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Inspired by What has been Harrison Ford's attitude toward Star Wars? and What has been Alec Guinness's attitude toward Star Wars? and Kenny Baker's attitude toward Star Wars

Who can ever forget Laine Liska’s stunning performance as Muftak, the male Talz pickpocket who was sitting at a table bewildered in in the cantina scene at Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Original 1977/Special Edition 1997/DVD Version 2004) directed by George Lucas the acclaimed director of American Graffiti and THX 1138.

Laine Liska as Muftak the Talz pickpocket.

I’ve heard claims here and there about Laine Liska’s attitude toward the Star Wars franchise, with some claiming that he hates it or used to hate it, etc.

Did he like Star Wars and then grew to dislike it? Or vice versa? If he ever did dislike Star Wars, then why? etc.

Basically, what has been Laine Liska’s attitude(s) towards Star Wars?


“Not again! The line must be drawn here!”

Seriously, I understand the desire for Star Wars questions on this site since I myself have been asking and answering them as well since everyone’s “Force” was awoken a week or so back. But I think a line must be drawn between endless “behind the scenes gossip” versus “behind the scenes rationale for in-universe behavior.” All of these “What did they think about Star Wars questions don’t add anything to the concept of science fiction and just lay on the assumption that… Blah! I can’t deal.

I think the existing ones on Harrison Ford and the one on Alec Guinness are fine since these are both actors who desired their characters to die in the plot of the films since they both have issues with the whole Star Wars universe. Meaning, the reason Obi-Wan died in the first Star Wars film and Han Solo was frozen in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back were plot contrivances partially concocted to deal with their, “You know what? No more Star Wars for me!” attitudes. So it sheds light on character development in the fiction story presented. No disrespect to Kenny Baker but does anyone actually care about Kenny Baker’s ups/downs in the films? If—somehow—he revealed he was never actually playing R2-D2 in one scene, does that impact anything? Is it possible R2-D2 was in “low power mode” in The Force Awakens because Kenny Baker was being difficult on set so they cut his role?

If there is a desire for this type of gossipy info, perhaps one huge community wiki compiling all we know/find on the politics of the cast and crew might be worth something. But one thread per character is a trend I don’t think benefits the site or the readers or even the contributors to such threads.

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These questions are on topic. Unless you want to discuss changing the scope of the site to make all such questions off-topic, there isn't a lot to be done.

Yes, they're terrible questions. But we have a way to deal with terrible on-topic questions: we downvote them, so as to discourage future users from asking similar ones.

Unfortunately (for some of us, anyway) these questions are not only getting voted up, but they are getting high quality answers. Someone was interested enough in the question to ask it; others were interested enough to vote on it; still others were interested enough to find the answer and post it.

There's little chance we're going to start driving away on-topic questions getting good answers just because some of us find them silly. If that were the case, we'd have a lot fewer Star Trek questions on the site...

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    +1 for your main point, -1 for grumpy soddery ;-)
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Dec 26, 2015 at 1:36
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    Get rid of silly questions and there's nothing left but story-identification questions. I don't see anything wrong with that, but some people might object.
    – user14111
    Dec 26, 2015 at 8:02
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    @user14111 and plot-explanation, and....
    – AncientSwordRage Mod
    Dec 26, 2015 at 13:56
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    @user14111 - then there's a large portion of users who thing that story-identification questions at large are pretty much the bulk of silly questions (including Jeff Atwood :) Dec 26, 2015 at 19:59
  • @AncientSwordRage Yeah, lose the plot-explanation questions and there go at least half of the silly questions. Why doesn't it bother Uncle Scrooge that the cash in his money bin isn't invested in T-bills or mortgages or something and earning interest? How much is a cubic acre in SI units?
    – user14111
    Dec 26, 2015 at 22:59
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    I asked the Ford and Guinness questions because I had actually heard people say they'd spoken out against SW but I'd never seen proof. The Kenny Baker question wasn't me, and I don't think he's spoken out or anything so I think it might be a sort of silly question but still a valid one. What if there has a tag for these, as you call them, "behind the scenes gossip" questions? Then you could just add that tag to your ignored tags!
    – RedCaio
    Dec 26, 2015 at 23:24
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    @DVK Yes, I understand that this Atwood person is down on story-id questions, which he erroneously believes to be "guessing games". OTOH, questions are supposed to be about "actual problems to be solved", and story-id questions are pretty much the only questions on this site of which that can be said. If you want to reread a book or gift it to someone and you can't recall the author or title, you have an actual problem to be solved. If you want to know what kind of underwear Harry Potter wears, you have a different kind of problem, for which the remedy is not information but therapy.
    – user14111
    Dec 27, 2015 at 0:09
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    @user14111 - How WRUDE! </stephanie_tanner> Dec 27, 2015 at 0:11
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    @DVK Atwood doesn't see the point of scifi.se and also believes the answer to most scifi questions is "who cares?" :) (For the record, I disagree: I think Atwood goes too far, and that only questions about movies I don't like deserve a "who cares?")
    – Andres F.
    Dec 29, 2015 at 0:03

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