A Star Wars timeline curiosity

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-11 06:48pm

You don't see the forrest for the trees, Kurgan...

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2004-08-11 09:32pm

Kurgan wrote: (disbarring any "well in Star Wars they have incredible plastic surgery technology and people live super long life thanks to advanced medicine!" stuff that just complicates things)

Well, I know for sure about the plastic surgery thing(4th and 5th NJO books) and IIIRC they do live a lot longer, isn't Palleon like 150?

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2004-08-11 10:26pm

Anarchist Bunny wrote:
Kurgan wrote: (disbarring any "well in Star Wars they have incredible plastic surgery technology and people live super long life thanks to advanced medicine!" stuff that just complicates things)
Well, I know for sure about the plastic surgery thing(4th and 5th NJO books) and IIIRC they do live a lot longer, isn't Palleon like 150?

About 100, I believe (and brings up an interesting point. When the Thrawn trilogy was being written, GL had decided at that point that the Clone Wars were set 50 years before ANH. As the trilogy neared completion, Lucas ended up changing the date to 20 years before ANH, hence the confusion that many fans pointed out in the wake of the PT).

President Sharky · Post by **President Sharky** » 2004-08-12 12:33am

Obi-wan is 28 in The Phantom Menace, if he is to be 60 in ANH. I do think that's an acceptable age in both movies. Some Jedi take longer than others to become knights; in a time of relative peace that Obi-wan was training in, there were perhaps even less reasons to have a Jedi quickly pass through their training. Jedi Knight at 28 is most definitely acceptable.

Living in the desert with minimal technology obviously caused him to deteriorate much quicker, but he still has all his hair so it's obviously not that bad.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-12 09:50am

No, he's 25. There's no need for that kind of hypothesising, because Obi-Wan's age is officially marked down as 25 in TPM.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2004-08-12 11:38am

We know they have plastic surgery in SW, because of Luke (which was forced on Lucas by the RL surgery undergone by Hamill, etc), but I'm saying if we assume anybody can look young, no matter how old they "look" that just makes it too hard to do anything, just like if we assume anybody can be a clone or an android.

Ok, so I'm not the only one who sees that characters look at least "a little" older than they "ought to" in the OT when compared to the PT as we have the films so far.

Not that having several people with one opinion makes it any more or less right, but at least now Spanky can't claim it's 'just Crazy Ol' Kurgy up to his Ol' Tricksy again.' ; )

PS: Where are you getting the official ages from for each character? Here I'll make it simple for you, just fill out the form:

|Character | Official Age in TPM/AOTC| Source(s)|

Obi-Wan _______/________ | ________

Anakin _______/________ | ________

Palpatine _______/________ | ________

(is the above a trick question? Because if it is, then let's say the age of his
"soul" since the clones could be any age if we assume that)

Boba Fett ______/_________ | ________

And we'll leave out Yoda & Jabba since they are non-human aliens and have whacky non-human life spans. We can also leave out the droids, because they're also not human.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-12 01:21pm

It's not so much that I think that you're up to your old tricks, Kurgan, but that I think you're wasting your God damn time trying to drag a discussion beyond its conclusion.

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2004-08-12 04:04pm

C'mon, people age differently, why is that so difficult to comprehend? I don't think this is curious at all.

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2004-08-12 04:13pm

How old were Mark Hamil and Carrie Fisher during filming? Luke and Leia are twins, but the actors are different ages. The ages of the actors don't matter all that much...

And Palpatine has extensive mind control, from the RotJ novelization as well as Thrawn's musings in Heir to the Empire. And the whole burying the Lusankya on Coruscant thing. It's very conceivable that he could've made people all but forget about the Old Republic in 20 years.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-08-12 04:19pm

I'm leery of extrapolating vague abilities into much more complex and extensive abilities, and expanding them over an area of many orders of magnitude, and many orders of magnitude more individuals, as well.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-12 04:33pm

Mange the Swede wrote:C'mon, people age differently, why is that so difficult to comprehend? I don't think this is curious at all.

My sentiments exactly. Seems like some people are either spending too much time thinking too hard or feel like things need to be dragged on.

I mean seriously, for Kenobi/Guinness, it's just seven years, for fuck's sake: it is a non-issue...

Mad wrote:How old were Mark Hamil and Carrie Fisher during filming? Luke and Leia are twins, but the actors are different ages. The ages of the actors don't matter all that much...

Fisher was 19 and Hamil was 20, I believe.

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2004-08-12 04:38pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote:I'm leery of extrapolating vague abilities into much more complex and extensive abilities, and expanding them over an area of many orders of magnitude, and many orders of magnitude more individuals, as well.

