History Fridge / StarWars

* Stormtroopers have become the butt of quite a few jokes, both over their [[ImperialStormtrooperMarkmanshipAcademy poor aim]] and [[ArmorIsUseless apparently useless armor]]. However perhaps the Stormtroopers' armor isn't so useless after all:

** Assuming that the rate of this accelerated growth stayed roughly the same, then by the time of Ep. IV, the Clones would have been functionally around eighty years old. So it would make sense that the Empire started recruiting (or conscripting) ordinary, younger people for its army (and this also explains different Stormtrooper heights).

* Imagine seeing the saga from R2-D2's perspective. He has been in the service of the Skywalkers pretty much from the beginning, what with serving Padme, and unlike C3PO his memory wasn't erased. He remembers Anakin and Padme, and how Anakin fell to the dark side. So imagine being in service of a kind master and mistress and then your master goes evil and your mistress dies in child birth. Artoo watches as Anakin and Padme's children are separated, but at the very least he gets to watch over Leia. That is until his new home on Aldreaan is blown up, along with the people he served dutifully, and knowing that the once sweet little boy he befriended on Tatooine was responsible for the suffering of his new Mistress, aka. Anakin's daughter. Then after all is said and done and Luke sees to it that Anakin's soul is redeemed, that he witnesses Leia's son Ben, aka. his beloved Master Anakin and Mistress Padme's grandson, follow in his grandfather's footsteps and fall to the dark side and make off with Luke's acolytes and brutally slaughter whoever was left, as Luke mourns turning to Artoo for as little comfort as he can find in the situation of the decimated New Jedi Order... No wonder the poor little droid has shut down by the time of ''The Force Awakens'' after a TraumaCongaLine like that.

* I realized something about the OT: Luke's first and last spoken lines in the OT have to do with choice. In ''ANH'', when we first meet Luke, his Aunt Beru asks him to remind him to tell his Uncle Owen to make sure a translator droid can speak Bocce, to which Luke says "Doesn't look like we have much of a choice, but I'll remind him". And towards the end of ''ROTJ'', he says "Father, I won't leave you" as his redeemed father Anakin dies.

** They cut off Zam Wesell's arm after she tried to ''kill a Senator''. Please watch the movie before you make judgments. Also, they were right about balance. There are two ways to use the Force; the light way and the dark way. The dark way uses the Force ''wrong'', the same way that brutally beating and abusing a horse to make it do more work is using it ''wrong''. In the novelization of RotJ, Luke thinks that the lightening is an aberration of the Force. The dark side ''isn't mean to be'', so the Jedi are perfectly in the right thinking that destroying this aberration that wasn't created by nature and was created by human beings wanting power and fueling their power on rage and hatred will cause balance. Why wouldn't it?

** It also explains the "bring balance to the Force" prophecy quite cleanly. The Sith don't represent balance because they're too self-indulgent and cruel. But the Jedi don't represent balance ''either'', because they're too LawfulStupid. Proper balance, therefore, requires that both orders be dismantled, so that another one can rise - and indeed it does. It's less obvious there, but this is also the outcome of the KnightsOfTheOldRepublic series, and helps explain just what Kreia (and possibly Revan) intended.

* I've been watching these movies, reading the books, and playing the video games my whole life, and I can't believe that in all that time I hadn't wondered about this much earlier. But it hit me when I was playing ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' and was introduced to the Wookiee named Zaalbar. If you're a Wookiee and you want to introduce yourself to a human, your ''name'' ought to sound the same in Basic as it does in Shyriiwook, right? So when somebody asks Chewbacca what his name is, and he says "Urf-rawr-growl," people are going to call him "Urf-rawr-growl," right? For people to call Chewbacca or Zaalbar "Chewbacca" and "Zaalbar", the Wookiee would need to be able to make the sounds that make up his name...right? That's how it works with other languages in the SW universe; despite speaking his own language, Greedo still distinctly says "Solo" and "Jabba" in ''Film/ANewHope''.

** But there's more: the Clones had already been trained by the time the Republic received them, so it's reasonable to suggest that the Republic/Empire initially had no training program in place, and had to throw one together between Eps III and IV without knowing its true effectiveness.
** This shoddy planning was partly justified, however, since the Empire did not expect to be seriously threatened (at this point, the Separatists' armies had been deactivated, the Old Republic had been swept away, and the only major foes of the Empire were small bands of Rebels armed with clapped-out equipment), and so they could get away with having an ineffective army. All the Empire really needed to do to eliminate its enemy was put some new(ish) recruits into bulky armour and give them bigger and better weapons than the Rebels, even if those recruits were incapable of hitting the target or having any knowledge of military tactics.

*** [[{{wanbli}} This troper]] thinks the original troper was referring to the Separatists as the phantom (i.e., not really there) menace, the ''real'' threat being Palpatine.

** Once in the Senate, take a populist, pro-government stance, favouring policies like the "taxation on trade routes" mentioned in the opening movie scrawl that are guaranteed to earn him the ire of powerful companies like the Trade Federation.

*** Yes, it can still be racist, if the parody is informed by negative stereotypes of one's own culture. That's called internalized racism. And even if he did singlehandedly think it up, all of the producers and film crew had to agree that it was a good idea and put it into the final idea of the film. And I'm one of those in the camp that thinks Binks' portrayal wasn't necessarily racist - just answering the above question.

*** I saw that as a(n accidental, in retrospect) subversion of SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Even in the Prequel Era, when the Jedi are relatively numerous, there are more planets in the Republic than there are Jedi. Obviously not everyone in the universe will be aware of Jedi, and not everyone who has heard of them will believe that their exploits are more than rumour.
** I don't understand why people get so worked up about midichlorians. They are NOT mutually exclusive with the Force being spiritual/religious in nature. For example, let's say God created mankind - does this change the fact that humans have DNA and are made up of atoms? If you hate the fact it makes Jedi "predestined", well sorry to break it to you but they were that way anyway previously, they just said 'force sensitive' instead of having midichlorians. In fact, they did test for Jedi before the midichlorians were mentioned in canon, and one must assume they had SOME way of scientifically testing for it in children. In fact, it would be sort of ridiculous if the genetic makeup/DNA/atoms/whatever (not a scientist here) was NOT impacted by being force sensitive. I would find it strange they test for being a jedi without actually having a substance/particle/whatever to test for. (i.e. if they didn't use the midichlorian explanation)

* A moment of FridgeBrilliance for myself was the pre-emptive realization that The Chosen One was always fated to destroy the Jedi Order. Even though the Jedi interpret the legend to fortell the end of the Sith, they are always careful to explicitly state: "The Chosen One will ''bring balance to the force''." At the time of Anakin's arrival, there are a tiny number of Sith and vast numbers of Jedi. Hence, to balance the force Anakin must kill most of the Jedi. By the original Star Wars trilogy we know of only two Sith (Palpatine and Vader) and two remaining Jedi (Obi-Wan and Yoda).

*** I had the same idea, thinking the "Balance" aspect was in fact Luke: A Jedi who could be fuelled by his Emotions, but at the same time keep from being controlled by them. His defeat of Vader at the climax of [=RotJ=] seemed to be the prime example of that.

