IIRC, the plan was to deliver the Death Star plans back to Alderaan, so that Bail Organa could reveal to the Senate what the Emperor had really been up to all these years. Tattooine was an unfortunate stopover when Vader’s flagship caught up to the Tantive IV.
Alternately, Vader already knows where the Rebel base is from interrogating any number of captives on Admiral Raddis’ ship, and the whole deal with him torturing Leia is just him wanting to break her spirit to punish her for pulling one over on him.
Nope. If Vader already knew where the Rebel base was he wouldn’t have advised Tarkin to allow the Millennium Falcon to be tracked to the base. It’s the only explanation for the ease of their escape.
If one wanted to get sufficiently fan-wanky, one might then propose that Vader felt something in the Force - a connection to a certain young person onboard, perhaps - that told him shooting down the Falcon would be a bad idea.
That’s a good point. There’s no real reason for Mon Mothma to have brought up Obi Wan at all, his involvement was unintentional. Having said that, Tatooine is way out of anyone’s likely route, so maybe they deliberately went past, the jettisoning of the plans to him being Bail Organa’s Plan B if they were boarded.
Leia’s message to Obi Wan specifically says, “my ship has fallen under attack and I’m afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed.” So, Leia’s stopover above Tatooine is entirely planned and purposeful. The way that I figure it is that because they come out of hyperspace for their stop at Tatooine, this is when and how Vader’s ship is able to locate, catch up with, and lock onto them.
When we first see the opening scene of the original Star Wars, we haven’t yet been introduced to the concept of faster than light speed travel (in the Star Wars universe). We don’t see that until the Millennium Falcon leaves Mos Eisley. At the opening of the film, we see one spaceship being chased by a bigger meaner spaceship. Then we never bother to question the idea of one spaceship chasing another across the galaxy because the story moves on from there. But look back at the opening scene applying an understanding of ships in the Star Wars universe travelling in hyperspace. Chasing the Tantive IV through hyperspace makes no sense (impossible?). Somehow the Tantive IV was traceable once it came out of hyperspace, which it did over Tatooine- which was a planned stop because of Leia’s mission to bring Obi Wan to Alderaan.
Threepio does know he’s part of the rebellion. He tells Luke that in the scene in the workshop I referenced above.
Luke, cleaning R2: You’ve got a lot of carbon scoring here my friend. You boys must have seen a lot of action.
3PO: With all we’ve been through sometimes I’m amazed we’re in as good condition as we are. What with the Rebellion and all.
You know of the Rebellion against the Empire?
That’s how we came to be in your service, if you take my meaning sir.
Have you been in many battles?
Several, I think. Actually, there’s not much to tell. I’m not much more than an interpreter, and not very good at telling stories. Well, not at making them interesting, anyway.
But then why doesn’t he tell Tarkin where the base is after he tortures her, and after they destroy Alderaan?
You’re correct that Leia’s mission was to pick up Obi-Wan. Her message stated so, and why else would Leia have even known he was on Tatooine?
It’s unclear whether you can track ships through hyperspace. When they first leave Tatooine, Han says “We’ll be safe enough once we make the jump to hyperspace. Besides, I know a few maneuvers, we’ll lose them.” Later, when Luke is training with the lightsaber, he says “Well, you can forget your troubles with those imperial slugs. Told you I’d outrun them.”
That’s open to a few interpretations, but ISTM you can at least think that tracking a ship through hyperspace is difficult but not impossible.
Who Tarkin also works for, and who would probably be pleased by the destruction of the Rebel base. Seriously, come up with a reason why Vader wouldn’t tell anyone else where the base is.
What retconning? Jimmy Smiths was present throughout the latter part of ROTS and was a participant at the conference when they decided to split and hide the twins. And Obi Wan’s actions even within the the sole context of A New Hope seems to suggest that after he got [del]Leia[/del] Bail’s message, he intended to take Luke by hook or by crook to the rebellion.
Hell, I won’t have put it past him to have dropped a few Force-Hints to the Stormtroopers to go to the Lars Homestead and burn it down.
There is none and while Yavin IV probably was the Rebel HQ, there is nothing in either movie to suggest that it contains the entire rebel fleet. For all we know the Mon Cala cruisers that got whacked was elsewhere when the sortie order came through and they picked up Her Highness and Not!Admiral Ackbar on the way.
But during the Death Star battle, he absolutely detected something about Luke - “The Force is strong in this one.”, but was a second away from killing him - target lock, “I have you now.” when Han swooped in to save the day.
The Leia in R1 looked absolutely nothing like the Fisher of ROTJ. That was definitely Fisher from ANH, possibly with a slightly longer face, but definitely a young Leia.
I was expecting him to walk out of the darkness. So yeah, the sudden illumination was perfect. That scene was lit primarily by his saber, which added even more atmosphere to the slaughter of the rebel redshirts. Their terror really made the scene as it perfectly captured Vaders reputation. Their scared and trying to get away when the very thing that they most fear happens. Vader arrives, and he’s out for blood.
It seemed to me in Empire that once the Falcon finally made the jump to hyperspace, all the Imperial officers on the bridge looked at each nervously like “that ship is gone”…not “let’s chance after it”.
We see time and time again - Hoth, Endor, Starkiller Base, all the locations in Rogue One, that there seems to be zero warning of a ship coming out of hyperspace. It’s never “ship approaching at light speed will be here in 5 hours”. It’s just ZOOOMP!!…ship’s here.
Which leads me to a bit of a nitpick with Rogue One and The Force Awakens. It’s pretty much established in canon that flying through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops. But now ships dropping out of hyperspace right in front of each other or within planet’s atmosphere or jumping to hyperspace from inside the hanger. I kind of always felt like travelling through hyperspace wasn’t the sort of thing that had a level of precision where you could just stop short a few hundred yards from another ship.
Also, all this hyperspace travel has me wondering about the Battle of Hoth. Vader was mad at clumsy, stupid Admiral Ozzel coming out of lightspeed too close to Hoth and revealing their position. What was the alternative? Come out of lightspeed on the edge of the system so the Rebels can spend the next several days or weeks or whatever watching a fleet of Star Destroyers slowly approaching Hoth at sub-light speed?
I understood it this way – from farther off, they could have bombarded Hoth before being detected (and thus having the base shield raised). I’m not sure if it makes sense that their weapons have longer ranges than planetary sensors, but that’s the only thing that fits the dialogue that I can think of. We know that probe droids can land on Hoth without being detected (at least as more than a mysterious signal) – maybe missiles or torpedoes could too.
The appearance in Rogue One made sense, but I hope they don’t get shoehorned into the Han Solo movie. He’d have zero reason to know them prior to meeting Luke. The galaxy is not that small, people.
The issue with Tarkin for me wasn’t that he fell slightly into the Uncanny Valley. It’s that they magically recreated a dead actor which yanked me out of the film. When I saw him, my thoughts were about how good the effect was, instead of what the character was doing and saying. I’d have been just as happy if they’d used a similar actor to play the part. Same with Leia. Although the effect was Impressive. Most Impressive.
It was lucky for Vader that the lease became open at Barad-Dur.
