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This is an "It Just Bugs Me" entry. This area of the wiki is more friendly to the idea of conversation in the article itself, due to the highly subjective content. The regular entry on this topic is in the main wiki.
Star Wars
Star Wars
  • Anyone tell me why the jedi in AOTC simply did not just use the force? There were apparently thousands of them on one side of the arena, while the droids attacked from the other side. It seems much easier to get the jedi lined up, and to use the force, perhaps force push. That way no jedi would die, the droids would all be force pushed into the wall behind, and would therefore block the entrances where they entered. The sheer power of thousands of jedi using the force would crush the droids, and even the other jedi could move out and hack the droids to pieces. It just seemed to me that the jedi took the route of defeating the droids so that as many jedi as possible would end up in body bags. Mace Windu was seen in the clone wars cartoon to take out a droid army by himself. Why didn't the jedi just do that?
    • First of all, the cartoon exaggerates things. A lot. As powerful as the Jedi are, I have a hard time imagining them capable of taking out an army of that size alone. Secondly, use of the Force requires concentration. If you're right in the heat of battle, why waste time trying to concentrate on a Force push with enmies on all sides, when a lightsabre can take them out just as easily and protect you from laser fire? Finally, at this time in the Star Wars universe, there hadn't been any major enemies for the Jedi to fight en massé for quite some time. They were simply out of practice.
    • "Thousands?" Are we watching the same movie here, because there were less than a hundred of them in that battle. Also, the droids were coming from every direction in the arena, as were the Jedi, and it very quickly devolved into an unstructured melee.
      • Actually, it was 200, give or take a dozen or so.
  • Did anyone else's jaw hit the floor in Invincible when Jaina Solo gets information out of the Galactic Alliance Guard soldier she had taken prisoner BY THREATENING TO TORTURE HER WITH THE FORCE? I couldn't believe that they had the "hero" do this in a series that was full of Anvilicious "torture is always wrong" moments. As Jaina herself puts it: "There are a lot of ways a Jedi can hurt you - most of them so bad that you can't even scream." Yes, the girl was under duress but wow. Maybe Jacen won't be the last Solo to turn to the Dark Side...
    • Threatening to use torture != using torture in the first place.
  • Ok, so Luke goes to train with Yoda while Han and Leia are on the run from the Empire... so how long are Han and Leia on the run for? Days? Weeks? Months? For any of these answers it doesn't make any sense for Luke to become so honed while training with Yoda, considering young potential Jedi are trained from such an early age.
    • He's already been trained by Obi-Wan, and in the years between the two movies he's clearly advanced enough to manipulate objects training by himself. Yoda simply provides him with some direction, and its worth pointing out that Luke abandons his training long before he should.

  • So if Luke turned off his targeting computer, how did the proton torpedoes know when to do their 90 degree turn? Were they preprogrammed to follow the route down into the core, so all the pilots had to do was fire at the proper moment and then let the torps do all the maneuvering by themselves?
    • He guided them with the Force. I thought that was the whole point.
      • You're missing the point. Like, how? Did he use the Force to shove them in physically or did he alter their programming on the fly? Somebody explain this to me.
      • Yes, you can move stuff with the force
      • At that point in the series Luke could barely pull his pants up with the Force. He probably couldn't guide torpedos with it, and fly his ship at the same time.
      • It could have been instinctive; he is, after all, the son of The Chosen One. Once he knew subconsciously he'd be able to do things like this, he could have
    • The targeting computer was to get through the jamming. Its likely the torpedoes were preprogrammed to home in on the largest power source they could, but they needed to be guided to the exhaust vent itself through the massive jamming field around the Death Star itself. The instrumentation on the targeting computers on the fighters couldn't get through said jamming fields, whichw as why theyw ere missing. Once Luke blind-fired the torpedoes and guided them at their target with the Force, the dropped into the exhaust vent.
    • My take on it was that the torpedoes were guided to a degree ("lock onto the big glowy heat source"), but not well enough to avoid the walls unless carefully aimed. After all, the Rebellion are running on a "beg, borrow, steal" economy, so they probably wouldn't have access to anything better-guided. Luke's connection with the Force instinctively told him when to fire after he let go of a mechanical crutch like the targeting computer, just like how he got better at dealing with the remote with the blast shield down - trusting the Force rather than a computer.
  • Okay, we all know that originally GL shot a human to stand in for Jabba in Ep4, but cut the scene. My original theory was that Lucas shot this scene, didn't like it, so he wrote and shot the Greedo scene later to cover the same plot points (dumping cargo, bounty on your head, etc.) That would also explain the reuse of Han's line about being boarded — "Do you think I have a choice?" in the Greedo scene (as he unsnaps his holster.) Thus my original conclusion was that if GL really wanted the "new" Jabba scene in the "new" Star Wars, he should have cut the Greedo scene, as having both was redundant. And then I rewatched the original. ( footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3642rswxQsw ) And noted that "Jabba" says "Why did you have to fry poor Greedo like that?" And noted Han said "...come see me yourself. Don't send one of your twerps." And thus GL had decided to use both scenes, all along, redundancy be damned. And therefore, I now think GL can't write dialogue for bantha poodoo.
    • What's your point? That scene establishes why Jabba let Han go without sending another bounty hunter after him.
    • You're correct - when Lucas cut the Jabba scene, he reshot extra material to be inserted into the middle of the Greedo scene. And for some reason he included both scenes, in full, in the Special Editions.
    • Plus, wasn't Han shooting Greedo a major establishing scene for his character? Oh, wait...
  • Re: "Your father wanted you to have this, when you were old enough... If, of course, he knew you had existed and I hadn't just chopped his legs off. But I swiped it from what I thought was his burned corpse, so um, here."
Maybe it should have been "Your father would have wanted you to have this..."
  • Yeah, because we all know Obi-wan, who is actually more or less actively deceiving Luke about how his father died, is going to tell him exactly what his father said regarding the lightsaber. Instead of, you know, making something up.
    • Good point though - why does Obi-wan lie so often, about things there no reason to lie about? Not that I remotely get why he couldn't either have just told Luke the truth or if he really thought that would be too demoralising - ha! just said "Your father died in the war. Bad things happen in war. It certainly had nothing personally to do with Darth Vader! Who is a very bad guy, but hey - don't get into a big Dark Side-Inducing rage about him!" But anyway, assuming that makes sense "from a certain point of view," why lie when "This was your father's - you should have it, it's what he would have wanted." would be perfectly true?
    • I always figured that when Obi-Wan told Luke that Darth Vader destroyed his father, it was from a figurative stand. As in Darth Vader the Sith personality overrode all the good that Anakin has done.
    • Yes, I know that's how he defends it, but it's just not good enough, dammit. For one thing he gave Luke no indication that he was speaking metaphorically, he knew perfectly well that what he said would be taken to be straightforward fact. And said "Betrayed and murdered" which is even less likely to be read as figurative by an uninformed hearer than "destroyed". If when asked to explain the facts, you say something that might, at a stretch, be seen as metaphorically compatible with the facts by someone who already knows them, but which you know cannot possibly have any effect other than to mislead someone who does not, then you're lying. Like if when asked for directions to the post office, which is on the left, you say "It's on the right," but justify yourself that this is true, so long as you keep going in a straight line all the way around the world." It's still obviously a lie, because you knowingly gave him a false view of the factual situation. I know, I know, I'm hardly the first to have a problem with this. Obi-Wan's just such an amazing git.
    • It makes it more meaningful if he indicates that his father would have wanted him to have it, instead of just giving it to Luke.
    • It's surely still fairly meaningful to receive a legacy from your dead father even without explicit confirmation that he willed this to happen, and in any case, why does Obi-Wan want the situation to be more emotive than it already is? Won't that only fuel grief, resentment and hate, and lead to the Dark Side?
    • Yeah, because telling a kid his dead father who he never knew in the first place wants him to have this lightsaber is going to be the thing that pushes him over to the dark side. I mean, Luke is a wuss at that point, but seriously.
    • On its own, of course it wouldn't. But it's just one extra, entirely unnecessary lying detail to make the lying story of Luke's lovely heroic dead dad whom that bastard Darth Vader murdered even more inflammatory to him than it already is.
    • Obi-Wan is clearly not thinking purely objectively and rationally here. Anakin's fall is the big traumatic incident that his whole later emotional life has revolved around. It's probably not really *possible* for Obi-Wan to try to downplay either Anakin's heroic life or Vader's horrible evil with a straight face. In trying to come up with a way to talk to Luke to motivate him to live a good life, the life of Anakin Skywalker is the only story he can find that moves him; in trying to convince Luke how horrible and awful the Dark Side is, the metaphorical "murder" of Anakin by the Vader personality is even more so the one example that dominates all his thoughts.
    • And there's also a practical reason for the Vader-as-Anakin's-murderer story — if it's established from the beginning that Vader "killed" Anakin it predisposes Luke to see Vader as an entity of pure evil who needs to be killed to stop the terror, *not* as his poor long-lost father whom he needs to redeem. Remember that Ben sees his own greatest failure as failing to recognize how far gone Anakin was, failing to overcome his deep personal attachment to Anakin ("attachment" being verboten for the Old Jedi) and failing to kill him once and for all when he had the chance. Ben thinks that an uncompromising and unflinching attitude toward Anakin's fall into total depravity is the only way to defeat him.
    • Ben and Yoda are, of course, both wrong about this. There *is* a fine line between an uncompromising, dispassionate antipathy toward evil and crossing over into contempt and hatred for evil people, which is itself an evil line of thought that leads to the Dark Side. The Old Jedi were foolish about this and refused to recognize this as an error in their own thinking; the Sith, meanwhile, knew all about this and had formulated their entire strategy for corrupting and destroying the Jedi on it. Palpatine and Vader *counted on* the idea that Ben and Yoda would've tried to poison Luke against his father and turn Luke into a slayer of his own kin; it was Luke's unwillingness to do this, his "weakness", his inability to become a Knight Templar, that was his real strength.
    • That's one of the best "Old Jedi vs New Jedi" summaries I've ever read.
    • Alternatively, Obi-Wan simply has learned from the mistakes of the old Jedi and the mistakes of Anakin, and he's trying to bring Luke up differently. With Anakin, he was extremely forthcoming, very blatant about things like wanting him to spy on Palpatine when he could've just said "So, has the chancellor done anything WEIRD lately?" every now and then, to say nothing of his training, where he thought being honest with Anakin ("[You're a match for Yoda] only in your mind, my very young apprentice") to the point of downright demoralizing him was the best way to do it. Now, just look at the scene in RotJ where he explains that what he said "Was true...from a certain point of view." Luke's response is to stare at him incredulously, obviously understanding the point, but not understanding how that makes it okay. Compare with Episode III where this is clearly referenced, "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" And earlier, when Obi-Wan says "Only a Sith deals in absolutes," possibly the biggest logical fallacy spoken in the series. Obi-Wan has learned from all of these things, and what he's learned is that he can't just say "This is how it is" and expect someone, Luke or otherwise, to believe you. Call Obi-Wan's actions machinations or a dirty scheme if that's what it feels like, but in the end, he screwed up with Anakin, and succeeded with Luke.
    • A simpler idea along the same lines as the above: Obi-Wan is teaching Luke the power of differing points of view. A certain point of view let Anakin legitimately see the Jedi as evil and Palpatine as good, in Anakin's own words. Luke is certainly much less likely to be swayed by semantics and other wordplay after this, and will have learned to look at the world objectively instead of being satisfied with what he sees in front of him at any given time.
    • All this ignores, of course, the obvious non-Fan Wank out-of-character fact that the line was written that way because George Lucas didn't initially know that Vader was Luke's father; that was a plot point he tacked on later, just like Leia being Luke's sister.
  • Why do Sith Masters encourage their students to try and kill them if they become weak? If you're really evil, the first thing you do is change the fucking rules so that the apprentice doesn't kill off the master. I mean, she'll probably turn on you eventually, but do you really want to encourage that sort of behavior? "Go ahead. Kill me. I want you to try!" If you're amoral, you shouldn't really have any problems changing the system so it benefits you and screws your underlings.
    • Uh, do you honestly think that the Sith won't be planning to overthrow their leaders anyway? Sith underlings will be plotting to overthrow their masters without it being institutionalized, and having it be a part of Sith doctrine and belief is going to ensure that the Master won't get complacent if he knows his underlings will be looking to slide a lightsaber into his back.
    • It would be really hard to try and indoctrinate students in a value system of 'The stronger take whatever they want from the weaker, and that's the natural order of the universe!' while simultaneously trying to sell them on 'You must never try to overthrow your master, even if you have become stronger than he!'. Catching you out on blatant hypocrisy like that tends to make your students more cynical and disrespectful of your authority than they already might have been.
    • The Sith are as much a religious ideology as the Jedi, with the same weaknesses of dogma and tradition; this stuff has been explored by the EU countless times. Kot OR 2, for instance, has some pretty clear pronouncements by Kreia that despite their posturing neither the Jedi nor the Sith have some perfect philosophy that guarantees they'll win every time.
    • There is a long tradition in Star Wars of different flavors of evil; the outright simplistic Dark Side ideology of the Sith is often contrasted with the more vanilla, more human, more flexible kinds of evil we see from villains like Admiral Thrawn, Prince Xizor or Jabba the Hutt. This is part of it — Jabba the Hutt doesn't raise up apprentices to try to betray him because unlike Palpatine he doesn't aspire to become some ultimate master of ultimate evil and ultimate power through the evolutionary process of constant battle, he just wants to boss people around and take their stuff.
    • Look at each Sith Lord individually, Palpatine in particular, and you'll see they do bend or outright break the rules, this one included, for their own benefit. Darth Vader lost much of his effectiveness after losing all four limbs. Why did Palpatine keep him around instead of shocking his helmet off and finding another highly Force-sensitive apprentice? Because Vader is now effective against Palpatine's enemies, but completely ineffective against Palpatine until push really came to shove in the end. The list of Sith Lords who had apprentices that lasted as long as Vader without betrayal in either direction is probably short, if such a list even exists. Darth Maul, for that matter, was a very weak Force-sensitive, with enough power to learn lightsaber combat, basic telekinesis, and not much else, if anything at all. Lethal to many, not to Palpatine.
      • And Palpatine's fostering of deliberately weakened apprentices was a very large contributing factor as to why he was the last Sith Lord. The rules would seem to have a point.
      • Vader was also kept around because Palpatine enjoyed rubbing his victory in the face of the Universe. He left the burning wreckage of the Jedi Temple sitting around for ages, after all. The novelisation of ROTS described Vader's armour as basically a display chest. Palpatine had just turned The Chosen One into his own personal thug, and he wanted to keep a trophy.
    • It is related to the idea of an entire Sith Order related to the Jedi Order. The Sith are all about acquiring power, so no one could take leadership if everyone is lusting after power. The Sith died from their own ambition just as much as from fighting the Jedi. The rule of 2 means that one person trains another, and the "graduation" is to kill the master. It keeps the principle but keeps them much more organized.
  • What do stormtroopers even have armor for? It obviously doesn't do anything.
    • Like? Examples of things stormtrooper armor doesn't defend against? Blasters do penetrate armor, but armor-piercing assault rifle rounds can penetrate most modern body armors, yet any modern military equips its armies with them. The only other things used against stormtroopers are Ewok arrows, which don't penetrate the carapace, and rocks and bolas, which don't show any more effect than knocking the stormtroopers off their feet, where the Ewoks close to melee and can attack between the gaps in the armor plating.
    • Take another look at the Cloud City escape. The blasters blow big holes in the walls. If I got hit with that kind of firepower, I'd sure be happy to only be knocked down and suffer blunt trauma.
      • Heck, Han's pistol is firing bolts that blow holes in walls comparable to the 40mm grenades of a Mark 19. These are walls designed to withstand the backwash of spaceship engines.
      • Whether intentional or not, it has been pointed out that in the Tantive IV scene, we only see Stormtroopers fall over if a blaster bolt actually hits them. Rebel soldiers fall over dead if a blaster bolt hits a wall or floor next to them. (Understandable, actually, given the huge flash and burst of sparks we see every time a bolt hits. Also understandable that they didn't make this a mechanic in any of the video games.)
      • Further, we see stormtroopers get shot and fall down, without any confirmation that they're dead. In Vader's first appearance in A New Hope, there are even stormtroopers checking on their fallen comrades. It isn't uncommon for someone wearing conventional body armor to be knocked off balance by it, so it seems reasonable to think a direct hit from a blaster would knock someone off their feet. The armor may make the difference between a fatal and survivable blaster injury.
      • In a couple of Michael Stackpole’s X-Wing Novels Corran Horn gets shot, but gets shot after having taken chest/back armour off a fallen Stormtrooper. Both times it is stated that although the armour didn’t stop the blaster bolt that it did absorb a lot of the energy and make the wounds significantly less severe (after bacta healing the red mark left on Corran was half the size of the one left on Gavin).
    • Legitimate civilian weapons are by canon much weaker than the military grade and illegal ones carried by just about every character in the movie. As shown in the TIE Fighter series, the Empire does spend a lot of time fighting against groups that do not have military grade hardware, thus giving them a huge advantage.
    • Not all shots are direct hits, absorbing enough energy off an indirect hit can save someone's like, even is direct ones are always fatal.
    • Shrapnel and debris are generally much weaker than direct hits, but still potentially fatal. Armor pretty much negates most of either of those unless it is a really direct hit.
    • Which is more imposing- an entire army of guys wearing vaguely skeleton-faced matching armor, where you can't even tell if they're "human" on the inside, or a bunch of guys in flannel jackets? If the entire universe knows that Stormtroopers = The Empire, then you'd know that when you saw one that you'd better get your stuff together or they're just going to blast you. Some guy in a more regular uniform? How can you even tell he'd be who he says he is? (Albeit, the same goes if some guy just took a dead Stormtroopers armor, but if you figure that the Empire travels only in the Battalions and that the armor can't just be fixed with a little duct tape and caulk, a non-Stormtrooper with that armor would probably be a little on the rare- or dead- side)
      • That didn't seem to stop Han and the gang from blasting some Stormtroopers while they were inside the Death Star and stealing their armor, which had no markings on it whatsoever once they got it on.
