The length of time that the Empire has existed is very ambiguous in IV, V and VI. It actually wasn’t until I got hold of the Guide to the Star Wars Universe that I even understood that it was only 20 years. Maybe I was just a dumb kid for not realizing it, though.
It’s not really all that ambiguous. Darth Vader hunted down and destroyed the Jedi. One of those Jedi was Luke’s dad. Therefore, the destruction of the Jedi had to have happened less than 20 years ago. Likewise, one of the earliest scenes in the movie is Tarkin describing the recent dissolution of the Senate.
Nonetheless, up until I saw Phantom Menace, I, too, had always thought of the rise of the Empire and the destruction of the Jedi as something that happened a long time before the events of the movie. I suspect it’s a function of being small children when we first saw the movies - when you’re six, twenty years ago really is an unfathomably ancient era.
Eh, it can’t have been too long, given that the Emperor was only just getting around to completely abolishing the Senate in Ep. IV.
I think it’s the Sci Fi Fairy tale feeling Star Wars has that makes you think that because as a kid I also had a hard time gauging the exact timeline.
Beside what others have said, those of us who saw Ep. IV before it was called Ep. IV were clear on the importance of Vader from the beginning. He led the attack on the courier. He represented the dark side of the Force and we see that the Force was important. Tarkin was an incompetent, not believing in the danger and not getting any leads as to the whereabouts of the plans. And of course the Vader - Obi wan due is vital.
The first one was build by the Empire also. Now, it takes less time to replicate something than it does to build it the first time, though the Death Star was pretty far along at the end of Ep. III. However, if I were the emperor I’d be very dubious about having two independent sources of power floating around the galaxy. One is bad enough, together they could stand against anything the Emperor sends and could even fry Coruscant.
The line is “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.” Even though the Jedi were wiped out 20 years ago, they had been around for thousands of years, but had over time retreated into themselves and weren’t really a part of peoples everyday lives. That is how the Sith plan was able to succeed. The Jedi had cut themselves off fromt he people they wree supposed to serve and from the Force. Han is also proven right through the prequels. Lightsabers and the Force did nothing to stop the Clone Army from wiping the Jedi out of the universe.
That and there were probably people who were skeptical of the Jedi, especially if they hadn’t been around all that many of them.
The first one was built by the heavily-corrupted Republic, not by the Empire. Palpatine was still calling himself “Supreme Chancellor”, or some such, and still had to contend with the remnants of the Senate. By the second one, though, there was no pretense of democracy or accountability to slow things down.
Palpatine: “Now your report says that the rebels escaped…cough…the Death Star. They studied the plans, found a weakness and blew up. The Death Star. Now WHOSE bright idea was it to let the rebels escape the Death Star? Because. You know, with the Death Star we were going to bring the entire galaxy to its knees right? The rebellion would have utterly failed. No one would have dared support them.”
Vader: “Tarkin. I tried to stop him.”
Exactly. You ALWAYS blame a dead guy. Always! No inconvenient contradictory stories…
And if you can’t find a dead guy, make one.
Forgot he needed sunblock on Tatooine.
My own fanwank : Ep 4. Jawa chop shop. Little *hooteeneeee *bastards yanked every movable part they could that wasn’t straight up fried by that ion shotgun thingamabob they shot him with. Flipped them at a 40x markup like so many aftermarket printer ink cartridges :).
No, the *real *puzzler about R2-D2 is : he’s specifically called an “R2-model droid”, right ? So D2 would be his own specific name/serial number. There are only 36² (26 letters+ 10 digits) R2 astromech droids in the whole galaxy ?! 1292 units total ? Are they the Lamborghinis of the droid world or what ? 
I did not see it that way at all. The movie makes him out to be somewhat of an enforcer character, the “muscle” who can get things done. He is not treated with respect or deference by the Death Star commanders which leads to him choking one of them just to regain some pride. Even Leia comments that Tarkin is “holding Vader’s leash”. People with real power do not get their hands dirty and do not run errands like Vader does in the first film. His role was greatly expanded later.