* A lot of people probably wondered why the Jedi order in the prequel trilogy seemed like a bunch of ineffectual, pompous, self-rightous, hypocritical jerks as apposed to the stalwart defenders of the innocent and warriors against evil they were stated to be in the legends. The reason is because by the time of the clone wars, the jedi order was on the decline. Since they thought the sith were gone, they believed that they only has to deal with the mundane problems of Muggles rather than fights between sci-fi [[MagicKnight magic knights]]. They stopped going out looking for evil because they believed that normal crime was something the republic could handle and they couldn't be arsed to get out of their temples to handle it. Had they gone out and been TheKnightErrant and fought all types of evil and crime, they might have gotten wise to the sith scheme to take over the universe sooner. Also, they got more and more entagled with the republic's affairs and came to rely on the republic as patrons too much worrying about public opinion and reprisals from government bodies that they actually just became and extension of the republic. They would even sell out one of their own on circumstancial evidence that have the republic be mad at them. Not to mention stuff like taking force sensitive children from their families because they, the jedi, [[SarcasmMode obviously new better than the families of said children.]] In fact it was that whole "we're jedi, we know better than all of you" attitude that really showcased their pride and arrogance. By the time of the prequels, we weren't looking at a BadassArmy of [[SpaceWizard space]] [[ThePaladin paladins]]. We were looking at church full of self-rightous ascetics that got soft in peaceful times [[TradeYourPassionForGlory and were content practicing the tenents of their religion rather than adhere to the spirit of that religion.]]

*** According to Wikia, the stormtrooper officer who told Vader of the political ramifications of Leia being imprisoned was highly respected by Vader. (NB: Stormtrooper officers are not always in armor and wear black uniforms.) The officer was very competent, dedicated, hardworking, and perceptive, traits which Vader (and previously Anakin) prized; he always made sure his stormtrooper squad was in tiptop shape; he was also the kinda guy to measure twice, cut only once. He also had a tendency to be very direct, even with his superiors, and he would not hesitate to point out potential problems with their plans. (Basically, he wasn't an ass kisser.) When he first started reporting to Vader and showed himself as being perceptive and direct, even with Vader (at times he would tell Vader about flaws in his plans), other officers who thought kissing ass was the way to go with Vader pronounced him a dead man walking; they were surprised when Vader later actually promoted the stormtrooper officer. As I'm sure you can tell in his personality from both the prequels and the original trilogy, Vader wasn't too much into having his ass kissed, but rather cared about getting the job done and getting it done right, so he liked having a highly competent, dedicated, and perceptive officer working for him, because it would minimize the risk of Vader making mistakes and, plus, that officer could get the job done. Also, although the stormtrooper officer was direct, he wasn't self-serving and arrogant like the admiral who talked back to Vader on the Death Star or Admiral Ozzel in ESB; Vader always prized his observations, because they often helped him tie up loose ends in his plans. It's a good thing for the Rebels that they didn't seem to have to encounter that stormtrooper officer or his squad again.

* Why are the Stormtroopers such terrible shots? You could put it down to Luke (and to some extent Leia) unconsciously using the Force in defence, but I think there's a more logical and simple explanation in the prequels:

** Assuming that the rate of this accelerated growth stayed roughly the same, then by the time of Ep IV, the Clones would have been functionally around eighty years old. So it would make sense that the Empire started recruiting (or conscripting) ordinary, younger people for its army (and this also explains different Stormtrooper heights).
** But there's more: the Clones had already been trained by the time the Republic received them, so it's reasonable to suggest that the Republic/Empire initially had no training programme in place, and had to throw one together between Eps III and IV without knowing its true effectiveness.

*** That.... makes a ridiculous amount of sense. Vader told the troops to "put on a show" to make the escape seem real, with added orders to not actually hit anyone. To add to this theory is the dialogue stated previously by Obi-Wan that "These blast points aren't random like sandpeople, only Stormtroopers are so precise." Adding further to this theory are the actions of Vader on the Death Star after his duel with Obi-Wan, he slowly makes his way towards the Falcon, but gets stopped by a blast door. ''Rogue One'' proved that Vader is scary fast when he needs to be, and the door could have been opened either by the use of the Force or the button that is sure to be there to open it (and Vader doesn't really need ''authorization'' to either override a lock), or he could, you know, use the ''lightsaber'' to cut through. This all points to the above suggestion being plausible.

*** One more word on the pod not getting shot down: This troper always took it to be along the same lines as Vader wanting the prisoners alive: If they just blew it up, they would never know for sure what might or might not be concealed in it. By leaving the escape pods intact and then collecting them, they could see exactly what information the rebels had collected.

*** Actually Luke said he wanted to join "the academy", not necessarily become a stormtrooper. This troper finds it much more likely for Luke to wind up an Imperial pilot. Or at least start down that track before the name Skywalker becomes well known enough to get someone's attention upstairs...

*** I agree with this fullheartedly. Midichlorians make things far, FAR worse. Because how do THEY interact with the force? And how do they share that interaction with the living beings? What of force spirits and places with Force "imprint", like the dark cave on Dagobah? Midichlorians not only answer nothing, they only make handwaving the Force (pun POSSIBLY intended :P) more difficult.

** I was reading [[http://web.archive.org/web/20101020123407/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustBugsMe/StarWarsArchive2010 an archived copy of a Just Bugs Me page from 2010]], when I suddenly realised why midichlorians work so well as an explanation. Being Force-Sensitive, or rather, having a high midichlorian count, is either a recessive or partially dominant trait. In addition, it was most likely self-destructive to early individuals until people began to come up with ways to use the Force instead of just letting it do whatever, which would likely take thousands of years (at best); before then, there'd be no real advantage to the trait, explaining why it's not standard.

* I juuust realized that the R2 units on X-Wings are supposed to emulate the round observation dome on top of bombers.

** I thought this, too, until I stumbled across something George Lucas says in one of the DVD commentaries. He says that the Force is like a living entity, and that the Sith are akin to a cancer or disease, bringing it out of whack. Anakin/Vader fulfils the prophecy by doing away with the Sith, which requires him to sacrifice himself in the process. If a person's health is out of balance (y'know, he's sick), you don't make him sicker to make things fair, right? If you want to see how he phrased it, [[http://blogs.starwars.com/moosepoodo/17 here's]] a link.

* For the absolute ''longest'' time, I was of the opinion that Anakin only wanted to become a fully-fledged Jedi because he just wanted power. Then I realised that in Episode II, he has recurring dreams about his mother suffering - ''he wanted to save his mother'', and he couldn't get out of his Jedi commitments when still a Padawan. When he goes to save her and fails completely, it starts to break him. In Episode III, he still wants to be a master so he can have more time with Padme and his future children, but the council still don't let him because he's unstable.

*** Overlooking some of the dialogue/plot issues the prequels had in some places, I've always thought Padme was a great foil to Anakin. He was a man who couldn't let go of his personal attachments for the sake of the higher cause; she was a woman who had sacrificed so much of herself for the greater good that she hardly had anything personal to speak of. She was always strong in her moral convictions, but Anakin's passionate endeavour hit her right where she was weakest.

** The Yoda theory is confirmed in the Thrawn Trilogy; when Luke is reflecting on the passing of Obi-Wan's ghost, he claims he is the last of of the Jedi... then he hears Obi-Wan's voice "Not the last of the old jedi, but the first of the new"

** One thing that occured to this troper after watching all the films in succession several times, is what is Vader's exact motivation for destroying Palpatine? Is it to save his son, or to preserve the only thing left of Padme?
* This bothered me for the longest time. I used to think Vader was an incredibly dumb character, mostly because he is so inconsistent in his actions. One minute he is a loving, caring, albeit obsessive husband who wants to protect those he cares about, and next he's murdering children. His psychological transformation into Vader was sudden and not fully explained. I used to chalk this up to simply Lucas's crappy writing. But then I began researching psychological disorders, and I stumbled across Borderline Personality Disorder, a mental state in which people tend to have varying extremes of emotion, reason and the like. They can't seem to decide on a single core personality. And then it hit me at last: this is Anakin's problem! He's got BPD! A scientific explanation for his all-over-the-place behaviour! This explains how he could be trying to fight Luke one second, and then suddenly switches sides and kills Palpatine. His mind is just wired that way. Similar to bipolar disorder, actually. If Lucas actually had BPD in mind when he created Vader (and Anakin), then he is more brilliant than I could have ever expected of him, and has created one of the most complex and psychologically fascinating characters of all time. -Unnamed Troper.

