IIRC, the info we have about Leia and her family, based ONLY on what’s told to us onscreen in ANH, is as thus;
She is the princess of Alderaan and a member of the Imperial Senate.
Alderaan is an influential planet and a major part of the Rebellion but not its headquarters.
Obi-Wan Kenobi served her father as a general during the Clone Wars, about which we are told nothing other than the name.
The original movies, as the homage to ‘30s serials they are, are light on details. So much has been filled in over the years by books and comics and prequels and video games and TV shows and radio dramas and action figure packaging and other tie-ins that people forget “the Emperor” doesn’t even have a NAME in the original trilogy, for example.
It’s easy to forget that for the better part of almost a decade, the only new Star Wars stuff was in the form of products made by West End Games. Kenner stopped producing Star Wars toys in 1985 and by 1986 even the last episodes of the Droids/Ewok cartoons were being aired. The Star Wars franchise was essentially dead, nobody expected anything new, so some rinky dink gaming company was not only able to procure the license, but given free reign to do whatever they wanted.
It’s fun to watch something from Star Wars and realize they put in an Easter egg or just outright cribbed something that first appeared in the RPG.
“movies” plural, your words. As @Smapti notes, and as I noted, if you only look at the first movie (which seems to be what @Dinsdale is talking about), a lot of what you talked about, regarding Leia, isn’t necessarily clear, or even stated.
One can fairly assume that Alderaan is a major planet, and that Leia is a very important person (they flat out call her a Princess and a Senator), but it’s also possible that it all goes over someone’s head, especially if they aren’t paying close attention, or only saw the movie once or twice.
I think having nothing explained and you just get the vibe from the characters’ comfortable familiarity with all the gobbledegook and references to places and people. They know what they’re talking about, even if we don’t. It makes it feel a real lived-in world. It’s tantalising, and also hints at being familiar despite being alien.
This is the actual quote to which I responded. Nothing about only one movie. Mentions aware of this for nearly 50 years.
“The way everyone referred to her as “the Princess” always made me think…”
Now I agree there was a hell of a lot of info not given in the first move, or in the subsequent two. I don’t even remember when I first heard Bail Organa’s name. But nothing turn the first movie nor in Empire and Jedi characterized her as “some minor royal on some minor planet.”
Now we only hear half a dozen or so planet names in the first movie, and most are not significant. Tattooine is only significant as some outpost planet that is the headquarters for the crime boss “Jabba the Hutt”, and happens also to be Luke’s home planet and thus where Obi-wan is hiding out.
Alderaan is shown to be significantly populated, and Dantooine was described as too remote to make a good demonstration. So Alderaan is more significant than just a random planet.
Given that there are numerous, countless planets in a galaxy, and the Empire is depicted as being galactic, and immense and immensely old, we can assume there are roughly a kabillion planets that need rulers. Given it’s a space Empire as a stand-in for a fantasy story, you can imagine there are any number of royals from all over, probably a large number of princesses in the grand scheme of things.
On the other hand, the first movie establishes clearly that Leia is a significant mover in the Rebellion, as she has a diplomatic ship and is smuggling secret plans, and she’s seeking out some mysterious old dude to bring back to aid her father. Presumably, then, he must be significant to the rebellion.
So no, she’s not some minor royal from some minor planet, either depicted in the first movie, or the series as a whole.
Yes, they avoid tedious exposition and aren’t afraid to leave the audience with questions. The way everyone takes it all as normal helps make it feel real.
One of the things I hate about the prequels was the “need” to explain everything that happened before and tie all the characters in somehow. I mean, Jango Fett - because Boba needs a backstory. C3PO was built by Anakin. Friggin’ green dude kid who seems to be a young Greedo. Instead of feeling vast, it shrank the galaxy.
The first time he responded in this thread (in post #5) he said (emphasis mine):
What he said there suggests to me that the original movie may have been the only SW film he had ever seen until recently. Even if he had seen ESB and RotJ back in the '80s, what’s clear from his posts is that he had only a passing familiarity with any of the films (and much of that from decades ago) until now.
You guys are reading WAY TOO MUCH into the words of a VERY casual not real fan. Just finished 9 yesterday (and told my wife she doesn’t get to pick any long movie cycles to watch for some time!)
I THINK I had seen all 9 before, but really couldn’t remember much of 2, 8, and 9. I think, possibly, because to me they are just cotton candy. Possibly momentarily appealing, but quickly vanish with no lasting trace. Probably saw 4-6 more than once. Pretty sure I saw at least a couple of the later one-offs - one with a train robbery? At that point, I decided I had had my lifetime fill of things SW.
