None of Star Wars makes any sense in context. From “Darth” to the whole I think I have your dad’s lightsaber stashed here somewhere thing to who Luke’s family is supposed to be and these days even Obi Wan’s weird desert hermit outfit now being official Jedi uniform, apparently or how Vader keeps getting bullied by all of the Empire’s middle management.
Honestly, that last one is the most impressive. In retrospect, Tarkin is an absolute badass that doesn’t give a crap about Vader’s whole deal. And it works. The magic space wizard that basically runs the empire and everybody is terrified of just sits there and takes it. You have to respect that.
Vader wasn’t originally planned to be Luke’s dad. One of the producers came up with it halfway through Empire.
Part of being Sith is fucking over others, even those you are “allied” with. The way to become second in command is to kill the current second in command. Tarkin is at the point in his career where killing Vader would probably be a good move if he could manage it.
Wasn’t Vader being his dad hinted at in a new hope when Luke talks to obi wan?
Original draft of Empire by Leigh Brackett had Luke meet a force ghost of his dad. Obi Wan pretty clearly says in the original that Vader killed Luke’s father, which you can certainly claim he was being metaphorical, but I’ve never really gotten that vibe. Luke and Leia are also infamously handsy. I suggest hunting down VHS rips of the originals to see what you think. It’s a shame we’ll never get the unaltered versions in HD.
George Lucas claims it was always his plan, but he also has waffled on so many things (was it always planned to be 6 movies? Or 9? Or just a one and done?) One aspect is that he did have just a shit ton of random, unhinged ideas that never made it in.
Doesn’t matter, really.
Because the most inconsistent thing in that scene ends up being Obi Wan choosing from the entire prequel canon the idea that Anakin was “the best pilot in the galaxy”.
Seriously, he tells him that:
- his dad was a good pilot.
- his dad was a cunning warrior and a good friend
- his dad wanted him to have his lightsaber when he was old enough.
It’s not just that the facts of the conversation are wrong, it’s that the tone of the conversation is entirely off for what ended up being canon, even before the prequels, but DEFINITELY after the prequels.
People latch on to the “Vader” thing, and who’s to say, but it’s absolutely clear watching it that the backstory they hint either makes no sense, is different than what they ended up doing, or both.
I don’t think Tarkin has to be a Sith - more that he’s a smart cookie and knows how the politics work. He knows that if he could find some way to take down Vader, it would make him look more powerful/valuable in Palpatine’s eyes.
Most of human history doesn’t make sense if you scrutinize it enough.
The US military, the strongest army in the world, was defeated by a bunch of rice farmers? Come on, get some better writers.
And the atomic bomb. Clearly the writers didn’t know how to end the WW2 story arc so they just came up with this super lazy plot device. And you can see that they don’t have any faith into it since they haven’t used it ever since, hoping that we would just forget about it
ha! And then the spinoff built up the bomb as the big bad for the whole damn series but we never got a payoff, just a wall falling down. LAZY.
I mean, I guess that was the payoff. Imagine the stakes while the episode air, you think nukes are going to explode but they see that if they fired that they would get destroyed too in the process and decide to make peace
And then, slowly but inevitably, their rule crumble
Fair enough.
I mean, when they brought the Russians back as the villains you could really tell they had run out of ideas.
None of these things are plot holes. Why is it unbelievable that Obi Wan would keep the light saber? You might not have, but that doesn’t mean Obi Wan wouldn’t. Who is Luke’s family supposed to be? Yes, Obi Wan still dresses like a Jedi when he lives as a hermit. Vader is subject to the emperor’s wishes. It’s believable that tarken is very effective and therefore the emperor sees how valuable he is and he could outrank the emperor’s useful idiot attack dog.
See, it’s not about plot holes.
“Plot holes” are a pretty useless concept anyway. Star Wars as a franchise goes so far out of its way to plug “plot holes”, and it does absolutely nothing for its consistency or coherence.
Case in point, Obi Wan the TV series goes out of its way to justify the goofy, inconsistent use of “Darth” as a first name during the Death Star fight and all that did was break the hell out of suspension of disbelief. See also: the entirety of Solo.
It’s about how you as a human can discern meaning. And yeah, in the original Star Wars Jedi Knights are meant to mostly just have been knights, like medieval knights, and likely not fundamentally connected to the idea of the Force. And the robes hermit look is supposed to be mostly Ben’s whole deal, not a Jedi uniform, and Vader is clearly supposed to mostly be a glorified henchman.
And it’s fine when you come back for Empire and a bunch of those things are no longer quite true. You shrug it off. Star Wars is “from a certain point of view: the franchise” and it’s absolutely to its detriment.
Maybe he never force chokes tarkin cause he’s into it and Vader knows this
Why does him having the lightsaber seem odd to you? We see him take it at the end of episode 3.
I’m pretty sure lightsabers have different weirdness levels / connotations than dildos.
“What plans?”
“The plans that were delivered to you.”
“He delivered me hope. Didn’t you see the previous scene?”
My headcanon is that Vader senses the force in Leia and deep down may unconsciously realise she’s his daughter because she looks like her mother, which is partly why he doesn’t kill her, even if the stated reason is that they still need to get information out of her.
Vader could have revoked her diplomatic immunity
You can blame Lucas all you want, but the writting has almost only gone downhill since he sold it. I will say Andor was great, but it was great because of how it diverged from typical Star Wars stories.
Stars Wars always had poor scenario, dialogues, unempressive acting and weak scifi. People who think it just got worse from the second trilogy are blinded by nostalgia. Star Wars value is rather in visual and audio production: planetes, species, costumes, space ships, music, sound design, visual fx etc …
