I don’t know if Lucas did it intentionally or if it’s just my strange brain, but I’ve noticed a number of parallels between the two middle episodes of both Star Trek Trilogies.

Over-all Structure
In the first section of Empire Strikes Back all of the main characters are on Hoth. They separate in the middle section, with Luke and R2D2 heading for Dagobah while Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO try to escape in the Falcon. In the final section, everyone is back together in the vicinity of Cloud City.
Attack of the Clones follows the same structure. The main characters are (mostly) together in the opening section in Coruscant. In the middle section, they split up. Obi-Wan and the droid R-4 go to Kamino while Anakin, Padme and R2D2 go to Naboo. In the final third of the movie, the main characters are reunited in the battle on Geonosis.

Romance
Both movies feature a romance, although the romantic element is stronger in Clones, since that’s a major and necessary part of the plot. (Indeed, without this romance, there would be no Luke and Leia for the second trilogy.) In both movies, the romance follows a three-act sequence:

• In the first part of the movie, Anakin and Han are attracted to Padme and Leia, but the women are cool or actively discouraging.
  
• In the middle sections, the couples spend some time alone (or nearly alone) and we see Padme and Leia start to show interest.
  
• In the final sections, the women finally admit their feelings, but only when things are looking pretty bleak. Leia tells Han “I love you”, just before he’s put into carbon freezing. Padme tells Anakin the same thing as they’re both taken to face death in the area.

Saving the Senator/Princess
In Empire, Han takes Leia on the Falcon to help her escape from Imperial forces.
In Clones, Anakin goes with Padme to Naboo to keep her safe from assassins.

Going to the Rescue
In Empire, Luke leaves Dagobah to rescue Han and Leia, despite warnings from both Obi Wan and Yoda that he should remain with Yoda to complete his training.
In Clones, Anakin, despite instructions from Obi Wan that he should stay in Naboo, first goes to Tatooine to rescue his mother and then to Geonosis the rescue Obi-Wan (Granted, Padme was aiding and abetting him, especially when they went to rescue Obi-Wan.)

Loosing a Hand
In Empire, Luke looses his hand in the light saber duel with Darth Vader (the former Anakin).
In Clones, Anakin (the future Darth Vader) looses his hand in the light saber duel with Count Dooku.

Asteroids
In Empire, Han pilots through an asteroid field in an attempt to escape the Empire.
In Clones, Obi-Wan pilots through an asteroid field as he follows Jango and Boba Fett.

3PO Looses his Head
In Empire, he’s shot by the stormtrooper and disassembled
In Clones, he’s taken apart in the droid factory and his head is put on the wrong body.

Shooting at Fleeing Ship
In Empire, Leia shoots at Boba Fett’s ship as he leaves Cloud City with Han in carbonite.
In Clones, Padme shoots at Dooku’s ship as he escapes Geonosis.

Final Scene
In Empire, the movie ends with Luke and Leia standing together, looking out at the stars. R2D2 and C-3PO are behind them and to the right of the screen.
In Clones, the movie ends with Anakin and Padme standing together, kissing. R2D2 and C-3PO are behind them and to the right of the screen.

Can you think of any others?

The Kennel Murder Case is a 1933 movie starring William Powell as Detective Philo Vance. About 27 minutes into the movie, a doctor arrives to examine the body of the murder victim. (At this point, most of the officials think it’s suicide, but Vance is sure it’s murder.)

Anyway, as the doctor is walking to the building where the body is, the reporters hanging around outside pester him for a statement (which obviously he can’t give because he doesn’t know anything yet). He shrugs them off and says, “I’m a doctor, not a magician.” (I think it’s “magician”, the sound wasn’t really clear.)

A bit later, just before he examines the body, he says “I’m a doctor, not a detective.”

Could this be the origin of this famous line (in all it’s variations) for Bones McCoy?

Oh, and it was a fun mystery, too.

Why the big deal about the children being the ones who realized that the missing planet, Kamino, was only missing because someone erased it from the archives? That seemed pretty obvious to me. Why was it such a problem?

Of course, maybe that’s the point. Like the children, I wasn’t aware that it’s supposedly impossible to delete anything from the archives, so it never occurred to me not to think of that possibility. Obi-Wan and the Librarian, however, took the library’s inviability for granted, so the missing planet posed a real mystery, as least to Obi-Wan.

We see what we expect to see. If we have no expectations, our minds are open and we can often see more clearly. (Indeed, Yoda tells Obi-Wan just that when Obi reports in after viewing the clones on Kamino.)

In some ways, this little incident is symbolic of the entire movie. The Jedi don’t expect certain things to happen (a planet being erased from the archives, the former Jedi Count Dooku turning bad) and so don’t look for them. Until it’s too late.

Yoda says the Dark Side conceals things, but in some ways the real culprit is the inability or unwillingness of people - even Jedi - to look beyond their expectations and preconceptions. (Or maybe you could say that’s part of our personal Dark Sides.)

It’s even possible - and I’m really stretching here - that the whole “bring balance to the Force” thing that Anakin is supposed to do has something to do with this blindness. Most of the Jedi have become too complacent, too sure of themselves, too sure the Dark Side is not a threat. When Anakin becomes Darth Vader he forces the Jedi to face the darkness rather than ignore it.

