Nericus

Leia had skill in that duel with Luke, but I dont think Luke was taking her seriously at first in that fight. Still I would think that after the Thrawn trilogy and the whole "Clone Reborn Emperor" thing that Leia would have worked more at becoming a Jedi if for no other reason then to help keep her kids safe from all the kidnapping attempts that seemed to occur frequently.

Also the nature of evil was given an interesting spin in the Legacy novels when Jacen Solo started following in his grandfather's footsteps.

Per the Young Han Solo novel trilogy, he started life as an orphan "working" aka stuck in a crime organization run by a cruel boss who used him for many things from being a street thief to posing as his "son" for scams. Han picked up many skills and quickly became an excellent pilot. He escapes and after some interesting adventures working as a smuggler/pilot for an organization run by the Hutts, he joins the Imperial Academy at the end of book 1. Passed all their training and exams and was very proud to be in the Imperial service...

...Then comes Book 2 which starts out with Han in a bar drowning his sorrows while a certain Wookie named Chewbacca was trying to buddy up to him and explain the whole
"life-debt" thing. We then get a recap of how he was drummed out of the service for stopping a superior officer from killing Chewbacca. Han eventually accepts his new friend and they become smugglers. Han gets his own ship, eventually meets Lando who just got the Falcon and Han aids him in learning to fly it. The book ends with Han gathering his funds to ante up for a big sabbaac tournament in Cloud City.

Book 3 starts with the tournament and how it comes down to Lando vs Han and Han of course wins and gets the Falcon. Lando decides to stick around the city to recoup some funds while Han and Chewie obtain the Falcon and start upgrading her to what we'd see in the movies. Among the adventures he has in the novels is organizing the smugglers into a militia and leading them into battle so Han does have leadership ability.

It was working for me the other day, but I agree that 10 days of downtime to recharge a 2 hour buff is rather not worth the time. Better to just charge up the ones that have x-amount of charges (smoke bombs, etc)

I think that was part of the Corellian trilogy, and yes they sparred but Luke wasn't quite taking her seriously and was caught by surprise. She then revealed she practices when she can. Problem with Leia for too long in the books was that she was too chicken hearted to embrace her Force heiritage until the Dark Nest trilogy.

The Dark Nest Trilogy also reveals yet again that the Lucas decree of "THOU SHALT NOT WRITE ABOUT THE PREQUEL ERA UNTIL I FINISH THE PREQUEL TRILOGY!" was more of a problem. That trilogy came out after Episode 3 and in it we discover that for all these years, the venerable Artoo-Deetoo, patron droid saint of Star Wars and veritable swiss army knife of useful abilities, had secretly recorded Anakin meeting Padme after the temple massacre in Ep 3 and that Artoo then remote accessed the temple surveilance cameras and downloaded the copies of Anakin killing the Jedi and younglings, and also recorded the encounter on Mustafar with Anakin and Padme up to the point where he began to Force choke her.

So all those years after ROTJ of never having a clue who their mother was, and suddenly out of the blue its revealed that Artoo had the knowledge all this time. Ugh.

Well Ep 1 indicated that a Padawan has some trial that the council puts them through to test them to see if they are worthy of becoming a Knight. Obi-Wan was deemed as not ready but later faces and defeats Darth Maul, thus proving he has the Force and can control it and thus is now dubbed a Knight.

For Ep 6: Luke's trial was to face Vader again. Given that Obi was a ghost and Yoda about to become one, that was the only trial they could give Luke. And Luke was sorely tested, Vader and the Emperor are constantly baiting him to use his anger and thus become corrupted by the Darkside. (i find it difficult to believe that a moment of intense anger permenately corrupts a Jedi). Luke goes nuts, rather easily beats down Vader and then severs his bionic arm and then looks at his own black gloved hand and realizes what is happening and makes his choice, trial passed successfully.

Although, throwing his saber aside and standing proudly before the supreme Sith Lord and declaring "I am a Jedi, like my father before me!" was not the brightest thing to do.....