      • Considering that they got that armor by leading a pair of Stormtroopers into a close-quarters ambush with a Wookiee and a fucking Jedi Master? Later on in ANH and in TESB, we see that Chewbacca is capable of punching a stormtrooper hard enough that they'll fly into the wall and get KO'ed by the impact even through their armor — and without leaving visible marks on the armor. So Obi-Wan simply has to hold one stormtrooper still with his Force TK while Chewie grabs the other one and pounds his head against the deck plating until he's not moving, then repeat step #1 with victim #2.
    • More importantly, why the hell does the Empire give their troopers helmets that severely limit their vision? Luke comments on it in Episode IV, and a genuine Stormtrooper bitches about it in Jedi Outcast.
      • Luke is too short to be a stormtrooper. The helmet wasn't properly fitted, and it probably doesn't limit their vision too much since clonetroopers and stormtroopers maintain good situational awareness in the films. It's not unlikely that there's a bunch of visual gadgetry in them too, like in Vader's helmet.
    • What do you mean, it doesn't do anything? It gives a +2 to Reflex defence. Am I the only troper to have read the Saga Edition RPG rulebook?
  • Even if Republican credits are no good on Tatooine, why didn't Qui-Gon try to find a moneylender of a species susceptible to the mind trick and "persuade" him/her/it to give him a fair exchange rate on the credits?
    • To be honest, I think Qui-Gon was just going to all the trouble with the pod-race because he just wanted to get Anakin out of Tatooine with his head intact. Also, Jedi can see the future, so he probably knew it would succeed. And on the off-chance it didn't, it wouldn't be too hard to trick themselves onto a bulk-freighter to Coruscant or do what you said.
    • Also, Qui-Gon seems to be big on the whole "Living Force" idea, which basically involves taking things as they come. When the mind trick didn't work, and then he met Anakin, he probably thought "Reckon he'd make a good Jedi. Must be sure to get him off planet with us. I'm sure he'll be a great boon to the Republic and in now way go crazy and kill us all."
  • In "A New Hope", why did the Imperials on the Star Destroyer hold their fire when they realized that there were no life forms aboard the escape pod? Didn't they think about any droids that might be on board or that the plans might be on it? And why bother saving one shot? They had already fired thousands! In short, why didn't they just blast the damn escape pod just to be sure and short circuit all three movies and the fall of the Empire?
    • The downside of strangling your subordinates every time they make a wrong decision is that most of them will decide that its safer simply not to make any decisions. Vader's singularly poor (and homicidal) leadership skills guaranteed a lack of initiative and general mediocrity from his crew.
    • Everyone in the Star Wars universe seems to underestimate droids. For that matter, all the droids we see except R2-D2 and C-3PO are pretty stupid. The idea that droids could take an escape pod on their own might not occur to them. Maybe entrusting the plans to a droid was a brilliant piece of lateral thinking by Leia.
      • Uh... "and C3-PO?" Except for being six-million-lingual, C3-PO is as dumb as a sack full of hammers. You'd think he was designed by an eight year old child or something.
      • Specifically R2-D2 seems far more capable of creative thinking than you would expect from a droid. Even C-3PO with all he does over the course of the movie has to be pushed into doing anything beyond his basic function by his human companions. In the Expanded Universe, it is implied that it is standard practice to memory wipe astromech droids every couple of years or so, but Luke won't let that happen to R2, meaning he has developed far more personality than most droids.
      • If you take the Clone Wars series as canonical, Anakin does the same thing. He even gets chewed out by Obi-Wan for it.
      • But even in A New Hope, Artoo unusually rebellious— he runs away after hours, not years, of Luke's ownership.
      • Artoo isn't being rebellious at all there — his last order from Princess Leia was to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi as soon as possible, and that's exactly what Artoo is doing. Artoo doesn't actually start to acknowledge Luke as his owner until after he's carried out this order... up until then, only the restraining bolt the Jawas fitted him with is holding him in place.
      • The EU has stated that some higher level droids are programed to self-destruct if they attempt to run away. That's why R2, not C3PO got it.
      • It is also stated in several works that the droids are usually wiped routinely, to keep them interfacing properly with the standard electronis. It has been noted dozens of times that this caused frustration for the X-wing techs, because they needed Artoo to stay around and talk with the now-quirky X-wing computer.
      • That said, this troper doesn't even thing R2 has EVER had his wiped in his 200 plus years (I'm counting the Legacy comic)
    • IIRC, they wanted the plans intact, or at least confirmation that the plans had been recovered. If they had been stuck on the pod, and the crewmen blew it up, they wouldn't have gotten any confirmation that they had recovered the plans, which is kind of the whole reason they bothered boarding the Tantive IV in the first place.
      • Good thing for Leia that Vader had orders to make certain that the Tantive IV hadn't passed on the plans anywhere else first, or else the simplest solution to their problem would have been to simply blow up the entire ship.
    • Plus, the dialogue alone shows sufficient reason to hold fire; there was no reason to shoot it, as there were no life signs on board. Either the crewmen had specific orders to not waste shots on empty pods, or they were just being lazy.
  • Why weren't the storm troopers cloned from someone who was force-resistant, considering one of their primary missions was to kill Jedi? Granted, they killed most of them by ambush; but still.
    • There are Force-resistant humans?
      • No. There aren't.
      • Resistance to the mind trick isn't something one is born with (unless one was born extremely force sensitive), it depends on how strong-minded you are (as mentioned by certain people during the movies). As far as i can tell it's pretty hard to be resistant to the directly offensive powers (such as push, lightning, grab etc.)unless you're a Jedi who knows how to counter these powers.
      • Nope, Watto says his entire species is immune to mind trick. Granted, 3 feet tall stormtroopers with little flappy wings wouldn't be very impressive, but perhaps there are other suitable species. Come to think of it, even if you can't have a force-resistant clone army, why clone puny humans and not some other, more imposing race for your Legions of Terror?
      • I'm not going to take Watto's word for that. It's like all Jews being market-savvy because a Jew went "I'm Jewish! We don't get ripped off easily!"
      • Because, at least according to EU, the New Order despises all non-humans, and Storm Troopers are more like the Royal Marines as compared with the British Army; more intensely trained and only trained for combat, as opposed to having a medical corps, an engineers corps, and administration corps or a logistics corps, as opposed to the Imperial Army which has all of those things. It would be like Nazi Germany allowing Jews into the SS.
      • They were cloned from the most feared Mandolorian warrior alive, and the Mandalorians were a power to rival the Sith or the Jedi. Added to that, there's the point that they were humans.
    • Then why not clone a Jedi, or anyone who can use the force for that matter.
      • Because the Sith are just as elitist as the Jedi, and Palpatine didn't like the idea of his mooks being almost as powerful as his dragon
      • Palps tried it. Result: 6 insane Force-using clones, 1 traitorous Dark Jedi, 2 Sith Lords, and one trooper on a small shuttle. Hilarity ensures. Anyway, doesn't a certain mad clone from the Thrawn era come to mind?
      • Even ordinary levels of connection to the Force make the cloning process dangerous. Apparently the quick-growth used in cloning has a tendency to cause "clone madness" if accelerated too quickly — the result of a young soul trying to power a brain and body too adult for it — which is why the clone troopers still take ten years to grow to adulthood, even though the technology technically exists to flash-grow clones in less than a year. In the EU Thrawn manages to accomplish this by using ysalimiri to cut off the growing clones from the Force entirely during the development process, with the downside that this turns the clones into mindless emotionless initiative-less zombies (exactly the kind of soldiers Thrawn hates using).
      • Also, consider that the clone troopers weren't ordered directly by Palpatine, and that cloning force-resistent army would seem rather odd to the Jedi. Sometimes you have to accept weaknesses in your Mook Army to get said army in position.
  • Most of the events in the second half of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith have to take place all within about half an hour, during which time Obi-Wan Kenobi travels halfway across the galaxy twice. On the other hand, in the same period of time Padme goes from barely showing her pregnancy to eight months gone. Either way, something's up. What?
    • Some viewers thought the latter half of the film was set over a period of months, and that Padme wore concealing clothing.
      • False. Just consider it the will of the Force.
    • Simplest explanation: Obi-Wan travels at the speed of plot.
    • I think the official timeline of the main story given was somewhere between 7 to 9 days. The opening act was all in one day, and Anakin's dream was the end of that day. Obi-Wan was sent off to track Grievous on the 3rd day, killed him on the 5th. He returned to Coruscant on the 7th, fought Anakin on the 8th, Padme died on the 9th. The closing scenes can be anywhere from the next day to a week later. Star Wars has never mentioned any specific speed or real distances between two points. The most we have is that supposedly Coruscant is near the center of the galaxy and the Outer Rim is the outer rim.
      • Actually, Coruscant is in the Outer Core, not the Deep Core, which is so dense with stars as to be darn-near impossible to navigate, and the Outer Rim is actually about two-thirds of the way to the actual rim of the galaxy. Beyond the Outer Rim is Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. The Outer Rim was most likely named that because at the time of its naming it was the outer rim of the Republic—the Colonies and Expansion Region, for example, are actually inside the Inner Rim and Outer Rim, respectively. Here's three appropriately labeled maps: [1]◊, [2]◊, and [3]◊. Coruscant is in the red box near the center of the first one. I couldn't find Mustafar, but if you do please post its location.
  • Several that Irregular Webcomic points out, including this, this, this, this, but most of all this one.
    • As to the first one, vast areas of Coruscant are actually industrial areas inhabited only by droids. In other words, the population is confined to certain areas, and Coruscant is a manufacturing center that can export plenty of things to offset the food imports.
      • On that note, how does anyone even breathe on a planet with no plant life?
    • Well, it's generally been assumed that Yoda was specifically guiding Luke's X-wing (hence why his instruments had a blackout on his first arrival on Dagobah, but apparently not subsequent visits — this is actually mentioned in at least one other article), and I'd always assumed that he knew that Luke was his son because Luke was openly going by his (and Anakin's) last name of Skywalker (not that the presence or absence of a "force vibe" is ever fully explained).
      • In one of the Zahn novels (Heir To The Empire, I believe), Luke goes back to Dagobah, and muses that he has no problems now; Yoda must have been screwing with him.
    • Leia's Force sensitivity is obviously much more latent than Luke's, so she doesn't show up on Vader's radar as easily. Consider that young Luke is doing things like flying a skyhopper down a canyon with one hand while making nigh-impossible shots on womp-rats with the other, and doing so with such ease that it isn't until he talks to a professional fighter pilot about it that he's told its just not possible for human reflexes to do that. Leia, on the other hand, never operated above 'talented normal human' levels either before or throughout the movies.
      • So basically, Luke would have wound up a Jedi Guardian while Leia would have been a Consular...had those ranks still been around after the Jedi purge.
      • Vader was focusing on learning the location of the Rebel base. As a pleasant bonus (according to Death Star), Vader already wasn't paying as close attention as he should have because he's too busy forcing himself to not let Leia remind him of Padme.
    • Because obviously if you want to hide a boy from his father is to stick him on his father's home planet, with his uncle, and give him his father's last name.
      • Also his uncle's last name. Remember that Shmi Skywalker never married, so 'Skywalker' is the family name of his maternal lineage. Carrying the last name 'Skywalker' on Tatooine makes you as unremarkable as mud, it just means you're related to that moisture farmer over there.
      • Owen was not a Skywalker, he kept his name (Lars) when Shmi married his father.
      • Besides, Tatooine is about the only planet in the entire galaxy that you can be certain Darth Vader will never willingly visit again. It holds nothing but bad memories for him, and its instructive to note in 'A New Hope' that Vader never goes down to the surface to take charge of the search efforts himself, even when he really should have.
      • Qui-Gon actually assures Obi-Wan that this is the case, in Dark Lord: The Rise Of Darth Vader.
    • Hey, you forgot this one. To quote DMM "Seriously, if they could fit all that other junk in there...?"
      • Does anybody else get the impression that R2 LIKES most people not being able to understand him? It's probably saved him from more than one memory wipe.
      • R2 units are highly modular. All the stuff inside him is designed to be easily switched out with other stuff to meet the various needs of the owner. There's no telling many times he's been modified between Ep III and Ep IV. Also, the Corellian Trilogy features an astromech (albeit of a different model) that can talk. And he's an insufferable jackoff.
      • Also, there have been a number of comics where we DO get to see what R2-D2 says and "thinks", and quite a bit of it is stuff that would get him dimanteled within the hour.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, was Palpatine faking his "defeat" at the hands of Mace Windu? I have always thought that he was, especially since he killed those other three Jedi in literally under 15 seconds. It was also very conveniently timed, with Anakin showing up just as Windu got a lightsaber pointed at his neck. Plus he seemed to be holding his own fine until that point. Plus, he fought to a standstill with Yoda, who was far stronger than Windu. So was it a real defeat, or a fake to convert Anakin with?
    • Ah, no, Windu is stronger than Yoda in swordfighting. Plus, his fighting style is based around channeling the Dark Side, so he was capable of reversing Palpatine's attacks back at him. So, yeah, it was a real defeat. Though the groveling probably was fake.
    • The novelization is much more detailed about this, and implies that Palpatine let Windu almost win. In the novelization he tape recorded the whole thing. Which means he had already planned it out. Plus in one move he is able to turn Anakin to the Dark Side, and convince the population that the Jedi tried to assassinate him.
      • He had it planned out in that Anakin showing up, turning to the Dark Side and bailing him out was all part of his plan. The novelization makes it clear that had that not happened, Windu would have won. Windu is one of the most accomplished Jedi at having a sense for the flow of the future and his last thought is supposedly the knowledge that Anakin's intervention was the one thing that prevented his victory.
      • The extended universe information on Mace's lightsaber abilities combined with the choreography of the fight suggests that Windu won legitimately. Much of what Mace does is to throw Palpatine off-balance and then take advantage of it, while Palpatine is narrowly saved by his use of Ataru and thus, compensating for his age, and for being thrown off balance, with the Force. The most obvious example is the portion of the fight where Mace stands with his arms outstretched, clearly leaving his center open for attacks with Palpatine pointing his blade right at him just out of reach; when Palpatine tries to move in, Mace simply steps back, causing Palpatine to lean too far forward to try to make his blade connect, while Mace simply swings his own blade up and directs it off to the side. This is a philosophy taught in several styles of martial arts (this troper got it from Okinawan Karate) that lean towards self-defense instead of competition. It's likely that Palpatine simply foresaw all of this; he knew he would lose, and he knew Anakin would arrive when he did, so he just hammed up his defenseless old-man act in the end. Mace's ability to turn the dark side against its users means that Palpatine was already at a huge disadvantage, because Palpatine couldn't fight without the Force even if he wanted to. Of course, given how silly the choreography is in the rest of the movie, the chances of this being intentional is pretty slim.
    • The only reason Yoda backed off from his fight with Palpatine was that Yoda felt himself start to turn to the Dark Side (you can see his eyes turn yellow briefly in the movie, a trait of dark Jedi). He was letting his hatred of Palpatine get the better of him, and knew nothing good would come of it if he continued. It's anybody's guess who would have won if that fight had played out to its conclusion.
      • His eyes are yellow, genius. And having seen this scene quite a few time, I've never seen any indication of Sith eyes.
      • Not true. The novelizations make it clear that he was retreating because he'd lost the element of surprise and clones were on the way.
    • This troper has struck the "under 15 seconds" thing from his personal canon, because the way it was executed in the film was non-believable and just lame. If you want [[Main/Mook mooks]] then bring mooks; if you don't, let the damn Jedi fight and die honorably, not "kekeke lightsaber in ur face K dun wit u". As the duel stands, it wasn't Palpatine who defeated them, but rather a power that eclipses even those of the Sith: editors.
      • Uh, they didn't bring mooks because they didn't want mooks. This is clearly The Worf Effect in action. There's also extended-universe precedent for it: many Jedi, quite possibly even the ones on the council besides Yoda and Windu, simply weren't good at lightsaber combat because, lacking the mindset and power of those two, there weren't any lightsaber-wielding opponents around for them to fight in the last thousand years. They only trained in blaster-bolt deflection.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin has told Mace Windu that Chancellor Palpatine is a Sith Lord. Windu and the Jedi immediately take it upon themselves to arrest and execute him without trial or any actual proof that Palpatine broke the law. Supposedly the Jedi are the guardians of "peace and justice" in the Republic. Except now the Jedi have the absolute right to execute the democratically-elected leader of the government solely because he follows a different Force-using tradition from them?
    • They don't. That's why the Jedi were traitors, remember? They justified it to themselves as necessary because Palpatine controlled the courts.
    • Actually, the Jedi probably do have the legal right to hunt down any Sith Lord they can find. Their influence over the founding of the Old Republic was immense, and they were the only military the Republic had for millenia. Given that plus the Sith also damn near destroying galactic civilization at least four separate times in recorded history, and the idea that Republic law considers 'existing while being a Sith' as a high crime is not far-fetched... the Jedi would want such a legal provision to exist, and they had more than enough opportunity to get it through the Senate thousands of years ago.
      • Palpatine raises this very point in the novellization. When Windu accuses him of being a Sith, he says something to the effect of, "So what? Even if it was true...that's not an admission...but even if it was true, the Republic's constitution guarantees religious freedom." To which Mace Windu replies: "Our authoirty here isn't legal. It's moral...
      • Watch that scene again. Windu and the other Jedi clearly say they're there to arrest Palpatine. It's not until Palpatine attacks them and kills three Jedi that Windu decides to outright kill him.
