How many parsecs long is the Kessel Run?

[Kaelik]

I think you're two pages into an argument about the stupid parsecs thing.

Edit: also I think my head and back are fucking killing me today and I didn't sleep well, and food and caffeine only help so much and I should drop this whole thing.

Uh... Prak. The twothree sides of the argument are:

1) Lucas made a mistake, and who fucking cares. Also the EU came up with an explanation because they sort of had to, lacking a time machine, the Force Awakens probably shouldn't have repeated any of it, because it destroyed the EU anyway, but even if they did, they should have made an actual explanation.

2) Lucas made a mistake, and that's really annoying, also the Force Awakens was dumb as shit for repeating it. What the fuck is in the EU? I don't know, I don't care, and I shouldn't have to.

3) Lucas did or didn't make a mistake, but Han Solo was totally just making up a really dumb lie because he's a really dumb bad liar who doesn't know what measurements are, but this is somehow a better character than a smuggler who is competent and good at his job, who if and when he lies, lies well. Also the EU is the devil, because even the act of writing the book that explains this as non-stupid statement destroys the movies retroactively, and then also in the future, after the EU is cast off, we can still blame it for shitty lines in a mediocre movie written by committee with a mediocre director.

Notice that like, absolutely no one is particularly defending Lucas, so... if you have no idea what the conversation is, maybe don't jump in with a strong opinion?

[Prak]

I think I'm at the point that, when I stop making sense and start getting really fucking worked up, someone should just say "Go eat/sleep/take some pain meds, idiot."

Because I've realized that most of my stupidity seems to be posted when I haven't eaten/slept/feel like shit.

[Starmaker]

Uh... Prak. The twothree sides of the argument are:

4. Han Solo was intentionally bullshitting to see whether Obi-Wan and Luke were actually the planet-bound yokels they looked like. Luke swallowed the bullshit like a chump, but Obi-Wan went "dude wtf" and gave himself away.

[Mechalich]

Ultimately, the standing EU explanation for the Kessel Run comment most likely still holds, since Force Awakens did not offer an alternate one. The next time someone writes a guidebook that involves the Falcon, or Kessel, or Han's career chronology they'll just import the old explanation and that will be that.

The EU spent a huge amount of word count nailing down the specifics of what just about everything in the OT meant, and since most of the people writing the new EU were conversant in the Old EU they'll just re-derive the same explanations because it's easier and they have no reason to come up with new ones.

Of course, they could choose to make up a new explanation, which is why all sorts of EU-based background material exists in a weird Schrodinger's Cat sort of canonicity and is likely to do so for some time.

[Kaelik]

Uh... Prak. The twothree sides of the argument are:

4. Han Solo was intentionally bullshitting to see whether Obi-Wan and Luke were actually the planet-bound yokels they looked like. Luke swallowed the bullshit like a chump, but Obi-Wan went "dude wtf" and gave himself away.

That's already 3.

[Darth Rabbitt]

There's a pretty big difference: 3 implies Han is saying bullshit because he's an idiot, while 4 implies that Han is saying bullshit to see if he can fast talk Luke and Obi-Wan into a quick sale, something that doesn't make him an idiot.

But can we just get this whole Kessel Run discussion moved/made into its own thread?

[fbmf]

From a marketing the movie to the majority of folks perspective, ignoring the parsecs thing (by not referencing it) entirely might be the right call, but how many fans are you really blowing out of the water with that? How many movie goers seriously got butt hrt over the incongruity versus (smiled at the OT reference + didn;t know what a parsec was, but it contained the suffix "sec" which sounds like "seconds" so it must be time).

Also, I only ever read a dozen or so books of the EU (not counting bits and pieces of the STAR WARS D6 game) and I knew about the explanation for the Kessel Run. My not-from-Texas friends tell me it doesn't bother me because we tend to express distance in time units.

[EXAMPLE]
"How far are you away?"
"45 minutes or so."

"We're ten minutes from the mall at most."
[/EXAMPLE]

From a story telling perspective, I've long been a fan of retconning the author's cockups (e.g. - the Great Game with Sherlock Holmes). George fucked up for sure. He's not infallible (see: the Prequels, many would also reference Ewoks). Conan Doyle did too. Geeks retconning it to still make since in story is amusing to me. Honestly, I saw the Kessel Run reference the same way I saw Finn's real name referencing Leia's prison time or Finn finding the remote on the Falcon: an OT in-joke for long time fans.

Maybe I'd have to be a casual fan to really understand how jarring it was/is to casual fans.

Game On,
fbmf

[Kaelik]

There's a pretty big difference: 3 implies Han is saying bullshit because he's an idiot, while 4 implies that Han is saying bullshit to see if he can fast talk Luke and Obi-Wan into a quick sale, something that doesn't make him an idiot.

But can we just get this whole Kessel Run discussion moved/made into its own thread?

No, 3 Implies Han is saying bullshit because he's trying to bullshit Luke and Han and he's really fucking bad at it, because he's an idiot, or in the alternative, that he wasn't supposed to be really fucking bad at it because he's an idiot but he sounds that way because Lucas made a mistake.