** The power was what Anakin could have been and was supposed to become, but never did. He was going to be the super-end all force user...which was why Palpatine was after him to be his apprentice, and why he put Order 66 in place the moment he had Anakin on his side. He knew that with Anakin as his apprentice, rounding up the Jedi would be no problem...which we see in that he destroyed the Jedi Temple on his own (which a squad of troopers - well known Jedi bait). Unfortunately, what Palps did not see coming was that Obi-Wan was going to defeat Anakin and reduce him to a (literal)half-man shell of what he once was...and what he was going to be. Obi-Wan was able to destroy Anakin's potential right there on Mustafar. If we accept that the number of midichlorians determines force power...if you lose half your body, you lose half your midichlorians. Every time a Jedi or Sith loses a limb it reduces their power level. Ironically, the Darth Vader of the original trilogy is a crippled and defeated old man in a walking iron lung who is not nearly as powerful as Palps thought he was going to be - but since most of all the other force-users are dead...he is a bad-ass. Vader's reduced capacity might also be why the Rebels were able to survive to cause so much trouble. Perhaps in Palps' original visions, his apprentice, fully-powered Vader, would have been able to sniff them out and destroy them utterly. It is also the reason why Palps was so eager for Luke to kill Vader and become the new Sith apprentice...Luke (and Leia) have that same potential to become just as powerful as Anakin would have. - BadSintax
** By stopping Windu from killing Palpatine, he is partially responsible for the creation of the empire. Also, his killing of the children in the jedi temple didn't just demonstrate his descent into evil, but also cut off a major source of potential jedi, though granted, MAYBE it could have been done by the clones. Also, Vader's "force-choking" of imperial staff ultimately instils a sense of fear in them which probably plays a significant role in their actions. Also, the Vader-Luke confrontations probably had significant effects on the psychology of each, which is probably important what with Luke being the "last of the jedi." (Save for Yoda until his death.) [=neoYTPism=]

* This is more of an EU Brilliance, but it has it's based on the movies. First, one has to wonder how exactly Palpatine became a racist, bloodthirsty despot growing up on pacifistic Naboo. I don't really have an answer to the bloodthirsty bit, but the xenophobia actually makes perfect sense. The only aliens that Palps would have known growing up on Naboo would have been Gungans, with whom the Naboo had had a sour relations with for centuries. No wonder he hated aliens, they were all Gungans to him!

** Exactly. Palpatine isn't a racist who holds nonhuman life in contempt; he holds ''everybody's'' life in contempt, human or otherwise. His favouritism towards humans stems solely from A) the fact he is one, so is better-equipped to appeal to human racists' preferences in a leader than, say, Twilek racists' preferences; and B) the fact that humans happened to be in the best position to become his hate-motivated minions.

* The human specism, and racism, particularly on the part of the Empire. For one, it was a clever way to explain why we see so few non-humans on the Death Star, or as extras. Rather than say that they just didn't have the budget to create hundreds of aliens for the purpose of just background characters, the explanation is entirely in universe.

** Except "Spice" is the name of a crystalline narcotic produced from inorganic spiders to catch beings made of energy, not flavourful minerals.

* Upon rewatching all six movies, it becomes clear that Anakin, by and large, was correct about the Jedi: they WERE keeping him back (Ep II showed that Yoda was aware of Anakin's brush with the dark side, if not the slaughter of the Tusken in specific); the Jedi HAD compromised their stated values (attempting to abuse Palpatine's favour of Anakin, and later Windu's decision for summary execution instead of due process); and the order's stodgy reliance on tradition and denial of emotion is part of what allowed the Sith to seize power virtually unopposed (for all Yoda's warnings of fear, he'd apparently given Anakin plenty of reason to hide both the Tusken slaughter and his marriage to Padme, out of fear of what the order would do). He was only wrong about Obi -Wan's personal loyalty. Moreover, not only is Luke successful without Jedi dogma indoctrinated into him, he succeeds despite the manipulations of his mentors: Obi-Wan's attempt to protect Luke by hiding Vader's true nature, while well-intentioned, was no longer necessary after the first movie, and outright endangered Luke in the second. Likewise, when Yoda tells Luke that the ideals of the rebellion matter more than the lives of Luke's friends, Luke ultimately rejects this, leading directly to gaining the knowledge he needed to defeat the Sith. Finally, both Yoda and Obi-Wan attempt to convince Luke that Vader's evil is monolithic, remembering from personal experience how Anakin's fall led him to murder children and his own wife. When Luke tried anyway, not out of a plan for the rebellion or an abstract philosophy, but out of genuine concern for his father, Luke not only redeemed Anakin, he also proved the falsehood of the Jedi Order's self-denial practices.
** [[{{neoYTPism}} This troper]] noticed the same thing, or at least the part about Luke proving Yoda and Obi-Wan wrong. Even ''without'' the prequel trilogy, it's clear that Luke redeemed Vader precisely BECAUSE he learned the truth and acted accordingly, which reflects poorly on the decisions of Obi-Wan and Yoda to lie to him. So, the original trilogy already made clear that the Jedi weren't quite as wise as they pretended to be and/or thought they were. The council's rigid traditionalism in the prequel trilogy only drives the point home further.

** That was what this troper thought too, but [[TheCuckoolanderWasRight everyone around her kept calling her names for years]]! I always thought that the incredulous look that Obi-Wan gave Han was the "Really, you found a shorter way to fly that route? Seriously, what are you insane?!" type.

** Expending on the above comment, and completely discarding the canon EU explanation, I theorize that a parsec here is slang for a time measurement, much the same way that on good old earth, time measurements are used as distance measurements. The expression "Person X lives 3 hours away", or the derivation of the distance unit Lightyear from the time unit Year both are based on calculating the described distance from the specified time measurement and an assumed universally uniform speed. This makes sense in a world with varying distance measurement units (miles, kilometres, etc.), but a common time measurement system (hour = hour). Now, in a Universe inhabited by spacefaring civilisations with a shared history that goes back countless millennia, I think it's not too much of a stretch to think that, unlike on Earth, (interstellar) distance measurement units would be universal (established as 'distance between historically important places A and B' or something similar), whereas time units would vary greatly, based on the rotation speed of the individual person's home planet, resulting in slang measurements such as the one in the movie. Much like 'an hour' is the same distance no matter whether you'd measure it in kilometres or miles, '12 parsecs' might denote the same time no matter what's an 'hour' on your homeworld, assuming normal hyperdrive speed. And Obi-Wan's expression is just a snob's frown upon slang.

** He needed ''Solo'' alive. He had no particular need to keep the Wookie, Princess, and Droid intact, and may have simply been annoyed that his options were being limited.
* I just realized: the holographic stuff used in throughout the Galaxy is always blue, right? What color are Force Ghosts? Blue. The latter cannot possibly be imitating the former and considering the technology level that is available, it would be easy to set up different colors or even full-color holograms. This leads me to suspect that holograms are blue because someone felt like imitating rumoured ghost sightings.

** When did the Jedi act like bureacrats? I distinctly remember watching Obi-Wan acting at various times like a police officer or a detective. Didn't see anything that looked like paperwork. And usually, yes, those who lived through a time period know exactly what they're talking about. That's how everyone else gets to know what happened. And seriously, does it take any tinting at all to think being part of an overstretched galactic police force is somehow better than being hunted by a galactic empire that burns down homesteads when interrogations aren't effect and blows up planets?

* Obi-Wan and Vader are supposed to be Luke's evil and good Fathers. We know that. However, this logically makes Yoda his crochety, cranky, selfish, but still wise grandpa. And Palpatine suddenly becomes an abusive patriarch who likes pitting his descendants against each other.

