# Star Wars A New Hope, Obiwan taking Luke on a suicide mission? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 27, 2011, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559 "2011-12-27T20:41:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/41 "2012-01-02T02:02:10Z")
Almost, **silensus**. [But not quite.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8_OcN5FXmg) ---
**Author:** ![UFC\_Is\_Sux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/46a35a/32.png) [@UFC\_Is\_Sux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UFC_Is_Sux)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/42 "2012-01-02T02:45:30Z")
> [@interface2x](#): > > A) how did Vader’s shot not hit Luke? He got it off in time My crackbrained theory: Luke set all shields aft when the fire coming from ahead of him stopped, requiring several direct hits from the pursuing Vader to destroy him. One or two of Vader’s shots might have connected but Vader’s TIE fighter veers slightly upward when Solo splashes the first of his wingmen, making his subsequent shots miss high. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/43 "2012-01-02T05:17:51Z")
One thing that has always bugged me is Obi using his lightsaber in the cantina, a fugitive who knows the empire is at that moment right on top of them with Mos Eisley crawling with Storm Troopers uses the one weapon only associated with the old Jedi order, that non force users cannot use without killing themselves. :smack:😕 Its not like Obi should have been intimidated and scared of those aliens like a farm boy and presumably the audience, guy has been all over the damn galaxy. So why did he not use a force power to stop the assault, something hard to prove either way or leave witnesses? Dumb! ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/44 "2012-01-02T06:15:16Z")
> [@grude](#): > > One thing that has always bugged me is Obi using his lightsaber in the cantina, a fugitive who knows the empire is at that moment right on top of them with Mos Eisley crawling with Storm Troopers uses the one weapon only associated with the old Jedi order, that non force users cannot use **without killing themselves**. :smack:😕 Not quite true. To use with any finesse, maybe. But Han uses Luke’s light saber to save his frozen ass on Hoth. But yeah, the _zap schwing_ of Ben’s weapon should have had every snitch in the cantina comming the Feds in a nanosecond. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/45 "2012-01-02T06:38:00Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > But yeah, the _zap schwing_ of Ben’s weapon should have had every snitch in the cantina comming the Feds in a nanosecond. And it probably did, as evidenced by the stormtroopers coming into the cantina just a couple of minutes later, as Obi-Wan and Han finished up their negotiation, with the bartender helpfully pointing out where Obi-Wan was sitting. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/46 "2012-01-02T14:20:01Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > the _zap schwing_ Band name. ---
**Author:** ![Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/47 "2012-01-02T16:42:35Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > One of the many weird disconnects between the three good movies and the shitty prequels is that fact. In SW-ESB-ROTJ, the Force is used by basically nobody we can see except a few principal characters. A well-travelled, experienced, and clever space adventurer, Han Solo, clearly and unambiguously states that **he has never seen anything that would suggest the Force exists** and hints that the Force is just sleight of hand bullshit. That’s because those few principal characters are the only ones who ever received training in how to use their force ability. There could be thousands of people with untapped force ability at the time of ep4, but you’d never know without a midichlorian count and training. And Han would have been about ten years old at the end of the Clone Wars and probably wouldn’t remember seeing the force in action, even in the unlikely event that he had seen anything. > [@RickJay](#): > > But then according to the prequels, just twenty years before, Force users and Force stuff and Force tricks everywhere were as common as pretzels. There are a LOT of Jedi - they’re still a minority but they’re well enough known that a kid on an outer rim world, the SW equivalent of Pitcairn Island, knows what a Jedi is. Where in the prequels is the force being used “everywhere”? It’s used mostly for combat. It’s not like they’re doing Jedi street theater. And just because everyone knows who the Jedi are doesn’t mean everyone knows their methods. > [@RickJay](#): > > Obi-Wan Kenobi would be a historical figure roughly on par with General Norman Schwarzkopf; a lot of your more ignorant doofi would forget who he was but a pretty substantial number of people would remember him well. He’d have encyclopedia entries, there’d be news articles lying around about him - the Empire can’t have erased all of it. Where do you get this? Do you really think that the Republic under Palpatine enjoyed the same freedom of the press as we do? The Jedi were painted as traitors at the end of the war, and the few people left alive who knew the truth would be insignificant against the historical whitewash that followed. > [@RickJay](#): > > But in the prequels, they were as important and as acknowledged a part of public life as the FBI would be to an American today - actually, even more so, as the Jedi have an independent influence and a military presence the FBI doesn’t. And the galaxy just forgot about this in a span of time shorter than Madonna’s career? Huh? I’d equate the Jedi more with the CIA than the FBI. Very shadowy and secretive. Everyone knows who the CIA is, but very little of their methods and what they actually do. I see little evidence in the prequels that the Jedi are that visible to the average citizen. > [@RickJay](#): > > Of course, the other disconnect is that in the original trilogy the Force just isn’t all that powerful, although they bump it up a little in every movie. Obi-Wan’s abilities in “Star Wars” are primarily limited to tricks of deception… In the prequels it’s just a set of video game powers. Ben was probably out of practice after twenty years in the desert. Of course, in the prequels they’re fighting an all out galactic war, and they didn’t have prices on their heads. The events of ep.4 required Ben to be more subtle. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/48 "2012-01-02T17:21:53Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > But then according to the prequels, just twenty years before, Force users and Force stuff and Force tricks everywhere were as common as pretzels. There are a LOT of Jedi - they’re still a minority but they’re well enough known that a kid on an outer rim world, the SW equivalent of Pitcairn Island, knows what a Jedi is. They go around leading armies and winning wars. They have a large, well-funded organization for training themselves and are in deep with the Republic government. The prequels also establish that the Republic is made up of a thousand worlds and that there’s only a few thousand Jedi, at most, across the entire galaxy. What are the odds that a young kid like Han would have any experience with Jedi when he was just a kid? Think of it this way. There’s only 400 billionaires in the US but 330 million total people. How many people have ever met a billionaire, especially since they exist in a ratio of 825,000:1. Now realize that the number of regular Republic citizens to Jedi is probably 1,000,000,000:1. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/49 "2012-01-02T17:32:13Z")
What we discover in the prequels is totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand, because we didn’t know any of that garbage when the movie was released. Therefore all suppositions and speculations must disregard everything that came after (or before.) ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/50 "2012-01-02T23:42:36Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > But then according to the prequels, just twenty years before, Force users and Force stuff and Force tricks everywhere were as common as pretzels. There are a LOT of Jedi - they’re still a minority but they’re well enough known that a kid on an outer rim world, the SW equivalent of Pitcairn Island, knows what a Jedi is. They go around leading armies and winning wars. They have a large, well-funded organization for training themselves and are in deep with the Republic government. I love the prequels but this was a huge mistake ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/51 "2012-01-03T03:15:13Z")
I sometimes think that it kinda makes sense for Luke to be with his Uncle. **Vader** : ‘I still have weird dreams about where my mother died and I took my first real step towards the dark side.’ **Palp** : ‘Dreams, man, ya know.’ ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/52 "2012-01-03T05:36:04Z")
> [@grude](#): > > One thing that has always bugged me is Obi using his lightsaber in the cantina, a fugitive who knows the empire is at that moment right on top of them with Mos Eisley crawling with Storm Troopers uses the one weapon only associated with the old Jedi order, that non force users cannot use without killing themselves. :smack:😕 I don’t have a problem with this, actually. Obi Wan is in that cantina because the Rebel Alliance has specifically contacted him to help openly fight the Empire. From the moment Obi Wan saw Leia’s message, he was no longer in hiding. > [@The Second Stone](#): > > There is too much of an age difference between MacGregor and Guiness. But MacGregor did a bang up job where every other actor (except McDiarmind, aka Palpatine) was lost under Lucas’ direction. Gary Oldman would have been able to carry it off. (Inspired by Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) McGregor was 34 when he made _Revenge of the Sith_. Alec Guinness was 63 when he made _Star Wars_. Luke is meant to be nineteen\* when he meets Obi Wan, which makes McGregor all of ten years younger than he should be, which is not that significant a difference. Factor in the aging effects of seeing your best friend and pupil murder everyone you’ve ever known or cared about, and subsequently spending twenty years living as a hermit in the middle of a planet-sized desert, and Guinness is actually looking pretty spritely in his scenes in the original movie. I liked **RickJay** ’s post, but really, a lot of that stuff is right out of the first movie. Obi Wan is addressed as “General Kenobi” by Leia’s hologram, and she talks about his service in the Clone Wars with her father. Obi Wan explicitly names the rise of the Emperor as the beginning of the decline of the Jedi Order. When I was a kid, I always thought of the stuff Obi Wan talks about as occuring a Long Time Ago, but really, it’s pretty clear from watching the first film with adult eyes that Obi Wan is talking about relatively recent history. I wonder if the disconnect is a result of first seeing the film as a young child, when "twenty years ago"really does seem like a ancient history. \*Mark Hamil, incidentally, was 26 when he first played Luke. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/53 "2012-01-03T05:38:35Z")
Oh, and while I was on IMDB checking birthdates, I noticed that [the original fight choreographer for _Star Wars_](http://www.imdb.com/news/ni20436275/) just died. RIP, Bob Anderson. That fight in _Empire_ still blows anything in the prequel trilogy out of the water. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/54 "2012-01-03T14:26:22Z")