      • That's part of the larger point. Again, from the novelization, the Chancelor had just received from the Senate a bill placing the Jedi Order under his control, which is why he was able to appoint Anakin to the Jedi Council. Windu and co. had no legal authority to arrest him; making his charge of self-defence not entirely innacurate.
    • Add one more item to the list of things that went wrong with the Jedi since the start of the Clone Wars (and I'm sure there were flaws before them, too).
    • Look at what the Jedi know about the Sith: there are two of them (how they know that, I'm not sure), and one was the (apparent) Separatist leader. It's not an unreasonable jump to the conclusion that the other Sith is also part of the Separatists. One assumes the Republic had laws against treason.
      • They learned about the "Rule of Two" the last time the Sith emerged as a terrorist death-cult bent on destroying half the galaxy and enslaving the rest. These things tend to stick around in institutional memory.
    • The first Darth Bane novel explicitly states that the Sith religion is illegal in the Republic. There would be no particular reason to remove that law just because you think they're all extinct; after all, no-one actually got around to purging Korriban from orbit, [[Warhammer40000 Imperium of Man style]], so there was always a risk that the old Sith ruins would be found.
  • Judging by Padme's screaming, she was suffering a lot during the birth. Has no one in that galaxy heard of painkillers? And since they were actually operating on her, shouldn't she have been put to sleep? Any real doctor would kill those guys.
    • If mother or baby is in bad enough shape, sometimes you need drastic measures to get the child(ren) out in time. This troper was born by unanesthetized Cesarean section, for instance.
  • Other than the fact that the plot wouldn't have worked so well, why did Padme lose the will to live? She believed that there was good in her husband, plus she had two children now. Why didn't she have the will to live for any of those? And another thing, the loss of the will to live does not cause instant death. It may weaken your immune system, but it in and of itself isn't fatal. And the droid says that "Medically, she's completely healthy".
    • I don't think it's stated anywhere in-canon, but I hold to the theory that Anakin was subconsciously killing her via his Dark Side powers — partly anger over her "betrayal", and partly him lashing out from the pain of the cyborg conversion surgery.
    • If you believe in 'Force Bonds' from the EU, then Anakin and Padme are perfect candidates to have one. If we go with this line of speculation, then his survival of his injuries becomes partly a matter of his unconsciously or otherwise drawing upon her life force to sustain his own. And thus, she died.
    • I think Occam's Razor and the general Narmy quality of the entire relationship combine to suggest that she was so demoralised by Anakin's descent into evil (his choking of her being the last straw) that she simply died of a broken heart. Really really fast. Which shows scant care for her children, and is medically absurd, but there it is. One wonders how they can even tell that they're "losing her" if she's completely healthy. But then again, she was giving birth and had been choked, and perhaps one can fanwank that she had, say, had a haemmorhage which oughtn't to have been sufficient to kill someone as healthy as she, but she was so traumatised that it did. Somehow.
      • Ahem. The Force. The Force. THE FORCE. It's freaking Star Wars — it's the one science-fantasy setting where people's physical health totally reflecting their mental state makes perfect sense. ("Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter", etc.)
      • This troper also wants to point out that "Force Choke" only looks like the person is being choked from outside, just like "Force Lightning" is supposed to only look like lightning from the outside. They're both direct assaults on a person using the Force, i.e. using the pure energy of life and spirit and emotion and thought bla bla bla. When Anakin Force-Chokes Padme he's *directly attacking* her will to live.
      • Except that with everyone else Vader force-chokes, it's either fatal straight away or it's not. He either chokes them to death then and there, or lets go and they seem to be okay. No one else whom he starts to choke but doesn't finish off gets a crippling case of lack of the will to live, the damage appears to be wholly physical. And Luke doesn't seem to suffer any ongoing psychic damage from being zapped by the Emperor's lightning, - once the assault stops, he immediately starts getting better rather than continuing to deteriorate. Seriously, this is the original Romantic Plot Tumor and I'm pretty sure "You're breaking my heart!" was meant to be the key. It would be easy enough to show Palpatine doing something menacing or Obi-Wan sensing something force-related was continuing to attack her but being unable to stop it, if that were the intent.
      • Or not: Luke spent a couple of days in intensive treatment (as in, with the Star Wars miracle medicine, Bacta) for the damage caused by Palpatine's Force Lightning. Bone calcification or something like that (which indicates it is, in fact, real lightning, not just a Force attack that looks like lightning). It's in The Truce At Bakura if you care to check.
      • Judging by Vader/Anakin's gesturing, force choke is essentially a weaker, controlled version of force crush.
    • I think that it is rather safe to assume that Palpatine knew about Anakin's "kill the Emperor and rule with Padme" plan and killed her using the Force to secure Anakin's loyalty.
      • I agree with this theory and in fact have something to add: Given the Force bond between them, and the fact Palps was said to be using Sith Alchemy to keep Vader alive, I can assume he was drawing life energy from Padme to transfer into Vader.
    • Though this may not be the place for it, this troper would like to say that, prior to seeing III, he assumed that Padme birthed the children and hid with them from Anakin, only to have him hunt her down and off her. Obi-Wan would have swooped out of nowhere and saved the children, and run with them to Tatooine and Alderaan, respectively, but not after maybe fighting Vader off/to a standstill. However, most of Episode III was one big provocation for IJBMs, anyways, so don't fret about it.
    • It's like what Dr. Ballsaid, why the hell doesn't anyone use any of the wide arrange of medical equipment to save her? They might as well just pray!
  • When Vader picked up the Emperor, why is it he just kept shooting lightening out of his hands? Wouldn't a better course of action have been to use the Force to trip Vader?
    • He seemed to be too surprised to handle the situation effectively. You know how some people and animals lose control of their bladders when they're surprised? It's like that, but for lightning. Also, he couldn't see Vader's legs from his position, while moving something you don't have line-of-sight to seems to take more concentration than moving something you can see. The Emperor didn't have enough time to focus. In any case, the lightning did work- it killed Vader. It's possible that the Emperor felt he couldn't best Vader in a duel, so he decided to take him with him.
      • This troper would like to point out that "the Emperor has Force Lightning Incontinence" is the funniest thing he's run across all day.
    • You don't need to see something to use the Force on it. Besides, he demonstrated an ability to think clearly and calmly under life-threatening pressure before. Remember in Revenge of the Sith, where he talks Anakin into backing down when he was at lightsaber point?
      • Presumably Anakin was countering the force push, having the advantage of being firmly braced against the ground instead of suspended in the air. Also, note that Palpatine didn't stop the lightning as he fell, or even try to slow his fall using the Force, implying that Anakin was countering his attempts to save himself.
      • But Palpatine was stronger than Anakin. Before Mustafar he had the potential to be twice as powerful as the Emperor. After that, his power was estimated as at most 80% of Palpatine's.
      • Presumably that's why he got electrocuted, instead of countering it and not dying.
      • Because then Vader would have fallen and squished him.
      • Given that Vader has shown that his grip is so crushing that he can snap a human spine simply by closing his fist tightly, try to imagine how much agony Palpatine was in when Vader's hand was around his neck.
    • Then again, some sources indicate that certain emotions are inherently conntected to some powers, and that the emotion for Lightning is "I hate you specifically so much I want you to die twice." If that's the case, then Palps may not have been able to turn off the flow, and draws attention to a fundamental flaw in Dark Side practice (loss of control).
      • The emotion for Force-choking someone is "I hate you specifically so much I want you to die twice". The emotion for Force lightning, a far less precise and discriminatory use of the Dark Side, is "I'M SO MAD I'MA GONNA BREAK EVERYTHING URRRAAAGH".
      • This explains why Darth Vader can't use it — not just that his cyborg body can't handle it, but he's also way too mopey and tormented inside to indulge in Palpatine's exultant break-everything gleeful rages. Palpatine smiles, cackles, expresses sheer exultant anti-joy at the pleasure of being evil *all the time*; Vader, by contrast, never seems happy at all.
  • In Return of the Jedi, why is it that Vader thought that the best way to kill the Emperor was to pick him up while he was shooting lightening and throw him down a big hole? Since Vader's robot arms have super-strength, and seeing as how the Emperor is really old, shouldn't Vader have been able to kill (or at least KO) him with a punch to the back of the head? Granted, it would ruin his dramatic death scene, but still...
    • There's still a chance that he could take the punch and start shooting both of them. Do we know for certain that Vader's arms have super-strength? He's never shown bending or crushing anything with his hands.
      • Except Captain Antilles' neck, less than ten minutes into ANH.
    • Yes, in several books that are official canon, Darth Vader mentions that his arms are strong enough so that just one can lift a person with no help from the Force. We see him doing that in A New Hope. Also, the Emperor's heavy use of the Dark Side rendered his body physically weak. Vader was also strong enough to snap that starship captain's neck with one hand in A New Hope (the official canon book states that his neck snapped). Given those factors, it is extremely unlikely that a punch to the back of the head from Vader would leave Palpatine conscious.
      • Remember what happened when the cyborg General Grievous hit Obi-Wan? He shrugged it off. This is a cyborg figure who can punch hard enough to dent starfighter armour, (and had done so just earlier) so it's not unreasonable to think that Palpatine just might have blocked it using the Force.
      • Vader had the element of surprise. Grievous did not. Plus Palpatine couldn't stop him from picking him up and tossing him into a giant pit, so it is unlikely he could stop a punch, which is quicker. Or Vader could've just grabbed his neck from behind and snapped it, since it has been confirmed several times that he has the strength needed to do that.
      • True, but let's assume it was a spur of the moment thing where Vader wasn't really thinking clearly.
      • The book version reveals he did think about before acting.
      • Interesting. Can you quote it? Just because he put some thought into what he was doing doesn't mean he was thinking clearly though.
      • Can't quote it, mainly because it's a couple paragraphs long. You just wonder why he didn't go for a method that should've been thought of first.
      • This doesn't make any sense. Just because he had artificial arms that can crush necks doesn't mean he can lift a human being one-handed; those arms are attached to fleshy shoulders. Unless he was capable of unassisted one-handed human-lifting before the augmentation, the join would fail before he got any substantial weight off the ground.
      • Tell that to the starship captain in A New Hope.
      • Bracing with the Force.
      • In Revenge of the Sith he catches Obi-Wan's two-handed lightsaber swing with his off-hand (keep in mind Kenobi is a Jedi master, and an expert at saber combat), and shortly thereafter grabs him by the throat and starts choking him while grasping his arms and almost making him cut his own head off. Before the accident, Darth Vader was already supernaturally strong, and with the added durasteel plating and reinforcement of his skeletal structure, it's no wonder he can pick full grown men up off the ground and throw them across the room without drawing on the Force.
    • Because, as Lore Sjöberg said, the most important rule of the Force is "Die in front of Luke".
  • Why is it that Darth Vader got into the habit of strangling admirals for minor setbacks? Not only is it unwise to kill off your most experienced commanders for failures that were no fault of their own, it is also likely to incite other officers to resign or defect to the Rebellion. This is even more strange when you consider that he was able to show restraint towards the official that dismissed the Force in the first film.
    • Because he's a baddie.
    • Because he's like Stalin. First, he definitely has the power to do it, seeing as he doesn't really have to answer to anyone but himself and maybe the Emperor. Second, an officer's failure reflects badly on him, so by killing the offending officer, he severs the connection between him and the officer, essentially washing his hands of the mistake. Third, he was mad. REALLY mad.
      • Especially third. Vader's a veneer of icy control over an eternally seething core of pain-fueled epic rage. When regular people lose their temper, they scream. When Vader loses his temper, people die.
    • In the first movie, Tarkin was there to tell him to stop.
      • And it's fairly clear from other comments made by Leia that Tarkin actually outranks Vader ("holding Vader's leash"). They never explain exactly where "Lord" Vader falls in the Imperial chain of command, but apparently it's somewhere below Grand Moff.
      • In the EU, its explained that Vader's original official position was as the seniormost officer of the Imperial military, second only to the Emperor. However, that was after Tarkin was dead. This troper presumes that Tarkin's dominance over Vader was either a) less a matter of official rank and more a matter of whose influence with the Emperor was greater at that moment in time or b) Tarkin, in addition to being a Grand Moff, was the prior occupant of the job the EU described Vader as holding.
      • It may just have been that Tarkin was the commander of the space station, and a very important one at that. Vader could get away with killing random underlings. It may be that Vader is always the ranking officer on any ship (such as the various Star Destroyers he kills people on) but the Death Star is a big deal. Much like how on Deep Space Nine, Sisko can yell at Admirals and Captains all he likes, despite technically being outranked, because it's his damn station.
      • In the EU, a Moff is a planetary Governor, and a Grand Moff is essentially the governor of an entire star sector. Tarkin is of a rank second only to the Emperor or a Senator, and with the Senate dissolved...
      • I always assumed it was because Tarkin was friends with Vader - he actually calls him his friend at least twice.
      • This concept of "friendship with Lord Vader" confuses and infuriates this troper!
    • Ozzel actually was going to take over the ship... or at least try to.
    • Vader uses the Dark Side of the Force, which means he practices a religion based entirely on channeling one's fear, anger and hatred. While this may make one a fearsome opponent in a fight, it does NOT make one an effective leader. This, honestly, is probably a large part of the reason why the ragtag rebelion is able to defeat the Empire in the first place.
    • Quick note: Timothy Zahn, in the EU, recently brought this up. Captain Ozzel, later to become Admiral Ozzel, features in an adventure Mara Jade and Darth Vader were both involved in. During that adventure he proves himself to be corrupt, a coward, a crappy tactician, and the kind of nasty piece of work that the Empire's staggering level of bureaucracy breeds; a politician who knows how to inveigle his way into power and keep it and will sell out anyone over or under him to protect his power if he has to. Vader's been looking for an excuse to get rid of him for quite some time, and the terrible botch he made of GETTING VADER'S SON BACK (and keep in mind that more than anything else GETTING HIS SON BACK is an obsession that stokes Vader's deep irrational inner rage) was all the excuse he needed.
    • There is also the Alternate Character Interpretation that Ozzel is in fact working for the rebels or at least sympathyzes with them, which has some merit. Captain Needa on the other hand was just Vader hitting the Berserk Button.
  • What determines whether or not a person will be born Force Sensitive?
    • Apparently midichlorians. Yeah, I don't like it any more than you do.
      • Please.The films contain enough evidence that Force ability is inherited,and thus genetic or biological in some way.And exactly what Midichlorians are is never explored,just that there is some relationship between count and Force ability. All this 'midichlorians suck' stuff is just a knee-jerk reaction that never stopped.
      • So in that case how come there are tons of examples of Force Sensitives not inheriting their powers from anyone and just being born with them?
      • Simple genetics. Traits can be passed down recessively for many generations before manifesting again.
      • In a series with giant Terriers and Laser Swords I don't see why it's so hard to believe that a person could just be born Force Sensitive.
      • If Force sensitivity can be passed down genetically - and we know it can - then it must have a biological vector; hence the midichlorions.
      • Moreover, if Force sensitivity is genetic or biological, or physical in nature at all, shouldn't it be possible to endow people with it artificially, or enhance naturally sensitive people? Also what about Force sensitivity across completely unrelated species with no genetic similarities?
      • What about it? You may as well ask why completely unrelated species with no genetic similarities can see in the same spectrum of light, breath the same kind of air, and tolerate the same kind of food. The real question is, is the ability to sense/manipulate the Force an evolved characteristic? And yes, you CAN artificially endow someone with Force sensitivity or enhance someone who is already sensitive.
      • There's nothing knee-jerk about it; can you not see how downgrading The Force from some awesome mystical energy that imbues all things to something you can catch from a blood transfusion kind of spoils the magic? Literally.
      • You sound like a religious fanatic who's protesting against evolution theory. Midichlorians are a pretty good way to scientifically explain force-sensitivity.
      • The Force itself is still an awesome mystical energy, it's Force-sensitivity that's revealed to be a function of the midichlorians. Considering that midichlorians are roughly modeled after mitochondria, I suspect one's midichlorian count is innate, not something that can be altered with a blood transfusion. And it could very well be that a high midichlorian count is just an indicator of Force-sensitivity, not its cause.
      • Still, it does ruin the idea that "anyone can be a Jedi", which drew so many young fans to the original trilogy. Never let elaborate explanations of story mechanics get in the way of escapism.
      • The Force has always been stronger in some people than others:
      • Darth Vader: The Force is strong with this one. (A New Hope)
      • Emperor: He could destroy us.
        Darth Vader: He's just a boy. Obi-Wan can no longer help him.
        Emperor: The Force is strong with him. The son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi. (The Empire Strikes Back)
      • Luke: The Force runs strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And... my sister has it. (Return of the Jedi)
      • The main issue here may be the fact that the story mechanics are being given a wholly unromantic and frankly unnecessary explanation. The fact that something as awesome as Force sensitivity can be determined through what appears to be a home blood sugar tester is just kind of lame.
      • I don't remember it being stated that midichlorians are the things that actually cause Force Sensitivity.
      • Here's Wookieepedia's article on midi-chlorians. Let's get all the facts so we can properly complain about them.
      • Actually, one EU novel, Dark Rendezvous, described what happened when someone tried to artificially increase the Midi Chlorian count of a planet. Pretty much everyone went insane, due to the lack of Jedi training to handle it. Most of the citizens died, and the planet became "steeped in the Dark Side", with the side benefit of increasing any Force-sensitive's proficiency.
      • This happened in the video game Jedi Outcast, too. Thanks to a rather gruesome process involving the sacrifice of a bunch of innocent lives and the use of some dodgy weird glowy-crystal technology, they do manage to create artificial Jedi, the "Reborn". That said, Reborn are still erratic, prone to insanity, and have far less control over their power than real Jedi; their only advantage is numbers.
