Comments on Alternate 1985: Jedidicy: justifying the ways of Lucas to Man

Icky, maybe. The problem is we are guessing (even...

2010-06-04T06:26:06.564-07:00

Icky, maybe.

The problem is we are guessing (even if it's a good guess) that the person changed their name only to "sound less Jewish."

The acting business is not about integrity, but the ability to project false integrity. Her job is not to put the real Natalie Hershlag on screen, but to be able to convince people that she is Padmé Amidala one minute, and Evey Hammond the next. The persona of Natalie Portman is nothing but one more layer, one more facade.

It's also protection. Think of the legions Star Wars fans who would respond to any Hershlag they met, if that was the name she used. Again, the intent is to not project integrity, but one more persona for fans to consume, "Natalie Portman" being the character she plays in the cross-media ongoing series "The Personal Lives of Celebrities."

On the way up, there's more that goes into the choice to use a stage name than "I don't want to sound Jewish." With the line between success and obscurity so fine, a tiny thing like a difficult-to-pronounce surname could easily make the difference. Those with a say as to who gets to be a star and who doesn't are not interested in someone who takes a stand for their heritage -- they want somebody whose entire being is committed to being really good at acting and projecting whatever kind of image is best for promoting her projects.

In that paradigm, who are we to judge?

All that said, I really brought it up because I spent several years calling her "Hershlag" as well. I have also found that at least half of the people I know claim some sort of tenuous connection to her, which I take as evidence that Ms. Hershlag was cultivating a very large network very early.

Also, my Word Verification for this post is "balls" which is a fair approximation of how seriously you really need to take my opinion on this matter, i.e. not very.

Wow, you've got your own movie, here! I most a...

2010-06-03T18:29:41.173-07:00

Wow, you've got your own movie, here! I most agree with the business about the age difference: making Anakin a sweet little kid was such a mind-boggling misstep.

As for Hershlag, I think the reason we care is that she's Jewish. I do do it with other actors: Winona Horowitz, e.g. There's something kind of icky about Jewish people changing their names to make them less Jewy, no? (I was at a party with her once in 1996 and walked by her several times. Does that count as knowing her?)

7. Darth Maul is one of the barbarians. Their lead...

2010-06-01T12:55:06.281-07:00

7. Darth Maul is one of the barbarians. Their leaders have been trained and organized by Sideous. They include many minority, more warlike species who were supplanted by human settlement on their planets. One of their methods is to align with other pre-Industrial races supplanted by settlers of various planets (this is why the Empire is so species-ist later on). The Wookies are among their strongest allies later on (thus sealing the Wookies' fates as slaves under the Empire).

8. C3PO makes a cameo appearance in the last film as a translator for Bayle Organa - his personality has not been developed. R2D2 does not. Obi Wan Kenobi is not Han Solo's long-lost father, and neither is Captain Needa the love child of Chewbacca and Wicket. It's a big galaxy; it's okay if some of the characters over 30 in the original films had never met one another before that.

9. Anakin's pre-Jedi history is very dark. Other slave kids choose not associate with him. He first encounters Qui-Gon et al. through Amidala, who while visiting Tatooine is kidnapped by human traffickers, and promptly rescued by Anakin, whose secret outlet for his emerging Jedi powers is hunting and murdering Tatooine's criminal class, particularly the human traffickers. Anakin's mother is dead when we meet him -- a suicide. There are clues throughout the series that she was a settler's daughter who was kidnapped around Amidalah's age and made a sex slave (hence Anakin's love for her -- he sees Amidala, the queen of a settler community -- as the idealized version of mommy).

10. Forget "Bring Balance to the Force;" The Prophesy says that the Chosen One will destroy the Sith. Since the Jedi believe they are in a good-and-evil battle with the Sith, they are just fine with this and allow Anakin to be trained, against the warnings of Yoda, who thinks the kid is already on his way toward being a sociopath. We learn in Movie II that the Sith also have a prophesy that says the Chosen One will destroy the Jedi.

