Then this should fix you right up....

Gonna go ride a real horse. Outside. And stuff.

If a Double Experience Weekend event occurs, and no one is around to hear it fall, er, I mean, benefit from it, did it really happen?

Ditto, and I'd be more than happy to trade in a few companions I already have, frankly. Plus, I'd like to do naughty things to her. Did I say that out loud?

*Waves hand in vaguely mystical fashion* These aren't the servers you're looking for, Move along.

It's a trap!

That is friggin' awesome. +10.

No issues with most of what you say. A point to remember is that the fights were choreographed stage combat. They're made to look exciting and flashy for the audience, and even moreso for the fans who were familiar with the original movies with the somewhat stilted and stylized movements. With that said, there's a tremendous difference in watching a stage combat fight and watching two swordsmen really go at it. It's definitely not slow. The closest I ever got was olympic sabre and foil fencing (Junior Olympics, '88, woohoo), but even that is unbelievably fast. You blink, and you miss it. A step further, to the Japanese styles borrowed from heavily for the movies, and fights in that style did not last very long at all. Speed on the attack was of the essence, defense was minimized, and within a few strokes the fight was over. I suspect a "real" fight between two Force users would be still for a few moments as each opponent tested each other's strength and skill in the Force, and then a flurry of motion and strikes. And then one walks away.

Because they're either: A. Written by people with a limited understanding of rank structure (regardless of which real-world military they're using as a reference). or B. The rank is less important than the plot and character development so the structure is adapted as necessary (BSG, for example). And actually, the captain issue is a correct usage. There have been a number of discussions about that on the interwebz, but you can actually have army and navy captain ranks. It actually gets more complicated, as captain is also a title of an officer (regardless of formal rank) in command of a vessel. In the real world, if you had an army or marine captain on board a ship, they get a courtesy promotion to Major, as there is only one captain on board. A navy officer with a rank as captain on board (but not in command) would get a courtesy promotion as well (Commodore, usually). Ain't it a mess?

You forgot the part at the end of that sequence: "You cannot perform that action because you are dead." I hate that.