Originally posted by Naredhel
Obi pops Grevious in the stomach (spilling his guts) and the Anakin/Yoda dialogue follows his nightmare he has about Padme dying...... right?
I think we may be presuming a lot to suggest that this photo of Obi with a blaster is the moment when GG gets it but, yeah, Popular thinking still says Obi blasts the General in the gut.
In fact Ewok Pudu's original Spoiler from way back when even went so far as to say that Obi actually placed the blaster right into GG's chest and blasted away repeatedly until GG was dead.
The conversation between Yoda and Ani is pretty much about Ani's premonition of Padmé dying.
Interesting that Yoda actually brings the subject up, though - I was wondering how that would play out, how Ani woudl go about mentioning his dream....without mentioning his dream, if you get what I mean....
Written Material part 1
Revenge of the Sith Novel Excerpt
March 09, 2005
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
By Matthew Stover; Based on the story and screenplay by George Lucas
A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY. . . .
This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it.
It is a story of love and loss, brotherhood and betrayal, courage and sacrifice and the death of dreams. It is a story of the blurred line between our best and our worst.
It is the story of the end of an age.
A strange thing about stories --
Though this all happened so long ago and so far away that words cannot describe the time or the distance, it is also happening right now. Right here.
It is happening as you read these words.
This is how twenty-five millennia come to a close. Corruption and treachery have crushed a thousand years of peace. This is not just the end of a republic; night is falling on civilization itself.
This is the twilight of the Jedi.
The end starts now.
INTRODUCTION: The Age of Heroes
The skies of Coruscant blaze with war.
The artificial daylight spread by the capital's orbital mirrors is sliced by intersecting flames of ion drives and punctuated by starburst explosions; contrails of debris raining into the atmosphere become tangled ribbons of cloud. The nightside sky is an infinite lattice of shining hairlines that interlock planetoids and track erratic spirals of glowing gnats. Beings watching from rooftops of Coruscant's endless cityscape can find it beautiful.
From the inside, it's different.
The gnats are drive-glows of starfighters. The shining hairlines are light-scatter from turbolaser bolts powerful enough to vaporize a small town. The planetoids are capital ships.
The battle from the inside is a storm of confusion and panic, of galvened particle beams flashing past your starfighter so close that your cockpit rings like a broken annunciator, of the bootsole shock of concussion missiles that blast into your cruiser, killing beings you have trained with and eaten with and played and laughed and bickered with. From the inside, the battle is desperation and terror and the stomach-churning certainty that the whole galaxy is trying to kill you.
Across the remnants of the Republic, stunned beings watch in horror as the battle unfolds live on the HoloNet. Everyone knows the war has been going badly. Everyone knows that more Jedi are killed or captured every day, that the Grand Army of the Republic has been pushed out of system after system, but this --
A strike at the very heart of the Republic?
An invasion of Coruscant itself?
How can this happen?
It's a nightmare, and no one can wake up.
Live via HoloNet, beings watch the Separatist droid army flood the government district. The coverage is filled with images of overmatched clone troopers cut down by remorselessly powerful destroyer droids in the halls of the Galactic Senate itself.
A gasp of relief: the troopers seem to beat back the attack. There are hugs and even some quiet cheers in living rooms across the galaxy as the Separatist forces retreat to their landers and streak for orbit --
We won! beings tell each other. We held them off!
But then new reports trickle in -- only rumors at first -- that the attack wasn't an invasion at all. That the Separatists weren't trying to take the planet. That this was a lightning raid on the Senate itself.
The nightmare gets worse: the Supreme Chancellor is missing.
Palpatine of Naboo, the most admired man in the galaxy, whose unmatched political skills have held the Republic together. Whose personal integrity and courage prove that the Separatist propaganda of corruption in the Senate is nothing but lies. Whose charismatic leadership gives the whole Republic the will to fight on.
Palpatine is more than respected. He is loved.
Even the rumor of his disappearance strikes a dagger to the heart of every friend of the Republic. Every one of them knows it in her heart, in his gut, in its very bones --
Without Palpatine, the Republic will fall.
And now confirmation comes through, and the news is worse than anyone could have imagined. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine has been captured by the Separatists -- and not just the Separatists.
He's in the hands of General Grievous.