> [@outlierrn](#): > > **Palp** : ‘Dreams, man, ya know.’ I LOLed. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/55 "2012-01-03T14:57:08Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > PADME should have owned C3PO, and ANNIKIN should have owned R2D2. Except, everybody loves R2, the real hero of the Star Wars saga, and while 3PO isn’t Jar-Jar level annoying, he’s pretty annoying and only works as straight man to R2. So Lucas needed to get R2 onscreen early and often, and so you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it…well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men. That actually makes so much sense that it actually seems stupid that it’s not in the movie. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/56 "2012-01-03T23:54:33Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > He doesn’t really need to look them up specifically to see if they’re raising his son though. They’re his only living relatives, so its hardly unthinkable he might check up on them in the 20 or so years between the films just out of curiousity. Except, even though Owen is technically his step-brother, they only met once, for about 20 minutes, after his mom was kidnapped, murdered, and possibly raped by sandpeople. I don’t find it a stretch at all that after that he just basically said “fuck this dustball” and never thought about Owen again. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2012, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/57 "2012-01-04T01:09:47Z")
> [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](#): > > That’s because those few principal characters are the only ones who ever received training in how to use their force ability. There could be thousands of people with untapped force ability at the time of ep4, but you’d never know without a midichlorian count and training. And Han would have been about ten years old at the end of the Clone Wars and probably wouldn’t remember seeing the force in action, even in the unlikely event that he had seen anything. I again have to point out that an advanced, large, multicultural society is going to have a media. The absence of a collective memory in Star Wars is every bit as unbelievable as anything else I’ve mentioned. I referred to this, but let me address your point about Han being ten when “Revenge of the Sith” ends. Assuming that’s about his age, which I suppose it is, it’s just not possible that something that was as huge a deal as the Jedi order when Han Solo was ten years old would be unknown to him. By way of comparison, it’s been twenty years since the existence of the Soviet Union; can you imagine every 30-year-old not knowing the Soviet Union existed? I was born in 1971 and was only four when the Vietnam War ended, but I’m quite aware of the Vietnam War and if I met any 40-year-old who didn’t know what it was I’d think they were an idiot. And we know the Jedi are known throughout the galaxy in the prequels. Their existence is not a secret; it’s common knowledge. People in jerkwater Tattooine know who the Jedi are, know what weapons they carry, know they will sometimes use mind tricks. It’s just NOT in the cards that the existence of a widespread Jedi Order with a great big damn HQ right in the heart of Coruscant and very considerable resources would be forgotten. You make the point that they were painted as traitors, but that’s irrelevant. They weren’t painted as being _nonexistent_, and the Force can’t have been painted out of history. It’s just not believable; the Empire is a relatively decentralized thing. Tarkin notes at the beginning of “Star Wars” that practical control of the Empire’s constituent systems is left with local governors; they’re counting on the Death Star’s sheer shock-and-awe factor to keep them from open rebellion. It’s simply ludicrous, and, frustratingly, wholly unnecessary. They didn’t have to write the prequels the way they did. I see Miller’s point that you can’t make the prequels that far back or else Luke can’t be Vader’s son - you have to fit it into a timeline that includes Obi-Wan, Luke and Vader (and I really didn’t have a problem with Ewan MacGregor’s age.) But the story told in the prequels is just, well, really frickin’ stupid. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2012, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/58 "2012-01-04T01:17:21Z")
Keep in mind that the _last_ time Obi-Wan tried to train someone the apprentice turned into a Dark Lord of the Sith and spearheaded the near-extinction of all Jedi everywhere. Yoda isn’t the only “washed-up master that refuses to take a new student” character in the story: I think Obi-Wan was basically that and only started to train Luke when he had no other choice. He’d done his job keeping Imperial eyes away from Luke, keeping an eye out for his safety from the distance. When the Empire showed up looking for the droids he saw the opportunity to move Luke and help the resistance in one go. ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2012, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/59 "2012-01-04T05:08:27Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I again have to point out that an advanced, large, multicultural society is going to have a media. The absence of a collective memory in Star Wars is every bit as unbelievable as anything else I’ve mentioned. But this isn’t just a multicultural society, this is an intergalactic society–and the best interstellar transmissions we saw were crappy, static-y black-and-white holograms that can’t even handle an asteroid field. It seems entirely plausible that even that technology was mostly limited to government/military use under the Republic (and certainly under the Empire), so someone on Corellia isn’t just going to be turning the video monitor to see a live correspondent with the day’s news from Coruscant. Sci-fi/Space Fantasy almost never really handles communications issues well, I don’t think it’s all that unreasonable to think that news travels more like it did in medieval Europe than it does now–and in that case the Jedi might be playing the part of the Knights Templar. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2012, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559/60 "2012-01-04T05:14:22Z")
Whoah, where are you getting the idea that Han’s never heard of the Jedi? He doesnt believe in the Force, but that’s entirely different than not knowing about the Jedi. I don’t believe in Jesus, but I’ve still heard of the Catholic church. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-a-new-hope-obiwan-taking-luke-on-a-suicide-mission/607559.md?page=4)