** There's actually a fairly popular fan theory that Qui-Gonn was the only Jedi available to take on a padawan that would have been able to stop Anakin's fall--Qui-Gonn is a 'Grey Jedi', which is a Jedi who goes against tradition and believes that both the restraint of the light and the emotion of the dark are needed to fight in balance, and was a better warrior because of it, but also a pariah. This is referenced repeatedly throughout TPM. If Anakin had been mentored by someone who believed this way, like Qui-Gonn or Mace Windu, he would never have repressed and internalised his emotions, and thus would never have been anywhere near as susceptible to the Dark Side. And it's entirely possible that someone like Qui-Gonn who put little faith in blind tradition would be entirely able to not only keep Anakin and Padme's relationship a secret but empathise with it, and his knowledge could have helped save Padme down the line. In short; as mentioned above, the entirety of Star Wars is riddled with 'vergences' or 'shatterpoints', where a single aspect of reality is all that keeps galactic history from being radically different; the fact that Obi-Wan, someone who was very much a staunch traditionalist and who believed the Jedi dogma until that faith was shattered in Episode III was Anakin's mentor instead of Qui-Gonn was one such vergence and directly or indirectly led to the events of the next five movies.

* All Jedi are world-class [[DeadpanSnarker Deadpan Snarkers]]. The reason for this is quite obvious: being trained to distance themselves from emotion, their main reaction towards pretty much anything can only be unfazed cynicism, their humour being an expression of basically not being able to react with happiness, fear or anger. At the same time, the Sith seem to be taking everything way too seriously.

* George Lucas has made no secret that he based many of the battles on old war films, with many of the spacecraft based to varying degres on RealLife aircraft. With that in mind, what could he have had in mind with the folding S-Foils on fighters like the X-Wing or the ARC-170? If you find footage of dive bombers in WWII (such as the North American A-36 Apache, or the Douglas [=SBD=] Dauntless, you'll realize they're likely intended to be dive brakes, which would be extended just as the bomber [[LetsGetDangerous rolled into a dive]] in order to keep the bomber from diving fast enough to rip its own wings off.

** The body armor worn by modern soldiers is ''not'' designed to ''stop'' incoming fire. It's designed to reduce its velocity, and therefore energy on impact, so that injuries that would ordinarily be fatal would instead become treatable wounds. It stands to reason that Stormtrooper armore is designed under the same principle; making armor that would actually ''stop'' blaster fire would make it unwieldy to wear. Instead, it's better to design it to minimize how much energy of a blast gets through rather than stop it entirely.

* Mostly an Expanded Universe thing, but there didn't seem to be an appropriate SWEU column in either comics or lit, so I'm posting it here: The worst damage the Sith ever did to the Jedi (I suppose you could argue their near-total extinction at the hands of Sidious, but shut up, I'm trying to make a point here) was the war with Exar Kun. Prior to Exar Kun falling to the Dark Side, the Jedi were a massive, loose coalition of wandering monks and righters-of-wrongs, Jedi Masters would keep in contact with each other and refer apprentices to one another. Masters would train a couple new Knights, whatever suited their personal style, and, on the whole, the Jedi seemed very open-minded and trustworthy (possibly a side-effect of there not being a whole lot of stories set before TOTJ). But in response to Exar Kun declaring himself the Lord of the Sith and declaring war on the Jedi and the Republic, the Jedi are forced to crystallize into something more akin to the Jedi we see in the Prequels. In fact, reading Tales of the Jedi after the release of the Prequels, thinking of the KOTOR games and comics and the other stuff in between, such as Jedi Vs. Sith and the Pre-Prequel stories of their prominent Jedi, you can almost see the Butterfly Effect rippling out from the Jedi getting together to fight Exar Kun, watching them slowly evolve into the impotent, detached order we see euthanised in the Prequels. 4,000 years of your worst enemy gradually evolving into something completely powerless to stop your successors from taking over the Galaxy. Not bad for a snot-nosed punk who just thought his Zoideberg-esque master needed to take off the training wheels a bit sooner. ~ UnitedShoes37

** The Revenge of the Sith novelization elucidates this. During his fight with Sidious, Yoda realizes that while the Sith have spent a thousand years since the last war growing, changing, and evolving, the Jedi have spent those same thousand years training to refight the ''last'' war. Yoda's Jedi Order just doesn't know how to combat this new Sith threat, and the fight was over before the Jedi even realized they were in one.

** It could be that most races aren't capable of making the sounds Wookies use to name themselves, so they adopt names in Basic for communicating with others. Greedo speaks a language with sounds humans can produce, so he can keep his old name; Chewbacca doesn't seem to. (Many immigrants who move to English-speaking countries in the real world change their name for this reason, if their language is hard to pronounce in the local tongue.)
* In the most recent Star Wars Insider magazine this troper got, there was an article talking about a book that will be released titled ''Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction''. The author Aaron Allston in the article said that the Jedi Order ends up taking control of the Galactic Alliance government. He makes it clear that this is a bad thing, and that the situation would be akin to the World Wrestling Federation suddenly taking over NATO. He also points that apart from Leia, the Jedi have shown on the political level that they are only good at settling problems through quick and confident acts of violence. This troper thought about what the article said and then realized something. Practically no Jedi, except for Leia, has ever been a politician. The Jedi Order truly has little to no concept of the mechanics of politics and how running a government works. Then this troper realized that this explains a number of things. It explains why Obi-Wan assumed that Padme was a greedy, looking-out-for-herself politician (when she was the total opposite), and did not seem to lump Palpatine with her. It explains why the Jedi never seemed to sense anything out of the ordinary with Palpatine - how could they when they understood nothing about the political machinery he was hiding in? It explains why Jacen Solo did a horrible job of running the government - because he did not really understand how politics work. It also explains why the Sith did a horrible job of running the government...they knew how the system worked, but only to benefit themselves and not how to use it to benefit everyone else.
* Regarding the question on why Palpatine did not sense Vader turning on him, this troper realized something. In the book ''Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Revelation'', Ben Skywalker thinks to himself how Jacen Solo had become so saturated in war, danger and deceit that he ended up treating danger as noise to be filtered out (as an explanation for why Jacen's danger sense did not kick in while he was confessing to murdering Mara Jade and he was being recorded without his knowledge). This troper realized that this explanation could easily be applied to Palpatine and the Sith. This explanation could even apply to the Jedi Order. The danger sense ability is actually unreliable (especially in war) and the Jedi and Sith fail to realize this one simple fact (instead they rely on it too much).

*** There is no need for namecalling Newton. While the Star Wars does take plenty of shortcuts with overcoming the laws of Physics, nowhere (that I know of) is there mentioned that the laws of Physics are different from our world. All the spaceships in Star Wars setting have artificial gravity for crew comfort, they serve a specific purpose. Those artificial gravity generators don't exist just because. What exactly would be the purpose of putting an artificial gravity generator into a lightsaber just to prevent it from jerking a little when the blade shuts down while not being held? That would be quite a vanity modification highly uncharacteristic of the jedi.

