Luke, come to the Dark Side (Star Wars questions)

Factual Questions
1

I need help from the Star Wars fans. . .

  1. We learned in Episode I that there can be only two “dark side” Sith Knights at any one time, a master and an apprentice. (In Episode I, Darth Sidious was the Master and Darth Maul was the apprentice.) However, in the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi we see that Darth Vader tries to convert Luke Skywalker to the “dark side”. Up to this point I always assumed that Darth Vader was the apprentance to the “master” – Emperor Palentine.
    So. . . if Luke did convert that would make 3 Sith Knights – is this possible? Was Darth Vader considering killing the Emperor?

  2. Why did George Lucus decided to make Episode IV first? Did he not decide to make 6 movies until after the amazing success of “Star Wars” in 1977? When the movie first came out in 1977 did it say “Episode 4”? – or did that come in later editions of the movie?

2

I seem to recall seeing an interview with George Lucas (on the tape for the 20th anniversary release, I believe) that he had always intended to do a trilogy of trilogies, with the middle one first. AFAIK, episodes 7, 8, and 9 are no longer being considered for movies.

3

The original Star Wars release did not have “Episode IV” on it. Lucas may have planned to do six movies from the beginning, but that wasn’t the plan when Fox released the first film.

And it was hardly likely they would have gone along with the project: science fiction films were hardly ever blockbusters. The success of “Star Wars” caught the movie executives by surprise. Most critics of the time commented that a sequel was being set up (since Darth Vader escaped), but if “Star Wars” would have flopped, there wouldn’t have been any additional films.

If Lucas had done Episode I first, there would never have been another Star Wars film.

4

Yes. From the Cloud City gantry scene:

Vader needed to convert Luke in order to kill him. In Return of the Jedi the Emperor wanted Vader & Luke to fight to the death so that he could either take Luke as his new apprentice or continue to keep Vader as his apprentice. With Luke being the apparant final Jedi Vader would not have another chance to defeat his Master.

5

According to an interview That Mr.Lucas gave in the digitally remastered version of A New Hope.

“I focused on the first part and left the other two parts on the shelf to be made at a later date. … The other part of it is that in order to write the first sript i had to write a backstory about where Darth Vader came from, how the kids evolved and his wife, how Ben related to all of that, how the emperor came to power, And that ended up being the basis for the projects that i am working on now.”

6

AFAIK, The reason there were only 2 siths at a time was because the Jedi and the Republic had considered the Sith to be extinct a thousand years earlier, so the Sith went underground. In a galaxy-wide community of countless trillions, discovering two individuals would be next to impossible.

With the fall of the Republic and destruction of the Jedi
Order, and the rise of the Sith controlled Empire, the Two-at-a-time-only rule could be lifted, and an unrestricted Sith order could be established.

7

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by RealityChuck *
**

Can anyone confirm this? Is it true then, that when people first saw the movie in theaters they didn’t see “Episode IV” scrolling up the screen in the beginning? What did they see instead?

I think this claim is somewhat suspect.

-Outrider

8

Was there really a rule that there cannot be more than two? The impression I got was that there wouldn’t be an unmatched sith, i.e. a master without apprentice or vice versa. In other words, there can be more than two, but they were always in pairs.

9

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Outrider *
**

Well, the folks at StarWars.com sure seem to buy it.

10

Neat, thanks for the confirmation.

-Outrider

11

I saw “Star Wars” the first week it came out. There was no “Episode IV” on the credits; they just started with that big crawl that gives the backstory.

When the film was rereleased a few years later, “Episode IV” was added, a fact remarked at the time as a change.

12

Well, I’m glad that I wasn’t the only one who thought this. I was under the impression that they meant that sith come in pairs, a master and an apprentice, so at least one more was wandering around. Maybe less dangerous, but maybe more.

13

I also saw Star Wars the first week it came out. I must have gone back and seen it about 20 times! :slight_smile:

The newer “special edition” version has “Episode IV: A New Hope” added to the crawl, several added CGI shots and a sequence where Han Solo meets Jabba the Hutt (the scene was originally shot but never included in the 1977 release). I also heard that the soundtrack was re-mastered but I’m not sure about that.

–Nut
Do not taunt the Happy Fun Ball. If Happy Fun Ball starts to smoke, run away and take cover.

14

If you read the “expanded history” on the starwars.com site, it states that the Siths made a hard and fast rule that there can be only two at any one time – not just simply “pairs” – this was designed to prevent the Jedi from “discovering” them.

