Thanks for posting that.
As an aside that is slightly relevant, in the film A Fish Called Wanda the original screenplay had the villain, a white American, killed at the end. To allow distribution in the US, the ending had to be changed so the villain survived.
Hollywood traditionally liked to have British villains or fall guys, starting with Chaplin and Stan Laurel, because white Americans must not be seen to be bad or ridiculous.
But did anyone leave the theater thinking Otto lived?
Sure he managed to crawl out of the cement after being ran over by the steamroller, but he clearly fell off the wing of the plane as it took off.
I suppose it falls in the “didn’t see the body, so can’t prove he’s dead”
If they wanted to, they did.
I would love to have been in on the script conference arguments, because I suspect the Hollywood people were trying to find ways to get their way without outright saying “The American can’t die if the Brits survive.”
But Wanda (the woman, not the fish) survives. Otto meets a slapstick end but the whole end of the movie is a transatlantic lovefest…
I may have to go watch it again.
FNW and Brazil prove Michael Palin is freaking amazing.
Went to see the new Star Wars movie. Liked it. Heard there were some sketchy reviews and wasn’t sure why, but I’m not a big Star Wars fan. Went to Rotten Tomatoes. OOOOOhhhhh, I see.
There are women in it.
Always with the ramming and the throats, those guys.
Such a specific phobia 
Yeah, you know you’ve reached wingnut territory when freaking Star Wars looks left-wing to you. The whole thing is based on a generational aristocracy.
I thought Luke was about not being an asshole? I haven’t seen this SW, but it seems unlikely to be improved by mining the roots of neo-Nazi bigotry 
.
We all know women can’t drive, therefore, this idea that ladiez can drive the ships is ABSURD! amirite?
The first movie was relatively free of that kind of thing. Luke was not originally supposed to be anybody special, and Leia was, at the time, an inversion of everybody’s expectations for a damsel in distress.
“I am your father” was good for shock value but it wasn’t part of the original plan.
Making everybody related to everybody else was a terrible idea. I don’t really understand why people are still interested in Star Wars now. It’s just the same shit over and over again.
Sigh. Some Star Wars fans.
The very first lines of the very first title crawl establish the story is happening long, long ago in a galaxy far far away.
So not just Chewie and Greedo, but Leia and Han and all the rest – they’re aliens. They’re not humans at all.
Which means including more diversity in the human actors who don’t happen to be wearing prosthetics changes not one damn thing story-wise. But it does mean the production has a higher chance of hiring quality talent for all the speaking parts by widening the pool of possible casting choices, and makes it easier to sell worldwide because it’ll appeal to a greater number of people.
(And that’s not even getting to the effing obvious social justice parts.)
Well, women can tolerate higher g, or at least in Heinlein’s imagination, so they have great careers in space opera so long as they know they’ll be showering nekkid with the jarheads for the greater glory of bug-splatting.
I’ve never been convinced of that. That’s Luke’s father’s light sabre Obi Wan gives him – he is most definitely not the son of a nobody.
And my Dutch mum spoilered what “Vader” means in Dutch on the way home from seeing the first film. Our family had been debating who Vader was the father of for three years when Empire came out. Luke wasn’t the only one we were considering, but it was in the betting pool so to speak.
I know, Lucas claims otherwise – but I don’t believe him.
This is why I prefer the “daughter of nobody” interpretation of Rey. I hope the new movies don’t trash it.
Luke was the son of a samurai, but not any particular samurai. Just another guy who fought Vader and lost.
Obi-Wan was the special one. The others were all connected together by their proximity to him.
Still an elite. Not exactly moisture farming.
ETA: And, as we find out later, the only good reason for Obi Wan to be on that specific planet was Luke.
Amen.
I’ve never had such an odd feeling about a film sequel as for Episode IX: This Would Have Been About Leia. So many things set right in Episode 8, so much potential for JJ Abrams to screw it up in predictable ways, ways that we can see coming years ahead of the fact.