Grievous is not like other leaders of the Separatists. Nute Gunray is treacherous and venal, but he's Neimoidian: venality and treachery are expected, and in the Viceroy of the Trade Federation they're even virtues. Poggle the Lesser is Archduke of the weapon masters of Geonosis, where the war began: he is analytical and pitiless, but also pragmatic. Reasonable. The political heart of the Separatist Confederacy, Count Dooku, is known for his integrity, his principled stand against what he sees as corruption in the Senate. Though they believe he's wrong, many respect him for the courage of his mistaken convictions.
These are hard beings. Dangerous beings. Ruthless and aggressive.
General Grievous, though --
Grievous is a monster.
The Separatist Supreme Commander is an abomination of nature, a fusion of flesh and droid -- and his droid parts have more compassion than what remains of his alien flesh. This halfliving creature is a slaughterer of billions. Whole planets have burned at his command. He is the evil genius of the Confederacy. The architect of their victories.
The author of their atrocities.
And his durasteel grip has closed upon Palpatine. He confirms the capture personally in a wideband transmission from his command cruiser in the midst of the orbital battle. Beings across the galaxy watch, and shudder, and pray that they might wake up from this awful dream.
Because they know that what they're watching, live on the HoloNet, is the death of the Republic.
Many among these beings break into tears; many more reach out to comfort their husbands or wives, their crèche-mates or kin-triads, and their younglings of all descriptions, from children to cubs to spawn-fry.
But here is a strange thing: few of the younglings need comfort. It is instead the younglings who offer comfort to their elders. Across the Republic--in words or pheromones, in magnetic pulses, tentacle-braids, or mental telepathy -- the message from the younglings is the same: Don't worry. It'll be all right.
Anakin and Obi-Wan will be there any minute.
They say this as though these names can conjure miracles.
Anakin and Obi-Wan. Kenobi and Skywalker. From the beginning of the Clone Wars, the phrase Kenobi and Skywalker has become a single word. They are everywhere. HoloNet features of their operations against the Separatist enemy have made them the most famous Jedi in the galaxy.
Younglings across the galaxy know their names, know everything about them, follow their exploits as though they are sports heroes instead of warriors in a desperate battle to save civilization. Even grown-ups are not immune; it's not uncommon for an exasperated parent to ask, when faced with offspring who have just tried to pull off one of the spectacularly dangerous bits of foolishness that are the stock-in-trade of high-spirited younglings everywhere, So which were you supposed to be, Kenobi or Skywalker?
Kenobi would rather talk than fight, but when there is fighting to be done, few can match him. Skywalker is the master of audacity; his intensity, boldness, and sheer jaw-dropping luck are the perfect complement to Kenobi's deliberate, balanced steadiness. Together, they are a Jedi hammer that has crushed Separatist infestations on scores of worlds.
All the younglings watching the battle in Coruscant's sky know it: when Anakin and Obi-Wan get there, those dirty Seppers are going to wish they'd stayed in bed today.
The adults know better, of course. That's part of what being a grown-up is: understanding that heroes are created by the HoloNet, and that the real-life Kenobi and Skywalker are only human beings, after all.
Even if they really are everything the legends say they are, who's to say they'll show up in time? Who knows where they are right now? They might be trapped on some Separatist backwater. They might be captured, or wounded. Even dead.
Some of the adults even whisper to themselves, They might have fallen.
Part 2 Written Excerpt
Because the stories are out there. Not on the HoloNet, of course -- the HoloNet news is under the control of the Office of the Supreme Chancellor, and not even Palpatine's renowned candor would allow tales like these to be told--but people hear whispers. Whispers of names that the Jedi would like to pretend never existed.
Sora Bulq. Depa Billaba. Jedi who have fallen to the dark. Who have joined the Separatists, or worse: who have massacred civilians, or even murdered their comrades. The adults have a sickening suspicion that Jedi cannot be trusted. Not anymore. That even the greatest of them can suddenly just . . . snap.
The adults know that legendary heroes are merely legends, and not heroes at all.
These adults can take no comfort from their younglings. Palpatine is captured. Grievous will escape. The Republic will fall. No mere human beings can turn this tide. No mere human beings would even try. Not even Kenobi and Skywalker.
And so it is that these adults across the galaxy watch the HoloNet with ashes where their hearts should be.
Ashes because they can't see two prismatic bursts of realspace reversion, far out beyond the planet's gravity well; because they can't see a pair of starfighters crisply jettison hyperdrive rings and streak into the storm of Separatist vulture fighters with all guns blazing.
A pair of starfighters. Jedi starfighters. Only two.
Two is enough.