In the short run, this causes hatred and fear of the Dark Side in general and Vader in particular. (Not to mention lots of pain, suffering and death.)

In the long run, Luke goes beyond this as he faces and acknowledges both the darkness and his father. Even though Obi-Wan tells him that he must kill Vader, Luke refuses. His faith in the essential goodness of Anakin not only redeems this man, but shows us that the only way to truly conquer the darkness is to look it in the face and embrace it as part of ourselves. Only then can we mingle the Dark with the Light and be truly balanced.

Note: I wrote this before Episode III came out.

I thought these quizzes were silly until I found a bunch about Star Wars and Star Trek!

You have earned the Green Lightsaber. You are wise and skilled as a Jedi. The force is strong with you. Other Jedi look up to you for information. You would rather teach others the way of a Jedi than fight. But if you are needed you are up to the challenge.

Which Star Wars Lightsaber Should You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love old SF B movies, but this one is so bad, it’s hard to even find things to laugh at.

Spoiler warning: I give away bits of the plot.

The movie starts with the title credits shown over a stormy sea. This is promising, as the story is about a diving bell that goes missing. Could it perhaps be floundering in this storm?.

No such luck. The credits end, and instead of seeing the diving bell tossing and rolling and people screaming and so on and so forth, the next bit is a documentary about the mysteries of the sea. This drones on for a while with stock footage and a really bad voice-over. It finally ends and we discover that the movie characters are also watching the documentary! This leads into a lot of talk about diving bells and experiments and so on.

Eventually we get to a ship where one of two identical experimental diving bells is going down for the first time. The cables somehow break and the bell sinks with all hands aboard (two women and two men). It lands on some kind of underwater shelf, so the explorers put on scuba gear, get out and swim. And swim. And swim. And swim No attack by a giant octopus. No feet caught in giant clam shells. No sharks. No ancient monsters of the deep. Just lots of stock footage of swimming and swimming and swimming.

They finally reach some mysterious underwater caves (the “petrified world” of the title) and now we get to see them walk and walk and walk. They encounter some kind of large lizard - but wait! It’s actually stock footage and it never attacks them - they all just look scared and walk past (As one reviewer said, “It’s not even in the same movie.”)

Various other boring things happen, including meeting a hermit with a false beard who’s been in the caves for years, and discovering there’s no way out. They decide they have to make the best of it, so the two men put their scuba suits back on and make several trips back to the diving bell for supplies.

Meanwhile, back on the surface, everyone thinks the diving bell crew is dead (although there are clues they have survived.) At any rate, after a long and boring explanation of why the cables snapped on the first bell, it’s decided to put the second bell down at the same place where the first one disappeared.

Coincidentally, the second bell reaches the first one just as the two men from the cave are returning for one last trip. The men are seen and rescued. This is really lucky for one of them, as he ran out of air just before that. Fortunately, the people in the second bell have coffee; he drinks that and is saved from oxygen deprivation. Then someone goes back and gets the women (the hermit has been killed by a volcano that conveniently erupted just when he started to cause problems) and everyone lives happily every after.

Read about this movie in the Internet Movie Database

A white back, I rented the movie Silverado, a Western I had seen and enjoyed when it first came out in the mid-1980’s.

The traditional showdown-in-the-street gun fight between two of the main characters takes place near the end of the movie.

What struck me is that the whole thing was over so fast. Get ready - stare each other in the eye - draw - bam! The bad guy is dead and it’s done. No wonder they spend so much times in Westerns leading up to the draw: close up of hand nearing the gun - close up of face - close up of people watching and so on and on. All this builds the suspense and draws out a scene that would otherwise be over in a second or two.

In contrast, look at sword fights (including the laser swords of Star Wars) Unless one combatant is much better than the other, sword fights can last a long time. You can have leaps, twirls. thrusts, parries, rolls, spins and all sorts of wonderful sword play. I think this is a lot more fun to watch!

Read about Silverado in the Internet Movie Database.

I was just watching Star Wars Episode II (for the zillionth time), and was reminded once again of this issue:

Except for the very beginning of Attack of the Clones, when she’s in disguise as an escort pilot, Padme wears long dresses, even at times when pants would be more practical (riding the little boat to the island or traipsing around on Tatooine, for example).

But at the funeral for Anakin’s mom, she wears that tight white pants outfit. Now it’s handy she did because right after that, they get the message from Obi-Wan and go traipsing off to Geonosis. It would have been a bit difficult for her to dodge the machine and then fight the beasts in the arena if she’d been wearing her usual long, flowing dresses.

But when she dressed for the funeral, she didn’t know all this was going to happen! And since she’d been wearing dresses all the time previously, why did she suddenly decide to change into pants? One would think a dress would be more appropriate for a funeral.

And she would have had time to change into pants during their journey to Geonosis, so there’s not even a plot reason to have her wear pants in the funeral scene.

Did you know that near the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope , you can see Kenny Baker’s eye inside R2-D2?

It happens during the scene where R2-D2 is hiding in the rocks after the Sand People attacked Luke. Take a good look when there are close ups of the little droid, and you’ll see a human eye behind R2-D2’s lens.

Sometimes I can watch this scene without seeing the eye, but sometimes it jumps out at me and I have to put my hand over the screen because it looks so creepy.

Donna Dolezal Zelzer