Question: When Luke has an argument with Owen and Beru and storms out, Beru says to Owen "He's too much like his father", to which Owen says "I know. That's what I'm afraid of". But if Luke is like Anakin (as Owen and Beru fear), then what caused Luke to not go to the dark side like his father did, if Luke had all this frustration of wanting more control in this movie like his father did when he was younger?
Question: What did Obi-Wan mean when he said to Vader "You can't win, Vader. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"? Also when he said "Strike me down", did he specifically mean taking Obi-Wan's life?
Chosen answer: Yes, he meant take Obi-Wan's life. By killing him, Vader would release Obi-Wan from his body allowing him to follow and advise Luke wherever he goes.
I believe that Obi-wan would also win because he was willing to "let go" in this situation. Helping Luke was more important than destroying Vader right now.
Question: I submitted a mistake where the soldiers hear the blockade runner docking with the star destoyer before they come into contact. Someone corrected me saying that they were hearing the effects of a tractor beam on the ship. Does the book mention a tractor beam being used to capture the ship?
Answer: The blockade runner's not going to be docking willingly with the Star Destroyer that's been shooting at it. Something has to be moving the runner into the docking bay, and use of a tractor beam to capture ships is established elsewhere in the movies. It's a reasonable assumption that the same system is used in this scene.
Question: Two questions: In the bar, Obi Wan's lightsaber is purple, not blue. Is there any particular reason for this? Also, the trivia section for this movie mentions a scene with Han Solo and Jabba the Hut that I have never seen before in the movie. Can somebody explain where the scene is and what happens in it?
Answer: The different color is likely due to the lighting of the cantina. The scene with Jabba is in the remastered version of the film and takes place as Han and Chewie are preparing the Falcon for takeoff. Han tells Jabba that he'll have the money to repay him as soon as he gets back from the job of taking Luke and Obi-Wan to Alderaan and Jabba tells him that if he doesn't, he's going to have to send Boba Fett after him.
Lucas filmed the scene during the production of Star Wars but dropped it because he didn't have the technology at the time to replace the stand-in with Jabba the way he wanted. Later during the remaster, now equipped with the right technology, they added Jabba and included the scene in the film.
Question: I read that Mace Windu was originally going to be in this movie. Does anyone know if this is true?
Answer: Sort of. The name "Mace Windu" dates back to the very first story treatment that George Lucas wrote in 1973, however the character bears no resemblence to the distinguished Jedi Master of the prequel trilogy. In the rough draft, the name is given to a brother of Leia's, while a later draft has the character as a friend of Luke's. The name was ultimately dropped from the script entirely, only to be reintroduced when choosing names for the Jedi council members decades later for the prequels.
Question: Why does the technology in the original trilogy not look as good or as advanced as the technology of the prequel trilogy?
Chosen answer: The real reason is that our technology has advanced in the thirty years since the original movies were made, so better effects were possible. The "in-movie" reason is that he rebels are operating illegally, and therefore their equipment is all jury-rigged and pieced together from stolen or broken scrap, not manufactured like the devices featured in the prequels.
Question: This is a two part question. Question 1: during Obi-Wan and Darth Vader's duel aboard The Death Star, Obi wan spins around, briefly exposing himself and giving Vader an opening within which to strike. Why didn't he take it and stab him through the back? Question 2: towards the end of the duel, at 91 minutes 28 seconds, why does Obi-Wan's lightsaber dim to the point of where it looks like it's going out?
Chosen answer: In response to your first part, its simply a case that Vader missed the opening, he clearly has no issues with striking down someone unarmed as he demonstrates later. In response to your second question, its a fault with the effects used at the time that when the lightsabers were held at certain angles, the effects used to 'paint' on the shimmer of the lightsabers couldn't be applied because there wasn't enough of the required colouring.
Question: Why isn't Darth Vader's and Obi-Wan Kenobi's duel aboard the Death Star as good as the lightsaber duels in Episodes 1, 2, & 3? Is there any reason?
Chosen answer: In reality terms, fight choreography was simply not as advanced in those days. From the story point of view, neither man is exactly at their prime any more. Vader is more machine than man and Kenobi is simply getting old and has not been practicing the Force regularly for nearly two decades. When the prequel trilogy was being put together, it was recognised that the story would be dealing with Jedi at the height of their abilities and thus the filmmakers developed a much more complex and detailed combat form for the Jedi characters to use.
Answer: They had to hold their lightsaber props at a certain angle for the specific effect. Because of this, they couldn't move their props like in later movies.
Question: There's a line in this movie - I think - in which Obi-Wan mentions that Yoda was his master. But wasn't Qui-Gon Jin actually Obi-Wan's master?
Chosen answer: Yoda isn't mentioned in this film - you're actually thinking of The Empire Strikes Back, but I know the line that you mean - Obi-Wan refers to Yoda as "the Jedi Master who instructed me". While Yoda was not "his" master (as you say, that was Qui-Gon), his description is technically accurate - Yoda is a Jedi Master and, as we see in Attack of the Clones, appears to take responsibility for training the young Jedi hopefuls, the younglings, as they're referred to, so would undoubtedly have had a hand in Kenobi's training at some point.