It's conceivable, but not conclusive, true. And I don't think he'd do everybody at once... he'd have to do it to groups of people at a time, over a period of 20 years that adds up to a lot of people. The important ones, especially.

He can make a large portion of Coruscant completely forget that a huge area of buildings was removed, replaced with a SSD, and built over. Nudging the concept of the Jedi from "protectors of the Republic" to "mythical legends" would seem simple in comparison. People don't have to completely forget, they just have to think the Old Republic is old, mythical, and unimportant.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2004-08-12 07:06pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:It's not so much that I think that you're up to your old tricks, Kurgan, but that I think you're wasting your God damn time trying to drag a discussion beyond its conclusion.

I don't consider it a waste of my time (after all, it's my time to waste, and it's your time to waste responding that it's a waste of time as well).

All I'm doing is observing, what I percieve to be Lucas changing his mind (yet again) with regards to the Star Wars saga, and how this complicates the continuity of the mythos. Then I'm speculating about how he will, could, or should smooth things over to make it all flow together better.

While the OT DVD's and ROTS aren't out yet, and they will make a lot of my speculation moot, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy speculating in the meantime.

Hell, there are plenty of topics on these forums devoted to speculating "what if" we ignore certain books or even movies and speculate what might have been (even the EU does this with Infinities). While this is borderline blasphemy to some fans, it's great fun for others. I'm not being paranoid and assuming that you're simply out to pin me as a troll and a fool, I'm just telling you why I'm doing what I'm doing, so hopefully there will be no (or at least, less) misunderstanding. ; )

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-12 07:24pm

Well it's not really what you do but how you do it. For some reason I find the way you do your little theorising and hypothesising to be irksome and grating. It's just the way you write that makes it often sound like you have some sort of ulterior motivation and are typing with your hand behind your back. So I'll just say it flat out: Kurgan, you irrate me.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-08-12 07:35pm

The reason is bugs you Spanky is that Kurgan here consistently "theorizes" in such a manner that he implicitly undermines the validity and authoritative value of any non-filmic material.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-12 07:45pm

Yeah, that would be part of it. The other part is probably because Kurgan's a moron who often doesn't really know what he's talking about (because he's a OT Canon Purist n00b) and doesn't EVER bother to look shit up.

But I digress...

Tychu · Post by **Tychu** » 2004-08-12 09:11pm

Its probally the desert and stress thing but how do we know how long a year is in the Star Wars galaxy. It goes by Coruscant standerd time i know but that dosent mean a SW galaxy year = Earth Year. it could be 1.5 Earth years, which will make sense with the aging of Obi Wan. At 30 Obi Wan will be actually 45.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-12 09:49pm

Other than the number of days in a year (and how they arrange weeks and months), SW timekeeping is identical to Real Life.

There are 368 24-hour days in a Standard Year.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2004-08-13 06:21am

Illuminatus Primus wrote:The reason is bugs you Spanky is that Kurgan here consistently "theorizes" in such a manner that he implicitly undermines the validity and authoritative value of any non-filmic material.

So, I'm an EU hater and Spanky's an EU fanboy, that what you're saying?*

*not that there's anything wrong with either of those opinions, mind you.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-13 11:08am

For God's sake, just shut up, you shit head...

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2004-08-13 12:44pm

Is this discussion still going on? What more could possibly come out from it? I've seen many people that looks either older or younger their age. I've said it before; people age differently. Besides, Alec Guiness was 61 years old when ANH was filmed, so what does it matter if his character only was a few years younger? As Spanky has pointed out, we have canon sources that puts Obi-Wan's age at 25 years at the time of TPM.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2004-08-13 10:10pm

I think Knife has it right: Ignore the ages of the actors. I think Han Solo was supposed to be in his mid-to-late twenties (according to the ANH novel). Harrison Ford was 35 at the time. This could be a discrepancy of 5-10 years. Cut out the age of the actor and it fits.

I think the reason Lucas sped things up was the fact that he wanted Padme to be young and innocent like Anakin. Kids (whom these movies were made for) might not relate to an Anakin-Padme pairing if they were in their thirties and forties. If Anakin was 40 and Padme 20 (or the other way around), everyone would be hung up on the age difference (like when Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones starred in Entrapment).

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2004-08-14 04:13am

Mange the Swede wrote: As Spanky has pointed out, we have canon sources that puts Obi-Wan's age at 25 years at the time of TPM.

Let's get it on the table, which sources are we talking about: The TPM novelisation? Screenplay?

Elfdart wrote:I think Knife has it right: Ignore the ages of the actors. I think Han Solo was supposed to be in his mid-to-late twenties (according to the ANH novel). Harrison Ford was 35 at the time. This could be a discrepancy of 5-10 years. Cut out the age of the actor and it fits.

