Nericus

There was an episode of Batman TAS that starts off with Poison Ivy in court and the judge stating "Since you were apprehended by Batman, who is not an agent of the law; the court cannot grant the prosecutions request for life imprisonment. Instead you will be remanded to Arkham Asylum where it is hoped you will complete your rehabilitiation."

So yes, Batman can stop his rogues gallery, but as he is a vigilante that does seem to impede the courts. Due process, miranda rights, etc. Now if Batman could somehow rig things so that it APPEARS that only the cops stop the Joker's latest scheme and bring him in, then perhaps the courts can order Joker to death row.

As to the villains being scared of the Joker, I doubt Rha's Al Ghul fears Joker. He might be leery of the Joker as it's nearly impossible to predict what Joker will do at any time, but I doubt he fears him.

Also Rha's could for reasons of his own, decide to do what he feels would be a favor to Batman. Rha's could easily arrange the termination of the Joker. He could launch some grand scheme to keep Batman busy, and at the same time send some of his best hit squads to Arkham and turn Joker into swiss cheese with massive gunfire and then leave a note on Joker's corpse; "Dear Batman, a gift for you. Something that I know you always wanted to do, but could never do. Truly, this makes you the better man than I. Sincerely, Rha's Al Ghul."

That does make one wonder....Joker has survived some pretty serious stuff both in comics and the Batman TAS.

In Death in the Family, Joker gets some gunfire in his stomach and stomach wounds are not to be laughed off (pun not intended)

In Batman/Superman World's Finest at the end Joker is laughing it up as his own grenades bring down the flying wing with him on it, but no body or pieces of a body are found. In a Batman TAS episode, Laughing Fish, it sure looks like that shark got him but we see no body, or pieces or blood.

Then in Tim Burton's Batman movie, Nicholson Joker makes the comment "Haven't you heard of the healing power of laughter?"

Perhaps the chemical dunk that bleached his skin, etc also gave him a healing ability that is in fact tied to laughter? The more he laughs, faster he heals, etc.

I never had a major problem with ROTJ except of course for the Ewoks, but I accept that budget constraints and FX problems forced Lucas to not have Wookies. For which he profusely apologized for in Revenge of the Sith by giving us some nice fight scenes on the Wookie homeworld

The Prequels: how much of what we hate about them can be credited to Lucas' apparent inability to direct or write romantic dialog and wanting total control vs. any rules in effect from the industry about violence and children in movies and what they can and cannot do to avoid upsetting parent groups, etc?

Case in point: at no time in Ep 1 do I recall kid Anakin wielding a blaster or a lightsaber, yet oddly it's ok for him to launch into space and blow up the enemy base with proton torpedoes.....go figure.

Yes Ep 1 also had some dry moments in the plot and of course the dreaded Jar Jar Binks.

Ep 2: hideous romantic dialogue and no chemistry between Anakin and Padme were my main gripes. Yes many scenes were Lucas showing off new CGI and FX tech, but then again that's also what the Star Wars films are about too.

Ep 3: Anakin's decision to go darkside mirrors the situation Luke was in back in ROTJ. However his sudden agreement "yes I shall slay the children!" was like....okay....... Of course they also cannot show THAT happening otherwise parent groups would go berzerk and the movie would receive an R rating instead of PG 13. The Obi vs. Anakin fight and Yoda vs. Sidious fight I have no quarrel with, both were highly entertaining despite any violations of physics in the Mustafar fight (like not being fried from the splashing lava when the shields went down, or the heat in the air frying their lungs from the inside out). My only other main gripe with Ep 3 was that Lucas blew his best chance to explain the Force Ghosts since in the novel of Ep 3 Yoda converses with Qui Gon who offers to teach Yoda deeper meaning of the Force including how to join with it and become an eternal Force Ghost! I hope that if he makes a special edition of Ep 3 that gets included somehow. Padme dying....yeah ok that kind of contradicts Leia's memories unless they decide she remembered her adoptive mother instead.

Well Han was also rumored as to not going to be able to survive being in the carbonite or the thaw out. Also there were rumors that Lando and the Falcon were going to be incinerated just before they escape the Death Star. If you look at how close the flames were to the Falcon, that is on rumor that can almost be believed.

As to the Alliance being decimated, well it looked like not many survived the fight in space anyway since Death Star 2 began shooting down the fleet.

Still for all the hate that some fans feel about any of the movies, the plain fact is that Lucas got lucky back in 1977, and he would go on to create things like Industrial Light and Magic and THX among others.

Love him or hate him, the man has definitely had an impact on pop culture and the industry.

I would also point out that Lucas and crew had literally no idea how lucky they would get back in 1977 when Star Wars first launched. So now that he knows he can get a franchise going and has the licensing/merchandising rights in his iron grip, then he can go back and stick the Ep 4 into the intro.

Here's hoping they adjust the requirements on that Gladiator badge.

That MIB quote is so true. But given that people are panicky dangers animals, I can't see a lie about a disaster coming in the next decade or so being effective. I CAN see it doing more harm then good, though.

I've tried the new Fury. I don't mind the changes and really don't see any performance loss at all. As to the damage cap reduction, no big deal.

