Why would the emporer ever agree to ‘turn’ Luke to begin with? With the Sith - there are only ever 2 - the master and the apprentice - so, to turn Luke either means that Vader is no longer useful (or dead) or that the Emporer intends to step down - which isn’t happening either - for Vader to mention it, should indicate to the Emporer that Vader is planning a coup -
Exactly. That’s the whole point. The Emperor’s plan was that he’d pit Luke and Vader against one another and whoever won would be his apprentice. If Vader showed his superiority and defeated Luke, well, nothing of value was lost. If, on the other hand, Luke was the better (and this is what the Emperor expected and wanted), he’d defeat Vader and become the Emperor’s new apprentice. Pappy’s just made an upgrade. From his POV it was a win/win situation.
1.) This is, generally, what the Sith are all about. Apprentices don’t overtake their masters because their masters get old and die peacefully in their beds. They usurp their masters, thus showing their superiority (in the Sith’s eyes). Thus it’s a never-ending cycle of the Sith constantly becoming stronger. So the Emperor would have likely been shocked if Vader wasn’t willing to turn against him.
2.) Regardless of the previous point, however, we see that Vader is still a slave to the Emperor’s will when he intercepts Luke’s lightsaber in ROTJ, saving the Emperor’s life. Though this can be fanwanked: He only saved the Emperor because Luke was still a good guy at that point- if he’d let him kill the Emperor he would have had to fight Luke alone and he would have lost. He only wanted Luke to kill the Emperor once he was firmly in place as Vader’s apprentice. Or something.
I don’t think that’s necessarily a fanwank. Both Vader and Palpatine wanted Luke to turn - that was paramount over which of the two of them he sided with. At the moment when Luke struck, Luke wasn’t far enough down the dark path for him to turn completely, which we know, because he didn’t turn completely. It seems to me that it’s not the act of killing the person that turns you to the Dark side, it’s the willingness to commit it. Luke was angry and desperate, but to spontaneously turn him totally evil, they needed to get him into a fever pitch of pure rage - the state he’s in when he hammers down Vader and cuts off his hand. At the beginning of the duel, he wasn’t there yet. If he’d killed Palpatine then, he might have stained himself, but he wouldn’t have gone over entirely.
pancakes3, I want to live in the universe where your version of Star Wars is canon.
About the prequels. I know that the climate of the day affects the movies, and the prequels were finished while we were in a couple of wars, but I found it a huge huge mistake that this epic battle of good and evil came with a subtext of democracy and governance. In my mind, Obi Wan and Padme talking about democracy doesn’t exactlyg the juices flowing in my thrill meter. Just the word conjures up images of people in line voting, bureaucracy, and politicians. Am I the only one who get that impression?
Plus, we see almost no ordinary citizens of the Galactic Empire that’s good, nor do we see much of how bad the Empire is. This isn’t ancient Rome setting up crucifixes of people as a warning to others. Coruscant seems to have a very lively and varied social life. Did the Empire as run by the Sith suddenly ban all that? They made a bunch of ships and later blew up Alderaan, but how bad was the Empire, really? Luke’s uncle seems to be doing well enough for himself, there are typical bandits in the deserts of Tatooine, the Ewoks seem to live their life unmolested by Imperial troops. I would have just liked to have seen some examples of what made the Empire so evil rather than a single attack on a rebel planet in an attempt to destroy the resistance. If there were lots of ordinary citizens being rounded up for slavery, maybe I would have been more sympathetic to the rebel cause.
I think you’re really underselling the casual murder of billions and billions of innocent people.
