He let them go. It was the only reason for the ease of their escape.
Plus lots of people are strong with the Force. And I don’t think Anakin went back to a lot of the Mos Eisley A&M homecoming games to visit his old friends and family.
I remain astonished by the great variety of misspellings of Obi-Wan’s name in this thread.
And people always forget the final “a” in Alderaan.
Droids pretty much identical to Threepio were a dime a dozen when Anakin got his legs bobbed. I think he probably built Threepio from the equivalent of a Lego starter kit (coverings not included - sold separately).
And if the Stormtroopers were all that and a bag of potato chips, why did that one bump his head on the top of the hatchway on the Death Star?
Actually, it’s the middle “a” they forget.
Because they didn’t open the blast doors.
Look, we’ve seen dozens and dozens of protocol droids in the original trilogy. They’re all over the place, there’s nothing particularly custom about C3PO that identifies him as the particular droid that Annakin built from spare parts. Yes, it’s pretty dumb, because why the fuck would baby Annakin build himself a protocol droid? Yes, they can communicate with moisture vaporators, but Annakin wasn’t on a moisture farm, he was a garage slave in a junkyard.
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.
I like to avoid the issue and call him Ben.
Anyway, Vader didn’t find the kids because he thought they died when Padme did.
Luke might not have been hidden particularly well, but how many of you go looking for distant barely relatives secretly raising your child you thought was dead?
Leia, what, out of the billions of babies in the galaxy why would he suspect Organa’s daughter was anyone special to him? She might have strong potential in the Force, but she doesn’t even know this so unless he goes around with a midichlorian detector randomly scanning everyone he comes across, that’s not gonna give her up.
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. And the fact that Luke has his last name means if he just runs across the name of Owens kid, it quickly becomes pretty obvious what happened.
And indeed, thats presumably what did happen at some point between New Hope and Empire, since Vader finds out about Lukes existence and comes up with a complicated plan to trap him.
If they’d just bothered to change Luke’s name to the admittedly much less cool sounding Luke Lars, it would’ve been a lot less obvious.
Have you tried looking out of a Stormtrooper’s helmet? You can barely see right in front of you. And fuhgedabout peripheral vision.
The empire was going after force sensitive babys. Now Leia’s force sensitivity was the least of her trouble when Vader actually discovered them (on the death star), not so much when she was an baby/infant and at a time when the empire was actively hunting such children down.
Look, Vader had no idea Leia was his daughter, let alone that she was strong in the force, when he had her in his personal torture chamber on the frikken Death Star. And again on Cloud City, he’s happily torturing her and Chewie and Han, just to lure Luke into a trap. So I doubt he’s gonna notice her any other random time he bumped into her at a Coruscant cocktail party.
And fuhgedabout breathing without artificial assistance too. A friend of mine is in the 501st Legion “Vader’s Fist”, and tells me that wearing the helmet when the temperature is over 70 degrees without turning on the internal ventilation fans (3 of them) is a quick ticket to Passingoutsville.
But your point is well taken. Considering the restricted view from inside one of those things, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” is simply an acknowledgement of reality.
[QUOTE=AK84]
The empire was going after force sensitive babys.
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No once in “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” or “Return of the Jedi” is it ever even hinted that anything like this is happening. Only six people ever demonstrate any ability to sense the Force; Obi-Wan, Luke, Darth Vader, Yoda, the Emperor, and, at the very end, Leia. Outside of them, the Force appears to be a dead issue. Vader and the Emperor never demonstrate any interest in finding babies. They are interested solely in Luke, and Vader becomes aware that Luke has a Force-sensistive sister only in thier final confrontation - he doesn’t specifically know it’s Princess Leia.
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. It’s referred to as an “ancient religion” with the sort of respect people on the SDMB treat Scientology. At the commencement of Star Wars, Darth Vader is basically the only open practitioner of the Force in the galaxy - Obi-Wan and Yoda are in hiding, Luke and Leia don’t even know they possess the ability, and the Emperor seems to spend most of his time cackling. And Vader doesn’t seem to have a lot of chances to use it outside of getting his way in meetings. And that seems okay, because it makes the Force special and kind of hints at what this civilization lost.
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.
Forgetting about all this in 20 years would be like an American in 2011, who is 40 years old, forgetting about the existence of Ronald Reagan, or of the Gulf War. 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.
