Archive | July 11, 2012

Nitpick of the Day

Write this stuff, I do not.  Read it only, I do.  Off my case, you should get.

Write this stuff, I do not. Read it only, I do. Off my case, you should get.

“Our own counsel we will keep on who is ready,” says Yoda in The Phantom Menace.

I don’t think George Lucas knows what “keeping one’s own counsel” means. It doesn’t mean “deciding for oneself without taking advice from others.” It means “keeping one’s own plans and opinions secret.” It’s a ban, so to speak, on the exportation of counsel, not on its importation.

There are people who will, y’know, read scripts to catch things like that. But Lucas’s own ban on importation of counsel is far too firmly in place. (A more substantive example: in the original Star Wars, when Luke finds the charred corpses of his aunt and uncle, Lucas wanted Hamill to shake his fist at the sky and shout “Nooooo!” but Hamill convinced him otherwise. Back then Lucas was more open to taking advice generally (from Spielberg and Coppola, for example). Obviously no one was in a position to argue Lucas down from having Vader shout “Nooooo!” at the end of Revenge of the Sith.)


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