Lately HBO has been on a Star Wars binge, so I’ve been re-watching all of them. While watching aforesaid classics, the following question came to mind. During Vader’s talk with Luke in TESB, it seems that Vader desires to overthrow the Emperor, has wanted to for some time, but yet lacks the power to do so. He wishes to corrupt Luke and rule the galaxy as father and son.
Yet despite all that, in RoTJall Vader has to do to kill the Emperor is pick him up and toss him down the drain. Vader made it look easy too, like the Emperor was a little rag doll. I guess the Emperor was surprised, but if surprise was the crucial element, then why did Vader wait so long to do it? Surely even the Emperor has to piss sometimes. Why couldn’t Vader just ambush him on the crapper? I admit, it would not have made for such a good movie… ooooooh… is that the reason?
Anyone have any info on this?
Amateur Star Wars fan,
John
Considering that he took the Emperor completely by surprise at the moment of his triumph, and still died as a result, getting Luke on his side doesn’t seem all that bad an idea.
Just to bring in something relevant, Luke has a greater potential in the Force than the Emperor does, about equal to Vader’s before the limb-choppage. A well-trained, experienced Luke, plus Vader, would probably be able to take the Emperor with neither of them dying.
But of course your final reason is right - surprising Palpatine on the toilet wouldn’t make for a good film. And things besides Jedi might return.
I also have an Empire question: In the beginning, Luke gets captured by the snowman creature. Han goes to find him. “Your Ton Ton will freeze before the first marker”, Han is told, before he starts out. When Han finds Luke, the Ton Ton dies. Did he freeze? If so, how could Ton Tons freeze before humans? Especially since they must have been warm from all that running. Poor Ton Tons.
Tauntaun. The snowman creature is a Wampa. According to my Guide to the Star Wars Universe:-
So there you go. Explains why in the films the tauntauns are kept indoors as opposed to being let out at night. Probably the amount of cold-weather clothing Han was wearing wasn’t all that useful, but I suppose we can assume they’ve come up with better heat-insulating materials. Plus a hulking suit would look bad on camera.
If the Emperor had succeeded, would the universe be doomed by Sith Rule forever? How much time would have gone by before a new hope would have appeared?
Maybe Leia could have trained and made a school with the help of Obi-Wan and Yoda’s ghosts?
Probably not doomed forever. The tricky thing is that the Skywalker family are all very powerful, and through Vader the Emperor has managed to kill off pretty much all the competition. No doubt he’d be killed or die at some point, though.
Leia could have trained. Force ghosty-type people don’t seem to be able to stick around all the time, but I can’t see a reason why they wouldn’t be able to help out. Really the problem is that Vader (and so Palpy) find out that she’s a potential threat without her having any training at all.
The Emperor was fully aware that Vader wanted to overthrow him, because that is in the nature of the Sith. But Palpatine also had power over Vader. What Darth needed to know he would be a successful ruler of the Galaxy was an apprentice. Without it, removing the Emperor would not achieve successful Sith rule. So he had to do two things simultaneously - find an Apprentice powerful in the Force, and kill Palpatine.
Palpatine believed he was manipulating Vader and Luke, Vader believed he could successfully overpower the Emperor, and survive, if he had Luke on his side. Luke knew he had to at least bring Vader to the Light Side again if he had any chance at all. Basically, all three (and Yoda) saw the need of a single confrontation to sort it out once and for all.
IMHO, Vader lacked the motivation/balls to oppose the Emporer on his own, he told Luke “you don’t understand the power of the dark side, I MUST serve my master.” When Palp was murdering his son before his eyes (and who would turn their back on a man while they murdered his son? I don’t care how much control you think you have) Vader found the motivation to act.
What? How does Yoda get any credit in all of this?
Yoda:
Failed to take any action to train Luke or Leia, and then petulantly complains that Luke is too old.
Lies to Luke to get to him to NOT find out the truth about Vader or seek him out.
Tells Luke not to go confront Vader. Luke goes, saves most of his friends (including the only other potential Jedi), learns the truth, and does some good. Yoda? Not so wise after all.
In short, is Yoda good for anything at all? Does he ever accomplish much of anything aside from learning how to turn into a force ghost for no discernable reason?
Only that he was aware that this was the only way.
Luke didn’t save any of his friends - Han got frozen and taken away, and Leia, Chewie, and Artoo were saved by Lando. Luke himself only barely got away through the unlikely convenience of an exhaust vent. As far as Yoda’s inexact* prediction was concerned, he was on the right track.
Hmm, I’ve always had a different take on the whole situation.
I think that Vader was using the ‘Join me and we’ll rule the galaxy as father and son’ line to trick him. The Emperor sent Vader to bring Luke back and he thought this line would be most likely to appeal to him. I don’t think Vader was capable of actually planning to off the Emperor because he’d been submissive to him all these years.
Why the Emperor wanted to have Luke brought in is another question. One possibility is that he was so powerful in the force he wanted him dead like all the other Jedi. The other possibility was the Emperor needed a new apprentice as Vader had gotten quite a few miles on him and was starting to need maintainance too frequently, always in the shop, etc.
The Emperor might not even care which scenario plays out, so he sets up the fight between the two of them in the Throne chamber. If Vader wins, he’s still got his servant, more loyal than ever. If Luke wins, he’s completed his trip to the Dark Side and will be easy to mold into a Sith.
Obi-Wan took responsibility for Luke, and after he died he brought Luke to Yoda. The “too old” protest I took as so much bullshit; he wanted to see if Luke wanted it badly enough.
Because he believed that Luke wasn’t ready to take on Vader or shoulder the responsibility of being his son. Looks like he was right, too.
Luke didn’t save anybody, that was Lando. All Luke did was almost get frozen and delivered to the Emperor, lose his hand, and risk his friends’ lives by having them come back into enemy territory to get him.
If Vader had won, the Emperor would’ve told him, “I always knew you were the best apprentice I ever had. Well met, Lord Vader.”
If Luke had won, he would’ve said, “So the son defeats the father. I always knew you were more powerful than he could’ve ever hoped to have been.”
Kind of like in Episode III (hush!) when Palpatine was watching Dooku duke it out with Anakin. He already had Skywalker in his grasp and already knew what he had to do to turn him. Had Dooku won, he probably would’ve shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh well. I guess I still have the stronger of the two.”
So how the heck do the wild ones survive? Do they build igloos? Do they hollow each other out and sleep inside each other? Do they just keep running around the planet so they’re always on the day side?
Tauntaun biology is as suspiciously inexact as their metabolism. What do they eat out on these ‘icy wastes?’ Why are they called ‘snow lizards’ when they’re covered with fur? Even here, at the peak of the franchise, the cannabis-strained seams were starting to show.
Perhaps the wild tauntauns have a good instinct for finding ice caves like the one the Wampa lives in? On their own, they know where they’re going, and won’t go too far from a cave. It’s only the domesticated ones who’ll go out far into the wastes without a cave nearby to overnight in. Or perhaps they’re not native to Hoth at all, but to some other environment which is cold, but not that cold, and the Rebels brought them along as a convenient beast of burden which is best-suited to the Hoth environment, even if they’re not completely suited.
That’s how I eventually came to stop grousing at the tauntaun problem and just accept it.
OTOH, nothing can explain away the ridiculous complex ecosystem on a tiny, barren asteroid-with-no-atmosphere set piece. Unless Lucas was anticipating inserting that scene into a Star Wars-based videogame of the future.
