> > > the identity of C-3PO's creator,
> >
> > Not stupid. Wait and see how that comes together in
> > episodes 2 and 3 before downing it.
>
> Err... No. It's too silly. Maybe Lucas can pull it out of the fire in the later movies, but that still doesn't make it a good idea in this one.

The whole point is that these movies are supposed to be taken together. Something can't be stupid in one movie if the same exact thing isn't stupid in another. All I'm saying is that one must necessarily reserve judgment on this issue because we don't have all the facts. After all the facts are presented, then the whole shebang is either stupid or not. If Lucas manages to develop the situation into one where it is perfectly logical that C3PO, by virtue of his history with Anakin, later becomes the droid who did all he did in episodes 4-6, then it's a perfectly acceptable plot development. Remember that this is a prequel. It doesn't make sense to say, "The droid that did all that stuff in episodes 4-6 just happened to be the one that Anakin built," because you've got the chronology is wrong. Instead, say, "The droid created by Anakin later became the one that did all that stuff in episodes 4-6." If the process by which C3PO becomes who he was in episodes 4-6 has no bearing on his being created by Anakin, then I agree, it's pretty contrived. But if being created by Anakin is later shown, in episodes 2 and/or 3, to be *why* he became in episodes 4-6, that's called good plot and character development and should be commended. As we don't know what happens in episodes 2-3 yet, reserve judgment, as that's only fair.

> No. The droids were much better comic relief,

I happen to agree, but this doesn't in itself make Jar Jar bad.

> for a few reasons:
> 1. They were less slapstick. A little slapstick comedy is good. A lot is annoying and repetitive, unless you can pull it off -really, really- well, like some of the old silent film folk. And the Jar-Jar team couldn't. Most of the droids' comic relief came from Abbot and Costello-style dialogue.

That's a difference, but it's not necessarily an indicator of inferiority, much less an indicator of badness. I happen to agree that the droids were more entertaining than Jar Jar, but that's not what's under discussion here. To clarify my position on Jar Jar, I didn't like the couple scatological moments of so-called humor, and I didn't like the extend to which the "tongue numbing" gag was played out (the gag itself would have been fine had it ended just after his getting zapped).

> 2. The droids didn't blow up badguys by accident.

Eh. The place was clogged with enemies. Throw a boomy thing somewhere, you're more likely to hit one than not. But Anakin's "accident" is and will remain an extreme annoyance to me. (Who puts a main reactor in a docking bay, anyway?)

> 3. Jar-Jar was practically incomprehensible.

So train your ear to pick up his speech better. This is way too personal of an issue to blame on the movie. It may have affected your personal enjoyment of the movie, but it has no bearing on the movie's actual worth. I had no problem with it, and frankly I prefer such deviations in speech -- after all, doesn't it make sense that different alien races would speak differently?

> First: I don't agree with your definition of racism. Racism doesn't require advocacy, merely the certain belief that your race is superior to other races (or that certain other races are inferior to yours) and the visible expression of that belief.

I don't think that's so terribly different from mine.

> Second: The resemblance is more than superficial. There's a physical resemblence (although certain characteristics are, naturally, highly exaggerated), there's a one-to-one correlation in speech patterns, and the image of the aliens presented fits in with the stereotypical view of the Chinese as emotionally dead money-grubbers.

This is what I'm talking about. This kind of "if the shoe fits, you're wearing it" mentality when it comes to racism. "If I can make up a way in which this could be construed to express racism, it obviously must be what's intended." Give me a break. Try to figure out what the movie's saying, and THEN evaluate whether those messages are racist or not. If everybody did that, there would be a lot fewer frivolous accusations of it, and the cases of genuine racism might get the attention they deserve.

Where in the movie did you see where it says ALL members of this race are "money-grubbers"? There was what, three of them in the movie? Personally, I think it's highly prejudicial to make the leap that the portrayal of a few characters of one race must necessarily logically extend to portray ALL the race. By that pattern of logic, you are enhancing the perception that people are not individuals but mere members of a race with uniformly consistent values.

In the context of the movie, (1) it made sense that the few alien characters of that race be of similar mind, as they were members of a government collectively driven toward a single goal; (2) it made sense that these characters were the only characters of their race to appear; (3) there is no good reason to believe these aliens were representative of their race; (4) *somebody* has to be the badguy -- how ludicrous (and even racist) is it to assert arbitrarily that all movie badguys have to be white males -- or how petty is it to say that for every non white male badguy, a member of the same race must appear as a counter-balancing goodguy?

On the other hand, these points are moot with me in the case of TPM, because I do not believe there is a substantial enough correlation between the alien race and the Asian race anyway. Sure, they have a stronger resemblance to the Asian race than to any other human race, but as I mentioned earlier, you can't have an alien race that *doesn't* resemble one human race more than another, particularly when actual humans are doing the voices.