      • As I pointed out on DoingInTheWizard, I'd rather Force ability have been measured by a glowing rock or something rather than what looked more like a mobile phone. I'd always assumed a divide between the magical (Force) and technological aspects of the setting, just because that's what the canon seems to imply in every other case.
  • The Jedi can levitate an X-Wing; why can't they levitate themselves? Given all the mile-deep pits in the Star Wars universe, it'd be awfully handy...
    • Well, it took an awful lot of concentration for Yoda, supposedly one of the greatest Jedi ever, to move that X-Wing, so it stands to reason that one needs a certain level of calm and focus in order to levitate anything man-sized or larger. It's tough to keep your wits about you when plummeting into a reactor core.
      • Further proven by Galen Marek, who needed a decent amount of time and a huge, concentrated effort to bring down a Star Destroyer with the Force. One would surmise that size matters not in terms of how impossible it is (that is to say, it's never impossible) but something large still requires more effort.
      • But "size matters not", right? Or was Yoda lying for no reason?
      • He wasn't lying, he was giving the truth from another point of view.
      • Seems clear to me — all that matters is whether you believe you can move the object, but because large objects are larger and heavier, it's *harder* to truly visualize moving them. There are plenty of limitations on a Jedi's power, but these are limitations in the Jedi's ability to perceive the impossible happening, not in the power of the Force itself.
      • In theory this means that you can stop a Jedi's power by making something, say, appear to be heavier or bulkier than it actually is. The EU doesn't capitalize on this possibility, though. (Interestingly, it *does* play with the idea that an accurate visualization is all that's really necessary for things like Force Choke — a powerful Sith can Force Choke someone over a videophone, for instance.)
      • Also explains why Force Flight is a separate power — visualizing yourself lifting off the ground and flying around must be a harder image to keep in your head than just imagining an object flying around.
    • Although it's certainly not canon (though I wish it was), Lego Star Wars actually addresses this issue. Jedi can't levitate themselves, but two Jedi can levitate each other. Meaning two working in concert essentially have the power of flight. Wobbly flight, but flight nonetheless.
    • It'd be like lifting yourself up by your bootstraps, yeah? Action and reaction. Even Jedi have to respect the fundamental laws of physics.
      • But apparently landspeeders don't...
      • Landspeeders nullify gravity using SCIENCE(tm). Jedi have effectively an invisible arm with which they can manipulate distant objects. Totally different phenomena.
      • Oh right, and helicopters are breaking the laws of physics by hovering.
      • Hey, helicopters obey Newton's Third Law by pushing down on the air with the rotors. Jedis still nominally follow the same principle by using their legs to push off the ground (using the Force to add a little juice to their muscles). For all we know, Jedis induce counter-forces when they lift stuff.
      • Helicopters don't push down on air with their rotors. Rather, the rotors have a curved upper surface (like a conventional airplane wing) which means that air flowing over the top of the blade moves faster than the air flowing under it. This causes an area of low pressure to develop above the blade, lifting the helicopter. The downwash seen when helicopters fly close to the ground is a secondary effect, and does not play a significant role in flight.
      • You've just described how the helicopter does push down on the air. The "pressure" is the air pushing on the blades, by Newton's third law, the blades push on the air. The forces involved in normal flight must obey Newton's third, unlike The Force involved in Force Flight which is a completely made up fictional entity, basically equivalent to magic, that, I must repeat, does not exist. If it makes everyone feel better imagine the opposing force acts on the Forcitonium that acts as the medium for the Force.
      • Nonono, what you're talking about is the Bernoulli principle, which, while it does contribute some lift, is not the deciding factor by far, that is actually the angle of the wing/blade as it moves through the air. This becomes rather obvious when you realize planes are perfectly capable of flying upside down... That said, you got the helicopter bit totally wrong as well. Anyone who knows anything about aviation knows that helicopters don't fly at all, they're just so ugly that the ground repels them.
    • I always thought that the crazy crap they did in the lightsaber fights in the prequels was thanks to flinging themselves around with the Force.
    • Two words: Force Flight.
    • Actually, Jedi can levitate themselves (Mara Jade did so in Betrayal), it just uses a lot (and I mean a LOT) of energy.
      • If you consider the Jedi Knight games as canon (I think they are officially canon, but I could be wrong), then Jedi CAN fly, in a limited fashion. The Force Jump ability allows them to propel themselves upwards by nearly a dozen meters, and to control their descent downwards, but it requires an enormous amount of force power reserves, much like the above troper mentions. When you've got the highest level of Force Jump, and you jump to your maximum height, it uses over 50% of your force points. So, even if the game allowed you to use all your force power on one jump, you could only "fly" upwards by about 20 meters before completely losing force control and falling to your doom. And the flight requires a solid surface to propel oneself from, meaning that the Emperor could not have just flown back to the relative safety of his Jedi-filled throne room.
      • It should also be pointed out that the Emperor had just finished being half-throttled by somebody who can snap necks with a simple squeeze of their hand. It's likely his head wasn't too clear at that point, Force Flight or no Force Flight.
  • Can Chewbacca even pronounce his own name?
    • I always thought that was an approximation of his real name that Han used because of his inferior vocal cords.
  • Why the hell did the X-Wings have to fly down the trench and try to make a shot that involved the shot itself making a 90 degree turn down a hole anyways?? Why didn't they just line up with the hole on the way in, and fire when in range? Yes it would be a tough shot, but it couldn't be any harder than the shot they actually made!
    • Because of the huge battlestation full of turbolasers that would have shot them while they were flying at it without evasive maneuvers.
      • Yeah, but the main turbolaser (the planet killing one) is far too imprecise for one person starships, and the only other canons we see are located in the freaking trench!
      • Er, no. The surface of the Death Star was crawling with cannons - so many that most of the X-Wings were shot down before they even reached the trench.
      • I don't get it either. They had to reach the Death Star's surface once. Instead of going right to the target (and shot the missile from the farthest possible range), they approached a different point of the Death Star and they travelled a lot in the trench too and attempted a harder shot.
      • They had to target the port through the ECM. The trench was the safest place to stay still and compute the trajectory. They couldn't approach from above the port because then the many other turbolasers would have had a perfect shot as the fighters were lining up.
      • For those who are still wondering, consider the geometry: Approaching the exhaust port from directly above means that every single turbolaser on that side of the Death Star has a clear shot at you, in addition to you being potentially vulnerable on all sides to enemy TIE fighters, in addition to the part where you're having to fly a steady, straight line directly through the middle of a massive aerial battle. The trench, on the other hand, gives you cover on both sides and the bottom, and restricts the number of turbolasers that you have to deal considerably.
      • This is true for any one point on the surface of the Death Star, not just the exhaust port. Unless you're really close already, or hiding behind something else, you're going to be in line of sight of a good portion of the surface.
      • Incorrect. The main dish of the superlaser covers almost a full eighth of the Death Star's surface, and it has apparently no turbolaser emplacements. Approach from over it and with the equatorial bulge between you and the other part of that hemisphere, you could notably cut down on the amount of fire you're taking. Then, once you're down low enough that the DS' horizon blocks off most incoming fire, fly around the DS nap-of-the-earth to reach the exhaust port.
      • Which was pretty much what they were doing in the first place, at least with regards to hitting the surface and flying low. Except even then, they were losing pilots to turbolaser emplacements. And there's no evidence the superlaser dish lacked any turbolaser emplacements.
      • It wouldn't be much use as a parabolic reflector if the smoothness of the surface was broken by anything as large as a turbolaser emplacement.
      • Considering we don't see anything being reflected in the dish in the first place, I seriously doubt it was being used as one. The beams generated emerge from the edges of the dish exclusively.
      • There's really only one engineering reason to build something that shape in the first place. They did not use up 1/8th of the surface area of a moon-sized object just because they thought it looked cool, did they? If we don't see it, OK, the energy frequencies involved are not visible light.
      • Only one engineering reason using current knowledge of physics and engineering, you mean. Star wars technology is way, way, way past our undertsanding of technology, and they may have had another reason for designing it that way.
    • While preparing for the assault, they explain that the Death Star was designed to face more conventional attacks, specifically direct frontal assaults using larger capital ships. The rebels' attack was successful because the smaller fighters were able to use the Death Star's own structural features as cover, and expose themselves to a fraction of the fire they would have taken had they been flying around in open space. The turbolasers that were able to shoot at them were only the few directly bordering on the trench, and even then they had to turn them in ways that they weren't meant to fire for them to be of any use. Had the rebels attempted to attack the exhaust port from above they would have been massacred.
  • In Return of the Jedi, Han and Leia get cornered by two stormtroopers while in front of the backdoor to the shield generator. Leia then fires one shot (as the sound effect clearly indicates) at the two stormtroopers and she gets them both. Now, I know stormtroopers are pathetic, but that's pushing it just a bit.
    • This may have been Leia's force powers starting to show themselves.
      • No, there were two shots. I remember that scene. One shot we see, then a sound effect as the camera pans away.
      • I found her picking off the imperial on the top of the walker from the ground, far more impressive. One shot.
  • If English doesn't exist in written form in Star Wars-land, how did X-wings and Y-wings get named after their resemblance to letters of the English alphabet?
    • The X and Y equivalent resemble their English equivalents.
      • B Or some of their symbols do, not necessarily the ones that correspond to similar letters in English.
      • Or, since the whole thing is being translated into English for our benefit (so to speak), the names get translated. Maybe the literal name of the X-Wing and Y-Wing in Star Wars Basic is "Cross-Wing" and "Fork-Wing" or something like that.
    • There is an alternate Aurebesh script that is our Latin alphabet. It's not popular, but it's still used in formal roles, like on logos. Signatures are written in it, and droid designations are made from them. Think cursive writing vs printed letters.
      • This isn't canon; this is a presupposition that the Wookieepedia people have made to explain certain inconsistencies in the writing. It's not a *necessary* presupposition — you can also explain it all away as Tolkien-style "translation", like how Tolkien gives a long-winded explanation of what the real Middle-Earth days of the week are and why he translated them as "Friday morning" or "Sunday dinner". There is no reason to think "Artoo" isn't actually named "Reshdreth" or something, but that the "translators" have rendered it as "R2" so we get the idea that it's a cold impersonal numerical designation.
    • Who says it doesn't exist? You can clearly see some English writing on the Death Star's tractor beam controls in "A New Hope"
      • That got retconned out. They're Aurabesh in the Special Edition.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin/Vader says "if you're not with me, you're my enemy" and Obi-Wan replies that "only a Sith deals in absolutes". In other words, Obi-Wan is saying "if you deal in absolutes, you're evil". That sounds like an absolute to me, so Obi-Wan is basically saying that he's a Sith.
    • It's a one-liner, not a deep philosophical teaching. If you want to elaborate on it it's probably better to think of it as meaning "Only bad people divide every conflict into clear and obvious 'sides' and don't try to deal with each individual involved based on their personal motivations and points of view".
    • Just that absolute came to you? I saw several, including: Light Side/Dark Side, Jedi/Sith, Stuffing/Potatoes, Tastes-Great/Less-Filling, Control/Passion, Selfishness/Selflessness, Regular/Decaf. Then again, we are talking about a religion centered on bacteria.
      • You forget "Do, or do not. There is no try."
      • The Midichlorians are not the basis of their religion (either one), they're a transmitter— a radio for talking to the Force!
      • You just created an image of a Sith Lord melting himself by attempting to replicate Darth Plagueis's experiments. Ten points, and a tank full of High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
      • Which means we're talking about a religion that centers on using bacteria as a radio transmitter. Not sure that's an improvement.
      • They're not bacteria. They're clearly the Star Wars equivalent of mitochondria, which actually is kind of an interesting thing to use for "the Force" (and mitochondria *are* shockingly universal for all multicellular life on Earth, and you can ascribe some religious significance to that; Madeleine L'Engle did it for A Wind in the Door and I thought it came off pretty well).
      • You might as well say that all real-world religions are centered around randomly-firing neurons. I don't know about you, but I prefer the bacteria who let you crush things with your mind and see the future.
      • That's not the whole quote. Look at the scene again. Anakin says, "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy!" That's an absolute. It's very clearly the Sith way - 'My way, or the highway'. Obi-Wan replies, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes - I do what I must." In essence, he's telling Anakin that they don't have to be enemies, but unless Anakin backs down, he has no choice. He doesn't say "Only a Sith SPEAKS in absolutes", as that's absurd. Merely that Sith demand absolutes, whereas Jedi try for compromises when they can.
      • But he later DOES deal in absolutes. After he yells that palpatine is evil, Anakin replies "from my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" This is quite a reasonable respone; he is making Obi-Wan aware that he has a different opinion about what is good and what is evil, and hence he is figthing what he believes to be evil just as Obi-Wan does. His response? "Well, then you are lost!" Obi-Wan doesn't even consider the possibility that he is wrong, that Anakin might have an opinion that is different than his but might be equally valid, and that they are both figthing against what they believe to be a force of evilness; he simply rejects the idea out of hand. In his mind, Sith are evil, period. That's absolutism, and that's not just speaking in absolutes, that's dealing in them. As to the apparent hypocresy of this act, Obi-Wan is just another indoctrinated, dogmatic Jedi who believes a lot of things about Sith because that is the way he has been instructed, including the belief that it is only them that "deal in absolutes" in spite of the fact that the Jedi do the same thing.
      • Yoda is green. Space vacuum is empty. Chancellor Palpatine IS evil. That's not absolutism; that's objectivism. What Anakin has lost is his objectivity. If Obi-Wan had said "Chancellor Palpatine is, always was and always will be evil", that would be absolutism. As it stands, all he does is point out the obvious fact which is true at that point in time.
  • If R2 knew what was going on the whole time in the original trilogy, why didn't he say/do something when Leia and Luke started getting romantic- is he just a little perv into incest, or something? I mean, he could've given them an annoying jolt, or provided convenient distractions, at least.
    • Unless I'm mistaken, R2's never even around when they start getting "romantic," and if he was, what's he going to do? Zap one of them until they stop making kissy faces? Plus, he may have knew how important it was to keep Leia's real identity a secret.
      • Babble at C 3 PO who could translate "Master Luke, sir! This is terribly untoward but Artoo says that the princess is your sister! Yes, he's most insistent that you STOP DOING THAT." And, I know this is getting into the giant "It Just Bugs Me" sink that is "Not ready for the burden were you," and "...From a certain point of view," (Gah, Obi Wan's such a tit), but why was it so important to keep Leia's identity a secret - from Luke, at any rate? I suppose what ultimately happens - Vader learning of his relationship to Leia by reading Luke's mind - might have happened earlier, but how would that make things any worse? Leia was already running away from the Empire as hard as she could. Luke and Leia would have had the benefit of a partially restored family, the rebellion would have had the advantage of another Force-user, no one would have done anything incesty. Surely even if there are risks, they're more than outweighed.
      • If Luke knew Leia was his sister, than Vader could have probably pried it right out of his head on Bespin and used it to manipulate him or Leia to turn to the dark side. From Obi-Wan's perspective, this would be an unacceptable risk.
      • I find it far more amusing to consider that he knew and didn't say anything deliberately. Because he found it hilarious.
      • Or maybe, being a droid, he doesn't understand/doesn't care.
      • Remember R2 never met Luke, why would he know that the two were related? He might be able to guess, but Luke was some backwoods kid to him. R2 wouldn't have a reason to say anything.
      • He never met Luke before but he definitely met Anakin and Obi Wan. If he still had his memories at this point, he should have come to the conclusion with some minor logic within half an hour into New Hope. But hey, I don't buy Lucas had any plans for a relationship between Vader and Luke any other then "the evil guy that killed my father´."
      • In the third movie, C 3 PO and R2-D2 get their memories whiped at the very end of the movie. R2 didn't even know.
      • I thought that was just Threepio. Of course, Threepio is a diplomat and got the chance to watch most of the Anakin/Padme relationship (that sounded less perverted in my head). R2 spent most of that time plugged into Anakin's ship, occasionally chatting with Threepio. Threepio has no common sense and didn't recognise pregnancy until Obi-Wan asked "Anakin's the father, right?" R2 was designed and programmed as a mechanic, and even though the Naboo engineers crammed on all the upgrades they could, I somehow doubt information dealing with incest taboos or genetic relationships were the highest on their list of priorities. He's the Engineer, not the Medic.
    • What would be the reason for telling R2 that Luke and Leia were the offspring of Vader? That'd be a pretty shabby way of keeping their birth a secret from Vader, while though R2 is definitely the smarter of the two droids, C 3 PO would probably have gotten the info too, and then everyone would know. Just better to have the droids also think that they died at birth. Unless you go with the idea that the first three movies actually are canon, in which case, this would be the least of your worries.
    • It's possible that, being a robot and therefore nonbiological, the Squick simply doesn't occur to Artoo.
    • Star Wars takes place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away," not in modern western nations of the Earth. How do we know they have an incest taboo? As far as I know nothing in the movies has ever suggested this to be the case.
  • Why is Lucas doing this Clone Wars movie, and why is he advertising it as covering the "untold story" of the Star Wars saga? Wasn't the Cartoon Network series quite well-regarded? Isn't this new thing completely redundant? Why does this annoy me so much?
    • A cash-in, obviously.
      • The story of the upcoming Clone Wars film/series is quite different from the Cartoon Network miniseries. Star Wars Clone Wars didn't have any Hutts, nor did Anakin have a padawan. It would seem that the entire new film takes place during the months that the original series skipped over: the "Anakin kicking butt" montage that immediately followed his promotion to the rank of Jedi Knight. So this particular story is new, even though the Clone Wars in general have been covered nearly to death.
      • As for why Lucas is doing this, while it's definitely a cash-in, keep in mind that Lucas had very little input on the original Star Wars Clone Wars miniseries (he was a little busy making Episode III at the time). I wonder if he's unhappy with the way it turned out, and wants this new series to be a do-over.