* Why is it we Jews like using Natalie Portman's pre-stage name? We don't do this for any other actors. Nobody says "John, Paul, George and Richard Starkey." We all know someone who knew her in school or at camp** or at Harvard, but I still think the chances of her looking us up through this person and calling and saying "hey" and us ending up together because we're from similar backgrounds except she was in Star Wars are pretty slim.

** oh, I do!!!

I am so agreeing with this post, right down to the...

2010-06-01T12:54:57.039-07:00

I am so agreeing with this post, right down to the buried Infinite Jest reference.

While visiting the guy who introduced me to Alt '85 last weekend, our late Friday night discussion was committed to a re-write of the prequels.

I'll save the details but, not having read this post yet, we did have some important parallels, particularly that Jedi vs. Sith dogma (neither being optimal) should play a major thematic role.

Some of the keys to fixing the story:

1. Anakin must be at least 13 when he is discovered by the Jedi. No six year old is so far gone that he can't be saved. Amidala is then 17 (just old enough that at their first meeting, a romantic relationship is not likely). Obi Wan is thus 21 when we meet him. The equivalent spacing in ages is important because...

2. Anakin/Amidala/Kenobi Love Triangle. Obi Wan acknowledges his feelings for the Queen by the end of Movie I, but he shuns their love because of the Jedi code and because of age difference (a college junior doesn't date a high school junior). Amidala seizes on the love of Anakin to prove Obi wrong since he is also four years apart, and a Jedi. Obi in turn has taken Anakin as his student (so she can't have him either). Anakin's jealousy toward Obi Wan, combined with the obvious, odious and hypocritical sanctimony of the Jedi are what tempt him to reject Jediism.

3. Queen Amidala* is not democratically elected. Naboo is an absolute monarchy, and her only claim to power is primogeniture, and therefore she sucks at being queen of a planet, and is taken advantage of. She is a Richard II or Henry VI character who was moved to end her minority by evil counsel, provided by Sideous, who rules Naboo through her as an unwitting patsy. Palpatine is thus her natural choice as Naboo's representative, and she trusts him; as an absolute monarch herself, she supports his later efforts to consolidate power in the Chancellor seat.

3-sub. As in Lucas' version, Amida as a exempli gratia of the sympathetic settler under barbarian siege, (and symbolic virgin female in peril) is played up by Palpatine. However, the more she learns about the world through the series, the more she sees through him, such that she is now a danger to him and needs to be executed.

4. Among Jedi, Mace Windu is the most respected and powerful. He is power-hungry with fascist tendencies. He is un-subtle, an absolutist with regard to Jedi dogma. Palpatine is thus able to play galaxy-wide distrust of Windu into support for his fascist rise to power.

5. Yoda is not on the Jedi Council. He is an academic, a relic of a more republican age (when dogma was secondary to service as policemen for an expansionist Republic), and largely discounted by the current pro-Windu generation of dogmatic Jedi who see their order as a power in of itself. Yoda does attract the occasional contrarian or renegade follower, e.g. Qui-Gon.

6. The Great Threat to the Republic is that of barbarian uprisings on the most recently settled/conquered parts of the galaxy. Organized barbarian raids are seeking to destroy all human-settled colonies, even those like Naboo that have been established for several centuries. The key reason for replacing the sanctimonious and hypocritical Jedi as the Republic's peacekeeping forces with a massive Navy (true star destroyers) and army (the clones) is that the Jedi are ineffectual at dealing out imprecise justice. They can't blockade a planet, or decapitate a headless rebellion.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm saying.

2009-04-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm saying.

the whole "third course" thing is cool, just not s...

2009-04-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

the whole "third course" thing is cool, just not sure how it connects to exploring the idea that the prequels are poorly told good stories. are you saying they establish the plant for the payoff of the third course being the course that wins the star wars/fulfills the prophecy, but that they don't do it very well, and that the mere attempt (the storymaker aspect of the prequels) is why we should reserve our hatred for them a little bit?