** Then cosnider how Luke was able to resist the Dark Side, as well as Mara when she rescued Kyle in the finale of 'Mysteries Of The Sith'. Both Luke and Mara had, between them, varying degrees of Jedi training. Mara, from the Emperor, and Luke, from Obi-Wan and Yoda. Mara even had some training from Kyle, except Kyle himself had no training. The best he had was some advice given to him from Rahn during the events of 'Dark Forces 2' and a lot of improvisation. Kyle, as such, would have had no real instruction on the temptations of the Dark Side and how easy it can be to fall to it

* In the Star Wars universe as a whole, AlternativeCharacterInterpretation is the reason why many end up not supporting the Jedi. At first, the Jedi are painted as a peaceful, almost monk-like organization, centred around achieving balance with themselves and the universe. However, consider for a moment the following facts. The Jedi is a warrior cult who operate entirely on their own, and have nobody regulating them, other than the fact that they ''usually'' go along with what the Senate wants... except when the Jedi decide they don't like it. Now imagine that the Jedi, in the course of their "duties," have the right to search people's homes and property with no authorization, can read people's minds, ''can actually control some people's minds'', and have the right to ''kill'' people they don't approve of. Remember in episode two, when Anakin and Obi-Wan ''dismember'' a person in front of a crowd of bargoers? "Jedi business, go back to your drinks." Sounds a lot more sinister when you consider what you've read here, doesn't it? Now consider that this cult takes people away from their homes and families as small children, so as to better brainwash them into believing their teachings. They force celibacy onto these converts before they even understand the idea of sex. They also preach the total divorce of self from personal emotions, because using one's powers in an emotional state is eeeeeeevil. Anyone who comes to the realization that these people are full of crap are promptly kicked out of the order, unless they leave of their own will. After they are kicked out, they are labelled as "Dark Jedi," because any views other than the Jedi's own are eeeeeeevil. These people also believe that "balance" in the force consists of people who believe in the application of the force in any way other than theirs being killed.
** They cut off Zam Wesell's arm after she tried to ''kill a Senator''. Please watch the movie before you make judgements. Also, they were right about balance. There are two ways to use the Force; the light way and the dark way. The dark way uses the Force ''wrong'', the same way that brutally beating and abusing a horse to make it do more work is using it ''wrong''. In the novelization of RotJ, Luke thinks that the lightening is an aberration of the Force. The dark side ''isn't mean to be'', so the Jedi are perfectly in the right thinking that destroying this aberration that wasn't created by nature and was created by human beings wanting power and fuelling their power on rage and hatred will cause balance. Why wouldn't it?

*** Grievous' backstory shows the Jedi in a whole new light, from the perspective of a people fighting their alien oppressors. Suddenly the Jedi swoop in, blockade their planet, and a huge percentage of the kaleesh starve.

** The Jedi proclaim that Fear is of the Dark Side and yet ''fear'' Love for it's potential to cause one to fall to the Dark Side. It's no wonder they seem corrupt when they have all fallen to the Dark Side without knowing it. One of Yoda's problems was an inability to acknowledge his darkness which threatened to destroy him until he acknowledged it. Even after acknowledging his inner darkness he inadvertantly let it control him during Anakin's talk with him during ''Revenge of the Sith'' about the visions he had been having.

* From the first film, it is established both that droids are sentient and self aware enough to be loveable, sympathetic characters, and that they're ''routinely memory-wiped''.
** Supplementary materials say that it takes a long time without memory wipes to develop these behaviours. R2-D2 hadn't been memory wiped in decades, and I'm pretty sure Anakin built C-3P0 like that

*** Following through with the above, it's very likely that the DS1 was filled with civilian workers and forced labour when it was destroyed(and this is outright stated in EU material on a couple occasions), as, as mentioned, it had just finished construction and had its first weapons test on Jedha and then again on Scarif and Alderaan, with the intent to blow Yavin IV to hell as well. At no point did they stop for a breath and let the workers off; they were constantly chasing the Rebels from point A to point B from the moment of completion. Was it necessary to destroy the Death Star to prevent the destruction of the Rebellion and the solidification of Imperial Dominance? Yes. Is a Necessary Evil any less Evil? No. The Rebels have always been morally grey; Rogue One is just the first film to out-and-out say, "Yeah, they're the protagonists, but they aren't morally good." Worth noting the opposite of this is why people were up in arms about Disney; they thought it would get softer, and we got the single darkest film in the canon from them(And, quite rightly, one hailed as being the best since Empire).

*** I always viewed it as grooming because ROTS makes clear that Palpatine has been an important presence in Anakin's life since he arrived on Coruscant - Anakin refers to him as a mentor and a friend, having watched over him ever since he arrived. There's also the familiarity with which Anakin and Palpatine interact in AOTC (and the frightening degree of deference Anakin accords him). Obi-Wan himself notes that their relationship makes the Council uncomfortable because they are too close. Considering Anakin hasn't been on Coruscant for at least several months at this point (and their interactions from previous films) the evidence has always seemed to point to a long-standing relationship in this troper's opinion.

* Droids in the Star Wars universe are initially nonsentient, unable to do or think anything outside their programming, but if they aren't routinely memory wiped they become sentient. The horror comes when you realize that if people were to have their memories erased to around our births every few weeks or so, we wouldn't be sentient either, we'd be no more than animals. That's essentially what droids that are routinely memory wiped are, babies that are set back to factory settings and required to relearn everything all over again every memory wipe. Sure, technically droids aren't slaves since they're nonsentient, but the only reason they AREN'T sentient to begin with is the people in Star Wars never let the babies grow up, as it were.

** That's not the reason Obi-Wan did not kill Anakin. The reason he does not do so is because he was very angry, and killing Anakin in such circumstances would leave Obi-Wan very near to falling in the Dark Side, and anyway he thought that Anakin would actually die after losing his limbs and nearly falling into the lava. It probably wasn't until much later that he realised that Anakin was still alive, and probably thought that Luke was his only hope to defeat Darth Vader and the Emperor.

* The lightsaber Luke proudly uses in ANH and TESB was given to him by Obi-Wan because it belonged to his father Anakin. Meaning it's the same one Anakin used to slaughter the sandpeople in AOTC and the other Jedi, including the younglings in ROTS.

** Not necessary. It's shown in ''A New Hope'' that droids can deactivate, reactivate, and recharge themselves. Even without it, [=R2D2=] can simly excaust his energy (unlikely but possible), and be in hibernation, which downplays FridgeHorror. So, why can't R2 do that?
* In "A New Hope", Han and Luke have to blast their way past a handful of TIE Fighters to escape the Death Star. However it later becomes clear that Tarkin and Vader let the Millenium Falcon escape with minimum resistance so they could find the rebel base. That means that they sent a couple of poor schmucks out after the Falcon knowing they'd probably get shot down, and even if they didn't, they'd at least have destroyed all trace of the plans and destroyed any hope of the rebels destroying the Death Star - a win-win for them, but it makes you wonder exactly how often they sacrifice pilots for a tactical gain.

*** Worse, to the galaxy at large it looked like a case of ScrewTheRulesIHaveSupernaturalPowers Even the Jedi had no idea that Palpatine was a Sith Lord until Anakin told them when they were ''already'' on their way to his office to forcibly depose him at lightsaber point. They merely thought he was a CorruptPolitician. But acting unilaterally this way, bypassing the legislature and the judiciary of the Republic entirely, only served to make Palpatine's version of the story sound true. Since Anakin never even told Padme or anyone else, the fact that Palpatine was a Sith would take years to come out, and that he was also the secret leader of the Separatists and the instigator of the Clone Wars was never revealed at all! This would have only served to fuel propaganda about [[BewareTheSuperman the dangers of having an organization like the Jedi around]]. He could even use the same accusation that the Jedi had leveled at ''him'', claiming that they had become addicted to power during their time as generals of the Army of the Republic and that with the imminent defeat of the Separatists they had decided to seize power rather than return to their previous role as mere peacekeepers.

* The Jedi Order is a religious order that heavily represses the sexual and romantic inclinations of its members. In real life, many experts contend that such repression has contributed to to widespread sexual abuse in organizations such as the Catholic Church, most infamously the sexual abuse of children. And then you remember that the Jedi temple houses ''younglings''. While the Jedi might not insist on complete celibacy, discouraging “romantic attachment” can still lead its members to develop very unhealthy ideas about sexuality or express their sexuality in unhealthy ways. In hindsight, Anakin's ill-advised relationship that was none-the-less with a consenting adult was probably only the tip-of-the-iceberg in terms of the sexual mistakes committed by the Jedi.

