gotten around to making the prequel films.

/always wondered what it would be like if Quentin Tarrantino remaid the prequels
//Obi-One-Kenobe hacks up Anakin to "Stuck In the Middle With You"

I find your case of the 'mondays' disturbing.

I'm guessing there was no health or dental plan or other perks for working for the Empire. Other than, free food probably. The Death Star was pretty clean looking so I'm guessing the bathrooms were nice.

LOL I remember when the commercials usually described it was "the EEEEEVIL Galactic Empire".

And I wondered... why are they "evil", anyways? I mean, do they have an ideology to this whole thing? What business are they IN, exactly? Taking inventory of the plot, there's a fleet of ships driving around of basically do-your-job military, and one asshole boss brooding in chamber and ordering people to do horrible things. The stated motivations go no deeper than "domination".

It's a critical point so often neglected in scifi/fantasy. So where's the money? What's the goal? I mean, if you DO achieve "galactic domination", it doesn't seem like Vader or Palpatine would enjoy a better life. It's not like a Vader or the Emperor is going to retire on the beach in a magnificently appointed villa with an infinity pool, hookers, and friends to show this all off to at million-dollar dinner parties.

This is kind of difficult to understand because a military like that needs a HUGE flow of ongoing profits to keep going, and keep the upper echelons satisfied with their long-term outlook. This is not merely a practical ideology, it's an unwaivering requirement of reality. When the money stops flowing, there's no more ships and the unpaid troops starve or leave. I'm not seeing how they make their money. Where was the profit in destroying Alderaan?

In real life, you'll find an evil dictator motivated by two things: one, people keep getting in the way of daily business of malappropriating money, resources, and decision-making power for yourself and your cronies and send people to do away with these troublemaking assholes, and two, the realization that falling out of absolute power pretty much means you're gonna be jailed or killed and there's nowhere in the world you can escape to, thus compromises are suicide.

You'll also find people in real life committed to fighting for a cabal of elite people. They meet regularly, mutually defend each others' interests, and have rigidly defined lines of who's "in" and "out". Star Wars seems to have the Emperor and Vader though... it doesn't apply. Vader is the Emperor's tool.

Now if Vader was somehow the Emperor's gay lover, and somehow the Emperor's self-loathing makes him want to destroy the universe which might otherwise judge him... I'm not saying it would be a GOOD plot, but it would at least make some sense.

Why would the Emperor make an empire to outlast him? He NEEDED to be integral to everyone's survival.

FTA: " because Admiral Ozzel took the Imperial Fleet out of lightspeed too close to the Hoth system"

I remember Vader saying he came out of hyperspace too soon ... implying they came out too FAR from the system. Is my memory incorrect?

beta_plus: JohnCarter: Odd -

They failed to mention
- Cloning thousands of soldiers
- blowing up planets
- loosing track of your family
- loosing track of your enemies
- choosing a lava planet as your place of battle

That's unfair bringint that up. None of those things appear in the only 3 films made, New Hope, Empire, and Return. It's a shame Lucas has never gotten around to making the prequel films.

/always wondered what it would be like if Quentin Tarrantino remaid the prequels
//Obi-One-Kenobe hacks up Anakin to "Stuck In the Middle With You"

A good amount of that stuff is covered in numerous books that are canon. The Thrawn trilogy (which takes place after Jedi) in a movie form can easily go toe-to-toe against any of the movies that were already made. Are you really admitting that you don't like books?

FTFA: "Despite his decades of scheming, Palpatine's organization barely lasted a day after he was gone."

Well, that's a bit of an assumption. All we saw was people celebrating and tearing down a few statues and such.

There were still who-knows-how-many thousands of Imperial officers and troops throughout the galaxy. They may not have had a direct succession plan, but some of them must have been committed to the ideals and methods of the empire. The organization didn't have a single clear leader, but that doesn't mean it ceased to exist.

Rude Turnip: The Thrawn trilogy (which takes place after Jedi) in a movie form can easily go toe-to-toe against any of the movies that were already made.

Absolutely. That trilogy was incredible.

No the Empires big mistake was not devising an inoculation for midi-chlorians and treating the population of the Empire. No midi-chlorians, no new Jedis, no light side to the force and no serious opposition to the Emperor.

To create a successor you find one evil person and flood their system with midi-chlorians as you, the Emperor have kept only enough to create an apprentice on hand. Rinse, repeat the Empire lasts forever!

Perducci: FTFA: "Despite his decades of scheming, Palpatine's organization barely lasted a day after he was gone."

Well, that's a bit of an assumption. All we saw was people celebrating and tearing down a few statues and such.

There were still who-knows-how-many thousands of Imperial officers and troops throughout the galaxy. They may not have had a direct succession plan, but some of them must have been committed to the ideals and methods of the empire. The organization didn't have a single clear leader, but that doesn't mean it ceased to exist.

Exactly. And if you read many of the novels you'll find out just how hard the Alliance still had to work afterwards to clean up the rest of the Empire's forces. Killing the Emperor was a nice tie-up for the movies, but it was far from the end of the war.

Magorn: Fano: Flawed from the start. Palpatine didn't get any "advice" from Vader. He mused out loud and allowed Vader to speak to him.

He had a secret council, though, not seen in the movies.

If it's not seen in the movies IT DOESN'T EXIST. People who knew the ridiculous names of minor characters and minutae about Bobba Fett's armor were the bane of my childhood.

The council shows up in Jedi, but they have no lines and are used as set dressing for when Palpy disembarks from his shuttle. Can't blame you for completely ignoring them, only reason I remember them is thinking of how much they looked like the Emperor that I wondered if they were the same species (at least until the prequels established Palpatine as being a Dark Side disfigured, otherwise normal full-on human being).