Two is enough because the adults are wrong, and their younglings are right.
Though this is the end of the age of heroes, it has saved its best for last.
Written stuff #3
The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Excerpt
March 09, 2005
To get a feel of the dynamic layout and presentation of The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Del Rey Books is pleased to first share these downloadable PDF-format spreads with Hyperspace members. Click on the thumbnails below to begin your download.
The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is due out April 2nd.
PDF Files Here
http://rapidshare.de/files/823742/sheet1.pdf.html
http://www.revengeofthesith.4t.com/sheet2.pdf
http://www.revengeofthesith.4t.com/sheet3.pdf
Written Material Part 1 of a few
Exclusive Article: Droids and the Force
March 09, 2005
Droids, Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena
By Jedi Tam Azur-Jamin; (Translation by Abel G. Peña)
Droids' rights have been a long-standing issue. Groups like the Coalition of Automaton Rights Activists and its more militant cousin the Mechanical Liberation Front, along with famous pamphlets such as San Herrera and Nia Reston's pioneering "Droid Rights" and Arhul Hextrophon's "The Problem of Droid Abuse," have succeeded to varying degrees in making headway for the recognition of droids as viable beings with certain unalienable rights. With the recent invasion of the technologically antagonistic Yuuzhan Vong, there has been a resurgence of droid discrimination among the galactic citizenry. The Jedi themselves have been somewhat reluctant to address the topic in the aftermath for reasons that have not been made clear with the general public. What follows is a careful dissection of the issue.
1. The Problem
In his book Of Minds, Men, and Machines, the renowned pre-Republic philosopher Plaristes argued fiercely and eloquently, and convincingly about the impossibility of automata ever achieving Artificial Sentience, citing roadblocks ranging from staggering concepts such as the postulation of reality, intention and freewill to trivial concerns like the ability to form proper syntax. Over twenty-five millennia of droids' existence, and over fifty billion droids in current service, however, have since proven him wrong.
Yet droid sentience remains as inexplicable as hyperdrive technology. Like consciousness in higher-order organics, it is only known that when certain cognitive components come together, self-awareness springs forth like an Akurian geyser. But there is no specific aspect of a droid's cognitive module or behavioral circuitry matrix that can be pinpointed as the particular cause of A.S., nor has a definite "cut-off" line been determined at a certain level of automaton: can it be said that a third degree droid (such as protocol droid) is sentient, yet a fourth degree (such as a single-minded IG assassin droid) or fifth degree droid (such as a monosyllabic ASP model) is not? Furthermore, can mindwipes, or the lack thereof, alter this perceived cut-off? Where does artificial sentience begin and where does it end?
These ambiguities, which should sound familiar to the various fauna rights organizations, have long allowed for the stubborn denial among organic beings of droid sentience, who cling to terms such as "near-sentience." But droid engineers testify to droids having predisposed personalities (or as the comedian Joon Odovrera put it, "Some droids are just born bad."😉 And how many persons have not heard a droid proclaim service to a "Maker." Many beings have tried to explain away this uneasy allusion as a droid simply referring to its manufacturer, however, few have dared to ask a droid itself what is meant by this.
The Maker, according to droids, is a reference to "the One Who Creates." This concept has been treated contemptuously by the average biological being, but it is a matter of record that there exists a planet by the name Ronyards that is host to an entire population of deity worshipping mechanicals. It is also no secret that the Sunesi species also worships an entity called the Maker, and has a number of droid devotees within its religion.
These facts have made it obvious, if not palatable, to a majority of the intellectual community that droids do undoubtedly exhibit consciousness of a kind, as much insofar as one can claim the same of higher order biologicals. This, however, poses a new problem, particularly for those who work with a little phenomenon called the Force, the energy field that surrounds all living things.
All living things. Droids and the Force have never been thought of in compatible terms. Coupled with the lasting droid prejudice inspired by the Great Droid Revolution, and revived to some degree by the smaller Arkanian Revolution, these inorganic, reasoning creatures that are devoid of the Force have caused even respected Jedi Masters like Jorus C'baoth to label droids as abominations.
Yet, other Jedi haven't been so closed-minded, daring to ask the question: do droids truly exist outside the Force? After all, if the Force can be imbued into inanimate objects such as staffs and personal trinkets, even found in lifeless rock, what makes droids so different? Tales of Iron Knights (and even wild rumors about Jedi droids named Skippy) have fueled the fire for those devoted few who dared to press the question.