Dav

In Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3, there is a sharp contrast made between Anakin and Amidala. For example, in Episode 2, during some cutesy conversation they’re having in a grassy field, Anakin says he’d prefer an “empire” so he could get things done, and this upsets Amidala, who is a supporter of democracy. You can see this schism forming throughout the two movies. Amidala is in the Senate, Anakin is a Jedi. Amidala prefers to consult with her allies, Anakin likes to charge ahead and bust some heads on his own. The fact that Amidala is portrayed as the champion of democracy hits its peak in Episode 3 when Palpatine tries to dissolve the Senate or something, and she says “So this is how democracy dies. With thunderous applause.”

I was thinking today, and I arrived at the following thought. Amidala is Queen Amidala. Her home planet isn’t even democratic. She only got to where she is due to birthright, and yet somehow she thinks she’s all about democracy. This is akin to the United Nations breaking up, and the dude from China just slowly shakes his head and says, “Poor democracy. Never even stood a chance.” If she’s all about the democratic process, seems like she should start on her own turf.

Update
So I did some research into this, and apparently she was elected to the position of Queen. So I guess now my problem is that George Lucas doesn’t know what the word Queen means.

VS.

Who would win in a fight, The Incredibles or the Fantastic Four? Let’s make a list of powers.

Does the team have a member who can turn invisible?
The Incredibles: Violet
The Fantastic Four: Invisible Woman

Does the team have a member who can set his body on fire?
The Incredibles: Jack Jack
The Fantastic Four: Human Torch

Does the team have a member who can stretch out their limbs?
The Incredibles: Mrs. Incredible
The Fantastic Four: Mr. Fantastic

Does the team have a member who has super strength?
The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible
The Fantastic Four: The Thing

Does the team have a member who has super speed?
The Incredibles: Dash
The Fantastic Four: NO

Looks like The Incredibles would win in a fight. And although I haven’t seen the Fantastic Four movie — and I do not plan to — I think it’s safe to say The Incredibles win in that arena as well. As an aside, did I just accidentally prove that The Incredibles ripped off the Fantastic Four? I think I did!

So, I saw Batman Begins with Mikix tonight. Verdict? It was pretty damn good. But that’s not the point of this post. All throughout the movie I found myself analyzing the alignments of some of the main characters. When I say alignment, I refer to D&D alignment, a two word description of a person’s morals. I will warn you that there are movie SPOILERS ahead and so now you know. Honestly, if you haven’t seen the movie, this post is probably going to be meaningless to you anyway. Also if you don’t play D&D this is probably going to be pretty stupid. Yay ridiculously niche audience!

I was faced with a tricky decision when analyzing some of the characters’ alignments. The concept of Lawful versus Chaotic gets kind of blurry when the law is corrupt. Since “justice” is a major theme in the movie, and the movie’s definition of justice seems to refer to ideology and not written law, I went with that definition for Lawful.

Bruce Wayne / Batman: This was the hardest character to figure out. He’s always at odds with the police, has a secret personality, and fights for his own beliefs no matter what the price. This leans toward Chaotic. However, he is primarily motivated by revenge against criminals and a desire for justice, which are fairly Lawful. Since I’m using the ideological definition of Lawful, I decided that’s where he fits. On the Good/Evil scale, he is clearly Neutral. He’s a decent guy, and he genuinely wants to clean up Gotham, but he’s not above busting a few heads while doing so. Verdict? Lawful Neutral

Rachel, the District Attorney: Clearly Lawful Good. She has strong ideals and will not be threatened or bribed. She and Batman want the same thing, justice, but work for them in different ways.

Carmine Falcone, the mob boss: Clearly Chaotic Evil. He loves power and will do anything to keep it, including drug trafficking, extortion, and bribing the local government. He also has no qualms with killing those that stand in his way.

Ra’s Al Ghul, leader of the League of Shadows: He has the same ultimate goal as Bruce and Rachel, to rid the world of criminals. His strong devotion to justice made him see eye to eye with Bruce for a while, as both are devoutly Lawful. However, planning to wipe out an entire city is rather Evil. Ra’s Al Ghul and his minions are all Lawful Evil.

Jonathan Crane / The Scarecrow: Preying on the fears of your opponents is a rather Evil act. Crane is just as corrupt as anyone in Gotham, and works directly with the League of Shadows in their plan to destroy the city. However, he doesn’t give a damn one way or the other about the criminal underworld or about the League’s ideals. The Scarecrow just loves being Evil, plain and simple, and he deserves the Neutral Evil award.

Several remaining characters in the movie are Neutral Good, including Bruce’s butler Alfred, Lucius played by Morgan Freeman, and Bruce’s cop friend whose name I think is Jim. They are generally good guys who want to help, but don’t mind winding up on the wrong side of the law to do so.

This concludes my ultra-geeky analysis of Batman Begins.

I was driving back from dropping Mikix off at his workplace and I got to thinking.

1.) Jedi can see a few seconds into the future. This is documented in Episode I as an explanation for their apparent incredible reflexes.
2.) RPS is awesome. In case you’re out of the RPS-loop, RPS stands for Rock-Paper-Scissors. It might be worth visiting worldrps.com for more information.

In case you don’t see where I’m going with this, I posit that a game of RPS played between two Jedi would be totally awesome. Jedi #1 is going to throw paper, so Jedi #2 sees this coming and smartly decides to throw scissors, but now Jedi #1 sees that coming and decides to throw rock, etc, until finally time gets to be too short to start changing your mind anymore and the throws would finally come down, revealing the wiser Jedi as the winner. Oh man, it would be so intense.

A deeper analysis follows.

Mind Tricks: The Jedi are seen frequently waving their hands around and convincing other people to believe whatever the Jedi want them to believe. This is shown not to work on people with “strong minds”, but I don’t think a situation where a Jedi tries to mind trick another Jedi has ever come up. Assuming it could work, possibly if the opponent Jedi were caught off-guard, then a mind trick could be used to convince the opponent to throw paper, allowing you to counter with scissors in a classic move called Paper Clipping.

Cloaking: In Episodes I through III, Senator Palpatine managed to frequently deal with the Jedi council and they never suspected he was a Sith. Clearly, the Sith have some sort of cloaking ability that lets them mask their intentions from other Jedi. This would be a powerful tool in RPS, allowing you to prevent your opponent from seeing your next move, or possibly letting him think he has predicted your throw while secretly plotting a different one.

The light side and the dark side of the Force grant access to different strategies, making the prospect of Jedi RPS even cooler. Deception and prediction are key tools in the game, and Jedi and Sith have plenty of both. I look forward to seeing an RPS match in Episode VII.