The original series hints that the Jedi order is LONG dead; that Obi-Wan and Luke’s father were the last of a breed that was already pretty rare, and Vader just bumped off the remnants of a tiny sect, so it’s believable that Han Solo doesn’t even believe the Force exists or that Jedi powers are the real deal. (Given the astounding powers attributed to Force users later in the series, one wonders why, when Han expresses skepticism, Obi-Wan doesn’t just start flinging things around the room.)
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?
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; that might even explain Vader’s choke ability (he might not be physically choking the admiral; maybe he’s making the Admiral think he cannot breathe.) Vader and Yoda are presented as* extreme *masters of Force power; it’s fairly clearly noted that their abilities are very unusual. For the most part the Force’s capabilities are fairly nebulous and vaguely defined, and much of them is related to perception; the ability not only to cloud the judgment of others, but to enhance one’s own perception - to know where blaster fire is coming from, or to know when to launch the proton torpedoes without a computer’s help, or simply to be be supernaturally aware of impending danger. The idea that you can just sense so-and-so is Force-capable by meeting them is only once hinted at in the prequels, when Vader remarks “the Force is strong in this one” during the trench run battle, and for all we know that’s just his way of saying “sumbitch can really fly, I’m having a hell of a time shooting him.”
In the prequels, however, the Force is effectively magical ability on par with Dungeons and Dragons; it’s everywhere, and it’s immensely powerful. All trained users have astounding telekinetic powers and they can sense the Force in other people with the ease of noting the manner of someone’s dress. Obi-Wan, who in Star Wars uses his Force powers rarely, in the prequels uses them routinely, for things like telling a pot dealer to fuck off.
Which, to be honest, makes it suck. In the original series the Force is mystical and when it gets trotted out, it’s either awesome (Yoda picking up the X-wing) or really frightening (Vader throwing stuff at Luke.) In the prequels it’s just a set of video game powers.
RickJay I’m going to print out that post and use it to wrap my prequel DVD set to prevent accidental viewing.
Honestly, the only way I’ve ever heard it explained that made any sense at all refers to Obi-Wan’s famous line, “He’s more machine now than man.” Vader has truly lost touch with his humanity, and so he doesn’t feel in quite the same way that a human does. That’s undercut by his “I am your father” line in The Empire Strikes Back, though.
Presumably, though, an orthodox-trained Jedi like Obi-Wan doesn’t use his powers simply to prove a theological point with a non-Jedi; that seems like a frivolous misuse of the powers, especially with an impressionable Luke standing nearby.
I always assumed that Vader was implying that there are natural “Force adepts”* who use the Force unconsciously, without training, and in a very limited fashion, so as to be just a smidgen faster, stronger, and more accurate than the average human. You’re quite right, though, that it may simply be Vader’s way of paying a compliment.
Your larger points, though, are entirely correct, and I think it’s a good analysis. I just wanted to pick those two nits.
*I realize that “force adept” is an Expanded Universe term, but it does apply here.
Excellent post. 'The Emperor seems to spend most of his time cackling. ’ 
Although there are a couple of inconsistencies in the three original movies - I’ve always been sure Leia wasn’t intended to be Vader’s daughter/Luke’s sister - they’re nothing compared to the inconsistencies with the prequels. They even messed up something as straightforward as casting an actor the right age to play Obi-Wan - Ewan McGregor played the role really well, but he was at least twenty years too young to be Ben.
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)
Watched it again this morning on FX and it inspired me to ask a question (unrelated to this thread generally, but I’m putting it here anyway) about it. I’ve seen it hundreds of times and the end has never made much sense to me.
They’re skimming the trench (which is also questionable - it’s not covered, why not just fly there and take turns taking shots?) and Vader is on Luke’s tail. He gets a lock on Luke’s X-wing and says “I have you now!” However, just as he’s taking his shot, the Millennium Falcon comes out of nowhere and shoots Vader’s wingman. This is where I’m confused -
A) how did Vader’s shot not hit Luke? He got it off in time
B) how did Vader get to spinning off into space? Was it the force of the explosion right off his wing? It all happens so fast that I have trouble parsing out the action.
a) A wizard did it.
b) IIRC, Vader’s fighter was physically knocked away by the impact of his wingman’s TIE fighter. The Falcon zaps the wingman, who slams into Vader, who spins out of frame.