Question: When exactly did Dooku turn to the dark side?
Question: Why is Darth Tyranus still going by the name Count Dooku? Later on, Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine consider Anakin Skywalker to be a dead and completely separate person from Vader.
Answer: Because Dooku's status as a Sith was secret and his Dooku identity was still useful. Same as how Darth Sidious continued to use his Palpatine identity until he was publicly revealed as a Sith Lord.
Even Darth Sidious still goes by Emperor Palpatine. I took them considering Anakin to be dead as Anakin, the Jedi. Whereas Dooku had already left the order and Sidious never was a Jedi.
Question: Why can't Jedi get married or have children?
Chosen answer: Because this leads to them being attached to someone. A Jedi is supposed to be selfless, put others before themselves, and act on the behalf of maintaining the order and balance of things. A Jedi must be willing to throw themselves in harm's way for the betterment of the galaxy and must act in a way not thinking of him or herself. If a Jedi is married and or has children, they suddenly will have other priorities. He or she may be reluctant to act in a dangerous situation in fear of death, and leaving behind loved ones. Or as is very likely the case, enemies of the Jedi getting a hold of the Jedi's family and using them against them.
Question: What are death sticks?
Answer: According to the Star Wars Wookipedia, death sticks were a mild hallucinogen primarily sold on Outer Rim worlds, but could be found in abundance on Coruscant. Originally developed in the illegal pharmaceutical labs of CoCo Town, they were relatively cheap and were smuggled into the clubs of cities by dealers. The cilona extract offered euphoria in exchange for a horrific outcome, producing a twisted version of reality enhanced by bright colors. With each dose, the user's life was shortened, and the successive dosages took away larger chunks from a lifespan. With each successive dose, the desire for a harder reaction increased. It was thus very difficult for a youth to shake off their addiction without medical assistance. The death sticks came in two forms: Liquid form or injected.
Question: How did Dooku meet Darth Sidious?
Answer: It is explained that the ever watchful Sidious/Palpatine had his eye on Dooku as a potential apprentice even before the events of The Phantom Menace. Indeed, Palpatine's own master Darth Plagueis was also familiar with Dooku and had actually met him twenty years prior to TPM (though he did not reveal himself as a Sith Lord). It is stated that Plagueis introduced Dooku to Palpatine during this time (again, with their public faces) and the latter two had a friendly relationship thereafter. Palpatine approached Dooku shortly after Qui-Gon Jinn's death, revealed himself as a Sith Lord and finally took Dooku as his apprentice (after many years of careful cultivation).
Question: How old is Anakin in this movie, at least when he and Padme get married at the end (depending on how much time passes throughout the movie)? I've read both eighteen and twenty.
Answer: Anakin was born in 42BBY and the events of the film take place in 22BBY, making Anakin nineteen or twenty when he marries, depending on precisely when it occurred in the year.
Question: Did Dooku have any personal reason for wanting to kill Padme, or did he just send Jango after her as a favor to Nute Gunray?
Answer: Gunray demanded that Amidala be targeted as part of his price to bring the Trade Federation, with its substantial military force, into the Seperatist movement.
Question: During Anakin's duel with Dooku, why did he cut that huge cable and why exactly did he open himself up by sticking his arm out, thus giving Dooku the opportunity to chop it off?
Chosen answer: He presumably cut it so he wouldn't trip over it. Dooku was a better fighter than him and Anakin was overconfident, but Dooku was one of the top duelists in the entire order. His style was meant for saber-to-saber combat, whereas Anakin's was meant to block blaster bolts. He lost his arm because he didn't think.
Question: Why exactly did Dooku join Sidious, when Sidious was actually involved in Qui-gon's death (since his last apprentice killed Qui-gon)? Does he not really care?
Answer: Allowing nebulous emotions like caring to influence their actions is not generally part of the Sith game plan. Dooku joined up with Sidious after becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the Jedi Order and their allegiance to a Senate that he saw as fatally corrupted. After a couple of disastrous battles, which Dooku learned the Jedi had been manipulated into fighting by unscrupulous politicians seeking to advance their personal agendas, he refused to accept any further missions from the Council, becoming increasingly withdrawn and concerned about the course the galaxy was following. It seems that Palpatine first met with him at around this time, some years prior to the battle of Naboo, using their meetings to determine Dooku's suitability for recruitment and gradually bringing the disaffected Jedi into his circle, much as he would do with Dooku's eventual replacement Anakin Skywalker years later. After Qui-Gon's death on Naboo in what seemed to be yet another politically motivated battle, Dooku spoke out, publically denouncing the Senate, then resigned from the Jedi Order, returning to his home planet of Serenno and reclaiming his family title of Count. Shortly after that, Palpatine approached him, revealing himself as a Sith Lord. In a long discussion, Dooku realised that Palpatine's goal of bringing the galaxy under the control of a single powerful individual, rather than the corrupt and inefficient Senate, was not far removed from his own thoughts on how things should be. Accepting Qui-Gon's death as a regrettable but necessary sacrifice to bring order to the galaxy, he agreed to join Palpatine and become his new apprentice.
Question: Why did the Tusken Raiders kidnap and torture Shmi Skywalker?
Chosen answer: They hate the moisture farmers, who they regard as having encroached on their territory. They kidnapped Shmi and tortured her to gather information for a future big raid on the local moisture farms.