      • Au contraire, he liked the series. This is just an expansion of the same concept.
      • Which doesn't justify firing Genndy Tartakovsky, the guy responsible for everything good about the old series, and replacing him with a director who, judging from the miserable reception the movie got, is a derivative hack.
      • That's hardly his fault. The guy wasn't interested in making any more.
      • Um, that's not what I heard. Last I heard he wasn't even asked about making the new Clone Wars feature film or full-length series.
    • Speaking of which, why the hell doesn't the New Jedi Order era get any of the love it deserves?
      • Because the Yuuzhan Vong are silly.
      • Because the Character Derailment is massive. There are only a few authors who've ever handled Star Wars right... Timothy Zahn is one of them. Real enemies, not a superweapon-a-book. Handling the Force much closer to the original movies (no exceptionally over-the-top stunts - more acting as a guiding force). New characters with depth and backstory to them. Generally fixing up most of the shit the rest of the authors introduced, in his final duology. In this troper's (admittedly picky) mind, Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole are two of the only authors who stand out as handling Star Wars relatively well. (Half the reason Stackpole's there is his canon Fix Fic of KJA's Jedi Academy trilogy in I, Jedi.)
      • It suffers from the central problem of Sequelitis — it derails and destroys the satisfying resolution offered to us in the original work, creating a frustrating sense of having been robbed. So the Thrawn Trilogy has the problem that it takes all the air out of the triumph at the end of Rot J — no, the galaxy *hasn't* been saved, the Empire hasn't been defeated, in fact the *real* greatest threat to democracy everywhere hasn't even been fought yet. And New Jedi Order does the same thing to the Thrawn Trilogy — uh oh, *more* aliens who show up out of nowhere and blow up the entire laxy at once.
      • Not to mention that on a personal level fans have a reason to be pissed that characters who were supposed to get a happy ending haven't been allowed a moment's peace. Han and Leia don't get much time for a happy marriage — by Legacy of the Force, they've become one of the most shat-upon couples in the galaxy, children dying and going crazy left and right. Luke and Mara, if you like that ship, haven't gotten much of a happy marriage either.
      • And really, the constant unending conflict gets ludicrous at a certain point when you try to fit it into continuity. How can the galaxy be beset by threat after threat after threat all within the same 100-year timeframe? Under conditions like this it's ludicrous that the Old Republic could've possibly lasted for 5,000 years — the New Republic barely lasted for 50! As has *any* galactic government in the modern era!
      • All those threats spring from a very small number of events- specifically, the rise of Palpatine and the (possibly related) attack of the Yuuzhan Vong. By taking over the Old Republic, Palpatine destroyed the old power structure, which was the only thing preserving relative peace. In the process, he threw the galaxy into chaos. Suddenly, lots of small players saw opportunities to make their move and everything went crazy. The result? A hundred years of unending civil wars. That Magnificent Bastard...
      • Tolkien understood this problem when he was toying with the idea of a LotR sequel and ditched it. Any sequel that was true to the ending of the original — the idea that supernatural evil has been dealt a permanent defeat and the world is going to go on morphing into the mundane world of Men — would be a boring anticlimax. Any sequel that *wasn't* true to that idea would spit on everything the original characters fought and sacrificed and in some cases died for.
      • The problem isn't so much that it's un-doable, it's that the original trilogy would've had to have been constructed with the idea in mind. Babylon5 does this, having a recurring theme (even blatantly saying it in the season-four finale) that people are imperfect and the most any of the main characters can hope to do is make their own eras a little better; the characters expect that, as is true of the unpredictable nature of life, it is not possible to make their world completely perfect, nor is it reasonable to assume that the changes they make will still be making peoples' lives better a year in the future, or a hundred years, or five hundred, or a thousand, or a million. The original trilogy, however, carries with it a more fantasy-oriented theme (I'm sure we've all heard the line about how Star Wars is "really just high fantasy IN SPACE" and doesn't concern itself all that much with philosophical lessons about the nature of conflict. Thus, neverending conflict seems out of place.
  • Why is it that, prior to Jedi, the Millenium Falcon is only ever attacked by four or five TIE fighters at once? Surely the Death Star in A New Hope and the Star Destroyers in Empire can carry more fighters than that.
    • 1) They let them go, 2) They weren't trying to destroy the Falcon, just disable her, so blowing her up with hundreds of starfighters is a bad idea. Four or five starfighters can do the disabling thing easily, more would just have got in the way.
    • 1) They "let them go" ONCE. What about all the other times? Like at the end of episode IV, when the Falcon gets to fly all the way back to the Death Star and start shooting down TIE fighters without anyone noticing them because they were BehindTheBlack. 2) The entire Imperial fleet could not "do the disabling thing".
      • 1) Tarkin didn't release all of the station's fighters because he was too arrogant to believe the Rebels were an actual threat, and Vader didn't get any warning of the approaching Falcon because of all the jamming. 2) You don't go for overkill when you're trying to disable something. They were using the minimum of force; they could have gone for the hundreds of fighters, but then there'd be a chance the Falcon would have been shot down. Star Destroyers can disable things without any fighters, it just dispatched fighters because the Falcon is much more maneuovrable than Leia's ship.
      • In defense of Tarkin, the amount of fighters released was sufficient to rapidly destroy over 90% of the attacking Rebel fighters. His poor fortune was that the remaining few survivors included Luke Skywalker. But, really, that's not Tarkin's fault.
      • Unfortunately for Tarkin, to the best of this troper's memory most of those fighters were released on Vader's orders. Because Tarkin is very bad at getting inside a hero's head, he didn't think any real threat could come from something that small. Vader, the ace pilot, knew that if anything can hit a weak point, a starfighter can. As an additional bonus, according to Death Star neither Tarkin nor Vader genuinely knew that the bullseye was there until the Rebels were clearly focusing on that one trench.
      • When the Falcon pulled its Big Damn Heroes moment, remember that they were flying through a field of jamming so intense that both sides' pilots were stuck using their eyes instead of sensors; they actually probably wouldn't have been able to see the Falcon or even notice its presence until it opened fire.
    • Releasing too many fighters would lead to unnecessary casualties because they would get in one another's way.
    • Even if the TIE Fighters did see it, the Millenium Falcon is a freighter. They aren't going to be able to eyeball the illegal weapons modifications, so why prioritize it over the X-Wings and Y-Wings?
  • Blasters can be "set for stun". Exactly how can a foking fiery ball of overheated burning plasma be set to not scorch a hole the size of a fist into someone just beats me.
    • You know what you call what would otherwise be plasma if you've pumped enormously less energy into heating it? Ionized gas. The 'stun' mode is apparently some type of non-lethal electrical shock, like a wireless taser. Of course, this makes no sense according to real science, but virtually nothing else in these movies does either, so its good enough for fiction.
    • Who said the stun setting was the same weapon as the blaster's lethal setting? The blaster could have simply had a secondary firing mode, like a high-tech equivalent of the underbarrel M203 grenade launcher on an M4 or M16.
    • Indeed. I had always assumed that "kill" and "stun" were not so much settings as completely different weapons occupying the same housing. They certainly look different. In fact, the real question is, why do stormtroopers ever use any setting besides "stun"? It looks like it would be much easier to just hit everyone with those big blue circles and then slit their throats at one's leisure.
      • But they're like two or three inches wide, and we don't know if they work through armour. They shot at the screen, remember? That's why they looked so big.
      • NOTE: Stun does not work through armor. It also doesn't work on anything much larger than a Human, as it takes two to three shots to take down a Wookiee.
  • "Return of the Jedi" was to be the last movie which involved Luke, Han and Leia - the trilogy's resolution could have been anything. There was a precedent for Luke and Leia becoming romantically involved, in both previous movies. There was absolutely no reason why Leia having Jedi powers would mean she had to be related to Luke (this also had precedent in The Empire Strikes Back when Leia hears Luke calling to her - the same film where they had their big snog). And Harrison Ford wanted Han to be killed off. So why why why WHY WHY did they decide to pair off Leia with Han and clumsily resolve the love triangle by making Luke Leia's brother? (And don't say "That's how Lucas always envisioned it", because that's crap and everyone knows it.)
    • Convenience. Give the trilogy a sense of an actual ending.
    • I don't know about the brother and sister thing, but it's pretty clear that Leia and Han were set up from the beginning. In Star Wars it takes a backseat, but it's pretty obvious that Luke's interest in Leia was purely the fact that she was a hottie while Han's interest was more in the fact that he likes bitchy women. Come Empire Strikes Back, there may have been off-screen romance between Luke and Leia, but what we actually see is Han and Leia flirting left and right (the big snog, as you put it, was a moment of Leia spiting Han). And then they "pair off" in Cloud City, Leia admitting she loves Han. Imagine a Return of the Jedi where your idea is put into place: Han's dead, Luke and Leia are fucking over his corpse. We have another Secret Tacked On Origin Story wherein we find out that Leia's parents were sekrit Jedi who ran away to Alderaan or whatever. Vader's "If you don't turn evil, maybe your sister will," becomes a far less effective, "If you don't become evil, maybe your girlfriend will." Lucas' handling was clumsy not because it was a bad idea, but because he's George Lucas, and has to do one thing wrong.
      • Only one thing?
    • Also, originilaty and unpredictability. It may look ridiculous today, but the way story was handled back then was a refreshment. In fact, this troper came across an article in an old SF magazine, published between ep 4 and 5, where the author was dismissing Star Wars as a same old story, where Luke will end up with the princess, kill the big bad Darth Vader and save the world.
    • In this troper's view, some of it is retcon. Traditionally, the hero gets the princess. I suspect initally, Darth Vader was always Luke's Father (the name *means* Dark Father after all), but Leia was not originally written as Luke's sister. As originally written, Leia would have fallen for Luke (remember the kiss, "just for luck" in ANH?) but this was changed for Empire.
      • Darth Vader does not mean "Dark Father." It just sounds like it does. Nobody's quite sure where "Darth" came from, but "Vader" clearly goes along with the Sith naming theme. (That is, take some malevolent-sounding or meaningful word, and if you feel like it chop either the beginning or end off. Invader—>Vader.) Originally, Darth Vader may have been a name instead of a title and the equivalent of a pen name, who knows.
      • Setting up Han/Leia as much as they did in Empire Strikes Back and not having them get together in Rot J would've been an immense letdown. It may have been ambiguous which one was the official ship in ANH, but by ESB it was obvious.
  • Why is Obi-Wan such a shitty detective? Shouldn't Jedi have a better understanding of "motives"? In "Attack of the Clones" he states that there seems to be no motive for the Kaminoans to kill Padme. Well, they were offered a shit load of money to create an army for the Republic. And she was speaking out against the creation of such an army. If she managed to convince everyone then the Kaminoans would just have to kiss all that money goodbye. Not to mention all that they already spent creating all those clones. Seems like a perfect motive for murder to me.
    • I would imagine that most Jedi would have absolutely crap detective skills considering they're raised as monks.
      • So, what, they enforce peace and justice throughout the galaxy handing out traffic tickets?
      • That and stabbing people.
    • Hadn't they already been paid for the army?
      • Yes, but if there's one thing a defense contractor loves more than getting paid huge sums of money to build something, it's getting paid huge sums of money to build even more of it after they've already worked the bugs out of production.
    • "No motive" could have been shorthand for Obi-Wan saying that he sensed no motive there... reasonably enough, as the Kamionans are being entirely open with him. After arriving, he almost instantly fixes on the one person on the planet who's hiding something and is worth interrogating. Jedi aren't necessarily trained in detective work because they can achieve similar results through pure instinct, with their weak area being cases where everybody's guilty - such as politics.
  • Uncle Owen wasn't exactly Uncle Vernon and Aunt Beru definitely wasn't Aunt Petunia. There was never any doubt that Owen and Beru loved Luke as if he was their own: that's the entire reason Owen didn't want Luke going off to the Academy and getting his ass either caught by the Empire or killed in some stupid battle. Why is it that Luke, this bastion of light and goodness, mourns the only mother and father he's ever known for all of five seconds before joining Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade? It seems like they're never mentioned again, either.
    • He only went on the damn fool idealistic crusade because his aunt and uncle were dead.
      • Yes, but again, he never mentions them. Not even a throwaway line about how he's going to get the Empire for Owen and Beru so Obi-Wan can chide him about revenge. Vader doesn't tease him about the fact that his aunt and uncle died because he was stupid enough to let the astromech droid run off. Hell, he could have just sold the moisture farm while he was looking for money: he was their only living heir. It's not like they knew that they had to be there the day of. It just bugs me that they were a plot device to keep Luke on Tatooine for five extra minutes.
      • Vader wouldn't have taunted Luke about Beru and Owen because he didn't know about Beru and Owen. He had nothing to do personally with killing them; he doesn't know that the daring young pilot who destroyed the Death Star has any connection with some random couple who was killed for resisting arrest on Tatooine. If he did, he would've instantly known their nephew Luke was his son, given that Anakin *met* Owen and Beru and knows that Owen is his only living (step)sibling.
      • Also, this troper really doesn't think everything needs to be mentioned explicitly in order to have been given due weight in the story. Luke looks tragic and burdened when he sees the corpses of Owen and Beru; he is clearly burdened and sad a lot afterwards; he is clearly terrified of loss, and deeply, even irrationally protective of the only family he has left. The death of Owen and Beru is an obvious factor in this subtext, and it would not be improved by being stated as text.
      • Basically, there's no accounting for taste. This troper finds most bombastic expressions of grief in popular movies to be [[Narm]]ful. This troper, for instance, would've preferred if the vast majority of Harry's violent protestations of awful grief about Sirius Black had gone unsaid, and thought the brief moment of deep sadness followed by stern resolution to do what needs to be done is how tragic deaths should be handled more often.
      • Especially since Luke lives in one of the most violent and dangerous places in the galaxy, and has probably known people who've died of exposure, of wild animal attacks or of Tusken raids since he was a child. This doesn't diminish the grief he feels when he loses his own parents; it does mean he's less likely to feel the need to pour out his grief on everyone around him. (This troper found the badass Spartan warrior who breaks out into hysterical shrieking tears when his son dies in Three Hundred to be ultimate [[Narm]].)
      • Luke also might have thrown his lot in with Obi-Wan as a reaction to their daeths, that was how he handled it, he moved onto the next thing. That way he didn't have to contemplate it. While I doubt it was explored Luke probably spent a fair amount of time reflecting on it later, and possibly grieving then.
      • Harry might have been Wangsty after Sirius' death, but you have to consider he was 15 or 16, a teenager in puberty who has lost his godfather after just finding him and several other stones on his shoulder. Luke was 19 and he had a pretty carefree life until this point.
  • The Empire is not very efficient. Why build the expensive Death Star to blow up a planet when a cheaper decomissioned star destoyer can be used as a relativistic bomb to do the job cheaper, considering that the ships can reach 99% light-speed in two seconds.
    • Planetary shields. Big ones that cover planets. Protects them from attacks, see. Also, interception fleets which can just as easily decelerate said Star Destroyer. The Death Star is designed to take down heavily fortified planets that have shields that take the efforts of entire fleets of ships to batter down. It's also much more powerful than any relativistic kill-slug, by several dozen orders of magnitude.
      • Or, totalitarian dictatorships suck. Without wanting to invoke Godwin's Law, Hitler had a similar problem, constantly dreaming up new "secret weapons" to win the war such as the V2. If he had spent that money on just training and equipping his military better, things might have gone rather differently. The Emperor echoes that egotistical streak. It's not enough to just have a competent military force, his ego requires him to possess a colossal gun he can kill things with. And that's why he lost.
      • Well to be fair a lot of the secret wonder weapons revolutionized warfare when the technology matured. Yes, the V2 was stupid, but it was the precursor to modern ballistic missiles and had the Nazi nuclear program not fizzled it may have even been able to rain nuclear death on London (and Hitler would've totally done it, too). The Nazis were way ahead of everybody else in a lot of other areas as well, cruise missiles, jet aircraft, various guided missiles, assault rifles, night vision... I've heard quite a few historians and veterans express the opinion that had the Nazis been able to prolong the war for a few more months, they could've mass-produced these and made quite a spectacular comeback. Same thing with the Death Stars, it was a terrific weapon but nobody really knew how to handle it. The first one was lost not because of its technical inadequacy but because of the overconfidence of Tarkin, who stubbornly refused to defend it in any way - the few imperial fighters that took part in the battle were launched by Vader, who was apparently the only person on board who had a clue. And the second one would've been pretty much invincible, had the Emperor actually finished it and used it as a weapon instead of vulnerable bait. But since he thought it a good idea to lead the entire rebel fleet right to it while its reactor core was still exposed enough so that even a space freighter could fly right in...
    • Yeah, planetary shields. Given that even the Executor's shield was able to withstand the impact◊ of not one but three IS Ds travelling at relativistic speeds, I'd say it'd take an entire armada to penetrate a planetary shield in this way. That said, given that the Empire has the technology to move objects the size of small moons, one can't help but wonder why don't they just use, you know, moons for this.
      • It's probably an engineering problem. The Death Star is designed from the ground up to be accelerated by engines. Moons... aren't. The forces involved are quite huge. The engines could be driven into the moon itself because the ground can't take the force... stuff like that. If you can reinforce a moon enough to accelerate it easily, it would probably be easier just to build a Death Star.
    • The shields were probably invented by Bao-Dur during the recovery of Telos to prevent it from being destroyed a second time.
    • Tarkin explicitly states that the Death Star is for intimidation purposes - a gigantic, moon-sized space station is pretty damn terrifying. In the EU, the idea of ruling through the fear of force rather than through force itself is called the Tarkin Doctrine, and the Death Star is the textbook example.
  • Humans living in a galaxy far, far away in the past! This sounds silly, it should have been set in the distant future.
