But consider what the latter says about the former: imagine it’s back in the day, Han Solo is a stupid ten-year-old, and you’re a Force user who – hears the government is now hunting down and beheading every would-be Jedi they could find, after sending clone troopers to gun down every active Jedi in the field.
Do you hope they carefully split hairs while you float stuff for funsies, or do you hide your light under a bushel during the ensuing purge?
That’s my point. Everyone knew about The Force, but no one (especially in the time of the Original Trilogy) thinks of it as anything beyond a hokey old religion.
FWIW, the phrases “Dark Lord of the Sith”, “Grand Moff Tarkin”, and “Tusken Raider” are all in the original Star Wars novelization, that was released concurrently with the movie.
And IIRC, Jabba the Hutt makes an appearance in the novel as well, but is described as a scarred head atop a motorized cart of some sort holding his corpulent and/or injured body. I remember a friend of mine combined a GI Joe head with a toy tank to create his own Jabba figure.
Saw the OT in theaters as they came out. I am not sure I understand the OP’s confusion.
There are absolutely no other magic-like powers displayed or talked about in the OT than the force. On the other hand, Obi-Wan and Yoda spent 3 movies yammering on about the Dark Side of the Force and how easy it was to give in to it like Darth Vader did. Palpy was Darth Vaders boss, was EEEEvil, and had telekinesis and lightning force powers. He and Vader were clearly either former Jedi or force users, that had turned to the dark side early on. I don’t think they were labeled as Sith but they were (to me) unquestionably dark side force users.
“Young fool! Only now, at the end, do you understand: your feeble skills are no match for The Power Of The Dark Side.” It’s as obvious as the lightning, no?
-First, by the time Han Solo’s an adult the Jedi Order is gone, and the few surviving Jedi are in hiding.
-Anakin most likely wouldn’t have seen a Jedi since Tatooine wasn’t part of the Republic.
-And even so, you’re still going to have cynics that probably don’t believe in the Force, and think the Jedi are a bunch of crazies.
I was reading the book Secret History Of Star Wars which advances the theory that Palpatine was not originally a force user, and that all that had to be brought together for the prequels. It seemed obvious TO ME that Palpy WAS a force user not just a evil guy.
Originally Palpy was going to be sitting on a throne in the center of a lava lake deep in a planet called Had Abbadon BTW in ROTJ.
Even then, in every exterior shot of Coruscant that I can recall from the prequels, there are lines of sky-traffic and the cityworld’s streets are bustling… no curfews, no shortages… supposedly this planet is at the literal center of the conflict, and none of the residents even take notice.
“So the Senate Chamber got trashed, huh? Well, I got just one question for you… what the hell is a Senate Chamber?”
Oh I see. I don’t think it holds up at all even pre-prequels (heh) but it can be fun to speculate about things like this. I don’t think any of the EU was out at the time ROJ was in theaters and there was very little information about Palpatine at the time. Was this book written before or after the prequels?
Was the bit about the throne in the lava lake originally supposed to be in the script or was it from the Secret History book?
Not entirely true; as I noted earlier, there were a small number of novels which were published after ANH came out, but before RotJ…these were the earliest seeds of what would later be known as the EU. Those included Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (Alan Dean Foster, 1978), and the Han Solo Adventures trilogy (Brian Daley, 1979-80).
There was also a trilogy featuring Lando Calrissian, but those came out in the summer / fall of 1983, on the heels of RotJ’s theatrical release.
And, there was the Marvel Comics series, which started in 1977, though they’re now considered to be only of “secondary canon”.
That much is true, from my recollection. The novels I mention above didn’t touch on the Emperor at all, AFICR, and I don’t think the comics did much, if at all.
I laughed. 
Is every story’s hero a knight in shining armor?
A modern day good guy/bad guy movie may have the bad guy refer to the good guy as a knight in shining armor (e.g. "Where is your knight in shining armor, now? [evil laugh]) in the same condescending way that Owen refers to Ben and Motti refers to Vader. They are sorcerer-type characters, but they aren’t sorcerers in-story. You could just as easily call them witches.
AFAIK, in 1983 all this SW universe stuff hadn’t been built yet. In 1983, people thought Palpatine was a movie character. Later, the the so-called “fanwank” virus hit…
Are you sure? He describes it as “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us.” So, okay, it surrounds the living thing in question, but only upon getting created by that living thing; it’s not some outside source like a demon or another dimension, but something comparatively internal.
That’s a good point. Still, it’s something that has its own independent existence, regardless of origin. Else, how could you sense "a disturbance in the Force; or how could certain locations have force qualities, like that tree on Dagobah?
If you’re talking about Midichlorians, I thought they were merely the conduit to access the Force, not the creators of it.
What? No. That’s not – no.
I’m talking about the Jedi.
Ah, I forgot the line “Created by all living things” as said by Obi Wan Kenobi.
I think the idea behind midichlorians was supposed to be that, since the Force connects to all living things, a person with a large number of symbiotic organisms in their body has that much larger of a connection to the Force.
Yeah, it’s a genetic explanation for why it’s stronger in the Skywalker family line.