* The Jedi Order is a religious order that enforces celibacy upon its members. In real life, many experts contend that such celibacy requirements have contributed to to widespread sexual abuse in organizations such as the Catholic Church, most notably sexual abuse of children. And then you remember that the Jedi temple houses ''younglings''. In hindsight, Anakin's ill-advised relationship that was none-the-less with a consenting adult was probably only the tip-of-the-iceberg in terms of the sexual mistakes committed by the Jedi.

* Who is the biggest hero of the Original Trilogy? Is it Luke? Han? Ben Kenobi? Leia? R2-D2? No, it is the Imperial officer who says not to shoot the escape pod containing Threepio and Artoo at the beginning of ''A New Hope''. Had they shot down the pod, just to be sure, Artoo and Threepio would never have reached Tatooine, they would never have found their way to Luke and he would still be stuck as a farmboy in Tatooine, the special message would never have reached Luke or Ben Kenobi and as such Princess Leia would never have been rescued and the Rebels would never have the plans to destroy the Death Star, Han Solo would never have been hired by Ben and never subsequently joined the Rebellion, and, further down the line, Luke would have never discovered his destiny, trained with Yoda, found out that Leia (whom he never would've met) was his sister and that Vader (whom he never would've met either) was his father and so on. If not for that Imperial Officer, the events of the entire Original Trilogy and the Expanded Universe beyond that would never have happened at all. - Tropers/{{Jedd-the-Jedi}}

** For what it's worth, though, even in the framework of the movies, the pod being shot down, destroying [=R2=] and [=3PO=] would still not necessarily imply Luke remaining a farm boy; for all we know, Obi-Wan could have decided to train Luke as a Jedi otherwise. Let's just leave it at that... - [=neoYTPism=]

** Revenge of The Sith - Return of The Jedi, both refer to an old power coming back. - [=HG131=]

* While I was always far more forgiving toward the prequels than many people, one part that seemed too dumb to put up with was Anakin's conception: [[CrystalDragonJesus Jesus rip off?]] Born of The Force? Gimme a break. But then Palpatine explained his master's preoccupation, and the stupidest part of the prequel trilogy suddenly became the most ingenious. -- EricDVH

** The extended materials extend the quality of it even further. Palpatine killed his master because he believed that his master intended to conceive a child using the Force, and that the child would subsequently kill Palpatine. Palpatine was right. --Wodan46
*** My uncle described a moment of Fridge Brilliance he had with that same conversation. Palpatine described the perspectives of the Jedi and the Sith; the Jedi are inherently selfless, forsaking personal things to benefit the Republic while the Sith are inherently selfish, "Treachery is the way of the Sith." Yet the Sith learned to control the force to create life and prevent death. The Jedi found a way to achieve immortality for themselves after death. Both are essentially contrary to the philosophical beliefs of the two factions, one discovering a power to help others and one discovering a power to benefit themselves. --{{KJMackley}}
*** I was also confused by the contradiction of the ultimate expressions of the Light and Dark sides of the Force. It didn't make sense that the ultimate expression of the Light side was a form of immortality for oneself, while the ultimate expression of the Dark side was a technique to create life and preserve others. Then it occurred to me: the power of the Light side isn't about benefiting yourself; it's about becoming a part of the living Force itself to act as a guide for others. The main reason Force Ghosts exist is to guide the living. It's the ultimate act of selflessness, helping others even from beyond. OTOH, the ultimate power of the Dark side, creating life, represents the complete subjugation of the Force. It grants the Sith power over both life and death, essentially making him/her into a god. The Light is about acceptance and harmony with the Force, becoming part of it, and the Dark is about defying and controlling it. - M84

* Little worried I'm misusing the phrase, but here goes: Jar Jar Binks. I was indifferent at first, then annoyed, then I watched ''The Phantom Menace'' again three days ago. I realized Jar Jar was not an idiot, nor hyper, nor a total goofball, just a poor, clumsy guy who was always in the wrong way at the wrong time. He was even capable of solemnity, at certain points, even in Episode I. Now, I actually respect Jar Jar as a decent member of the group! And then, in a further bit of Fridge Brilliance, I realized that Lucas probably didn't mean anything by using semi-real accents for certain species! These races likely didn't have Basic as their first language. They're probably taught something else during their childhood. The language shapes the mouth, and gives the accent, and do you expect a writer to make an accent up out of thin air? He's going to borrow from something he's seen! So no offence was meant! -- Lhikan

** Yeah well, lots of people are racist and sexist and all those other things without meaning to be. And I say that as an avowed prequel fan who ''never'' hated Jar Jar. --TrickyPacifist

** My father is not a fan of the PT, but he liked the CG-animation that went into making Jar-Jar. He thought as a interacting being, Jar-Jar absolutely worked. - Tropers/{{Premonition45}}

** I'm partial to the explanation that midichlorians aren't in any way force generators. A high midichlorian count is simply a symptom of somebody being highly sensitive to the force. - SkarmoryThePG

*** EXACTLY. Midichlorians are '''not''' the Force. They can only communicate with it. They do the same thing on a microscopic level what we thought Luke and others were doing in the original movies.--Tapol.

*** I always interpreted the Force to be the active force representation of the Unified Field Theory - i.e. it is the unified force that governs all physics and movement within the universe - and hence that the Midichlorians just are a conduit to tap into the Force. I mean, technically, if everyone could tap into the Force just through years and years of practice, then Yoda would be a god by now (considering he was alive for 800 years) - the potential for use of the Force would be infinite if access to it was not restricted by a physiological imperative while the individual was alive. Once they die, we cross full on into Nirvana territory (merging with the Force, becoming one with the universe etc. etc.). I never saw it as DoingInTheWizard, but rather [[FunctionalMagic Giving The Wizard A Wand]]... er, [[{{Metaphorgotten}} sorta]]. - 13secondstomidnight

* I juuust realized that the R2 units on X-Wings are supposed to emulate the round observation dome on top of bombers. -- {{Tropers/Jonn}}
* A moment of FridgeBrilliance for myself was the pre-emptive realization that The Chosen One was always fated to destroy the Jedi Order. Even though the Jedi interpret the legend to fortell the end of the Sith, they are always careful to explicitly state: "The Chosen One will ''bring balance to the force''." At the time of Anakin's arrival, there are a tiny number of Sith and vast numbers of Jedi. Hence, to balance the force Anakin must kill most of the Jedi. By the original Star Wars trilogy we know of only two Sith (Palpatine and Vader) and two remaining Jedi (Obi-Wan and Yoda). -- Pak
** I thought this, too, until I stumbled across something George Lucas says in one of the DVD commentaries. He says that the Force is like a living entity, and that the Sith are akin to a cancer or disease, bringing it out of whack. Anakin/Vader fulfils the prophecy by doing away with the Sith, which requires him to sacrifice himself in the process. If a person's health is out of balance (y'know, he's sick), you don't make him sicker to make things fair, right? If you want to see how he phrased it, [[http://blogs.starwars.com/moosepoodo/17 here's]] a link. -- LonePaladin
*** Actually, YES you DO treat some medical conditions by injuring a person further. Especially with CANCER. Think about it. What is surgery? It's cutting a person open. The fact that you sew them up afterwards notwithstanding. We're just so used to the idea that it seldom occurs to us that that is what surgery is. The other major way cancer is treated is by poisoning the patient, with a poison that (we hope) will affect the cancerous tissue more than it affects healthy tissue. We call this 'chemotherapy'. -- auswelter
** WordOfGod or not, I disagree: I had a similar moment to Pak's: 2 Sith + balance = ...2 Jedi. (Ooops!) Given the way the phrase was so clearly and constantly used, I see it as a combination of arrogance and blindness on the part of the Jedi that made them assume that "balance" would mean "we win" (and would therefore be a ''good'' thing, instead of the prophecy of disaster it turned out to be). -- diannelamerc
*** While I agree that there is a certain attraction to the idea that "bringing balance to the Force" doesn't just mean destroying the Sith and may not even be something good, that equal numbers reasoning never appealed to me. Jedi and Sith are the main organizations of Force-users, by they do not, in their totality, constitute the Force itself. Even just between Jedi and Sith, there's a lot more that goes into "balance" than how many living adherents each side can boast. [[FridgeLogic Equalizing the number of Jedi and the number of Sith = bringing balance to the ''Force''? I think not]]. -- TrickyPacifist