Question: This goes along with the question someone submitted about Jedi reproducing. Isn't it also very likely that in a whole galaxy, there would be at least a few people born every year who are Force-sensitive, but aren't ever discovered by the Jedi? Couldn't the trait sometimes be passed down for a couple of generations before someone in the family is discovered by the Jedi? For example, it seems unlikely that either of Dooku's parents or Palpatine's parents were Jedi, since they both came from wealthy backgrounds.
Answer: Yes, extremely likely, particularly out on the Rim. There will always be people who either escape notice completely or, while recognised as being Force-sensitive, do not have the power level required to become a Jedi and thus would not be brought into the Order. In such cases, the Jedi would likely keep an eye on them, in case the trait manifested more strongly in any children who could then become Jedi.
Question: In the meeting at the beginning, after Padme is attacked, Mace says that their intelligence believes that angry spice-miners attacked her. Why do their intelligence people think that?
Answer: Presumably there's been some disquiet among the spice-miners for some reason - better working conditions, better pay, could be a lot of things. Apparently the intelligence services feel that things have got heated enough that the spice-miners might try open rebellion by attempting to assassinate their Senator.
Question: When Dooku and Obi-wan are fighting, Dooku says that Yoda holds Obi-wan in such high esteem. But how would he know that if he left the Jedi Order years ago and probably hasn't been talking to Yoda for a while?
Answer: Though not stated in the films, Dooku had been a member of the Jedi Order until sometime after Qui-Gon Jin's death. But probably also after Obi-Wan was given the title of Jedi Knight and Anakin his Padawan by Yoda. So Dooku could very well have known Yoda's feelings of esteem, even if it was years ago.
That whole conversation between Obi-Wan and Dooku is also part of Dooku's fighting style. He was deliberately trying to get into Obi-Wan's head and get at his ego, so as to get him to loose his cool or try something brash in order to "show up" Dooku, etc. He didn't therefore need to actually know if Yoda held Obi-Wan in high esteem, he was just saying it in order to try and goad Obi-Wan into living up that "praise" and thus make a mistake; whether he was telling the truth was irrelevant.
Question: Obi-Wan says that it's impossible for anyone to alter the information in the star system library. How, then, could it be possible that a Jedi erased this information, as Yoda says?
Answer: What Obi-wan says is "Who could empty information from the archives? That's impossible, isn't it?" It's a question, not a statement. He's heard that it's supposed to be impossible, but the fact of the missing information clearly contradicts that. Yoda puts him straight, telling him that only a Jedi (i.e. somebody on the inside) could have done it.
Question: Do the Jedi know that Count Dooku is called Darth Tyranus? They continue calling him Dooku, but in the later movies, Obi-wan and Yoda considered Anakin to be "dead" and wouldn't think of Darth Vader as being the same person as Anakin.
Answer: No, they don't. At the beginning of this film they don't even realise that he's a Sith - they shoot down the idea of Dooku instigating the assassination attempt on Senator Amidala, describing him as a political idealist. While Obi-wan hears the name Tyranus from Jango Fett, he has no way to connect that name to Dooku. While they become aware of his connections to the Sith, there's no indication that they ever learn his Sith title, so they continue to use his normal name.
Question: After Mace kills Jango, why does he stare at him for a moment? He is too far away to have seen the look on Dooku's face.
Answer: In the novelization for Episode III it explains that mace Windu created a fighting style known a Vaapad. It also explains that this form of fighting is very dangerous because the user's mind becomes passive. It is possible that Mace Windu was only then realizing that he had killed Jango.
Question: After Jar-Jar talks about giving emergency powers to Palpatine, who is the bald-headed person that is standing with Palpatine and Mas Amedda?
Answer: That would be Sly Moore, an Umbaran who serves as Palpatine's senior administrator. According to Expanded Universe materials, she was one of very few who knew that Palpatine was a Sith Lord and received some Dark Side training to enhance her species' natural ability to influence the wills of other sentients.
Question: What precisely was Jango Fett's role in the attempts on Padmé's life? It's established later that Viceroy Gunray ordered the assassination, but just before Zam Wessell was killed she said she was taking orders from a bounty hunter, presumably Jango Fett (which also explains why Zam was killed with a Kaminoan weapon). How could Jango and the Viceroy BOTH have been behind the assassination attempts? I wasn't aware that they were connected in any way (besides the fact that they were both loyal to the Separatist cause). For that matter, what does the Viceroy have to gain from Padmé's death anyway? This has never made sense to me.
Answer: The Viceroy contracted Fett to assassinate Padme. Fett worked with Wessell to do the job. Wessell never knew who had ordered the assassination; she only knew that the job had come from Fett. As for what Gunray himself gains, it's largely revenge; he's never exactly forgiven her for foiling the plot to take over Naboo. You do have to bear in mind, however, that much of the impetus for the hit may well have come from Dooku as part of the plan to set off the war. Amidala's potentially a major opponent in the Sith plans; eliminating her could be useful. Even if the assassinations don't succeed, they're still useful in raising the tensions between the Republic and the Seperatists, so it's largely a win-win situation from Dooku's point of view, so he may well have influenced Gunray towards ordering the hit.
Chosen answer: Dooku lost faith in the Jedi order when his padawan Qui-Gon Jinn died on Naboo at the hands of Darth Maul. He left the Jedi order and pursued wealth and power. He was contacted shortly after leaving by Darth Sidious, joined him and became a Sith.
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