15

But do you have to be a Sith Knight to be on the dark side of the force? Couldn’t you just be evil and force-sensitive and when a Sith opening comes up be considered for it? If not then someone needs to explain Mara Jade to me.

16

I’m shooting from the hip here, but doesn’t the “only two” rule apply to Sith Lords? There can be Sith Witches, Sith Monks, etc. But only one Sith Lord and his apprentice. The Sith aren’t organized like the Jedi, where you have, in ascending order of rank, Padawans, Jedis, Jedi Masters, and the Council. They have one powerful ruler, the Sith Lord, and his heir apparent, the apprentice. During the “lean years” of the Republic, there may have at times been only the two. But later, other force-sensitives joined on as lower ranks.

On the other hand, maybe it’s only a movie and George hasn’t worked all of the details out yet…

17

http://theforce.net/swtc/tpm/jedisith.html#sithhistory

Bigger nerds than I have tackled this question. (Why 2 Sith.)

So it was necessitated by:

  1. Too many Sith being too large a target for Jedi attacks
  2. Too many Sith just plain can’t get along, and wind up killing each other
18

Ok, I’ll try to answer question one of the OP.

According to the Star Wars Novels, which Lucas Films have said to be cannon, the Sith are an order of Dark Jedi. There can only be two of them at a time.

However, you can be a Dark Jedi with out being a Sith. The Sith were a race of beings that lived on the moon of Yavin (the one in ANH that the Rebels based their attack against the Death Star from) that were destroyed after a big battle against the Jedi Knights of the Old Republic over 4,000 years before ANH. Only two Sith survived from that battle, and started the order of the Sith.

Hope that helps to answer the OP’s question.

19

Lucas made the second trilogy first because they are more conventional. Ep 4, the original Star Wars is a straight forward space opera, straight out of Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. But Lucas (maker of the bizarre THX 1138) always had something far more perverse in mind, something that would, at its denoument, possibly at the end of Episode 2 or in 3, repulse the audience. In Ep. 5, the Empire Strikes Back, we found out what it was, one of the good guys became a bad guy. In fact, the Star Wars stories were never about Luke as the protagonist, they were about Anakin. The question then becomes, why did Anakin become evil.

In Ep 1, we learn that Anakin is “the chosen one”, something of a messiah. Obviously his choice about becoming evil is even more puzzling. After all, Jesus refuses all of the devil’s temptations. (Remember "The Last Temptation of Christ?) Well, for some reason, Anakin chooses to join the devil/Palpatine. Why? We can only guess at this point. Does Palpatine hold Anakin’s mother hostage? Does Anakin just become a bad teenager doing drugs? Does his love affair with Natalie Portman turn him evil?

We’ve seen him offer Luke an opportunity to “end this destructive conflict”, so I’ll jump out on a limb and go with something bad happens to Anakin’s mother, the Jedi are unsatisfactorily philosophical about it (or the blame is pinned on them, Palpatine is good at that), and he starts out on the road to hell with the best intention of making the world a better place. He sells out bit by bit and is frustrated at every step along the way. He sees Palpatine as evil and intends to betray him, but Palpatine is always one step ahead of him. After he is severly injured in his showdown with Obi-wan (undoubtedly the balance of the battle is tipped by some bone head clumsy thing done by Jar-Jar Binks, explaining why this annoying character was foisted on us) he realizes that he will never again be strong enough to defeat the emperor without assistance. So when he discovers Luke he realizes that this is his opportunity to train Luke in the more powerful Dark Side, and then turning on the Emperor. The Emperor and Vader are fully aware of their power struggle with each other at all times, each hoping that Luke will wind up killing the other and taking the apprentice position to the new master. They don’t just go at each other without a new apprentice (and here I’m really going out on a limb) because without an apprentice/master relationship their powers are very weak.

Palpatine wants Luke because Vader spends most of his own power just surviving his wounds.

You will also notice that so far, the most evil deed Vader has actually personally performed is choking to death a captured officer in Ep 4., bad, but not the devil himself. (He tortures Leia and Solo too.) Vader merely stands by for other evil acts. Is it possible that he is a double agent?

Other interesting Star Wars observations/tangents. Ever notice that the Jedi/Sith fight a lot of useless battles against each other? Ever notice that R2D2 always saves the day for everyone? My personal theory is that R2D2 is really the chosen one.

20

Regarding the OP, would I be out of line if I said too many Siths spoil the plot?

Buck The Diver <—selling icemakers on Hoth :smiley: