Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > Star Wars - Episode III

That isn't a retcon, but rather fanwank. Explanations of the terms below.

Of course, you have to view them as a 6 episode Star Wars saga, and not divide them into the "loved and perfect Original Trilogy" and the "hateful, what has Lucas done to my children, Prequel Trilogy."

That is, of course, the only way and the only terms in which one could possibly divide them. Anybody not as keen on the prequels as you can only possibly think of the original movies as perfect and also as their children, and express themselves in laughably hyperbolic terms. As we know, that is how people who don't agree with you think.

Oh dear.

I can see how this process of contextualising might be seen, but to take it to the extreme of specificity of "look at Alec Guiness' eyes" seems to me to be pushing it quite hard. There are a couple of different possible interpretations. One is that George Lucas told Alec Guinness that Obi-Wan had done in Luke's father, and to emote that when Luke asks, in the expectation of explaining that later (which happens within the OT, doesn't it?). Another is that George Lucas, seeing that look in his eyes, has carefully sculpted a backstory leading up to that moment and that expression to get the most out of it, which is not outside the gift of such a master storyteller.

However, you do then get to the point where, for that to work, you have to start fanwanking (definition, to avoid confusion - the creation of explanations outside the text for apparent errors within it - for example, assuming that in the 20 or so years since the fall of the Republic, Obi-Wan has somehow forgotten R2D2), and that endlessly reduplicates problems. If Chewbacca was a staunch ally of the Jedi Knights, how come he didn't react at all to the lightsabre-flashing? Because it is a retcon - in that scene as it was shot, Chewbacca was not a staunch ally of the Jedi Knights. Now that it has become clear that only the Jedi used lightsabres, why does nobody react with a bit more surprise to the use of a lightsabre? Because that was not clear at the time. And the chronologies... as we have already established, the Republic would have to have been dissolved in water. Luke and Leia seem first to be different ages and also, if Luke is in his late teens, Obi-Wan seems to be remarkably badly-preserved. For R2 not to mention any of this highly relevant backstory at any point seems near-psychotic - what kind of a tin sadist is he? Is he somehow prevented from doing so by some mechanical artifice?

And on it goes.

Star Wars - Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith (SPOILERS)