Even today, having watched all 9, I’m hard pressed to tell you which sword fight or dogfight occurred in which movie (possibly all of them?) And I still couldn’t tell you where those Knights of Ni came from, or all the variable first and last orders and such. I occasionally find myself wondering about family trees and relatedness, “Exactly who were Rey’s parents?” before reminding myself that I don’t really care. I find myself wondering where the resources came from to build that huge fleet in the middle of nowhere. And what the point is of all the emperor’s cackling. Just power for the sake of power? Is that a believable trope?
But mostly - WRT this thread - I wonder how a 10-20 yr old today would react to movies 4-6, if they were familiar with modern “culture” but had never seen the SW films. That would be a different view of how they had aged, than how they aged to us old farts who first saw them decades ago.
One final thought, viewing th emovies I found it harder and harder to ignore the fact that every time a ship crashed or planet exploded, that was 1000s or millions of people/beings dying. Even if they were the “bad guys.” Once that got planted in my brain, it made for a challenging backdrop to light entertainment.
Although interestingly, he was identified as “Palpatine” in the prologue of the novelization (credited to Lucas, actually written by Alan Dean Foster). So the name had been invented way back then, even if it wasn’t used. On the other hand, that same novelization also calls him a detached, powerless figurehead, so it’s not entirely accurate to what we came to know later.
For that matter, Luke’s planet was not identified as “Tatooine” in the first movie. The name Tatooine was used in the novelization, the Marvel Comics adaptation, on various trading cards and toys and such. But if your only source of knowledge was the first movie, you would have no idea what planet Luke lived on. The first time the word “Tatooine” is spoken aloud on screen is at the end of Empire Strikes Back.
Which is when I came to know that it’s “ta-too-EEN” and not “ta-TOO-in,” as I had been mentally pronouncing it for three years.
There was a LOT of information that only got filled in later.
And this is one way modern audiences are different from those half a century ago. Modern audiences are impatient and want the details up front. And complain when things are left unsaid or ambiguous.
It’s a reason why the prequels feel so jolting. They were written for a different audience at a different time.
The reason that there are so many details left out and the inconsistencies (such as Palpatine being a powerless figurehead, and not the Evil Emperor himself) is because Lucas hadn’t worked it all out yet. Despite his having written a “Journal of the Whills” and having some backstory for a lot of characters, most of that got changed as they wrote the screenplays, or it was imagined for the first time. All the random characters in the spaceport bar have names and backstories NOW. They didn’t back then. As Indiana Jones said in the first movie, “I’m makin’ this up as I go along”.
As I’ve said before, this is a kid’s fantasy with science fiction trappings, and it was plotted on the fly. So you’ve got a fairy-tale setting of Evil Emperors and good Princesses. All the good guy fighters in Return of the Jedi are “Generals” or “Admirals”. Good and Evil are as obvious as black and white, and the ambiguity comes in the form of relationships. Don’t look for things deep and well thought-out. Golden age Science fiction writer turned screenwriter Leigh Brackett brought a lot of narrative sense to things with her script for The Empire Strikes Back, even if it was heavily rewritten. (Brackett was not only a classic Golden Age author, she wrote lots of non-sf screenplays afterwards, including The Big Sleep and some John Wayne movies. I think TESB was her first sf screenplay.)
Sometimes that’s for the best. The mystery and wonder gets ruined with too much backstory. Like how Jaws was improved by not seeing much of anything of the shark for much of the movie, he stayed a shadowy menace.
“You served my father in the Clone Wars” WTF? I want to find out what The Clone Wars were, but don’t actually do that in a movie, my imagination is so much more awesome than your story could ever be. Not because my imagination is so good, but because I’m just imagining something awesome, I don’t need details, I just know it’s super cool.
Boba Fett was cool because he looked cool and Darth Vader admonished him “No Disintegrations!” I don’t need sad baby Boba or broken down old man Boba, I’ve already imagined him as a super bad-ass bounty hunter, don’t ruin it.
It’s what I still think of the John Wick movies. Too much backstory and the mystique is ruined. You only need to have enough for connective tissue between action set pieces
Just like General Solo, the SW universe rebellion military seems to promote non soldiers to the top rank without any training*. I mean, did we see Leftenant Organa, Major Organa, Colonel Solo? No! They just jump to the top spot. Why should the rank-and-file accept them?
Which IS consistent with the “fairy tale” aspects of the story telling. If you have princesses and knights, heroes and villains, you can have generals without having corporals, majors, colonels, and everyone just follows them…because.
Aside: was there historical precedence for this? Did the Romans or whatever do this?
*The Empire on the other hand, does promote through the ranks. Sometimes very quickly and unexpectedly!