    • No it shouldn't. In the distant future, you need at least some realism. But in a galaxy far far away, you can easily have magic and a several thousand year old Republic.
    • Of course, there is the alternative interpretation. It's not literally a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, that is simply a twist on the old way of starting fairy tales, once upon a time in a distant land. In other words, sometime in say the 30th century, these are the magical tales.
    • All this about one line in the opening sequence which is just there to set tone... anyway, are you really complaining about lack of realism in a movie series that is based on old camp scifi? Star Wars is not a hard sci-fi series. Like, at all. People who complain about the movies based on 'bad science' make me laugh, because your average Hollywood movie, be it fantasy or 'realistic', will have lots of scientific and realism errors as well. Any sci-fi show with FTL is breaking several important laws of physics anyway. The only important thing in a show is consistency.
    • Actually, there was going to be a tie-in novel that would investigate the origin of the human species and how literal the "long time ago" is; Robert J. Sawyer's Alien Exodus would basically be one giant George Lucas homage crossover fic. Basically the humans originate from a dystopian future Earth (the Earth depicted in Lucas' THX-1138) and escaped the solar system in a colony ship that somehow got sucked into a wormhole that sent them into the past in a galaxy far away. Along the way we find out the protagonist, Luke Skywalker's ancestor, is the descendant of the kid in American Graffiti, that Willow took place in the prehistoric past of the planet Corellia, etc. . The unpublished manuscript of this book is of interest to Star Wars EU fans mainly in how hard it contradicts what's been established as canon since then.
    • It bears pointing out that nothing about the basic conceit of the former work is impossible in current canon. The origin of the Human species is deliberately kept unknown, "lost to the distant past", in the Star Wars EU canon. Most people seem to assume the Human homeworld is Coruscant (which is clearly not Earth), but the EU itself provides plenty of evidence that this isn't true (prehistoric paintings of the ancient Coruscant natives, the Zhell, are clearly *not* humans, Coruscant is naturally colder than is comfortable for humans, there's evidence that humans were transported as slaves from a very faraway place by the Rakatan Empire in prehistoric times, etc.)
  • Star Wars forgot that laser guns do not have recoil! Laser swords do not parry or block other laser swords. The laser blades will pass through each other instead.
    • They aren't actually lasers. In fact, they aren't even called lasers in the movies. There are things called turbolasers, and they have recoil, yes, but the shooty things are called blaster rifles. Complaining about names is stupid anyway. Do you know why rifles were originally called rifles? Because they have a helical groove cut into the barrel. Do you really think they rifle energy weapons? Anyway blaster bolts are quite variable in terms of speed, in some scenes they move at the same speed as bullets as well.
    • Blasters. Are. Not. Lasers. Lightsabers. Are. Not. Lasers. Any idiot who has even the slightest bit of education as to the properties of lasers should know from simply looking at the weapons' behavior that they aren't lasers.
      • Any idiot who has read the book can see the word LASER written to describe these weapons. Unless said idiot CAN'T READ.
      • And any idiot who has observed the properties of the weapon in action will tell you that they aren't lasers. And any idiot who's read any of the in-universe technical information on the weapons will know that they aren't firing lasers. And any idiot should be able to tell that when something is referred to offhand as a "laser" but clearly isn't firing lasers, that said offhand designation is obviously a colloquial term or slang. Kind of how they don't serve food on the sensor dish, or how blaster rifles don't fire bullets and lack rifling of any sort.
      • It's interesting the philosophical differences in how people approach science fiction. A lot can be said about the fundamental divide between people who look at a zap-gun and say "Real lasers don't work like that, so this story is Wrong" vs. people who look at a zap-gun and say "Real lasers don't work like that, so obviously zap-guns aren't lasers, but something else".
      • Vs "I don't care how it works - I still want one."
      • At least a part of this can be traced back to subtitles in countries where English is not the main language. These subtitles will often translate "blaster rifle" and "lightsaber" into the local equivalents of "laser gun" and "laser sword".
      • The Star Wars universe treats "laser" as basically synonymous to "raygun". The Death Star superlaser, according to Death Star, is closer to a giant mass-energy converter than to any kind of laser (although the first hints of this came in the movie, when the beams converge to a point rather than just shooting out straight).
  • Ion drives can not reach relativistic speeds, and the Millenium Falcon is powered by an ion drive. Ion drives do not function well in a gravity well, they cannot even leave a planet's surface. And why do the ships in Star Wars lack delta-v? Also, all this "I can't shake 'em" crap during the space battles is utter horseshit. The starfighter can simply pivot and blast their pursuer...talk about crap fighter pilots.
    • You know, nowhere in the films are they actually called ion drives. They're actually identified as such only in the Expanded Universe, so it's rather superfluous to blame George Lucas for them. Secondly, what about it? Names are meaningless anyway.
      • They are called Ion Drives in the books, comics and all the other EU crap.
      • It's kind of annoying to hear someone talking about "ion drives" as though that's a category of drives that all work the same way because of being "ion drives". An "ion drive" just means some kind of drive that involves ions in some way — probably using ions as reaction mass, sure, but there is absolutely zero reason to think that the same constraints apply to them as apply to the ion drives we might be able to build now, in real life. (Almost every limitation of modern-day "ion drives" has to do with power limitations and the limitations of how efficiently we can generate magnetic fields. The fact that it's hard for us to deliver enough much power in a compact package or to maintain a stable enough magnetic field is why you can't blast off from a planet with an ion drive and they're currently being considered, in our world, for outer-space navigation only. There is no reason at all to think that the technology of a universe with FTL drives is not thousands or millions of times superior to ours in both of these respects.)
    • And while they are pivoting around to blast their purser, the pursuer shoots them in the second it takes the fighter pilot to come around. Unless you're seriously going to suggest they don't level out and cut their thrust so they can pivot in place, because that's a surefire way to go flying wildly out of control.
    • "Ion drives." This is the same setitng that calls a magnetically contained arc of plasma a "lightsaber," a gas-powered energy weapon that fires bolts of coherent energy with significant kinetic force "turbolasers" and an energy weapon that lacks any rifling a "blaster rifle." Its pretty damn obvious that whatever they're calling an "ion drive" is, it isn't a conventional ion drive as we know it.
      • Minor nitpick: lightsabers are not magnetically contained arcs of plasma, that's just bizarrely widespread speculation about how one would go about making something with an identical effect with anything close to resembling current technology. The actual, even more ridiculous explanation, is that the beam is actually a loop so close to itself it appears as one solid entity, and it will do anything (ie - cut through stuff by eroding it rapidly via friction) to complete the loop, thus no containment of any kind is required.
      • Protesting that the Falcon's ion drive should be able to reach "relativistic speeds" is wrongheaded anyway. The Falcon never flies to "relativistic speeds" through normal, non-space-and-time-bending means, which is good because it means we don't have to deal with time dilation effects or the insane degree of acceleration it would have to survive or the basic fact that even at relativistic speeds (which cannot exceed C) traveling from the "rim" of the galaxy to the "core" would take millions of human lifetimes. What the Falcon does is travel to an area of space where it's safe to use "hyperdrive" and then enter "hyperspace". Whatever technology does this is obviously Applied Phlebotinum and talking about how the hyperdrive interacts with the non-hyper-"ion drive" is going to just be baseless speculation.
      • Except Han tells Obi Wan kenobi that "the Falcon can go PAST .5 light speed", unless Han was just bragging to make a sale. (he also forgot that a parsec is a measure of distance and not time).
      • ".5" is a measurement of hyperdrive speed. Most high-end hyperdrives only go up to .4 or .45, so a .5 hyperdrive is ludicriously fast.
      • Ahem, ".5 past lightspeed" actually meant a hyperdrive rating of .5, which means it takes 1/2 the time the standard class 1 hyperdrive would to travel the same distance. Just to be clear, most ships have a class 20 or so backup hyperdrive. And a class .5 is highly illegal under Imperial regulations. And about the "parsec" thing, Han set both the shortest time and distance records for the Kessel run. And was rather surprised by the records when he reviewed them after the run. And then immediately started bragging about it to make a sale. So both interpretations are right.
  • Okay, why is force lightning considered a dark side power? I really don't see how manipulating electricity is some great sin while telekinesis gets a free pass.
    • Force Lightning doesn't just involve using electricity; it involves channeling your anger and emotions into a direct assault with the Force, that takes on the form of electricity. Basically, you RAGE someone to death, and that rage appears in the form of lightning.
      • It's also not inherently stronger than telekinesis. Any one who equals you in mastery of the Force can absorb or redirect it as they see fit. Also, while telekinesis can be used to redirect or block attacks, or hold somebody, all lightning does is blow things up. Which telekinesis is 'also'' capable of doing just fine, as Vader demonstrated in the end of Revenge Of The Sith. It's how you use it.
      • There's also the fact that telekinesis can be used as much to protect and help as it can be used to harm, i.e. Yoda using it to protect Anakin and Obi-Wan from falling debris. There's not a whole lot you can do beneficially with bolts of hate-lightning.
      • How about power a few city blocks? I'm picturing a power station staffed by a few hundred Sith right now. Really, no Force power is inherently good or evil, it's just how creative you can be when coming up with an application.
      • We have little to no indication that force-lightning works the same way as regular electricity (no indication in the movies, that is.)
      • Force Lightning is not actual electricity: it is pure Force power manifested (through hatred, et cetera) as deadly forking bolts that look like electricity, hence the name. Look at it this way: if the Force is the life-giving universal energy field, then when using Force Lightning you are essentially shooting your life force at people to kill/torture them. Pretty nasty, and clear that it's a Bad Thing To Do. That said, if I remember correctly Dooku used a modified type of Lightning as a Magic Defibrillator to keep Grievous alive when he was getting cyborg'd. So yeah...durn EU.
      • There actually is a Light-side version of Force Lightning, it's called Electric Judgmement or Emerald Sparks. You can look it up on Wookieepedia. It's just very rare(only Plo Kloon and Luke Skywalker have been known to use it) and it's very controversial amongst the New Jedi Order because of it's obvious similarities to Dark Side Lightning.
    • Because the Jedi said so. And if the Jedi have a fault, it's their extreme dogmatism. When Yoda teaches stuff to Luke, he refuses to explain himself, firm on the position that his teachings must be taken as is. This is the kind of thinking that leads to certain things being considered "evil" without anyone wondering why.
  • How in Katarn's name does Leia manage to remember her real mother, Padme? I'm like 2/3 her age by Rot J, and I can't remember stuff that happened when I was 5, let alone when I had only just been born.
    • There's lots of speculation, and it's never explicitly confirmed (if it is, then I've not seen it). But general consensus is (how do I explain this) some sort of Force imprint (she saw Padmé's face for like several seconds as a newborn, and somehow her Force connection allowed her to unconsciously imprint the memory in her brain).
    • Simple: Leia didn't remember her real mother, Padme. She grew up believing she was the daughter of Senator Organa and his wife, and she still believes that when she says she remembers her "mother;" she's never before then (or even after then) given any reason to believe Organa's wife wasn't her mother. So, when she says she remembers her mother, she simply remembers seeing the face of Senator Organa's wife before she died. Easy as that.
      • And that's the theory I subscribe to.
      • Erm... no. Luke clearly asks her, 'Do your remember your mother? Your REAL mother?', the emphasis on 'real mother' suggesting that Leia knew perfectly well the Organas adopted her, and that she is in fact talking about Padme.
      • Maybe Leia assumes Luke thinks she was adopted or something. Or maybe Leia's adopted mother died early in Leia's life and her adopted father married again. This would explain why Leia only remembers feelings and images. Or maybe Leia just thought Luke was being redundant.
      • Or, just possibly, Leia had seen pictures or video of Padme Amidala. Padme and Bail were about the closest friends two members of the Galactic Senate could be, so he would have probably kept a few pictures of her. After all, it was pretty well established that Breha Organa (Senator Bail Organa's wife) could not have children, which was why they wanted to adopt. Leia probably knew she was adopted, and may have seen pictures or recordings of her real mother.
  • Just a minor point, but how does Grievous talk, exactly? I don't know how much, if any of his throat is there, and he doesn't have a mouth. So...what separates his speech from his thoughts? And how does the built-in comlink factor in?
    • He's got a speaker grill. As for how the virtualization works, the details don't matter. It's not like you have to wonder about separating thought and speech normally. He is moving his robotic limbs about extremely dexterously, it shouldn't be too hard for them to fit in a "turn com-link on-off" switch.
  • Going to confront Palpatine, Mace Windu refuses to bring Anakin. Regardless of Anakin's mental state, if you're going to try to destroy the last Sith (or going into a confrontation where you may have to), wouldn't it make sense to bring the guy prophesied to do just that?
    • At this point, most of the Jedi Council is not fully convinced that Anakin is the chosen one. Anakin's own mental confusion is probably reinforcing Mace's own belief that he might not be the one destined to destroy the Sith.
      • In addition, Anakin was not a fit mental state to be of much use in any battle (what with him believing Palpatine could save Padmé and all), plus the prophecy is open to interpretation. It's possible that Mace saw Anakin's role in destroying the Sith simply as being the one to figure out who the Sith Lord was. While he wouldn't have delivered the killing blow personally, he would have been the catalyst that have led to the end of the Sith.
  • Okay, how does Grievous cough? If he's got no throat and lungs, and he's just using a speaker, why does he cough? Habit? Or does he have a Ultravoice (whatever than thing for people who've had their larynxes removed is)?
    • He has lungs, they're protected by a special flesh-sac underneath the cyborg armor.
  • Lightsabers: Nigh-unstoppable blades of intense energy which are practically a critical hit against any body part they touch. By the time Episode I rolls around, they have been around for 15,000 years, and an enormous amount of knowledge has been accumulated about their construction and usage. Customizations have cropped up, and fighting techniques have been refined. Yet in that entire timespan, it would appear that nobody ever thought to put some kind of cross-guard on them to protect their hands, either as an extension of the blade or out of some lightsaber-resistant alloy (Cortosis, Phrek, Mandalorian Iron, etc.). There's a chance that Luke could have kept his hand if he had had some sort of hilt and had learned to use it. It also bugs me how they swing these blades like they were golf clubs when rapier-fighting techniques would be so much more efficient and appropriate. Of course I realize that it's just "Hollywood Fencing" (where you have people swinging rapiers like Katanas or machetes because it looks cooler than actual fencing techniques) taken to its extreme, but it still bugs me. Especially since so much attention has been given in the EU to the various lightsaber combat-forms, and yet not one of them reflects the most feasible 1-on-1 technique, which involves little or no swinging; merely thrusting and parrying.
    • In regards to fencing style, I thought Makashi relied a lot on parrying and jabbing. As for cortosis, in Jedi Outcast, Luke claims the material is very rare. In the Kot OR era of course, every sword has a cortosis weave, so it must have been in higher quantities at the time. I'd be willing to bet that it was adapted into armour as well, considering so many enemies in the game can take hits with a sabre and still stand.
    • Makashi bugs me for a number of reasons. It's supposedly the best way to prevent an opponent from destroying your lightsaber while you are wielding it. However, if it is the most similar to conventional fencing, with focus on parrying and thrusts, it would actually be more vulnerable than any other saber form, considering the longer amount of time that the blades would be in contact, and the fact that lightsabers (as stated above) do not have cross-guards. In a duel between two Makashi users, the objective would be to have better control over your enemy's lightsaber than he has over yours, which is achieved through basic leverage, controlling his foible (top part of the blade) with your forte (lower part of the blade). However, with lightsabers, using your forte would place too great a risk on the destruction of your lightsaber without some kind of a crossguard, which is why I find it absolutely mind-boggling that nobody ever figured out how to make one.
      • Lightsaber blades seem to bind against each other rather tightly when they come into contact; a crossguard might be unnecessary.
      • Also, the lightsaber blade is hot; the fact that it doesn't crisp the user's hands suggests that something is stopping heat from radiating from the blade to the hand. Maybe there's some sort of force field at the base of the blade that stops lightsabers but isn't very visible.
      • Lightsabers only get hot when they're cutting things. The rest of the time, no energy is lost.
      • Makashi also bugs me because it is supposed to be weak against the more strength-dependent forms, like Djem So. While it is true that a Makashi user would have trouble blocking stronger lightsaber blows, the fact is that they shouldn't need to. For a style so devoted to speed and agility, it seems that precious few Makashi masters are familiar with the concept of "Attack of Opportunity." Strength-dependent styles create openings that a decent Makashi user could cut through like butter, since Makashi wielders do not have to draw their weapons backwards in preparation for a strike. Yet Makashi wielders are always depicted as politely waiting for an attack to get close to them before reacting to it, rather than striking when the attack poses no threat to them and their opponent's defense is down. This is particularly confusing when the opponent raises their blade over their head, while the Makashi wielder simply ignores the fact that their opponent's entire body is left undefended in preparation for an attack that will pose no threat to them if they kill their opponent before it is launched.
      • What bugs me is that Makashi is a fancy name for: "Christopher Lee refused to put up with the absurd fighting styles we made up for the lightsaber and decided to just use the damn thing like a fencer."
      • Uh, that's because Chrisopher Lee is old. His arms work fine, but his legs don't, so he can't fight using the more athletic styles used by other characters and thus uses the sword as a fencing saber.
    • Sabres are not rapiers. Rapiers are thrusting weapons. Lightsabres are capable of slicing people's arms or other bits off, therefore it makes perfect sense to use them to slash rather than thrust, using the whole length of the blade rather than just the point. In Real Life sports fencing, sabre allows for slashing, unlike foil or epée.
      • Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Slashing would probably be the better method for fighting multiple enemies, and of course in mounted combat it is the only practical strategy, but in 1-on-1 duels it just doesn't make much sense. You have to draw the sword back before you can slash it, whereas thrusting is a single move, always ready to take advantage of any gap in the opponent's defense (like, say, drawing their sword away from them in preparation for a slash). Sure, you can't cut off any limbs, but why bother when their torso is left wide open? (Also, "Real Life sports fencing" is a bit of an oxymoron to this SCA martial-arts fencer)
      • You don't have to pull back on the lightsaber's blade to slash with it. Remember, the lightsaber deals damage on contact, not due to weight and inertia, so a flick of a wrist and a light touch with the blade can do as much damage as a two-handed swing.
      • I recall reading in a canon star wars equipment book that a core attribute of a lightsabre was a strong, gyroscopic like effect. Maybe this limits the range of effective techniques down to the 'swing 'n smash' we see in the movies/games?
  • In a similar vein, after thousands of years, hasn't it occured to anyone that single-shot weapons aren't really that effective against Jedi. How come nobody ever opens up on a force wielder with a submachine gun or an RPG? Then again, Star Wars has never been big on automatic hand-held weapons.
    • Because blasters are standard issue across the entire galaxy, and the vast majority of soldiers, criminals, and the like will only ever be fighting other soldiers and other criminals. Comparatively speaking, Jedi are rare and can be brought down by concentrated blaster fire, gas grenades, explosives, etc, which are standard issue and are used when they have them. They're not going to waste time, money, weight, and space arming their troops with substandard, outdated gear on the off-chance that they might encounter a Jedi.
    • Obi-wan, in the ROTS novel, blocks the fire from 10000 battle droids with his saber. Vader is able to use the Force to block Han's blaster, bare-handed. A sufficiently talented Force user would be able to a) block some of the shots with the Force b) block some of the shots with a saber and c) mind trick the guy standing next to the guy with the machine gun to shoot him.
    • Not to mention Jedi have breathing tricks to avoid being gassed and can use teleknesis to deflect missiles. And since slugthrowers are substandard weapons that couldn't hope to penetrate most types of armor, they aren't standard issue.
      • It could be a matter of Gameplay And Story Segregation, but in the video game Star Wars Battlefront II, clone commandos have shoulder-mounted machine guns. And Jedi/Sith can indeed deflect their shots with a lightsaber.
      • To throw more against the use of slugthrowers (firearms), a Jedi who knows the slug (bullet) is coming can use telekinesis to stop it.
  • Can someone explain to me the dog fighting tactics used in the Battle of Yavin? When the star fighters were making their attack run, the one who was actually going to make the attack was supposedly being covered by his wingmates. Now, I'm not a fighter pilot, but I do know you don't cover your wingman by flying beside him. Instead, you fly well over him or behind him. So, if an enemy pilot drops onto your buddy's tail, you can drop behind the enemy fighter. In any World War II documentary, you see this. You'll see torpedo bombers making their way to their targets with friendly fighters, hovering above, ready to drop onto any enemy craft going after the bombers. In the first Death Star battle, you see nothing like this. You just see a bunch of stupid wingmen with "shoot me" written on the back of their fighters.
    • They were flying behind them. Specifically, they were flying close enough behind them to cover them with their fighters' shields. For all intents and purposes, the lead fighter's wingmen were disposable, ablative armor to protect him while he set up for his torpedo run. The wingmen couldn't hang very far back because that would let the TIEs slip inside the gap and smoke them, and they couldn't fly outside the trench overhead, because of the anti-air batteries.
  • Just how exactly did Anakin go from "I must pledge myself to the Sith to save my wife." to "Kill younglings!" in under an hour or so? Even though Anakin is mentally unstable and teetering towards the Dark Side, going from troubled and angry to a mass-murderer of children isn't just Jumping Off The Slippery Slope, that's flying off it with a jet-pack. It's true that he killed the Sandpeople, but there's a big difference between slaughtering viscious warrior people who killed your mother after days of traumatic visions and killing children just because you were told to. Personally, this troper thinks it might have worked better if Anakin went to kill the Separatists first - he'd agree to do that, since they are still the enemy and it will end the war, and then by the time he came back he could be so far gone into Dark Side rage he'd kill fellow Jedi and younglings. It's still a stretch, but a more acceptable one.
    • That's the power of the Dark Side. The Dark Side corrupts, and Anakin was already heading down the slippery slope after killing the Sandpeople.
      • I don't dispute that, but the issue I have is it happening so quickly. It's more of a sudden switch being flicked rather than a fast corruption. No one can corrupt so fast than they can pledge to a Sith Lord and then be willing to kill kids as soon as he makes the short trip to the Jedi Temple.
      • It's not as if he went from shining, incorrutable hero one moment, to irredeemable scumbag the next. In the first half of the film, he's put under constant stress, being torn between his commitment to the Jedi and his loyalty to Palpatine. Also, he's being constantly haunted by dreams of Padmé's death. Then, Obi-Wan is sent off to fight Grievous, leaving Anakin with no-one to confide his problems to except Palpatine. Then he finally learns the truth of Palpatine being a Sith, and the Jedi still don't trust him enough to come along, plus if they kill him, he loses his chance to save Padmé. Then, he arrives to see Mace about to kill what seems to be a helpless old man. Anakin's attack on Mace is a split-second, instinctive reaction. He wasn't being evil when he did that, nor did he actually kill Mace. Palpatine did. But by now, he's convinced the Jedi are traitors, and even if he does want to go back, there's no way he's going to be able to explain Mace's death without them thinking he's the least bit responsible. His fall to the Darkside truly started when Palpatine put him on the council, it was Mace's death that was the straw breaking the camel's back.
  • Death sticks? Seriously, death sticks? Was the [I'm assuming it's a Hutt, they run organized crime] Hutt who named that particular illegal substance on some really, really bad spice or something? I mean, public relations and marketing, man...
    • [4].
      • Yeah, but that doesn't sound like a "street name", like crack, pixie dust, blow, Mary Jane, LSD... all of which make the drug either no worse or sound better. It sounds like it'd, kinda, you know, push away potential customers.
    • This troper enjoys thinking up a new explanation for the name every time he hears the question. So far, his favorite theory is Celebrity Endorsement/merchandising. Deth is famous throughout the galaxy, and he only uses Deth brand nicotine sticks. Brand Name Takeover ensues.
  • So in "The Phantom Menace" we discover Naboo is ruled by Padme, a 14-year old queen. Ok, no great shock, these things can easily happen in hereditary monarchies if the parents die young. But then in the next film we discover that in fact she was elected to a limited term. Why on earth (on a planet whose inhabitants seem basically human, and that seems to have no shortage of adults) would you elect someone that age as a ruler? It all seems like a clumsy way to get everyone's ages about right and justify Leia having the title of "Princess", with a subsequent hasty retcon once the writers realised that having a hereditary monarch bemoaning the threat to democracy in later films might look a bit silly.
    • She's a politically savvy fourteen-year-old with the brains and steel spine to lead a guerilla war against an invading power and has the balls to personally lead the counter-charge into the palace to take out the enemy commander. Age is irrelevant when compared with ability, and there are very few fourteen-year-olds who can do that.
    • Yes, so few that its not very believable. That just makes it worse! But maybe this is the wrong place to complain about that.
    • Tropers, there's a simpler explanation.
    • To hopefully help clear this up, Padme had recently graduated from what basically amounts to politician boot camp when she was elected.
      • Yes, politician boot camp teaches you how to be effective with a blaster rifle and personally lead the assault on heavily fortified palaces. Damn, where can I sign up?
      • Yes, it does. Isn't that what the words "boot camp" imply? This is a universe where a planetary ruler needs to know these kinds of skills for precisely these kinds of reasons. Self defense is pretty damn important in this setting, and while Padme was taking part in the assault itself, it was pretty clear her much more experienced troops were the ones directing and commanding the assault itself.
  • Death Star. Mobility, what? It's the size of a moon, did they just plan to dismantle it and have star destroyers tow the pieces through hyperspace to the next planet, or were they somehow able to get it up to hyperspace catapult speed while using the realspace engines? Build a new one? Wait 300,000 years between attacks? Or just let the galaxy not notice the obvious flaw while they were busy trembling in fear?
    • ...*bemused silence*
      • ...The Death Star has a hyperdrive. That is how it managed to move from Alderaan to Yavin. Perhaps you did not notice this obvious flaw in your argument while you were sleeping through the actual film.
      • I knew it was supposed to have a hyperdrive. I just don't see how that's supposed to matter, unless I grossly misunderstand how the hyperdrive functions. To summarize what I have gathered from films and (possibly non-canon) encyclopedias, the ship moves into another form of space, where it can go really fast (way past the speed of light) while using a lot less energy than in plainspace. Under certain conditions, a ship must already be moving via the sub-lightspeed engines. It doesn't matter that the Death Star can get into hyperspace, how does it move once it gets there? If there's a Critical Research Failure, it's in the understanding of how Hyperspace movement supposedly works (compounded by multiple star wars reference books).
      • Because the Death Star has sublight engines, too, maybe?
      • Death Star covers this: yes, it has sublight engines. It also has hyperdrive, fighter wings, turbolaser turrets, libraries, and bars.
    • Critical Research Failure detected.
  • Why is the Sun Crusher even needed? Presumably, the resonance torpedoes work without need for an invincible ship. A conventional ship could fire the torpedoes and then escape into hyperspace. They could even fire the torpedoes at a great distance (several hundred million kilometers) and still hit the system's star.
    • It was built for killing, probably in secret, for preference. The Death Star was huge and terrifying mostly for intimidation purposes. The Sun Crusher, on the other hand, was small and unnoticeable, which is, in itself, intimidating. No one knows the Sun Crusher exists, and then when Rebel star systems start going up in smoke, they start thinking, "Shit, the Emperor can blow up stars with his mind or something!"
      • The fact that it's pretty much invincible is pretty intimidating, too.
  • So The Chosen One was the one who was prophesied to bring balance to the force, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the word balance mean, having the same on both sides? I mean, you'd have to be kind of an idiot to think that balance meant that the evil side of the force would be extinguished, right? So why didn't the Jedi realize what Anakin being The Chosen One really meant?
    • Because fans continue to stubbornly insist on a dualistic understanding of the force where balance means an equal number of Jedi and Sith. It doesn't. Word Of God is that the force is Balanced when the Light and Dark are clearly segregated from each other and the Jedi can trust their force instincts to guide them correctly. The problem at the time of the prequels is that the hidden Sith have blurred everything together and left the Jedi unable to predict things, hence the constant references to the dark side as a shroud or cloud over their vision. The idea that it has "anything at all" to do with numbers of force-users is "completely unsupported" by the films and utterly idiotic if you take one minute to think about it. What are the Jedi to do then? Allow the bad guys to murder and terrorize people every other day?
    • Since the prophecy was presumably made by a Jedi, the balance would have to be one from the Jedi perspective, which would mean many Jedi and no Sith. The Sith probably thought that bringing balance to the Force would mean the exact opposite.
    • Personally, if the Prophecy even exists, this troper likes to think that the outcome was meant to result in the destruction of both sides: with no Sith to carry on the rule of two, the organisation dies. With no original Jedi to carry on the ancient child-kidnapping love-abolishing dogma, a better order of Jedi will be established by Luke. And this is the only way I can enjoy Star Wars these days: any other ideas?
  • Battle of Hoth. Luke claims the armour on the AT-A Ts is too strong for blasters, thus meaning the speeders have to trip them up with cables. We see one trip up then a pair of speeders shoot it with lasers...and it blows up. So... what happened to "that armour is too strong for blasters"?
    • There's a weak spot in their armour behind their heads.
      • What, so Luke "I used to bullseye Womprats in my T-16 back home" Skywalker can't hit this spot of a huge machine that moves at about two miles per hour and has to have it come to a complete stop first?
      • First off, Luke is a dumb kid who's boasting. Second, womp rats aren't shooting back. Nor are their friends shooting back.
      • Also, in the official novelization by Lucas, right after Luke makes his "I used to bullseye womp rats" comment, Wedge's response is to thoroughly rip him on how useless that skill is in actual combat.
      • The weak spot is not exposed to any feasible approach vector. Blasters don't arc; the only way that Luke could have got a shot at the walker's weak point while it was walking was if he dived at it from directly above the walker. Which, suffice to say, would not have been very feasible.
      • Why not? There were no anti-air weapons on the thing's top or back.
  • It just bugs me that there's so much hate/dislike for Karen Traviss, I mean I've looked at all the examples mentioning her and I still can't figure out why. Admittedly I'm a Fandalorian so I've got a natural bias...but an enqiuring mind wants to know.
    • The Mandlalorians within her work are Mary Sues. And we're not talking the exaggerated, Flanderized version bandied about the interwebs nowadays. Traviss-written Mandalorians are Mary Sues in the classic sense: perfect in every possible way.
      • There's also her refusal to change the GAR number of three million, despite how utterly ridiculous it is for three million soldiers to defend an entire galaxy.
      • It's not so much the "refusal to change" (it was an error made by George Lucas in the first place, and first reproduced by well-loved-by-Traviss-haters author Matthew Stover). It's the generally bad attitude she displayed about the whole thing — yes, in response to some trolling and baiting by fans, but the professional author and representative of the franchise should not be sinking down to the level of the worst trolls in the conversation, tossing around neologisms like "Talifan", etc. It's been made worse now that she's made it clear that what she took away from this was a deeply negative attitude toward most "normal" Star Wars fans who don't share her strongly deconstructionist take toward the Star Wars canon. (I.e. if you don't think the "correct" way to read Star Wars is to look at most of the protagonists of the prequel trilogy as terrible monsters, the Jedi Order as irredeemably corrupt and the clones as the true victims of the Star Wars universe, she hates you and doesn't want you reading her books. Like, seriously.)
      • Fiction is Serious Business. More (ahem) seriously, why does everyone feel the need to throw a complete hissy fit about it? About anything, really? It's as if people are willingly ignoring the choice to act less biased just to complain about works you don't like..
  • Is Palpatine an idiot of some kind? I can kind of understand why he'd want to kill all Jedi, but the younglings? It's been shown before that Dark jedi can be easily put in a group without killing each other, so why kill a bunch of young kids who have barely learned how to use the force? Why not recruit them as members of the Empire? He did that with Mara Jade! He could have had another Vader Fist to group with the 501st and the galaxy would be under his iron grip easily.
    • Rule Of Two. Only two Sith are allowed, period. Attempting to use younglings already partially indoctrinated to Jedi beliefs is a bad idea anyway, especially in a transition period between the Old Republic governments and the Empire. Better to just get rid of them and look for non-indoctrinated minds elsewhere to corrupt later once he's gotten the galaxy under control.
      • Palpatine did successfully corrupt several younger Jedi to the Dark; one of them is the Inquisitor Tremayne; the others can be found in the "Recruitment" section of the article.
      • Lucas has made it pretty clear that what is in the movies overrides the Expanded Universe.
      • Original poster: The Rule of Two only says that you can only have two Sith Lords. The Rule of Two was made by Darth Bane, IIRC. Cut to the Jedi Civil War, where Revan and Malak are in cotnrol and we have a whole damn Academy for the Sith!
      • Darth Bane existed a thousand years after Revan and Malak. In fact, he got the idea for the Rule of Two from Revan's holocron.
      • Okay, you got me there, but since we can see there was a successful teaching of Sith under Revan and Malak's order, it may be more likely that the Rule of Two was meant that the Sith were under the rule of two Sith Lords. Not meaning there should be only two Sith. Ultimately, Bane had killed the very concept of the Sith by imposing the Rule of Two. Were Palpatine actually smart, he would have dropped the rule and be able to bring in an army of Dark Jedi under Vader's rule.
      • Who would, by Sith teachings, ultimately depose him. Bad Idea for one who wants absolute power and whose only apprentice is absolutely loyal.
      • Which, ultimately, means Palpatine is a bad Sith Lord.
      • Only from an ideological standpoint. Palpatine may have used Sith teachings, but I think its fairly obvious he didn't believe in the Sith ideals.
      • Bane watched the old Sith order weaken themselves through infighting, leading to their ultimate defeat. He created the new Sith order with the Rule of Two in place to ensure that it didn't happen again. Palpatine understood this. He later had the Emperor's Hands, but (going by this, anyway) they weren't given any formal Sith training.
    • Dark Side Adepts. Given Dark Side training, but nothing delving into Sith territory.
    • Back to the original complaint, if you're a Sith Lord, are you really going to give extra training to somebody whose first experience of you came when your personal thug storms in and butchers their instructors? The Dark Side is one thing, but giving training to someone who has every reason to want your guts cooling in a heap on the ground isn't necessarily the best of ideas.
  • In Episode III, when General Grievous sends off all of the escape pods. Why exactly are all the pod's controls inside the ship, rather than inside the pods? Wouldn't that mean that in the event that they had to use the escape pods, one person would be left behind to activate the controls? (And ultimately die aboard the ship?)
    • If you watch carefully, Grievous launched the pods while in his own one. My guess is that all the pods have their own launch controls, but Grievous has a special pod that allows him to launch them all in situations like the one in the movie. And even if the controls were in the ship itself, no-one would have to die to launch them. Make a battle droid do it.
      • Speaking of which, why does a ship crewed entirely by droids even have escape pods? (or more than one, Grievous would obviously put one in to save his own hide, but there's no need to save cheap expendable droids...)
      • Because the ship wasn't exclusively crewed by droids. There were at least a few Neimodians on board, not to mention Count Dooku.
  • Despite the fact that Jedi have existed for how many millenia, it's only in the timeline of the New Trilogy that they are capable of Ascension/Astral Projection/Cool-Glowy-Ghost thing? Seriously? People have been messing around with the Force for 5000+ years, and out of nowhere Qui-Gon Jin is the first Jedi EVER to reach this level? I'm not bad-mouthing Qui-Gon - God knows he was the only thing likeable about Episode 1 - but Christ! Can you really expect me to believe that Jedi Masters of the past could not become truly one with the Force and do that? Really? Most of the EU books themselves being crappy, I rather liked the idea that being one with the Force and existing as Boddhisatvas literally-spiritual guides to younger Jedi was an old, old, OLD talent of these Space-Paladins...