*** Just to add even more confusion, there's the issue of the so-called True Sith, who live in the Unknown Regions. That's two Sith orders to one Jedi order. And the True Sith are only mentioned in the [=KotOR=] games. How's that for FridgeBrilliance? -MutantRancor
*** While I agree that Bringing Balance wasn't likely to be reducing the number of Jedi to equal the number of Sith, I always viewed the Jedi as fallen or failed. The Force is Life and exists in the myriad of shades of grey. Having only good would lead to an ineffectual Ivory Tower or totalitarian utopian society. Thus the Old Jedi order also needed to be removed to allow the Force to from freely through the universe without being shoehorned into a "human" flawed morality system. -NightHaunter

*** Alternatively, Luke is neither. He never finished his Jedi training. Vader killed Obi-Wan, Palpatine and himself, while Yoda died on his own. No Jedi left, no Sith left. Balance! -- {{Tenebrais}}

*** What I personally think on the matter of the "balance issue" is that it is essentially a reset button. We mustn't focus on the fact that all the Jedi and Sith died but WHY they died. This reason is misuse of the Force. This is more obvious in the Sith than in the Jedi. The Jedi are steadfast in their old ways without being open to new ones and adapting likewise. In fact think of it this way: an organization who only accepts infants as members whom they will then train to use a specific elite skill-set that cannot be used by those not chosen, they are also taught a strict set of beliefs that includes forbidding them from exhibiting emotion and having children of their own, any deviation from this and they are "turned to the dark side" and their former peers are sent to eliminate them as an enemy; all for the sake of order. Not how they would have you believe it. But this inability to adapt and quest for order and control indicates a misuse of the Force. The sentient Force would therefore have balance be to get rid of these old ideas that seem to have strayed from the point and unfortunately it is so ingrained the extermination is required. Cue Anakin. His wiping out of the Jedi and then of Palpatine led the way for Luke to create the New Jedi Order which was open and inclusive. Essentially Order 66 and Anakin's final act before dying can be likened to the Great Flood of the Noah's Ark story. Also the only people distinguishable after becoming one with the Force, have all at some point embraced this concept: Qui-Gon Jinn was willing to train Anakin even though he was older and made an illegal bet because it was necessary, Obi-Wan was also willing to train Anakin and Luke and also harboured emotions for Anakin (more brotherly bond than a student-teacher one), Yoda eventually trained Luke out of necessity despite his age and emotional state, and Anakin himself for too many reasons to count. Wow. That is one massive wall of text! -- youngcosette

*** I should know that even the numbers doesn't means "Balance". Sure there are as many Jedi as Sith, but the Sith have much more power and influence than the Jedi, so not balanced, at all. -- MakiP

* A just-realized moment of my own: The "Vader" in Darth Vader is, in the real world, the Dutch word for "Father." In the Original Trilogy, this was merely a foreshadowing hint to Vader's true identity. However, in the Prequel Trilogy, where Palpatine grants him the name, the father meaning seems to not be present. But then I realized: Anakin's fall to the Dark Side resulted because of his desire to save his wife and unborn child. He fell because he was acting as a husband and father. The name Vader takes on a much greater meaning now I realize that. -- {{Sgamer82}}

** Actually, according to WordOfGod, the "Vader is Luke's father" element didn't exist at the time the first film was written (in fact, it wasn't even in the first draft of ''Empire''!), so that really must be chalked up to coincidence. --StarManta

* This one concerns the much-derided moment in ''Return of the Jedi'' when Palpatine congratulates Luke on losing control of his anger, [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame thus reminding Luke that he had to control himself]]. It seems like a moment of complete idiocy on Palpatine's part... ''and it is''. That moment illustrates why the Sith's adherence to their own emotions can be a weakness instead of the strength they claim it is: without Jedi self-control, Palpatine couldn't contain his glee at being so close to his ultimate goal... and that momentary lapse made him lose it all. --{{Anomaly}}

*** Yeah, Padme's been [[{{TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask}} the woman wearing the Queenly mask]] since she was [[AChildShallLeadThem fourteen]]. She had to learn how to mask, and at times [[TheStoic hide]] her emotions in order to be taken seriously. Being ruled by her emotions was a big no-no.--ncfan

* Up until ROTS, this troper used to think Vader's black lenses were [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin just that]]. But as his mask is being lowered, we see the lenses show red and black LCD. Red and black were the two dominant colors of Mustafar, so as Vader, Anakin sees the world looking just like the one which changed him forever. It lends a greater impact to his line "Let me look on you with my own eyes". - Tropers/{{Premonition45}}
** It also looks like fire as we see the mask descending over him, symbolizing Anakin's descent into Hell.--ncfan
* I realized something about the OT: Luke's first and last spoken lines in the OT have to do with choice. In ''ANH'', when we first meet Luke, his Aunt Beru asks him to remind him to tell his Uncle Owen to make sure a translator droid can speak Bocce, to which Luke says "Doesn't look like we have much of a choice, but I'll remind him". And towards the end of ''ROTJ'', he says "Father, I won't leave you" as his redeemed father Anakin dies. - Tropers/{{Premonition45}}
* There is one very powerful theme that crosses almost the entire saga and can only be fully understood by putting both trilogies together. In Episode III Obi-Wan suggests that he raises Luke himself while Yoda says no, that he should be raised outside of the Jedi life. This is elaborated more in the novelization, where Yoda believes that he lost the duel with Sidious because he had spent his life trying to hold on to past Jedi tradition while the Sith learned to evolve. In the case of Anakin, the Jedi life was forced upon him and he constantly resented it (taken away from his mother, forbidden from marrying Padme, etc). Because of this, whenever he made a personal choice he was always worried of the backlash. In the case of Luke, when offered the chance to leave Tatooine he told Obi-Wan that he has responsibilities on the farm. Obi-Wan's reply (with a distinct sense of regret) was "You must do what you feel is right." And when Luke approached Yoda, the little guy practically made Luke beg to be trained, to ensure that he wasn't going to go at it half-assed. Because of this, whenever Luke made a personal choice he always seemed to do so with resolve and dedication. And then in the ExpandedUniverse Luke's new Jedi Order emphasized the importance of evolution and learning over ancient tradition. The ''StarWars'' saga is a message about the dangers of blind tradition and the importance of personal choice. George Lucas said he wanted to tell his story, and this is what it is. --KJMackley
** And one line that perfectly enhances that theme is in ''Film/ANewHope''. When Luke is disappointed to learn that Han and Chewie will not stay to help the Rebels fight the Death Star, Leia tells him that "He [Han] has got to follow his own path. No one can choose it for him." - Tropers/{{Premonition45}}
** The Yoda theory is confirmed in the Thrawn Trilogy; when Luke is reflecting on the passing of Obi-Wan's ghost, he claims he is the last of of the Jedi... then he hears Obi-Wan's voice "Not the last of the old jedi, but the first of the new" --SeekerofAlice09

*** You noticed that too? I figured out a theory recently on what 'balance' could possibly mean to the Force, which seems to be more like the life energy of the entire galaxy: if the Force itself is alive, how could a stagnant, hyper-controlling and unchanging Jedi Order possibly be ''good'' for it? In nature, stagnation usually equals death. The Sith philosophy seems like a good alternative in theory, but the way the Dark Side corrupts and perverts life makes it seem more like a cancer - growth for the sake of growth, power for the sake of power. Anakin's entire life was forcing the Force to act more dynamically, to encourage healthy development. - OracleSeven