My own take on the Balance of the force prophecy. Prophecies are always open to interpretation, so lets look at it from this certain point of view:

1. The Force was out of balance due to a large Jedi Order, and an Order that was also inflexible in its ways. Read the ep 3 novelization as Yoda realizes during his fight with the Emperor that he and the Jedi were trained to fight the Sith of 1000 years ago not the Sith of the present and that he couldn't win this fight. Later as he communes with the Force he speaks with Qui-Gon's ghost who offers to show him the path to true immortality aka Jedi Ghost technique. Yoda agrees to this. (THIS REALLY NEEDED TO BE IN EP 3 the movie)

2. Anakin goes batty and agrees to apprentice to Sidious and wipes out the Jedi except for Yoda and Obi-Wan (I would presume others survived the purge and hid but who knows). So now we have 2 Sith and 2 Jedi......balance?

3. Anakin sires twin offspring, boy and girl, one who will become a fighter (Luke) and the other a diplomat. Another balance of sorts, war and peace.

4. The Force's balance has titled from lightside to darkside with the ascension of the Emperor and for 20 years it stays that way until Luke comes of age and gets trained by Obi and Yoda. Luke then becomes the motivation Vader needs to wake up and realize what he has become and done and fulfill his destiny as the Chosen One.

Now the Force is rebalanced to the light side.

So to me, Anakin brought balance to the Force twice, by wiping out the Jedi and then later killing the Emperor and dying in the process.

From a certain point of view, of course

Also those Ewok movies are the like the Holiday Special.....best forgotten.

Darksaber was ok, Truce at Bakura was average. Crystal Star was horrid.

I enjoyed I, Jedi; even though once he starts setting up in that pirate haven-city and scouts it all out I began to get a sense of deja vu. Then comes the comment about how pirates are superstitous and cowardly, plus he had Elegos as his servant or dare I say butler, and his cover was basically a drunk buffoon celebrating his pending promotion to the Pirate Queen's lover. But at night he suits up and use his security training and Jedi powers and theatrics to strike fear in the hearts of evil!

Kept waiting for a scared criminal to ask "WHO ARE YOU?" and for Corran to get in his face and say "I'm BATMAN!"

As to the NJO, my compliments to the authors for breaking the "invincibility bubble" by bringing death to the main characters. Chewbacca went out in a magnificent blaze of glory.

As long as George is in charge, if he says there are no Ep 7 to 9 then there won't be. Granted he's changed his tune in the past, but at the moment there are no Ep 7 to 9.

As to his comments about "no Emperor clones" and "Luke doesn't get married", well the novels and their content have to have his stamp of approval or they don't get printed. Also I again reiterate that many of the novels were hampered by his "NO PREQUEL ERA" decree. I knew that Luke's quest for his mother in the Black Fleet Trilogy was going to be fake. Lucas wouldn't allow any revelations about her unless they were in the movies.

Then in other words, the Hami mish of LGTF is basically pointless now. Well maybe not pointless as it still serves the purpose of stumping some MoLGTF runs

It was 2 weeks when it hit me. Looked cool at first but the coolness wore off fast.

But again, the aura is only on the leader and its description seems to indicate that the aura doesn't affect teammates, yet all can fight the Honoree....

Also yes that aura is annoying, when the TF first went live I was leader on the team and crashed as mish 5 started, when I returned I still had the aura....for 2 weeks after the TF was done.

His death basically cut off the head of the Empire. The loss of Vader and the super destroyer Executor took away some of their best soldiers. But the Imperial Forces were still out there.

As to bringing balance to the Force....well balance is a delicate thing, so easily disrupted. Yes, Anakin destroys the Emperor and Luke and Leia are the last of the Jedi, or first of the new depending on your point of view.

But if there are any records anywhere of Sith teachings, then yes the Sith can return.

Well the end of Robot Chicken Star Wars 2 makes a nice joke about how the ships don't fight back.

"We have tens of thousands of ships, we have tremendous firepower, we have countless worlds at our disposal!"

"No you see they blew up the second Death Star AND killed the Emperor! They had to both!"

"You mean we can't fight back?"

"No, sorry. This is the end of the Empire!"

