What do you expect? He’s only 5 foot 9.
i’m still trying to figure if reva put together that luke was anakin’s child or just a force sensitive child.
from the bit that she heard on the holo “found out about the children” and “luke”. anakin being a potential father was only known to a few people, why would she jump to that conclusion?
i reckoned on her thinking that bail and obi wan were hiding generic force sensitive children, and to strike at obi wan that way. after what happened at jibim i think she wanted to hurt obi wan for her failed attempt at vader and him setting her up.
And while we’re asking about ships, what did Obi Wan do with that hyper-capable drop ship he was tooling around in? Did he sell it for drinking money or something? Why did he have to go find Chewbacca in Episode IV, if he had a ship?
I had been thinking that perhaps she didn’t realize “Obi-Wan Kenobi” was the same man that she had known as “Ben.” But then Itty Bitty Leia called him “Obi-Wan” at the end of this episode, so there goes that theory.
What I’m wondering is, if Vader is capable of all those Force pushes during lightsaber fights, why he didn’t do any of that during the duel in A New Hope. Okay, Obi-Wan is old by that time, and maybe not capable of it anymore, but you’d think Vader still could. In fact, he never seems to use that tactic at any point during the original trilogy.
Okay, I know the real reason–they hadn’t come up with that idea yet back in '77. The Force was more subtle in those days. But it does point out the danger of introducing cool new stuff in the prequels that weren’t in the originals.
See also R2-D2’s ability to fly.
I just re-watched all the movies, and they do retcon this a bit, when Dooku fought Yoda. They did the “toss things around” part of the battle, but were too evenly matched, so Dooku essentially said, “Well, let’s do it the old-fashioned way, with lightsabers!”
I didn’t get the point of the Reva-subplot in the final episode, nor the logistics of it. How did she manage to get to Tattooine while the chase between the Star Destroyer and the proto-rebellion ship was still going? More importantly, why? What would have been the point of killing Luke? Replaying the scene, Bail says something like, ‘if he’s found the children…’, so she maybe could’ve come to the conclusion that they’re somehow important to Vader. But still, just killing Luke doesn’t really seem to serve any purpose?
Also, I’m not sure I’m happy with Obi-Wan’s arc—seems to me that the transformation from ‘can’t hold a candle to Vader’ to ‘beats the crap out of him’ isn’t really terribly well motivated. And why did he let him live? Or go? Even if he’s reluctant to kill him, because anger, fear, darkside whatever, it seems poor judgment to just let one of the Empire’s most powerful figures continue unchecked.
Except that Obi Wan had just then almost lost to Vader, and only won by reconnecting with the Light Side, via the Power of Love. So he had to show mercy, or something.
If I had known this episode would start with a space chase, where a Star Destroyer would take ineffectual potshots at a little frigate for protracted minutes, I wouldn’t have complained so much about the lack of chasing in any of the other episodes. They were saving it all for here.
That said, it would have been very funny if Vader had immediately left in a shuttle to chase Kenobi, leaving the Star Destroyer to continue to chase the proto-rebels.
Vader is a shell of a human being kept alive by machines and constant bacta tank treatments, and he just took another near death beating by Obi. Which would be good enough for me to explain his state in A New Hope…cept for Rogue One, which happens what? literally hours before A New Hope?
Even a beat-up Vader is powerful enough to totally dominate a bunch of rebel mooks.
Sure, he just looked significantly more…spry than he did a little bit later against Obi Wan.
I’m sure we could find a retcon explanation if we tried hard enough! But fight choreography and SFX came a long way between 1977 and 2016, so I can’t really blame them.
Like Luke in ROTJ. There it was his protectiveness for Leia. Here its Obi Wans determination to ensure that Padme’s children grown up and help overthrow the Emperor. Plus, in all his fights with Anakin, including the sparring match seen in flashback, he wins despite being outclassed since he outthinks Anakin, who had this tremendous bad habit of thinking battles are won before they actually are. That what happens there.
And why did he let him live? Or go? Even if he’s reluctant to kill him, because anger, fear, darkside whatever, it seems poor judgment to just let one of the Empire’s most powerful figures continue unchecked.
Since he isn’t beaten. He is hurt, but still standing and capable of fighting. And as said, old Ben knows he is outclassed. Better to cash in his chips, then continue the fight against a wounded and cornered opponent, something which is always dangerous.
Firstly, the ending of R1 and the start of ANH are literally hours apart. The duel on the Death Star takes place several days later. Secondly, fighting a bunch of militiamen is one thing, fighting a Jedi Master, whom was your teacher and has a history of laying the smack down on you is quite another. Vader is circumspect, understandably so.
Oh, I think choreography had already come a long way by 1977, the problem was the lightsaber props they had in 1977 were extremely fragile and couldn’t stand up to anything like the movie swordfights Kurosawa directed or Errol Flynn performed. Nowadays we’ve produced very sturdy props that–most crucually–even produce their own light. Even the lightsaber duels in The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi pale in comparison to the duels in the prequel movies and beyond.
The real fight master in 1977 was…Alec Guinness, who had some significant fencing experience and based his style on that and what David Prowse could follow easily
In the prequels, they used an actual martial artist in Ray Park for the TPM fight scenes and for the climatic duel in ROTS, McGregor and Christensen trained for months before it was shot.
ETA: apparently they did it again for Kenobi.
Compare that to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, where they actually hired a professional fight choreographer, Bob Anderson, to stage the lightsaber duels, and Anderson (not Prowse) wound up in the Vader costume for the fights.
Next series will be called “Fortress Vader.” The entire series will take place in the week between R1 and ANH. In a pivotal scene we’ll see Vader fall off some scaffolding while painting his living room. That will explain his stiffness in battling Kenobi in Ep IV.
Here is a picture of Guinness and Prowse rehearsing. From the picture, clearly Sir Alec at least knows what he is doing.
I remember when we were kids there were tons of speculation about Star Wars (this was long before the prequels existed) and a popular fan theory (although they didn’t call them that in those days) was that Obi-Wan was actually OB-1 and he was a first generation clone of Bail Organa (thus O,B -1). Disney? I smell a season two if you make this happen!
(Actually that would be terrible and make no sense but it was something people speculated at the time when we had no idea what “Clone Wars” meant).
I heard this but not Bail Organa, OB stood for old ben and he was the first clone of the original.