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Around Once Again
Once more, I’ve watched my way through my Star Wars Blu-Ray set. The proof I can do this once a year is evident, but the extravagance of it when I think about watching other movies but hardly ever manage that does seem palpable as well. This year, too, I just happened to have seen Return of the Jedi once before.
That difference aside, I remain conscious this is a bit like, to make a month-appropriate comparison, bringing up the Great Pumpkin in mixed company. Some who might see these reports may bite their lip in place of explaining why my judgments are suspect in total. Beyond that, there seems at least the possibility of sudden accusations that “so you’ll watch ‘the saga’ but you don’t bother with this recent work I can explain is a brilliant extension?” I suppose that could have happened in the days of the “Expanded Universe,” of course.
Beyond that, I am aware that a few other people whose opinions I appreciate for being both “saga-positive” and “Lucas-positive” tend towards adding “the Jedi were right, compassion is central to them, and Luke just sorted out what he was supposed to do without having to be told.” There are comments from George Lucas in the recent “Star Wars Archives” volumes that, if you can lever them open and page through their bulk, could be seen as supporting their takes. For all that “whatever Lucas had in mind for a continuation of the story” remains a blank-slate temptation to peer towards while looking away from stuff other people threw together, there’s also the possibility of “just because I didn’t fall off the tightrope to have to come up with an unpleasant explanation why, that’s not saying it couldn’t happen eventually.”
With all of that in mind, though, I did happen to again run across a quote from the Star Wars Archives where George Lucas declared the enigmatic Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas had in fact been another Sith apprentice to Darth Sidious. I must have forgotten about it before; watching Attack of the Clones a mere five weeks before now I’d gone back to a personal theory Sifo-Dyas had just happened to be in the wrong place and be killed by Count Dooku as part of his initial “commitment to the Dark Side,” anticipating what happened in Revenge of the Sith. Once I’d thought a bit about it, though, I did start to wonder if a second “ordinary” Jedi being tempted to the Dark Side for enigmatic reasons could be taken as a further hint that “Anakin wasn’t uniquely vulnerable and, indeed, ‘dangerous.’” On some level, finding space for ambiguity and varying (but positive) interpretation within even a complete saga might help explain why it works by itself for me.
That difference aside, I remain conscious this is a bit like, to make a month-appropriate comparison, bringing up the Great Pumpkin in mixed company. Some who might see these reports may bite their lip in place of explaining why my judgments are suspect in total. Beyond that, there seems at least the possibility of sudden accusations that “so you’ll watch ‘the saga’ but you don’t bother with this recent work I can explain is a brilliant extension?” I suppose that could have happened in the days of the “Expanded Universe,” of course.
Beyond that, I am aware that a few other people whose opinions I appreciate for being both “saga-positive” and “Lucas-positive” tend towards adding “the Jedi were right, compassion is central to them, and Luke just sorted out what he was supposed to do without having to be told.” There are comments from George Lucas in the recent “Star Wars Archives” volumes that, if you can lever them open and page through their bulk, could be seen as supporting their takes. For all that “whatever Lucas had in mind for a continuation of the story” remains a blank-slate temptation to peer towards while looking away from stuff other people threw together, there’s also the possibility of “just because I didn’t fall off the tightrope to have to come up with an unpleasant explanation why, that’s not saying it couldn’t happen eventually.”
With all of that in mind, though, I did happen to again run across a quote from the Star Wars Archives where George Lucas declared the enigmatic Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas had in fact been another Sith apprentice to Darth Sidious. I must have forgotten about it before; watching Attack of the Clones a mere five weeks before now I’d gone back to a personal theory Sifo-Dyas had just happened to be in the wrong place and be killed by Count Dooku as part of his initial “commitment to the Dark Side,” anticipating what happened in Revenge of the Sith. Once I’d thought a bit about it, though, I did start to wonder if a second “ordinary” Jedi being tempted to the Dark Side for enigmatic reasons could be taken as a further hint that “Anakin wasn’t uniquely vulnerable and, indeed, ‘dangerous.’” On some level, finding space for ambiguity and varying (but positive) interpretation within even a complete saga might help explain why it works by itself for me.