The Emperor is less forgiving than I am

And I don't forgive these two Slate nincompoops at all. Again, be cautioned that this contains spoilers.

Now, my blog is not the place to make such blunt insults and attacks, but this is too much. (And if Dr. Cowen relied on them for information, I can understand why, IMO, he got more than a few things wrong about Star Wars.) It wouldn't have been so bad had they not claimed to be Star Wars nerds, not just fans. The choicest of their inane comments:

I'm still not sure why Yoda and the Jedi Fun Club don't realize that the most evil guy in the freakin' galaxy lives and works, like, 20 feet away. And yet, in Episode II, we learn that Yoda can sense the hurt feelings of his fellow Jedi millions of miles away—sorry, Mr. Jedi, I don't get it.

Despite their claim to be fans, and their references to the stories, they apparently didn't watch the movies. In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda replied, "Difficult to foresee," when Luke asked what would happen to his friends. In both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the Jedi Council lamented how the Dark Side was clouding their ability to sense things.

I'm unclear on what happened to "Sifo Diaz" (forgive the phonetic spelling), apparently the first Hispanic Jedi, who started the Clone Wars in Episode II.

This is a curious touch of racism. Why point that out, ignoring all of the non-human Jedi? Furthermore, there's no Sifo Diaz that I ever heard of. Did they mean Sio Bibble? As in Governor Sio Bibble? He was a politician, not a Jedi, and he most certainly didn't start the Clone Wars. No single person "started" them. Do you blame Palpatine for engineering them? Yoda for bringing the army to fight the Separatists' droids?

And, finally, the eternal question, one Kevin Smith raised the other day: Why doesn't Darth Vader recognize C-3PO (the robot he built) and R2D2 (his frequent co-pilot) in episodes IV through VI?

Because C-3PO and R2D2 are not unique droids. In A New Hope, Luke declined a new R2 unit, after a crewman offers because R2D2 is "pretty beat up." In The Empire Strikes Back, C-3PO saw a similar unit, who apparently said something very rude. (Then C-3PO wandered into the room, discovered the Imperial stormtroopers, and was dismantled to prevent him from warning the heroes.) In Episode I, the captain looked at R2D2's designation so that they could properly "commend" it (rather a stupid thing, but the movie was filled with a lot of stupid things). Episode II established that a lot of pilots have R2 or R4 droids. In the Episode III novelization, Obi-Wan's droid is an R4 unit.

Do you think Darth Vader chooses to freeze Han Solo in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back because he's angry that Solo shot Greedo who, as we learned in The Phantom Menace, is his childhood friend?

Just like with the droids, why must it be the same entity if it looks the same? I don't recall that Anakin ever called him by name, so why must that have been Greedo?

When Leia shows up at the beginning of Star Wars in the ship that Jimmy Smits flies in Revenge of the Sith, do you think it's because she's been handed down the 20-year-old family clunker?

Was there really a purpose to this question, or did they have a minimum words requirement for the article?

And how in the world—as I believe the Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last was the first to point out—does Obi-Wan age from a young, vibrant Ewan MacGregor into a decrepit Sir Alec Guinness over the course of a mere two decades?

I can accept this as a legitimate criticism of the storyline. However, Obi-Wan settled in the Jungland Wastes, and that especially nasty desert could have had a very taxing effect on his physical body.

Chewbacca—since he and Yoda are old pals, why don't they get a chance to reminisce and tell old war stories in episodes IV, V, and VI?

Because never once met they in the original trilogy, hmm?

Yoda never left Dagobah. Chewbacca never made it to Dagobah. Understand do they now, hmm?

And while I'm on the subject, is there anything Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker at the beginning of Star Wars that turns out to be true? The famous lie, of course, is Kenobi telling Luke that Darth Vader killed his father.

I explained this in my previous blog entry. When Luke asked how his father died, Obi-Wan replied that Darth Vader "betrayed and murdered your father." Later, in Episode VI, Obi-Wan explained that it was all "from a certain point of view": "Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I have told you was true...from a certain point of view."

But Obi-Wan appears to have decided to embroider that big lie with a host of little ones. He says Luke's father was a great pilot. These prequels give us no real evidence for that.

Anakin being the only human alive who can pod race, his natural aptitude for learning the controls on Amidala's ship's bridge, the speeder chase in Episode II...none of those count?

He says Luke's father wanted him to have a particular light saber that he pulls out of a box. Guess not.

It's true "from a certain point of view." The remaining good within Anakin would have wanted his son to have his lightsaber.

He says that he fought with Luke's father in the Clone Wars. If that's true, it's sure hard to tell.

Fighting Dooku together at the end of Episode II, and all of Episode III don't count? Just what Star Wars movies are these two watching?

In Star Wars, a member of the Empire tells Darth Vader that Vader is the only remaining believer in that hokey Force religion. Is Palpatine, delightfully campy as his performance may be, still keeping his Sithdom in the closet two decades hence?

Completely wrong. Any neophyte Star Wars fan would certainly know that was Governor Moff Tarkin, not just a nameless "member of the Empire." So again, I question how much these two really know about Star Wars.

Tarkin told Vader, "The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are the last of their religion." He made no reference to others who can use the Force, only to the Jedi.

Even so, is it so unreasonable to think that the Emperor wanted to sustain his image as a regular human? If it were widely known that he were a Dark Lord of the Sith, it "might generate more sympathy for the Rebellion." The entire galaxy would have a reason to fight him, because he was unnatural, not just a tyrant.

I thought Revenge of the Sith was better than OK (it's sad to say that I'll probably see it again), but I used to disagree with people who argued that the prequels would ruin the original movies. (Well, the first two, since Return of the Jedi was already a quietly acknowledged stinker.

As an alleged "stinker," how did Return of the Jedi achieve #130 (at the time of this entry) on IMDB's list of the top 250 movies of all time? Granted these are based on user votes, i.e. strictly popularity, but people certainly enjoyed this "stinker."

I bought three Star Wars video games. I read at least five novels, the final of which was called The Courtship of Princess Leia, about which I shall say no more. I saw the original trilogy countless times on videotape and at least twice in the theater.

Considering all his errors, I ask if he was completely stoned when he saw the movies and read the novels.