I agree about the actors. We really can't always rely on the actor's age, since the PT jumps around between films. And if Mark Hamill's character and Carrie Fisher's character are twins, ought to be the same age, yet Hamill is a few years older than Fisher.

The major discrepencies are the Force sensitive characters (which, after you eliminate the alien Yoda, leaves Anakin, Obi-Wan and Palpatine). Didn't early screenplays depict Obi-Wan as being in his 30's? That's closer to the actor's age (iirc) but then we're not going by that, so we're just worrying about the fact that this "seems old" for a Padawan (but then, maybe they just do things differently in the Old Republic, barring what we think we know from the EU or from the example of Luke who's in the new class of Jedi and a special case).

But therein lies the first retcon, the idea that the "Dark Side" makes people age faster. This is never alluded to in the films, rather, it was made up in the EU (fair enough, "no outright contradiction" right?), but then the PT stretches this believability, by showing Palpatine who has time to age more naturally, but again, behind the scenes he could be still fooling everyone I suppose, somehow. It was just easier to believe it might be happening when we didn't see him at all, so the gap could be filled in. Applying this for Anakin could possibly be a fix for his apparent rapid aging, unless Lucas decides to make him look younger, and elminate all traces of Sebastian Shaw.

Face it, in the OT Vader, Palpy, and Obi-Wan are old men.

Anyway, if we accept the "Darkside makes you age faster" theory, this (may) help by making Anakin and Palpatine look decades older than they could be from the timeline "officially" established with the Prequels. I'd also like to know where the "official" timeline (of 32 years, 22 years and 20 years before ANH / alternately 33 years, 23 years and 20 years before ANH) comes from, other than say the SW databank, because they certainly aren't mentioned (yet) onscreen. I mean we could guess that with the Harry Potter scene (if it indeed appears in ROTS) that this is just logical, but only if there is no time lapse between the events of the rest of the movie and when it occurs. I'll explain again how it could work: PT takes place sometime in the distant past before ANH. Harry Potter scene takes place 20 years before events of ANH. But between those two sequences (PT and HP scene) could be any length of time (though probably not more than a decade). I don't see this as a certainty, only as a simple fix if George wishes to go that route.

Elfdart wrote:I think the reason Lucas sped things up was the fact that he wanted Padme to be young and innocent like Anakin. Kids (whom these movies were made for) might not relate to an Anakin-Padme pairing if they were in their thirties and forties. If Anakin was 40 and Padme 20 (or the other way around), everyone would be hung up on the age difference (like when Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones starred in Entrapment).

Maybe. However, there was an age gap between Hamill and Fisher (and until the end of ROTJ we didn't know they were siblings) and there was obviously an age gap between Ford and Fisher (granted, we can accept that Han is younger than the actor who plays him).

Can you imagine Obi-Wan (as played by Ewan McGreggor) and Padme having a romance? A lot of fans speculated that would happen (a love triangle that figures into Anakin's fall to the Darkside) though this has failed to yet appear onscreen...

I think it all started because Lucas wanted to show Anakin as a little kid. Admit it, how many of us saw that coming? Still, he chose the span of time that the PT would encompass. He doesn't have to end the trilogy with the birth of the twins straight up. The gaps between films can be any length of time (well, "I haven't seen her in 10 years master" in AOTC establishes that film as at least 10 years after TPM, though possibly more since Anakin and Padme could have seen each other briefly after the events of the first film). Likewise ROTS wouldn't have to be 2 or 3 years after AOTC, but I have yet to see the film, so there could be some dialouge that erases that doubt.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:For God's sake, just shut up, you shit head...

That was pathetic! LoL

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2004-08-14 04:27am

Kurgan, why don't you just quit it. This age-thing appears like an obsession to you.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from the TPM screenplay:

The droid bows before OBI-WAN KENOBI and QUI- GON JINN. He backs out the door and it closes. The JEDI lower their hoods and look out a large window at the lush green planet of Naboo. QUI-GON sixty years old, has long white hair in a ponytail. He is tall and striking, with blue eyes. OBI-WAN is twenty five, with very short brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes.

So, the screenplay establishes Obi-Wan's age to 25 years. Are you happy now?

EDIT: Look, Kurgan, no flame was intended in the above post, but nothing more can come out from this discussion.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-14 12:25pm

Kurgan wrote:Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Enough of the useless long-winded back-handed "theorising," you wormy piece of shit. I've become tired of it.

Kurgan, just because you don't know how to look shit up on your own doesn't mean that you both have to make others do it for you and refuse to accept what others say on face value. Does your idiocy make you think everyone is being dishonest?

Jesus Christ...