Anakin turns to the Darkside precisely at the moment that he kneels before the Emperor after Sidious kills Windu… Watch the movie you can see the gut wrenching look on his face as he kneels and the darkside of the force enters his being… before that he is just being led upon the path by Sidious…
I see a lot of people complaining that Lucas didn’t make Anakin “evil” enough to merit him turning into the hideousness that would be Vader… but the thing is that Anakin wasn’t evil and only became so because of Sidious’ manipulation… The turning of Anakin to Vader isn’t a triumph of the evil within Skywalker, but rather of the great power possessed by the Emperor… Skywalker, and Dooku as well, would never have walked the path of the darkside if not for the manipulations of the Emperor…
If Vader isn’t the central Villain of episode 4 who is??? He kidnaps the Princess, Kills Obi Wan and generally instill fear in all those that look upon him… About the only ultra-evil action that happens in episode 4 that he isn’t directly responsible for is the the destruction of Alderan, which was order by Tarkin…
While most people who are only familiar with movies don’t know, in the expanded universe there is evidence that Anakin was actually created by Sidious’ Master Plagueis in an experiment… Sidous had known about Anakin long before the the Jedi did…
Just a nit pick but Jango might have been gone but there were the millions of exact clones of him still around, the most important of which was Boba… So even though he was dispatched quickly his legacy certainly lived on…
Great Idea… I hope that this Live action TV show eventually get to air so it shows the era that your episode 3 would have covered…
Yoda couldn’t slice up Dooku??? Yoda clearly bests Dooku and forces him to flee at the end of episode 2, just as he did to Sidous in episode 3… Obvously he didn’t “slice” him up… but that is not Yoda’s nor Obi Wan’s style… It is the Jedi way to only kill if necessary, the light saber itself is their chosen weapon because it is consider a more humane weapon… but IMO it is clear that Lucas sets up Yoda to be considered the most powerful Duelist of the Force users… and there are even hints that Yoda has dabbled in the Darkside in order to understand it better, as demonstrated by his ability to handle and absorb Sidous’ force lightening… While he doesn’t possess Anakin’s raw force power his centuries of studying the force puts him on par with Emperor, who is supposed to be portrayed as the most powerful of all the characters…
Anakin loses to Obi Wan not because he is less powerful… but because of his arrogance… he thinks he is unbeatable and tries over power Obi Wan with brute strength, however Obi Wan’s Lightsaber technique, which is based upon defense bests Anakin through patience and better awareness of his surroundings… this is placed within the movie not to show that Obi Wan was more powerful than Vader, but that despite it’s appearance of being more powerful than the light side of the force it is flawed and in the end will always lose to the light side… kinda of like the entire 6 movies en abime…
One to Possess the power and one to crave it…
FWIW Vader does try to turn Luke in The Empire Strikes back with the offer that he and Luke shall usurp the emperor and rule as Father and Son…
Except we know nothing about his past. His place in the story is important in ANH, but we never see how he got that way. Furthermore, it would have given things a lot more heft if he was a human point of contact for Vader. Sure, he didn’t want Luke to join the Imperial-dominated school - but that becomes a lot stronger if we see that he knew exactly of which he spoke. It also would make his fear of Vader a lot more palpable, so that his half-true comments at the start of ANh much more powerful.
Basically, I think it would be good on its own, but I also think it would make Vader’s story stand out in contrast.
Thatr’s true, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. The movies got rid of villains a little too easily, and I felt it didn’t give us time to really associate with them.
But it looks like part of the Jedi code is full disclosure. Anakin was a Jedi. Indeed, he was a member of the Jedi Council. But, for this to change, he would have to be notified by another Jedi:
“You will be expelled from the Jedi order!”
Tarkin. Everything Vader does in the film is at Tarkin’s direct command. He’s the antagonist whose machinations set the plot in motion, and who must be destroyed for the heroes to prevail.
Instead of jamming evry possible retcon and mythology into the franchise… I think Star Wars should be taken as a standalone. I guess I am real old shcool old testament when it comes to star wars. There are only three real books… SW, TESB, and RotJ
I don’t know about this… Certainly Tarkin is an important character to the development of the plot, but I do not see him as being a greater antagonist than Vader or even the unseen Emperor, who is truly behind the “machinations that set the plot in motion” and the person “who must be destroyed”… the only protagonist that even has any contact with him is the Princess and he doesn’t seem to be a concern to either Obi Wan, Luke or Solo…
When Obi Wan speaks to Luke about the Empire and the Darkside of the Force… it isn’t Grand Mof Tarkin that he tells him to worry about… it is Vader and the Emperor…
That’s my opinion viewing the story as a whole…
I just cant understand how people can quote plot points of the shitology as though the real trilogy had to conform to it.
