Like I said, the nature of the Force depends on the needs of the story. In the original movie it’s mostly just psi powers, stuff from old X-Men comics. Later on you get voices from the dead and then literal ghosts. Eventually it’s just straight-up magic out of a fantasy novel with Palpatine shooting lightning bolts…

I feel like a lot of the business with the Sith, Rule of Two, etc., was something that Lucas came up with in the ‘90s when he was writing the prequels.

I always saw that as not about the act in and of itself, but about the motivation. Luke wouldn’t be killing the Emperor to save his friends (though he would accomplish that), but for revenge, to satisfy his own anger.

Hamill was like 25 but Luke was supposed to be around 18, Biggs was maybe 3-4 years older, which would be enough time to graduate from a school of higher learning. (The actor was in his late thirties at the time, but hey, I guess that spaceman life ages you in a hurry.)

Maybe Fred Durst didn’t know it was an acting gig.

Apparently he thought that because I could write more than a hundred words in less than an hour I was relying on ChatGPT or some such thing.

An AI chatbot.

Lucas’ take on emotional repression strikes me as a critical misreading of Buddhist notions of non-attachment. I also think his take on anger is very weird. Anger can lead to positive change if it’s harnessed properly.

I don’t think I’ve relied on Apple’s mice since the mid-’90s. When I got back into Macs about 20 years ago I used a Logitech mouse (a holdover from my PC days), and since 2011 or so I’ve used mostly Magic Trackpads (easier on the hands if you have a neuropathy like me).

He accused me of being an LLM, which, I admit, was a first.

Ah, the only sympathetic character in the entirety of the prequels.

I was kinda on the fence until they hit me up with the theme song from Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter. So yeah, put me down as sold.

The Force is absolutely a superpower, because just like comic book superpowers, its boundaries and applications are constantly being changed to meet the needs of the stories.

And at that point Luke knocks Vader down the stairs, leaving Palpatine unguarded, so as a strategy it seems a bit inconsistent. (Also Palpatine’s efforts to get Luke to kill Vader, even though Luke has made it clear that he wants to redeem him, or at least not have to kill him.)

If you consider all life to be sacred (and the Force is connected to life) then killing is morally wrong, no matter who you are or who the victim.

This was my experience with Lost. I was staying at my parents’ place after fleeing Katrina and I picked up the first DVD set out of curiosity; once I’d gotten into it, I would watch three or four episodes a night, because I was riveted. But when I started watching the show on broadcast TV, it started to seem kinda…

I propose we refer to them as “herbs.”

That’s the thing, though. Palpatine never tells Luke to kill Vader. His words are “Strike me down and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete.” The idea is that if Luke kills Palpatine — an unarmed opponent, sitting in a chair — it would be nothing short of cold-blooded murder, even though Palpatine is a…

Lol, “Campbell Canon.” There’s very little evidence that Lucas had read Campbell or relied on The Hero With A Thousand Faces when he was writing the first Star Wars.

Don’t engage this guy. He’s more articulate than the wads shouting “WOKE!” downstream but his whole schtick is to accuse you of being stupid or dishonest if you disagree with him. His one rhetorical flourish is to argue over the meaning of specific words and use that as the basis for his entire argument.