* George Lucas was inspired by many things in creating Star Wars: the old Buck Rogers serials, Joseph Campbell books on mythology, Japanese Samurai movies like ''The Hidden Fortress'' on so on. It just occurred to me that Lucas may also have been inspired by Medieval tales like the King Arthur legend as well: The union of Anakin is Padme is that of a knight (a Jedi Knight) and a lady (Queen-turned-senator), and Palpatine is in effect an evil sorcerer of sorts. Obi-Wan perhaps played the Merlin role, as did Yoda. - {{Tropers.Jedd-the-Jedi}}

* Also, I'm not sure if this was already mentioned here, (and it's not exactly easy to look through the list) but I think it's arguably FridgeBrilliance that when it comes to lightsaber colours, Qui-Gon uses green, Obi-Wan uses blue, and Luke Skywalker uses blue in Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack and green in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi''. [[spoiler:Also, Qui-Gon was more trusting of Anakin than Obi-Wan was, much like how Luke was more trusting of Vader in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' than he was in Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack.]] - [=neoYTPism=]

* Another thing, and this sort of combines FridgeHorror with FridgeBrilliance... in the original trilogy, Palpatine and Vader seem perfectly aware of the Force, and Vader is shown mentioning it to other Imperial officers in ''Film/ANewHope'', but they seem to perceive it as just another religion. However, they (or at least some of them) also seem to be aware that the Jedi were mostly wiped out, as implied by one of Tarkin's conversations with Vader, in which Tarkin says ''"you, my friend, are all that is left of their religion."'' Now think about this in light of the prequel trilogy. ''"Order 66"'' was already [[MoralEventHorizon heinous]], but we know from the context that it was at least somewhat pragmatic; Palpatine wiped out the Jedi because they were the only rivals to himself and Vader in knowledge of the force. Tarkin, however, not believing in the force, is probably unaware that this was the reason. Now think about what he said once more. ''"All that is left of their religion."'' In other words, he [[ANaziByAnyOtherName condones having people rounded up and killed for their religious beliefs]]. Sure, we knew he was bad news from the start, [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain but still]]... - [=neoYTPism=]

*** Of course he doesn't mind. This is the guy who blew up a planet as a mere show of force, so clearly empathy is not his strong suit. -Tropers/UmbraFractus

* Another case of FridgeBrilliance, you know how people often complain that Anakin's personality in ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' seemed so contradictory to his original-trilogy personality, and that both personalities seemed contradictory to the personality he had in ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' and ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith''... but then again, [[TruthInTelevision adults often ARE quite different as adults than they were as children]], so Anakin's going to have different personalities as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult. ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'''s Anakin was a child, so he's going to be more sweet and friendly than he was later on. The Anakin of ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' and ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' was a teenager, so he's going to be more whiny and arrogant than he was later or earlier on. The Vader of the original trilogy was an adult, much older than the Anakin of ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'', so he's going to be more mature than any other version of Anakin. This is, if not perfectly in line with actual age difference, at least in line with PERCEIVED age differences, and if one is to complain about this, their real complaint is with popular age stereotypes, not ''Franchise/StarWars'' movies. - [=neoYTPism=]

* For a long time, the idea of "spice mines" seemed to be just a bit of silliness I quietly ignored. Mining spices? How ridiculous can you get? Then I realized that far from being stupid, it's perfectly reasonable. The most common spice in the world is salt, and do we get salt? From mines! - {{Tropers/Whitewings}}

* [[WebVideo/TheAmazingAtheist The Distressed Watcher]] claims that seeing the Jedi act like bureaucrats in the prequels didn't line up with the way they were described by characters in the original trilogy. Think about it, though... how often in real life do people who view old traditions through rose-tinted glasses know what they're talking about? Perhaps the point very well was to imply that Obi-Wan's fondness for the past was very much like that which some people have for the [=1950s=] in real life? - Tropers/HiddenFacedMatt

* As many others, I sometimes wondered: why did the Death Star had to wait for Yavin IV to come into range instead of blowing Yavin itself and having a free shot. But then it occurred to me: Yavin is a gas giant. It means it is mostly hydrogen. It is also way bigger than Jupiter, judging by view from the base. Had the Death Star blown it off like Alderaan, the shock would cause all the hydrogen to fuse, essentially making Yavin into one '''huge''' nuke. The resulting explosion would be likely orders of magnitude stronger, and would blast the Death Star (which was sitting directly on top of Yavin and has crappy shields) to bits. -- Tropers/{{SS13}}

* Rewatching TPM, I realized the theme playing during Qui-Gonn's funeral is, in fact, the same theme playing during the birth of Darth Vader in ROTS. Vader was born the moment Qui-Gon had died. -- Tropers/{{Premonition45}}

** The novelization makes this motivation explicit. It's not the only thing it clears up either. The reason the prequels are regarded so poorly is because George Lucas took too much of the subtext, background, and motivation for his characters for granted and never bothered to explain to the audience what was going on half the time. This was likely an effect of having lived in this world and with these characters for YEARS; Lucas was so close to the material he lost the ability to asses it objectively. Had he let another director handle the prequels it is likely they would have been far superior in quality, and not nearly as loathed as they are (at least among the general public, I'm sure just as many fanboys would be [[FanDumb upset]] at the new movies upsetting the {{Fanon}})

** Another theory, playing on RealLife concerns: A study of firefights in modern wars show that in every situation, even the most vicious, no-mercy firefight, most shots miss, even if the soldiers are trained. Why? [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming Even if trained and indoctrinated, studies have shown that most human beings, save for sociopaths, do not want to will harm to other humans on a subconscious level]]. They may be missing unconsciously because they see human beings and not Rebel traitors. Add to that the military doctrine of "suppression fire" (where solders are trained to fire wildly, not with the object of actually hitting anything, but to make the opposition so concerned with keeping under cover that they don't have the opportunity to return fire, and that may be a simpler explanation.

* A lot of people forget how one of Palpatine's statements comes full circle. In ''Film/ReturnOfTheSith'', a DEEP emphasis is put on what he says as it cuts to a close-up of him saying in a sinister way, "It's ironic... He could save others from death but not himself." Fast forward to the end of the movie when Anakin was literally dying on Mustafar, only to be saved by Sidious and get turned into the "Original" Darth Vader. Now, let's fast forward again, this time to ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' when Vader threw Sidious down the generator shaft. "He could save OTHERS from DEATH but NOT HIMSELF."

*** And who would expect a small town boy like George Lucas to recognize the UnfortunateImplications of it?
*** Even if Modesto was actually a small town, by the time ''The Phantom Menace'' was in production, George Lucas was a multimillionnaire writer and producer.
*** There would only be a problem if actual Jamaicans saw problems with it. Since Jar Jar's portrayal isn't relying heavily on negative stereotypes, it isn't an example.

** There is also the possibility that the Stormtroopers weapons are just plain garbage. This parallels real life WW2 France, and the homemade Sten gun. Made out of any piping available, including bicycle pumps and sewer pipe, the Sten was great for putting out bullets, but had very low accuracy. The Empire requires a lot of weapons, so of course the lowest bidder is going to get the job. Imagine if Winchester suddenly started mass-producing arms in China, the overall quality would most definitely suffer. Now, take that analogy to a ''galaxy-wide'' level, and it is possible that all of the weapons the Empire gives to rank-and-file soldiers is not going to be top-tier equipment. Note how none of the characters willingly use a Stormtrooper rifle (with the exception of Luke, but he didn't have a personal weapon besides a laser sword he could barely use, and even then he hit only 2-3 Troopers in the entire escape) at any point, Han ditches it at the first opportunity for his personal side-arm which has proven much more reliable.