-Jedis cant marry, or have a love life. Where the fuck was that ever in OT (hey, not only it doesnt seem to be forbidden there, but you can also french kiss your own sister)? The plan of the Jedi Order is to breed an unstoppable army of pedophiles?
-note the diff between the scripts of the OT and of the shitology. In the latter the story bogs down every fucking five minutes so they can explain/justify what’s going to happen in the next five minutes (and which never makes sense anyway). Rinse, repeat. Was watching some of “The Clone Wars” episodes, it’s funny how they have to mimic that in a cartoon as well, with fucking couch/blablabla scenes…Unbelievable (especially when you compare with the action scenes that are often rather good)
-the way people talk about the mechanics of the political system in the shitology (characters AND fans), it sounds completely clueless about how politics work, or even what makes them interesting. Sounds like a moron who picked a few buzzwords off waching some news network (let’s say one named after a weasel or a fox), and decided to remix that with what little understanding he had of history. Oh, maaaan…
The Shitology sounds like it was written by a eight year old retard, sometimes I wonder if that wasnt the target audience.
So, anyone that tries to justify or rationalize Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader being even remotely the same character will be kidnapped and subject to heavy torture by myself.
But that billions and billions is in an empire that spans a galaxy. In terms of scale, it’s entirely possible that blowing up a planet is like the US blowing up the occasional Afghanistan wedding party.
The Emperor isn’t even a character in the first film, so he’s not even an antagonist, far less the main antagonist. Vader is the more compelling villain, and as Tarkin’s hatchet man, ends up in direct conflict with the heroes more often than Tarkin does, but at all points he’s acting under Tarkin’s aegis. It’s Tarkin’s goals and desires that drive the action of the entire movie.
Consider it this way: if Vader had tripped over his cloak and broken his neck boarding Leia’s ship, the fundamentals of the rest of the plot would largely be the same: Leia would still be captured, Luke’s family would still be slaughtered by Stormtroopers, Alderaan would be destroyed, Leia rescued, and there’d be a big showdown over Yavin. The only differences would be that Obi Wan would probably not die, and one of the other Alliance pilots might have destroyed the Death Star. Everything else the Empire did in the movie, they did at Tarkin’s command. If Vader had been dead, Tarkin would have gotten someone else to do it for him.
Now switch it around: Tarkin has a massive cerebral hemorage just as his ship capture’s Leia’s. Now all those events are up in the air. Vader is openly contemptuous of the Death Star, and correctly predicted that Leia would not be bullied into giving up the location of the Rebel base, so Alderaan probably survives. Vader was a fighter jock at heart, so assuming he even uses the Death Star to root out the Rebels, he’s going to have a much heavier fighter screen than Tarkin did, similar to the one he employed over Endor, making it much more difficult for the tiny fleet the Rebels had at Yavin to succeed. While the basic plot (Rebels must destroy Imperial superweapon) is going to stay the same, the individual plot points are going to be radically different, because it’s going to be playing out according to his will, not Tarkin’s.
It’s a different matter if you look at the trilogy as a whole, but taking just Star Wars on it’s own, it’s Tarkin who is the Big Bad. Vader is his Dragon.
That’s kind of like saying murder isn’t as bad if you do it in California versus Alaska, because there are more people in California.
Anyway, that aside, Alderaan wasn’t blown up by mistake. It wasn’t collateral damage as part of a legitimate military target. It was an unarmed, heavily populated, law-abiding member of the Empire. It was destroyed because it represented a political threat to Palpatine: it was a center of anti-Imperial, pro-Republic sentiment, but it wasn’t in open revolt. Palpatine blowing up Alderaan as part of the war against the Rebel Alliance would be like Bush dropping a nuke on Berkeley as part of the war on Iraq.
Which was it? Was it a law-abiding member of the Empire, or was it a center of anti-Imperial, pro-Republic sentiment? The Empire is one entity, with one will, the will of the Emperor. It has abandoned the weaknesses of the Old Republic; the “democracy”, the “debate”, the “disagreement”, the “tolerance”. Dissent is treason, and Alderaan needed to be destroyed as a lesson to those who would defy the Emperor’s Will and plot against the New Order.