There is no version in which Han says "Well don't worry, my ships really fast, it traveled 37 grams per square inch in under 7 Newtons" to trick people and he doesn't sound like an idiot.

So even if Han was trying to trick them, he's really fucking bad at it, either because Han is an idiot, or because Lucas made a mistake. There is no third option where Han is an even remotely competent liar who meant to use a completely different measurement type as part of his test, because that's how incompetent shitty liars who don't know anything would try to bullshit people.

[DSMatticus]

Blinker fluid jokes are a real thing that real people have really fallen for. The people who make blinker fluid jokes are not under the mistaken impression that blinker fluid is a real thing. The entire fucking point of the joke is that it definitely isn't real, but you want to find someone who doesn't know that and take advantage of them (thankfully only for your amusement).

Now, I've never heard of a real mechanic actually trying to sell someone blinker fluid, but then we again we usually don't get our vehicles serviced by black market smugglers, either. Deliberately talking bullshit is a perfectly reasonable way to test someone's ignorance and gullibility, and testing a mark's ignorance and gullibility is pretty fucking useful if your goal is "swindle people, particularly those desperate enough to be shopping for a black market smuggler." What the fuck are they gonna do, report you to the Better Business Bureau? Storm off indignant that the criminal they are dealing with tried something shady?

[erik]

From a marketing the movie to the majority of folks perspective, ignoring the parsecs thing (by not referencing it) entirely might be the right call, but how many fans are you really blowing out of the water with that? How many movie goers seriously got butt hrt over the incongruity versus (smiled at the OT reference + didn;t know what a parsec was, but it contained the suffix "sec" which sounds like "seconds" so it must be time).

I'm in the camp where I smiled at the reference, even though I knew it was nonsense from the first time I saw the first movie as a child. It's an iconic part of the Star Wars mythos, that trumps whether it is gibberish or in character justifiactions for why it was said.

[Kaelik]

Well 1) The idea of Blinker Fluid is not the same same. Comparable examples would be, asking them if they want their blinker fluid in miles. The idea that your car exists and has stuff you don't understand or know about isn't that weird, just like the idea that he would brag about running the Kessel Run fast even if the Kessel Run didn't exist would also still make sense. Using units that don't make sense is in fact, still fucking dumb, and more than anything, makes you less likely to separate rubes, because even rubes understand that you don't measure blinker fluid in miles. Hence, incompetent liar who is bad at it.

2) They didn't hire a smuggler, they hired him to transport them to Alderaan, a regular planet with no blockade or anything (as far as any of them knew). And they were asking in a bar at a spaceport, but... that's not that weird. I mean, it may or may not be normal, but isn't much reason for him to believe that they would not be willing to report him to the authorities.

[ScottS]

Why isn't "Lucas was self-consciously making schlock and kind of randomly threw in a sciencey sounding word for time units (which also kind of sounds like 'second')" one of the arguments here? (GL blows in other ways but I wouldn't penalize it as a 'mistake' if he was going for a John Carter/'Helium' kind of thing, just an artistic/genre choice)

[Username17]

Why isn't "Lucas was self-consciously making schlock and kind of randomly threw in a sciencey sounding word for time units (which also kind of sounds like 'second')" one of the arguments here? (GL blows in other ways but I wouldn't penalize it as a 'mistake' if he was going for a John Carter/'Helium' kind of thing, just an artistic/genre choice)

That's not an "option" because everyone agrees that is what happened. No one is confused on that point. The issue is only what the interpretation of that sentence is moving forward.

Interpretation one is that Han Solo was using a gibberish sentence to evaluate whether his clients were unknowledgeable rubes or not. Luke ate it up and Obi-Wan didn't, so Han knows that at least one of the people knows things.

Interpretation two is that we accept some EU posthoc retcon from a few decades later that holds that Han Solo was making a technically accurate, but still ungrammatical statement about his ship's achievements relative to a distant and obscure part of the galaxy and that Obi-Wan was unimpressed because he's some kind of asshole primadonna who rolls his eyes whenever anyone says anything about their accomplishments.

Now, The Force Awakens has made it officially canon that the "correct" interpretation moving forward is the second one. And it did so in spite of the fact that it makes both The Force Awakens and A New Hope worse movies for it to be the case.

For every casual fan that has no idea what a parsec is, it of course doesn't matter. All interactions involving that might as well be spoken in Wookie noises, and the actors involved sell those conversations naturalistically regardless. For every casual fan that does know what a parsec is, interpretation one is the only one which makes sense. Which means that the part in The Force Awakens where they take time to assure us that interpretation one is wrong but don't explain interpretation two simply takes people out of the movie.

Even when you get the bloated Star Wars fansplanation for how the sentence isn't technically wrong, it's still ungrammatical and there's no payoff to the knowledge. There's no greater mystery or secret coolness being alluded to. It's just an ungrammatical sentence that could have been replaced with a grammatically correct time unit with no loss of function or information.

