Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Gavinmad_sl said:

Dutch is the language Lucas claimed Darth Vader meant Dark Father in you stupid motherfucker.

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So Lucas made that shit up too and hoped no one would know?

As someone who saw they Star Wars back in 77' when I was 11. I can tell you that as kids, we all assumed that:

1) Darth Vader was his actual name. Darth wasn't a title is it has come to be now.
2) Darth Vader is underneath Grand Moff Tarkin in the chain of command.

I assume the Moffs were needed to build/pilot the huge fucking spaceship army and were a bit more important than your 3rd apprentice when apprentices are replaceable and always going to end up killing you. Vader just didn't give a fuck and was given a little leeway being a Sith, he knew better to fuck up the empire by killingallieswho actually mattered.

Blackyce_sl said:

As someone who saw they Star Wars back in 77' when I was 11. I can tell you that as kids, we all assumed that:

1) Darth Vader was his actual name. Darth wasn't a title is it has come to be now.
2) Darth Vader is underneath Grand Moff Tarkin in the chain of command.

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As a kid who also saw it in '77 though at the age of 9 ...

1) I didn't know if Darth was his first name or a title. It didn't matter at the time. He was Darth fuckin' Vader.
2) Grand what? What the hell is a Moff?

Yeah, I didn't see the movies in the theatres, but I was old enough to be upset when I saw the special editions released in theatre. I knew darth was his title, I didn't quite understand the chain of command, but I knew that Vader was evil, not stupid. Kill off a stormtrooper and no one blinks. Kill off a gran moff and now YOU gotta do his job until you replace him. Kill off middle management and you terrify everyone under him and piss off everyone over him without actually screwibg yourself over.

I always saw Vader not so much as part of the military rank and file, but more like an Ayatollah or a Warrior Monk. The one dude whose lack of faith is disturbing even calls it a religion. And I know it isn't really viewed as such in the canon and maybe only by that one admiral, but when I was however old, this little atheist kid took it to heart and instead of being a general, I always saw Vader as more of an evil religious warrior. He existed alongside, but wholly separate from the military.

It's sort of like how my Mom laughs at how people treat her at work. She is the secretary to the CEO and was hand selected by him. Technically, she outranks no one. But when people try to pull rank on her they usually regret it because UNofficially she is more trusted by the boss than any of the VPs. I dunno maybe that's a bad analogy.

Unless it was added in the special editions, at no point in the movie is Tarkin referred to as Grand Moff. It's just another made up word like Sith that is used in the script to set the scenes, but was never actually spoken during the movie. He is addressed by title twice in the movie, once by Leia and once by someone over the intercom, both times they referred to him as Governor Tarkin.

Later exposition by the EU established that a Grand Moff was an oversector governor, whereas a Moff was a sector governor. An oversector was basically just a sector that was considered especially important. Moffs did not answer to Grand Moffs, they answered to an Imperial Advisor, Grand Moffs answered directly to the Emperor. Tarkin was arguably the most powerful and influential man in the Empire after Palpatine.

AngryGerbil_sl said:

I always saw Vader not so much as part of the military rank and file, but more like an Ayatollah or a Warrior Monk. The one dude whose lack of faith is disturbing even calls it a religion. And I know it isn't really viewed as such in the canon and maybe only by that one admiral, but when I was however old, this little atheist kid took it to heart and instead of being a general, I always saw Vader as more of an evil religious warrior. He existed alongside, but wholly separate from the military.

It's sort of like how my Mom laughs at how people treat her at work. She is the secretary to the CEO and was hand selected by him. Technically, she outranks no one. But when people try to pull rank on her they usually regret it because UNofficially she is more trusted by the boss than any of the VPs. I dunno maybe that's a bad analogy.

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This is a good comparison to the role you might think Vader fills before the EU filled all the back story in. Vader is actually the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, which means the only person above him in military rank is the Emperor himself. Tarkin is not under Vader's command, and politically is as powerful or more powerful than Vader, so you can sort of assume that him telling Vader to stop choking the dumbass that had mocked him was more of a polite suggestion to an equal rather an order to a subordinate.