The Emperor is certainly a Character in the first film… No he is never on screen but you don’t have to get screen time to be a character… you just have to be part of the plot… In the LOTR books and movies Sauron has no speaking part and is only spoken of… yet there is no denying that he is the main antagonist… When Sidious is spoken of it is quite clear that he is the top dog in the Empire…
Tarkin is a Grand Moff and in charge of the construction of the Death Star , but his “goals and desires” are to serve the Emperor, and Vader is present as an agent of Sidious to Observe and assist… Yes Tarkin is imortant enough that Vader knows that he couldn’t just choke him out and even obeys Takin when he tells Vader to release the officer that insults Vader in Tarkin’s first scene, but it is quite clear that Vader answers to the Emperor not him… When Tarkin addresses him he calls him Lord Vader…
First off this is a Straw Man Argument, but I will still address a few of the issues involved… It is Vader that realizes that the escape pod, that was allowed to escape by the Captain of the ship, is where the Princess has hidden the Death Star plans and orders that it be tracked resulting in Luke’s Family being slaughtered… Leia being rescued and the “big showdown” at Yavin happened because of Vader’s idea to allow the Falcon to escape with tracking bugs aboard…
Obi Wan dying is a pretty important element to the plot… it is on his “advice” that Luke stop using his ships targeting and rely on the force to make the final shot that destroys the Death Star… which leads me to my next point… Luke was the only one skilled enough to destroy the Death Star, and if somehow some other pilot did, you would be making a HUGE alteration to the plot that would effect both subsequent movies… Skywalker is a nobody before the battle of Yavin, destroying the Death Star makes him hero to the alliance…
First off it is not Tarkin’s ship that captures the Princess., it is Vader’s (the Executor I believe)… Tarkin’s responsibility was constructing the Death Star and it is the only place he appears in the movie… as far a replaceablity is concerned Tarkin is one of Many Moffs, there are only two Lords of the Sith… I don’t see a flashy space battle involving more ships than were actually present in the movie to be “radical” departure from the plot, certainly not anywhere near as radical as “some other” pilot destroying the Death Star… And to reiterate again everything that is happening in the movie, or whatever hypothetical situation you want to put forth, is not the will of either Tarkin or Vader, it is that of the Emperor…
But it is not 1977 and the both trilogies exsist… The Emperor is Big Bad and Vader is his Dragon…
The Emperor is the phantom menace in the first film. Tarkin is the OT’s General Grevious so it’s really Sidious’s goals and desires that drive the action of the entire movie, indeed, of the entire saga.
Up until very shortly before the beginning of the first movie, it was both. There was still a senate, and Alderaan was an active participant - Leia was a Senator herself. The Emperor did not yet have a free hand to do whatever he wanted. When she is captured, she tells Vader that the Senate will not stand for his actions, indicating that she has (overtly) broken no law to that point,* and that there are still some checks on Imperial power. Of course, she doesn’t yet know that the Emperor has disbanded the Senate, at which point he is free to act in the manner you describe, and to declare post-facto that previously legal activities now carry the death penalty, etc. etc. But then, that just goes back to the original question that spawned this side conversation: what did the Empire do that was so bad? Blowing up Alderaan is a perfect answer to the question, both for the reason I brought up (genocide), and the reason you brought up (general tyranny).
*In point of fact, she has of course broken the law: she has stolen military plans on board her ship, which she intends to give to a paramilitary group dedicated to the over throw of the government. But at this point, Vader hasn’t proven that, and she’s not about to cop to it if they can’t prove it happened. On the other hand, she’s already known as an anti-Imperial agitator, and she clearly expects some form of legal protection for expressing those views.
I disagree. The Emperor never appears in the film, and he has no dialogue at all. He’s no more a character in the film, simply because a few characters namecheck him, then Yahweh is a character in Henry V, simply because King Hal attributes his victory to God.
Consider this: who’s the hero in Star Wars? Is it Luke Skywalker? By your logic, it has to be Mon Mothma. She was the leader of the Rebel Alliance, after all, and never mind the fact that we never see her or hear of her until Jedi - if it weren’t for her, there wouldn’t have been any stolen plans, or base on Yavin, or X-Wing fleet to fight the Death Star.