    • Magic marches on, Padawan. It's likely that most Jedi became truly one with the Force, essentially ending up as metaphysical Tang.
    • Qui-Gon only re-discovered "ghosting"; it was around in the Tales of the Jedi era (4,000-5,000 years before the prequels), but along the way it was lost for whatever reason.
      • And Sith and Jedi ghosts both popped up from time to time in Knights of the Old Republic, too.
      • Which takes place around 4000 BBY (Before the Batle of Yavin, or before Episode IV).
  • Why do the clones in Star Wars Clone Wars kick ass, but the ones in the sequels... don't? Did the engineers slack off or Palpatine cut costs or something? Going from gunning down Jedi to getting massacred by midget bears is a bit of a stretch even for Evil Is Dumb.
    • Clone Wars was deliberately over the top. Point in case: Mace Windu killing an entire droid army singlehandedly. With his barehands. While leaping a good twenty miles through the air.
      • Plus there are a bunch of different E.U stories to help explain it, such as the fact that Kamino rebelled against the Empire and was invaded. Possibly they had the best military education there and nowhere else in the galaxy was quite as good. Also, I think once the Empire was established, Palpatine began to lean more towards numbers over skill. TIE Fighters for example, lack shields, secondary weapons, hyperdrives and even basic lifesupport, but their job is to swarm enemies and defeat them via overwhelming force.
      • Are we talking about the Imperial Stormtroopers here? They were normal human recruits, not clones.
      • That's correct, except one group - the 501st Legion, Vader's Fist. Those are still clones, but they're the only ones.
    • I am pretty sure Palpatine stopped using clones after the Clone Wars, and his stormtroopers are just regular guys. It's much simpler and cheaper to conscript/recruit and train an army in a couple of months than to breed one from the ground up, which takes years.
  • What bugs me? In ESB, they're testing the carbon freezing process on Han. All they need is Han. Why don't they leave the rest of the gang in their cell? They even let Chewbacca carry the annoying thing that doesn't shut up along.
    • Vader was having Leia and Chewie taken to his ship. He simply brought them along so he wouldn't have to bother with hauling Han to the carbon-freezing chamber and then going back to get them and taking them all together. Saved him a trip.
    • Trip? Vader doesn't make trips. He has a legion of goons to do this stuff for him. Now, I wonder why he didn't take Han to be frozen and have the rest taken from their cell, directly to a cell on his ship.
      • Because Vader is evil, and making Leia and Chewie watch Han getting frozen gives him his evil jollies.
      • That, or he was being a nice guy and letting them say their goodbyes to their dear friend...
    • If he had, they probably would not have gotten away, with Luke in tow to boot.
      • No, it wouldn't. Leia and Chewie's escape was predicated on Lando's rescue effort; it had nothing whatsoever to do with separating the two groups. In fact, Lando only acted to rescue Leia and Chewie once they were separated from Vader and Boba Fett, so moving them in a separate group from Han would have only made Lando act sooner, which in turn might have led to a complete aversion of Vader's trap for Luke and Leia, Chewie, and Lando getting to Fett before he got back to Slave I, thereby potentially rescuing Han.
    • Plus it's a way to spread fear to those who would oppose the Empire. "We don't even care about this guy, we're just using him to test this thing, that's how easy it is for us to risk the live of people like you so get in line, or you'll be next into that pit. And your Wookie can rage and scream all he wants, but we don't even consider that worth the effort of shooting him."
      • The power and ruthlessness of the Empire was pretty well established. Surely, they were still talking about Alderaan.
      • This group has narrowly escaped them all over space until they laid this trap. Gathering them together to witness Han's freezing is begging for trouble.
      • They were under extremely heavy guard and had no way to escape without outside intervention. In fact, they didn't escape without outside intervention, even when Luke distracted the Stormtroopers the first time.
  • In the final battle of the Phantom Menace, the droid army opens up an artillery barrage onto the Gungans' shield. None of the plasma bolts were able to penetrate. So, if a bombardment couldn't break the force field, how come the droid troopers simply walked through it, as if they were stepping through a shower curtain?
    • That's a common property of Star Wars shields. Large, slow-moving objects tend to be able to pass through the shields without trouble, while fast-moving objects and/or energy blasts are deflected. For example, see the X-Wings attacking the Death Star in ANH, where they passed through the outer deflector shield before moving to attack speed, or the AT-A Ts in ESB which had to pass through the edges of the planetary shield that would deflect the Star Destroyers' bombardment to attack Echo Base.
    • Ever heard of STF materials? The more shear applied to them, the tougher they get. Punch them and they turn solid, run you fingers gently through them and they're liquid. So this principle exists in the real world, too. And guess what? They've been been applied to armour theory, though without much result yet.
      • Also, consider what would happen to the ground if shield interactions destroyed/repelled everything that came in their path.
  • In Rot J, Palpatine states "Only together can we turn him [Luke] to the Dark Side of the Force." So what exactly was their stated plan? While each man's real plan was to use Luke to overthrow the other, and as dedicated treacherous bastards were probably expecting that, they presumably didn't say it. Are they really supposed to have gone "We'll get him here and then I'm sure we'll think of something. It definitely won't involve me getting him to assassinate you or anything."
    • The Sith always betray each other. To the point where it's pretty much expected of a Sith to do so, to eliminate the weak ones. My guess is that Vader and Palpatine fully expected the other to be working against him. They both knew only one of them would survive this and they both knew the other knew it too. Whichever of them died, they would consider it a worthy sacrifice for the Empire.
      • Yeah, but that still doesn't explain what the stated plan was. In order to betray someone, you first have to pretend to be working with/for them. So what was the pretend plan?
      • You....don't get the Sith, apparently. With the Sith, betrayal is expected. It is literally written right into their basic rules and philosophy. You don't need to "pretend" anything; if you're the Master, your apprentice will betray you, and if you're the apprentice, you will betray your Master. That's just how it works.
      • No, I understand that it's completely understood (lol), but they still don't seem to talk about it. When the emperor says "only together can we turn him to the dark side of the force" he is lying. He knows it. Vader knows it. They both know they are both going to betray each other, they both know they will each try to turn to Luke the dark side for themselves as a new apprentice and dispose of the other. Yet they stand there, listen to this lie, and don't bother to correct it. This implies that they "pretend" to be working together even when everybody knows the whole thing is a farce. So in this pretend system which everybody knows is false, what was supposed to be the plan which they both know won't happen but which neither will bother to correct?
      • Hi, there, welcome to the Sith. You've just figured out why they've been regularly getting their asses kicked by the Jedi for four thousand years and counting.
      • Well except the last thousand of those years involved the jedi not knowing that the sith were still around and the eventual culmination of a 1000+ year long plot to destroy the jedi and have a sith rule the republic which works despite the backstabbing (I say works because even though the jedi eventually won the sith accomplished their goal, a sith ruled the republic and the jedi as an organization were utterly destroyed). And about 4K years before DSII bit the dust the jedi were almost wiped out by the sith in the First Jedi Purge, reduced down to less than 100 jedi during the Jedi Civil War then reduced even further in the purge. Realistically speaking the sith aren't prone to failure, they succeed as often as they fail, but they can't hold on to their prize because of their betrayal. I don't know about you but I wouldn't consider 2 near genocides of a group, both followed by their slow recovery after a lucky break (the Exile 4K years BBY, Vader's redemption at DSII) to be the same as that group kicking butt.
      • Except that in every single instance excepting Palpatine, the Sith still lost. Yes, they dramatically reduced the Jedi Order many times, but the Jedi continiously emerged triumphant over them even when they suffered near-complete annihilation. The best the Sith managed to do after four thousand years of trying to conquer the Republic was a brief twenty-year-long Empire that was brought down by, yep, the Jedi. There are real-life unstable banana republics that lasted longer than the Palpatine's Empire. If the best the Sith can manage over four thousand years is a brief, short-lived Empire brought down by a rag-tag collection of Rebels and a handful of Jedi, well...the Sith kinda suck.
  • Okay, mind powers won't work on Watto. Fine. Go to somebody else who is susceptible to mind powers, trade credits for whatever currency Watto wants, go back. It's not complicated! Furthermore, are we really trusting Watto when he claims that he's the only guy on the planet with the necessary parts? What sort of idiot would blindly trust Watto?
    • That would screw the mind tricked guy over. While Tatooine isn't a nice place, you're basically encouraging blind thievery of significant amounts of cash from some random guy, who may or may not deserve it. A starship engine isn't chickenfeed, in any case. While Watto might be lying, it's not implausible that he might have specialist parts that no one else on the entire planet (yes!) has. While Jedi aren't exactly absolute moral paragons, thievery would still be a jerky thing to do. Why not just outright steal the parts from Watto, if you're going to be that ruthless? While Qui-gon's plan was a bit convoluted, he can see the future (slightly), and even if his plan had failed he'd still have been able to get the Queen to Coruscant somehow. His convoluted plan was to get Anakin out without his head exploding, not to get the Queen to Coruscant. He had many more options for the latter.
    • Extra emphasis here on the whole "Republic credits are no good here." Foisting Republic credits on anyone aside from Watto results in said individual being pretty much penniless, if they're doing so to get enough money to buy spaceship parts. Mind-tricking Watto is a bit more reasonable, as he is a slaveowner and thus pretty much a pile of floating shit as far as Jedi are concerned.
      • Have the Jedi actually ever expressed an opinion against slavery, though?
      • Yes. Historically, Jedi don't like slavers at all. There's a reason slavery flourished during the Empire and why it flourished in areas the Republic didn't have direct influence over, like Tatooine.
      • According to the films, Jedi barely notice slavery.
      • Where was this said in the films?
      • It wasn't so much said as demonstrated by the fact that nothing had happened on Tatooine in between the films; slavery still existed, and the Jedi weren't all that interested in it, or anything that might interest their pet Chosen One. Slightly irritating, considering that tie-in materials for The Phantom Menace (as in "Shit that Lucas has embraced as at least partially Canon") indicated that Tatooine would be at least temporarily liberated by a force of Jedi led by Anakin. As Confused Matthew has pointed out, the Jedi of the prequels haven't done much besides act as diplomats in trade boycotts and border disputes: not a lot of Guarding Peace and Justice in the Galaxy to be seen there.
      • Tatooine is a lawless backwater outside of Republic influence or authority. What are the Jedi going to do, send a military expedition there to liberate all the slaves and instill justice and order? Establish an occupation army and garrision to ensure the planet complies by Republic law? Because without something like , say, a standing army, they can't. They don't have the manpower or the resources to do that. The only reason Anakin is able to go to Tatooine during the Clone Wars and liberate the slaves was because he had an army that could assume control and instill order.
      • First off: as far as the liberation of Tatooine, what have I missed? Did it actually occur in some semi-canon work? When? I was talking about Phantom Menace novelisations that feature one or two prophetic dreams about Anakin marching in and liberating the slaves. As far as I could tell, the event itself never happened. Secondly, if they were really thinking creatively, a Jedi force for social justice could have arrived on Tatooine disguised as slavers, buying up slaves to be employed as paid workers in the Republic. Thirdly, has there been any other situation in which the Jedi bothered to intervene with slavery, inside or outside the Republic- besides Revan on Taris and the Jedi Exile on Nar Shadda?
      • Tatooine is a backwater. The Jedi are overstretched as it is.
      • Overstretched with what? I mean, how many minor disagreements in the Galaxy require Jedi attention? Doesn't the Republic have any diplomats of its own? And, once again, have the Jedi done anything about slavery in the extended universe?
      • "Minor disagreements"? Jedi are sent to locations where all-out war might break out. The Jedi supplement the Senate, which of course, itself maintains diplomats. Due to their stellar reputation, a Jedi's presence often induces negotiations that a normal diplomat cannot succeed in. Any Tatooine mission would be a lifetime endeavour, and don't forget that Tatooine is in Hutt Space, and the Hutts are only loosely affiliated with the Republic.
      • Well, as far as the vital importance of the Jedi, it would have been nice if it was indicated in one of the films, yes? Out of a few hundred Jedi, I think only two of them did anything of any lasting worth in three whole prequels. Plus, you still haven't answered my question: have the Jedi done anything about slavery at any point in the Extended Universe, which- if Lucas were to at least partially acknowledge it- might show that the Jedi were doing things between the films?
      • You know what, that's a false dilemma. Slavery doesn't exist in the Republic. At all. It's not part of the Jedi mandate to try and wipe out slavery in another nation where they have no actual power. It'd be nice if they could, but they can't. Incidentally, it's a bit unfair to say that we never see any other Jedi doing anything useful, since the films focus on the main characters, whom incidentally, are doing important things that Jedi do all the time. Would you be similarly annoyed if social workers in the US were found to have made no specific effort to aid people in Somalia?
      • Social workers have their fields of influence carefully established- Jedi, not quite so. For example, there was one incident where Mace Windu apparently shut down a gang of slavers- but the work didn't mention where it took place: if this was within Republic space, this means that at least part of the problem starts or started inside the Republic and could be partially managed, but if it was in Hutt space, it means that Mace Windu was playing Cowboy Cop, and to be honest, that does not sound at all like Mace Windu. And as for the main characters doing important things, did Phantom Menace mention why Naboo was so important as to require Jedi attention?- I mean, Palpatine used it to wring pity out of the Senate, but what was Naboo in the grand scheme of things?
      • A member of the Republic, and capital of a forty-world sector. Incidentally, you're missing the point; Jedi don't have the power to remove endemic slavery from worlds outside their sphere of influence. Slavers,
      • Actually, bugger everything I've said in the past few entries: taking everything including the jurisdiction of the Republic and the Jedi into account, why hasn't Anakin tried rescuing a few slaves from Tatooine himself?- after all, he's the reckless one. And I know that he would have been under the Jedi Council's watchful eye, but if they really gave a damn about the so-called Chosen One's emotional stability, they should have at least been willing put some of his fears at ease by- at the very least- ensuring that his mother was safe, if not free. So, what do you think? Am I expecting too much? Have I missed the point?
      • Because until Episode two, Anakin was always doing missions with Obi-Wan. He couldn't really just slip away while Obi-Wan wasn't looking. When Anakin is told to protect Padmé, Palpatine comments that this is Anakin's first solo assignment. Therefore meaning he's off the leash.
      • I didn't mean "while on a mission." If Anakin was really that interested in ensuring that his mother was safe, he would have slipped the leash, at least temporarily. It's not exactly without precedent among Anakin's teachers: Obi-Wan himself once left the Jedi order to take part in a goddamn revolution, of all thing. Plus, you haven't answered my other question: if the Jedi Council really gave a damn about the so-called Chosen One's emotional stability, shouldn't they have at least been willing put some of his fears at ease by ensuring that his mother was safe, if not free?
      • As far as the Jedi taking care of Anakin's mother goes, they had a long list of problems to deal with and unfortunately, freeing slaves was probably not that high up. First and foremost, their responsiblity is to the Republic, while Anakin's mother lived on a planet outside their jurisdiction. Besides, the Jedi probably don't believe in special treatment. If they did everything they could to make sure Anakin's feeling okay and Anakin's fitting in and Anakin's needs are being fufilled, then they would pretty much have to do the same for every single member in the Order. Besides, they were never 100% sure that he was the Chosen One. As for why he didn't slip away to save her, well he probably didn't want to jeapordise his future with the Jedi unless it was absolutely necessary. He didn't choose to actively disobey orders until he started having visions of her suffering. Up until then, he probably figured she could handle things until he was ready to come and get her.
      • Sorry, but Anakin really doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd think about his future all that much- examples including just about every goddamn prequel film in the Star Wars saga. In fact it's more likely that the thoughtless git just forgot all about Tatooine until he started seeing visions. And I didn't say that the entire order should watch his mother; one Jedi would be enough to make sure that Anakin, the supposedly powerful new recruit, doesn't go completely apeshit when the bloody woman dies of unnatural causes. Last but not least: dear God, why did the Star Wars saga have to take on a Black And Grey Morality by accident? I can live with deliberate shades of grey, but Lucas keeps insisting that it's all still a straightforwards battle between good and evil even when the Pure And Good Crusanding Guardians Of Truth And Justice are now a gang of emotionally-warped status quo-bound bureaucrats that leave their retarded apprentices to burn to death! DO YOU SEE WHAT THIS HAS REDUCED ME TO? AAAAAAAARGH. PLEASE MAKE IT GO AWAY...
  • In the Luke/Vader duel in Rot J, why the hell did Vader lie down and flail his hand around before Luke cut it off? That just looked really bad and I think that someone with mechanical limbs would still be able to stand up after Luke began the berserker attack.
    • Partly because he's not trying to actually beat Luke. He needs Luke to totally give into his anger and at that point, the best course of action was to really let Luke just go nuts. Another interpretation is that he was simply overpowered. He wasn't like Grievous, his mechanical limbs were a hindrance (Palpatine deliberately had his limbs designed to be flawed to keep him in check, Or So I Heard) and he connection to the Force was reduced. Luke on the other hand was younger, fitter and stronger.
  • Why does everyone keep chewing out the stormtroopers for not hitting the main cast in ANH when they weren't actually trying to?
  • Why does George Lucas claim the six films are really all about the droids C-3P0 and R2 when they're clearly about Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader?
    • I heard he did claim it was about the Anakin / Darth Vader.
    • Why do people not get jokes?
  • Why does the Death Star have a huge trench leading to the exhaust port? I understand the obvious need for an exhaust port, something that big has gotta have a lot of waste heat, and a six foot hole is an efficient way to go about it. However, the trench that leads to it doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all, except for a hide away place for Rebels evading the turrets so they make a run to the port and destroy the whole station with one missile.

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