I'm not sure on the original release, but on my DVD I'm pretty sure in the credits he is listed as Grand Moff Tarkin. Then again... i have "been wrong... from time to time."
But I agree it's not spoken in the film.

Drakain_sl said:

I'm not sure on the original release, but on my DVD I'm pretty sure in the credits he is listed as Grand Moff Tarkin. Then again... i have "been wrong... from time to time."
But I agree it's not spoken in the film.

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Yeah I think I found footage of the original credits, and he's just listed as Peter Cushing. Nobody is listed by their roles. It just says Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, then Cushing and Guinness each solo on their own screen, then a big batch of names including James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. Every end credit scene of Empire Strikes Back I've found lists everyone out by their roles, so I don't know if the way studios did credits changed between 1977 and 1980, or if I just haven't been able to find footage of the end credits from the original Empire Strikes back.

For reference I watched what was clearly one of the re-releases, and it was the same as the original Star Wars, just names, no roles.

Intrinsic_sl said:

What year did the toys come out? I'm pretty sure I remember him being Grand Moff and learning all the little lore bits and character bios on all those packages. What was or wasn't said in the movie means dick all when you spent years playing with the toys day in and day out.

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None of the lists I've googled of all the vintage Star Wars toys have a single mention of Tarkin. I mean obviously they made Tarkin figures at some point, but I don't think it was for quite some time after the movies.

Yeah, 'Suggestion to an equal' is also how I took it. The General reminding The Prince to be careful with the King's toys.

This may or may not be related to the credit by role question, but the mpaa or whatever it was went BALASTIC when Lucas didn't put the credits before the movie in star wars. He thought it took away from the ambiance to have the credits on screen at the beginning while the movie is setting up. Maybe he thought the same thing during end credits, it takes away from the mystique to identify characters by their actors. I don't know. Maybe he made a deal that he would show characters by actors at the end if he didn't have to show credits at the beginning?

The first Tarkin action figure wasn't released until 1997. The orignal line of Kenner toys never had one.

j00t_sl said:

He thought it took away from the ambiance to have the credits on screen at the beginning while the movie is setting up.

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If Lucas really is the one who pioneered the standard of putting the credits at the end of the movie, I would say that is his single greatest accomplishment with regards to cinema. I can't even conceive of what it would be like to sit there and watch the credits before the movie started.

Weird. I've always thought the order that shit is presented and the way it is presented is part of the packaging. As long as it is there, fine, but you can put it in there however you want.

Would Se7en have been better if we would have known a major actor, Kevin Spacey, was in it before the reveal? Maybe I'm just too influenced by Lucas and Tarantino.

Intrinsic_sl said:

Wow my memory is literally terrible.

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Wedge also didn't get a figure with the old Kenner toys. They sort of mostly focused on the aliens and droids instead of the humans outside of the main heros for the most part. I mean no Tarkin or Wedge, but you had most of the aliens from the Mos Eisley Cantina.

Gavinmad_sl said:

If Lucas really is the one who pioneered the standard of putting the credits at the end of the movie, I would say that is his single greatest accomplishment with regards to cinema. I can't even conceive of what it would be like to sit there and watch the credits before the movie started.

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Not talking about the full black screen credits scroll here. You've never seen any old movies where the convention used to be to have the credits roll over some intro scene of the movie? That's the kind of thing he's referring to. It seems cheesy as fuck now but it was common at one time.

Think like James Bond films, how they have that obligatory opening graphical naked woman siloutte scene with a theme matching the plot and playing the "theme song" while a bunch of credits roll. That used to be the standard. Apparently the director's guild actually fined Lucas for doing this which led to him quitting.

Intrinsic_sl said:

Wow my memory is literally terrible.

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Who the fuck would want a Tarkin figure except the forty-year old virgin anyway? "Merry Christmas son, your stocking is filled with all the top military bureaucrats of the rebellion and empire. Enjoy debating matters of policy with your Mon Mothma figure, not as violent and patriarchal as those "jedi" guys that's for sure!"