That’s not entirely true: there are several scenes in LotR where Sauron attempts to directly attack Frodo, and once where he tries to attack Pippen through a palantir. That’s evidence of him acting directly in the plot. Plus, you do see “him” in the films repeatedly, in the form of the great burning eye. It’s not clear if that’s actually supposed to be him, or just the apparatus through which he views and interacts with the world, but it still represents him as an actual vital force in the narrative.
Yes, but this is backstory, not plot. You could easily change the film so that Tarkin is the one in control of the entire Empire, and all you’d have to is redub a half-dozen scenes or so.
No, a straw man argument is where I misrepresent something you’ve said and then disprove the misrepresentation. I don’t believe I’ve misrepresented your argument anywhere in this thread.
I’m thinking just about anyone would have figured that out. Hell, the guy reporting to Vader has clearly put two and two together. He says, “The plans are not on this ship, but an escape pod was launched.” He’d only bring up the escape pod if he thought it was relevant to the missing plans. Vader’s the one giving orders, but he’s not doing anything here that any other servant of Tarkin’s wouldn’t also be able to do.
Good point: if not for Vader, Tarkin never would have found the base at all. So that part, at least, would have required a substantial change if Vader wasn’t around.
He didn’t exactly have to be dead to give that advice. Luke’s got a radio in that thing, after all. Obi Wan didn’t die so that he could offer Luke post-mortem advice, he died because he realized that if he kept fighting Vader, the others would hold back and try to help him, and Vader would slaughter them all. His sacrifice is still important, but if we’re positing what would happen if Vader wasn’t in the film, he wouldn’t have needed to make the sacrifice in the first place.
I don’t think it’s necessarily true that only Luke could have possibly made that shot. But, I don’t think it’s really relevant. I only brought it up because, if Vader wasn’t at the Battle of Yavin, he wouldn’t have been able to kill Red Leader, and Red Leader might have been able to get his shot off and kill the Death Star. If you want to argue that only Luke Skywalker, in all the galaxy, could have possibly made that shot, that’s fine: it makes Darth Vader even more irrelevant to the Battle of Yavin, because it wouldn’t have mattered how many rebel fighters he shot down if none of them could possibly have hurt the Death Star in the first place.
No, the Executor was the giant Super Star Destroyer we see first see in Empire. The one that capture’s Leia’s ship is a regular Star Destroyer - the Devastator, per the EU. It was Vader’s flagship at the time, though. However, I’m assuming that the capture was carried out under Tarkin’s orders. I’m not sure if that’s provable simply from events in the film, but it seems likely considering his actions after he captures the corvette.
By “replaceable,” I don’t mean, “How many more people like this guy were in the Empire according to the Expanded Universe?” I mean, “If the writer had sat down and written a completely different character for the Darth Vader role, how would the plot of the movie be changed?” For Vader, the answer is, “Not much,” because the vast majority of the events in the movie are because of things set into motion by Tarkin. On the other hand, if you play the same game with Tarkin, you end up with a totally different plot, because a different character would have reacted to events differently, and how the character in that role reacts dictates how the rest of the plot unfolds.
It would be a pretty radical departure if those additional ships ended up winning the battle for the Empire. At the end of the film, the Rebel fleet at Yavin has been reduced to less than half a dozen single-man fighters. A single Star Destroyer in-system would have been able to wipe them out and bomb the Rebel base into rubble, regardless of what happened to the Death Star.
In the broad sense, yes, in that, at some point before the movie started, the Emperor told Tarkin to go out and destroy the Alliance. But the Emperor does not order the destruction of Alderaan. He doesn’t torture Princess Leia. He doesn’t kill Obi Wan Kenobi. He doesn’t track the Millenium Falcone to Yavin. He does not directly effect any event we see on screen, even from off-stage: his orders are given as part of the first act setup, not as a later plot point. He’s not a character, he’s a plot device. For the purposes of the first movie, his primary function is to indicate scale: the Empire is so vast that the guy who commands a moon-sized, planet killing space station is, at best, second banana.
Yes, but I’m not talking about them. I’m analyzing the structure of the first movie on its own.
In terms of the trilogy as a whole, yes. In terms of the first film, nope. Nor the second, for that matter: in that film, Vader is the Big Bad, and Boba Fett is his Dragon.