Yeah, the younger version should have been about 20 years older.
Don’t even ask how Anakin aged up to ~65 years old. I don’t care if you are in a suit or not…he looks way old at the end of Jedi.
Well, so does Palpy. The Dark Side fucks you up.
Yes, this. Vader is not military, he is outside the chain of command. He has authority for the personal mission of tracking the plans and locating the rebel base, which he is directed to report to Grand Moff Tarkin. He has the authority of the Emperor to commandeer military support when necessary, but is not strictly in chain of command.
The other Moffs see him as an interloper. He is strictly speaking aiding them on their mission with the Death Star, not directing them. Grand Moff Tarkin is in charge of the Death Star and its mission to hunt the rebels, but Vader is on the task of retrieving the plans and finding the rebels, so their missions overlap. Vader is to aid Tarkin. But Vader is under Tarkin’s command to the degree that Tarkin is responsible for the overall Death Star and crushing the rebellion plan.
Vader is the weirdo with that hokey religion thing going, and the Moffs think that the Jedis are jokes (because they’re like all gone and killed off and stuff - didn’t we take care of that 19 years ago?) Vader feels the need to assert himself to demonstrate he is not a joke, and that gets the attention of the Moffs. But Tarkin tells him to knock it off, and he knows actually killing the guy is probably excessive. Technically, that guy is Tarkin’s and thus killing him without Tarkin’s assent will cause a protest to the Emperor, and it isn’t worth the hassle.
Okay, fine, R2 has no jets on the ship or trying to drive around Tatooine. But later, after Luke hauls him off to the Rebel base, he gets all fixed up and polished up for the ceremony. Including major repairs from getting blasted in the gunfight. So why not repair the jets then? Or any of the other times hanging out through the years as they slog through to Hoth, then Bespin, and finally prepped for the raid on Jabba’s palace? There are plenty of opportunities for someone to have coughed up some working R2 thrusters and put him back to fully operational, but it never happens.
The religion was ancient - it was old at the time the Jedi were at their height. It happens to also have been killed off 19 years ago, except for the Emperor’s lackey (don’t let him hear you say that). Yes, the religion is faded and unimportant, but ancient isn’t meant to imply it was wiped out centuries ago. That’s just how our young ears heard it.
That’s part of it, as well as the fantasy aspect Quimby mentions. I think it’s also being young gives less ability to contextually understand those kinds of topics and pull them out. Less reference points to work with.
For example, it took me a long time to make sense of royal and noble titles and whatnot. It was just a “feature” without any system behind it, same as military titles and positions. “That’s what they’re called.”
Actually, the line he’s referring to is linked in that video clip above, 1:26 mark.
“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebel’s hidden for–[glug]”
All droids in the Star Wars universe have ludicrously short specific monikers. R2-D2, C-3PO, R5-D4, etc. I think they probably have much longer serial numbers and manufacturer model/make designations, etc, they just go by common nicknames, like “Mike” for “Michael”. How many Mikes do you know?
In 1976 (filming Star Wars), Alec Guinness was 62 years old. In 1998 (filming APM), Ewan McGregor was 27. 13 years pass between TPM and RotS. So, Obi-wan should have been around 40 at the time of RotS. 19 years later, Obi-wan would be 59, about 3 years younger than Alec Guinness.
They probably could have used a bit of age make up on Ewan McGregor. It didn’t take 13 years between filming TPM and RotS.
Also, Death St 2.0 wasn’t finished - Palpy may have said it was “fully operational”, but as usual, he was obviously full of shit. It was only half-built, it couldn’t generate its own force field, and it probably couldn’t travel interstellar distances, if at all. The only thing operational about it was its main gun, and even there, all we know is that it was capable of packing enough of a punch to blast a single cruiser - which is hardly an entire planet. I’d be surprised if it didn’t need at least 5 more years of work for it to become *actually * fully operational.