However the novels made a point of showing that the Imperial Forces were out there, but lacked leadership for sometime until Thrawn returned. Thrawn's demise threw it all back into anarchy. Admiral Daala wipes out the warlords but her leadership was brief (Darksaber novel) and Admiral Pellaeon; the pupil of Thrawn takes over.

Dark Empire: it's revealed that he Emperor transfers into young clones of himself and Luke goes Darkside to learn his secrets and destroy him and also to learn more of why his father went darkside

Dark Empire 2: still emotionally scarred from his darkside time, Luke must still face the Emperor who is running out of clones. Also Anakin Solo is born.

Empire's End: final battle with the Emperor.

Dark Empire occurs approximately 6 years after ROTJ and 1 year after Tim Zahn's excellent Thrawn Trilogy. After Dark Empire would come the Jedi Academy Trilogy of novels where Luke thinks he has recovered from his darkside ways and begins to train new Jedi. Also he unilaterally declares himself to be a Jedi Master after surviving the war with the reborn Emperor.

The Novel "I, Jedi" would come out years later but it fits into this trilogy and shows Corran Horn of Rogue Squadron training at the time to be a Jedi and also we get his viewpoint and Mara Jade's viewpoint on just how Luke's darkside time really screwed up his head.

The Hand of Thrawn duology of novels would finally have Luke wake up and realize a few things about the Force, his rather cavalier at times usage of his powers and how he is actually going darkside again due to all his frequent usage of the Force vs. listening to the Force for guidance. Mara also helps him screw his head back on straight, she dismisses the idea that those clones were really the Emperor (slight retcon-dismissal of Dark Empire), and she and Luke fall in love and agree to marry.

However a main flaw of all the Star Wars novels for years was the decree of Lucas that no author shall directly reference the prequel era or Luke's mother. Hence we got things like "Jedi Ghosts can only manifest for a few years then fade away forever", thus depriving Luke of any further guidance from Obi_Wan, and Anakin's ghost only appeared once after ROTJ and that was to Leia only in the Truce at Bakura.

Also some of the novels made hints and references to Boba Fett's history which had to be revised a bit after it's revealed Boba himself is a clone of his dear old daddy

Allegedly the pylons reduce Hami's aggro range to the point where you would shouldn't aggro it until you attack the greens. I've seen nothing yet to substantiate this as we make it a point to NOT aggro Hami

Also I've seen no indication that the Mitos are affected by the pylons.

Better yet, here's a question: the leader of the team gets the Hami aura and its description indicates said aura is to enable one to fight extradimensional foes, in this case the Rikti.

Well since we've been fighting Rikti in the first three missions of this TF without said aura, and that only the leader gets the aura, and everyone on the team can affect the AV's in the last mission......doesn't that make that aura and hence the Hami mission itself rather pointless?

It was only a teaser trailer, I'm sure they have an even better trailer planned. Also we do not speak of Viking thor and the canjun commandos from Hulk Returns......

Even when ODIN cast THOR to Earth in the comics all those years ago, he was worthy of the hammer. It was the fact that THOR was arrogant to the extreme and a braggart that needed to learn some humility that made ODIN cast him out.

I suspect a good portion of the movie will be THOR learning about mortals and love and gain a measure of humility. Then comes the attacks of the Destroyer and THOR must seek out the crater where his enchanted hammer would be since by rights nothing and no one on Earth should be able to move the hammer.

Hm, Die Hard/Blade Runner mix and Dredd's helmet stays on.......so far so good.

I rechecked the data on Dredd and I was right earlier. What little has ever been shown of his face is indeed suspect. They apparently once showed he was blue eyed but it was later revealed that his eyes are apparently cybernetic implants.

Also Ahnold did reject the role due to the helmet being on all the time thing. I'm guessing that since Stallone didn't have the helmet on much that they caved in to his demands about it as well as tossed him a lot of cash. Egos...

Yes but as Joker is a blank slate that can be played into any form of crazy, it works. It kind of reminded me of both Nicholson-Joker and Ledger-Joker.

I dunno, perhaps him having a cameo might elicit a few laughs as people recall the debacle that was the last Dredd movie...