As long as they reward as they should, the artwork is secondary.

Hm, I really can't argue with that. Snipes clearly didn't want to do the movie and later reports was that the script was shoved on him at the last minute and he wasn't happy with it. Also that was one weak choice for Dracula. Most disappointing.

That's where warp drive or hyperspace travel comes in. We'd need to leave this star system and check out our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri I believe, and see if we can colonize there and then launch expeditions to dare I say:

"Seek out new worlds and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before."

Sadly though since space is uncharted territory for us, many of these expeditions may never return due to who knows what is out there.

At least in B5 we got a jump start in our space technology and learned of the jump gates for hyperspace when we met the Centauri. Sadly I doubt that we'd get so lucky in the real world.

Unfortunately, given the tendency to panic that humans seem to have; even if society was told in 10 years an asteroid was going to hit and wipe us out I foresee society killing itself in a mass panic attack.

That was Commander Sinclair in B5 Season 1 when he was interviewed by the media in that episode. And what he said was so right, one day our sun will go and take Earth and the human race with it if we don't get into space.

Which isn't saying much considering what he and Snipes had to work with. Can't polish a stone....

Agreed. I've been converting my bases back to raid ability. I had one setup with the anchors, Raid TP and mish comp. I checked the mish comp and got the message that the dimensions were not in alignment, CoP not available. Didn't say anything about missing any rooms, but who knows.

I agree with you Bill Z. From a technology standpoint we are far from ready to colonize other worlds, but as a society we are even further from ready. The human race or least the majority of it seem to have a rather myoptic (re:tunnel vision) view of things and seem incapable of looking to the far future.

Politicians pay lip service to the concept at best. Businessmen won't do anything if there is no immediate monetary profit.

They would rather society focus such wonderful things as the next celebrity scandal, whether its Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Tiger Woods' fall from grace, or Mel Gibson shooting off his mouth, etc. etc. etc. I could care less about these things except for what minor amusement I feel as I laugh at them derisively.

The human race needs to grow up and pull its collective head out of the sand. Yes there are some enlightened individuals like Hawking, but said individuals are in the minority.

Yes, and then the Gorns return to be blasted by Captain Kirk's patented mythbusted Shatner Cannon

Too bad he was lousy in Blade: Trinity, but then the whole movie was lousy.

It used to be Vault with IoP stand in it, 6 anchors, the raid TP unit, and the mission computer. I don't recall 8 rooms minimum in the base as a stipulation.

I was about to ask if it was the 6 token limit per week like during the x-mas event.

Thank you!

Yes I recall that, Lucas gave approval for Chewbacca to perish and his other decree to the authors that is that only HE can ever kill Luke, Han, and Leia.

I remember the reason he gave about Anakin Solo and just face palmed. The author's later stated that Kyp Duron should be grateful to Lucas since he was the one slated to die. Also were supposed to get Jacen vs. Jaina until Anakin's demise threw things off.

So we then get Jacen vs Jaina in the Legacy novels since once again Luke's head isn't screwed on straight, and I think that novel series was cut short due to fan complaints.

Ever think that maybe the Star Wars novels need a "crisis" to reboot things a bit now that the prequels are done?

I always thought it was dumb to have Artoo out of the blue be revealed to have knowledge of Padme in his primary memory all these years despite being blasted and blown up in Ep 4 and shorted out in Ep 6, his memory allegedly wiped in Dark Empire by Dark Luke and other times he was damaged or sabotaged and yet NO ONE could discover this data......

In Highlander, the immortals automatically sense one another, in Star Wars the Force user be they Jedi or Sith must actively scan for another Force user. However said user they are locating seems to require:

1. the target having some Force training to activate their power.
2. be actively using their powers
3. have a strong presence in the Force that they can be felt across the galaxy. (Luke on Dagobah and the Emperor alerting Vader)
4. Not be concealing their presence somehow, (Sidious in prequels, Yoda in Ep 5).

In the movies, Leia was never trained and not even using her powers on an unconscious level, vs. Luke who was already an accomplished pilot to rival his father (skill + Force) and then gets some quick training by Obi Wan.

Back in the Dark Empire comics, we got glimpses of Leia's power as he used it to help Luke break free of the darkside and her power combined with Luke's did turn the Emperor's Force Storm back upon him. Then came Dark Empire 2 and Empire's End and Leia's powers seemed diminished again.

Courtship of Princess Leia gave another small glimpse of her power but it was pretty much all Luke.

Black Fleet Trilogy was typical barely trained Leia.

Correllian Trilogy showed that Leia secretly practices her saber technique and got lucky and disarmed Luke.

Jedi Academy Trilogy showed Leia's untrained toddlers were already stronger then her. However I chalk that up to them being young and thus not chicken hearted about their heritage like Leia is.

Crystal Star (YUCK! lousy story) showed even young Anakin Solo had already surpassed her.

At the end of the NJO, once Luke gets his head screwed on straight about the light/dark side concepts is basically performing as a Super Saiyan level 9000 uber Jedi Master against the Vong, and Leia was still practically inept.

Dark Nest Trilogy, Leia finally sucks it up and asks to be trained as a Jedi and earn her place in the Order.