And he was instructed to complete missions by Yoda.
Question: I never understood why the officer who is disrespectful to Vader in the meeting (on the Death Star) calls the Force an "ancient religion". If I remember correctly, at the moment, Vader only mentions the Force, not the Sith or Jedi. Since it has only been 19 or 20 years since the Jedi were defeated, wouldn't the Force still be something that a lot of people, around age 35 and older, could remember and have knowledge of?
Answer: Following the Force has been going on for millenia - "ancient" by any standards, so his description is hardly unreasonable. Yes, there will be plenty of people old enough to remember when the Jedi were around, but that doesn't mean that they're under any obligation to show respect for it, particularly as the public perception is that the Jedi died as traitors. Motti regards Vader with contempt, seeing him as a throwback, clinging to an ancient, outdated and reviled superstition. Hence his disrespectful and insulting attitude.
I believe Palpatine also took steps to discredit the idea of the Jedi as superhero with Force powers (pretty sure I read that at some point). If Motti had never seen a Jedi in action before, he might have bought into those ideas and not considered the Force to be a real thing, or at least not what it is was said to be.
Question: When Obi-Wan and Darth Vader are dueling aboard the Death Star, why does Obi-Wan's lightsaber fizzle out?
Question: If characters such as Luke and Obi-Wan are human, how come they are in a galaxy far, far away?
Answer: Well, it's also a "long time ago", so it doesn't rule out the possibility that the human inhabitants of Earth travelled here from there. Could also be a simple case of parallel evolution and the filmmakers refer to the species as "human" for convenience, in the same way that the standard Star Wars language is represented as present-day English, despite the fact that it obviously wouldn't be.
Answer: Why shouldn't humans be there? Maybe a god/gods created humans on multiple planets. Maybe humans have evolved and developed on multiple planets, multiple times. In the Battlestar Galactica series, it's established that "all of this has happened before" - the human race advances to a certain point, then they create the Cylons that destroy nearly all of them. The survivors find a place to start over and produce new generations, who will create Cylons again someday. You could imagine something similar about the Star Wars universe, or imagine any other explanation.
Answer: We don't know they're "human" as we understand it anyway, despite the use of the word which may be a translation, as mentioned already (their alphabet isn't Roman, for a start). Like The Doctor or any number of humanoid races in sci-fi who resemble us externally but aren't homo sapiens.
Question: If dates in the Star Wars universe are based on when events took place in relation to the Battle of Yavin, what date system was used up to and during the battle?
Answer: The Galactic Standard Calendar has been used consistently in the Star Wars universe for thousands of years and is, from its alternate name of the Coruscant Standard Calendar, probably based on the Coruscanti year length. Each new regime that has ruled the Star Wars galaxy has tended to reset the clock, as it were, so the Empire tended to count years from when Palpatine declared himself Emperor in 19BBY, during the events of Episode III. The Old Republic started their count thousands of years earlier, when it was founded. When the Empire fell to make way for the New Republic, they chose to start their calendar from the year of the Battle of Yavin, the year when they struck their first huge blow against the Empire.
Question: This goes for Episodes IV, V and VI. What are the little droid things that roll around on the ground in the Death Star?
Answer: These are the MSE (or Mouse) droids, who typically carry out minor maintenance or cleaning procedures but can also be assigned other tasks, such as carrying messages in the event that a comlink system is considered insecure, or leading individuals or groups to a particular area. Because of their occasional security related functions, they are designed to self-destruct in the event of capture, accounting for their somewhat nervous disposition.
Question: During the trash compacter scene, Luke gets sucked under by the one-eyed monster thing, which leads to Han and Leia trying to find him. But if the water's only about knee deep, why is it so hard for him to be found?
Answer: Presumably because the monster has pulled him through the lair of whatever they are standing on into whatever space the rest of the body of the monster lives in. Obviously, the monster doesn't live in the part of the part of the compactor that does the compacting or it would be already compacted.
Question: Is there any information, either from the the films or EU, about the specifications of the various weapons in the saga, such as Solo's blaster, or the Stormtrooper's rifles? How do they work? What do they fire etc?
Answer: Being fictional weaponry, precise details can be hard to come by and may potentially be contradictory as different authors provide different interpretations. Much information on the different types of weaponry used across the Star Wars universe and what's known about how they operate (often very little) can be found here.
Answer: Luke, despite his typically youthful frustrations, has been raised in a loving family environment. Compared to his father, who was separated from his mother at an early age, leaving her in slavery, raised by the strict Jedi Order, ended up in a secret marriage that he was unable to acknowledge and had a Sith Lord working on manipulating him from the age of ten onwards, Luke's frustrations are nothing.
Tailkinker ★