In short, JJ Abrams decided that he liked a stupid EU retcon so much that he chose to canonize something that takes an entire paragraph to explain that a single sentence in New Hope means something completely different yet still completely inconsequential. This is one place where JJ Abrams' inherent Star Wars fanboyism made him completely ruin a scene for millions of people with no upside whatsoever.

It's exactly like the scene where Finn looks up and sees the blast from the star killer in real time rather than dozens or hundreds of years later. JJ Abrams thought that scene was so cool that he put it in. Even though for millions of people the only effect was to make them go "WTF?!" and it added absolutely nothing to the story.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

In short, JJ Abrams decided that he liked a stupid EU retcon so much that he chose to canonize something that takes an entire paragraph to explain that a single sentence in New Hope means something completely different yet still completely inconsequential. This is one place where JJ Abrams' inherent Star Wars fanboyism made him completely ruin a scene for millions of people with no upside whatsoever.

Your repeated claims that this was somehow JJ Abram's decision, instead of the explicit Star Wars Story Team that Disney explicitly assembled to determine going forward what is and isn't canon are basically equally as completely unjustified as your claims that Han having successfully navigated near a black hole cluster and Obi Wan being surprised or not believing him is impossible and crazy.

But I do find it cute that you are now committed to viciously mocking the Force Awakens for the same thing you tentatively praised it for in your initial post, just because you are really mad about this specific shallow original trilogy call back/reference purely for the sake of reference and not story.

[PhoneLobster]

I don't see how hard it is to understand that when a movie slavishly and fanatically dedicates itself to a single goal, like just a little too desperately and ham handedly trying to reset the series back to the movies people actually liked, that it can lead to both good and bad outcomes in different scenes through the movie.

I also fail to see what particular difference there is to be made in some lame argument as to who precisely is resposible for the writing of a specific line. A bad moment is a bad moment, I don't care if it's JJ Abrams or if the coffee boy came up with it.

[Mechalich]

The point of that exchange - in the context of the Force Awakens - is that Rey knows about Han and the Falcon's smuggler past and is impressed by these things (even if she has imperfect information), as opposed to her referencing his presumably far more famous military career. Its worth noting that is what Finn references upon meeting Han. So the exchange says something about the kind of person Rey aspires to be at that point in the storyline.

On Han's side the remark also serves to show that he still takes pride in his achievements as a smuggler and still considers that the core of himself. It helps to explain why he's not with the Resistance at the start of the film.

I suspect the reason that specific line is used is because - with only the OT to draw upon - there's little other useful reference for the Falcon being fast or Han being a badass pilot and smuggler, at least not that can be delivered in a Marvel/Whedon-esque quip. Han's most impressive piloting feat in the OT is successfully navigating the Hoth asteroid field (for what it's worth a visual sequence that is far more of an offense to astrophysics than any mangled unit scrambling), but I guess they couldn't come up with a good one-liner for that.

[Kaelik]

I don't see how hard it is to understand that when a movie slavishly and fanatically dedicates itself to a single goal, like just a little too desperately and ham handedly trying to reset the series back to the movies people actually liked, that it can lead to both good and bad outcomes in different scenes through the movie.

I don't think it is that surprising either. Although I think much less of the examples that Frank tentatively supports, because I think they were all mostly shit that demonstrated that this wasn't a new movie at all, but whatever. My point is more specifically about how Frank absolutely cannot admit under any circumstance that the Kessel Run reference is exactly the same as the Force or Lightsaber references, or the remote reference, or any other reference, because doing so would undermine his slavish devotion to the idea that every bad thing about Star Wars can be traced to evil bad EU fanbois, as seen below.

I also fail to see what particular difference there is to be made in some lame argument as to who precisely is resposible for the writing of a specific line. A bad moment is a bad moment, I don't care if it's JJ Abrams or if the coffee boy came up with it.

Well it sure seems really important to Frank, since he seems to miss absolutely no opportunity to attribute it to JJ Abrams at least twice per post. More specifically, I suspect the reason that he wants to attribute it to Abrams is because it helps him blame specifically just the Kessel Run reference and nothing else, on being the product of an evil bad EU fanboi (not that we have any reason at all to think that Abrams even is one) instead of just part and parcel of the larger business decision made by Disney to make a bunch of shitty shallow call backs to the original movies that add nothing to the story or movie at all, but as a franchise reboot, declare arbitrary allegiance to "What Star Wars was really about, not that shitty prequel stuff."

Frank just happens to disagree strongly with the (extremely likely Disney committee made decision) about what the Kessel Run "really meant" in the original movies. Which is fine, he can totally disagree, and he might even be right, but since as early as Empire Strikes Back we were getting outside confirmation that the Falcon was faster than most if not all ships, and it was deemed good enough to run point in the fighter squadron that went into the Second Death Star, deciding that "The Falcon is really fast, and the Kessel Run comment was a reflection of that" doesn't seem to be any more traitorous to the original movies concept than "Han was lying and his ship is pretty average." And a stupid shallow repeat of the Kessel Run parsecs doesn't actually indicate any particular knowledge of or respect for the EU anyway, I am extremely skeptical of Frank's claim that unlike all the other callbacks, this one that he thinks sucks was specifically the fault of filthy EU fanbois.