/I know too much about Fett's Mandalorian Deathwatch armor

QuinnTheFetus: What?... Oh, oh, "just rebuild it"? Oh, real farking original. And who's going to give me a loan, jackhole, you?... You got an ATM on that torso Lite-Brite? Now get your seven-foot-two asthmatic arse back here, or I'm going to tell everyone what a whiny biatch you were about Padama-may or Panda Bear or whatever the hell her name is!...

*snrk* He's crying!

No wonder that the nation's in a financial dumpster! One of the leading financial news sources can't comprehend evil in relation to business.


Unfortunately neither can this collection of extremists.

Crotchrocket Slim: Magorn: Fano: Flawed from the start. Palpatine didn't get any "advice" from Vader. He mused out loud and allowed Vader to speak to him.

He had a secret council, though, not seen in the movies.

If it's not seen in the movies IT DOESN'T EXIST. People who knew the ridiculous names of minor characters and minutae about Bobba Fett's armor were the bane of my childhood.

The council shows up in Jedi, but they have no lines and are used as set dressing for when Palpy disembarks from his shuttle. Can't blame you for completely ignoring them, only reason I remember them is thinking of how much they looked like the Emperor that I wondered if they were the same species (at least until the prequels established Palpatine as being a Dark Side disfigured, otherwise normal full-on human being).

/I know too much about Fett's Mandalorian Deathwatch armor

Come to think of it, there were even action figures of them. The purple guys. So clearly, the Emperor was doing something or other all this time other than oppressing Jimmy Smits.

Not that I am now asking for Lucas to fill in the gaps, but it seems like a lot of nothing happened for twenty years after Palpatine secured his empire. I mean, he got around to dissolving the Senate around the time of ANH, so I guess he was kept busy pretending not to be Emperor for Life or something. The TIE Fighter game I guess indicates how much time was spend crushing rogue factions of the Empire though. That and identifying shipping containers. Of that is the sort of stuff that the Emperor's Hand is made.

I miss the days in which you could assume that storm troopers were just regular indoctrinated soldiers from loyal planets. Like Roman Centurions drawn from the sectors of the Empire that weren't overly familiar with how blasters work.

Read a book from Cracked mag that argued that destroying the Death Star was actually bad long term because all of a sudden there were a whole lot of unemployed warriors running around in war machines with no source of fun and funds except rape, looting, piracy and rape

Oznog: LOL I remember when the commercials usually described it was "the EEEEEVIL Galactic Empire".

And I wondered... why are they "evil", anyways? I mean, do they have an ideology to this whole thing? What business are they IN, exactly? Taking inventory of the plot, there's a fleet of ships driving around of basically do-your-job military, and one asshole boss brooding in chamber and ordering people to do horrible things. The stated motivations go no deeper than "domination".

It's a critical point so often neglected in scifi/fantasy. So where's the money? What's the goal? I mean, if you DO achieve "galactic domination", it doesn't seem like Vader or Palpatine would enjoy a better life. It's not like a Vader or the Emperor is going to retire on the beach in a magnificently appointed villa with an infinity pool, hookers, and friends to show this all off to at million-dollar dinner parties.

This is kind of difficult to understand because a military like that needs a HUGE flow of ongoing profits to keep going, and keep the upper echelons satisfied with their long-term outlook. This is not merely a practical ideology, it's an unwaivering requirement of reality. When the money stops flowing, there's no more ships and the unpaid troops starve or leave. I'm not seeing how they make their money. Where was the profit in destroying Alderaan?


Huh? They were the guys in charge, and they did enough atrocities that the rebels thought that they could run the place better. The same as any number of other, real-life rebellions throughout history. I don't think it's much of a problem. The profit in destroying Alderaan is that it did more economic and psychological damage to the rebellion than it did to the Empire, and it made other rebel sympathizers think twice before attacking the Empire.

As for ongoing funds, taxes, man. Same as today. They owned the galaxy, they could tax people as much as they wanted. With the War on Jedi and the War on Spice and the War on Scum and Villainy, people will pay anything to make sure that the Boys in White are properly equipped to face the enemies of the social order.

Darkrover2: No wonder that the nation's in a financial dumpster! One of the leading financial news sources can't comprehend evil in relation to business.
[Supreme Court photo]
Unfortunately neither can this collection of extremists.

You shouldn't paint with such a broad brush. Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer (and, on some days, Kennedy) can't comprehend evil in relation to government.

I just posted this article in one of my classes.

I'm never getting laid.

akula: Fano: Not that I am now asking for Lucas to fill in the gaps, but it seems like a lot of nothing happened for twenty years after Palpatine secured his empire.

I guess one of the things that bugs me is how much the prequels seemed to collapse the timeline before Episode IV. With all those Star Destroyers and other things, you were expecting an empire that had been around for centuries, not one that was only 20 years old. There was a bunch of stuff in a short span of time between Episodes II and III, then the Empire is born, and now NOTHING for 20 years. It just seems like there wasn't enough time there for things to decay to the point where the Empire had gone from establishing order to being outright evil and oppressive.

If anything, the Empire only reflected the evils committed by the Republic and added bigger weapons to the mix. There was no grass roots rebellion against the Republic, I don't get why all of a sudden people are taking up arms to fight the Empire. Sure, it did away with the Republic, but the Republic NEEDED to be toppled.

They started building the Death Star at the end of ROTS! Haven't they heard of just in time delivery? Sheesh!

Salmon: I just posted this article in one of my classes.

I'm never getting laid.

Aww, don't say that. You might meet a girl who gives you exactly what you want.