SW blu-rays have changes to the films again

[Dream]

No.

Yes!

Also ponies suck!

 

[Turtletrekker]

That was indeed from Heir to the Empire; I'm pretty sure that later sources have retroactively applied the "battle meditation" label to it, though.

I love the Thrawn trilogy. They need to be made into a film trilogy someday. Recast the main characters if they have to, but get it done!

No.

I would be interested in seeing someone adapting it as a fan-film or something, but an actual official Lucas production? Also, no.

 

[Guartho]

Also ponies suck!

Life IS ponies! Anyone who says differently is selling something.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's been awhile since I saw ROTJ, but whether or not Luke turned Vader back to the Light Side successfully was not as important as him being able to keep Vader and Palpatine occupied until the Death Star was destroyed. Why Palpatine and Vader didn't escort Luke somewhere else, away from the battle, can only be attributed to overconfidence, I guess.

You'd think one of them would say to the other, "Hey, you remember the time the rebels led an assault on the last Death Star and against all odds obliterated it? Maybe we should leave."

I mean it's not like Palpatine's presence on the Death Star makes it more powerful, is it?

This is a pretty good point.

However, the way the "lay of the land" was, there would have been plenty of time for the Emperor and Vader to escape when the shield went down, which I assume the Emperor would have known ahead of time. Evidently, the flaw in Death Star I was repaired, the reactor could only be destroyed by direct fire, and it took the fighters time to make it all the way in.

I presume then that the Emperor was aware that the shield went down and intended to escape after killing Luke. A little dialog to that effect would have been nice. Showing Luke dispatching some red-suited guards who were coming in to try to save the Emperor would have been nice too.

Even after the Emperor was killed (which was after the shield went down), Luke had plenty of time to get Vader's body into a shuttle and get them both off.

We also see plenty of Imperial troops rushing to get off, carrying their favorite gear, probably to beat the rush at the Robot Chicken Massage Parlor....

 

[TremblingBluStar]

Look up. No, straight up. Yeah, directly above your head. No, higher. Higher... Higher still. THERE IT IS. Right there. That thing is the point, and it appears to have gone so far over your head that it is now in geo-synchronous orbit.

Yes, but the point is a lie!

The Emperor was a big part of the fleet's coordination at Endor via conscious or sub-conscious use of the Force. In the book this is pointed to as the reason the Rebels were victorious after the second Death Star was destroyed even though they were still surrounded by a formidable Imperial fleet.

It must have been very sub-conscious given that he had no idea the Imperial troops were getting the snot beat out of them by Ewoks or that the shield generator was destroyed.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Oh Lord, I'm going to do it, I'm going to bring up the EU. Pray for me.

Anyway, I don't remember which one, maybe one of the first Timothy Zahn novels, the author put forth an interesting idea. The Emperor was a big part of the fleet's coordination at Endor via conscious or sub-conscious use of the Force. In the book this is pointed to as the reason the Rebels were victorious after the second Death Star was destroyed even though they were still surrounded by a formidable Imperial fleet.

I will. I will keep you in my prayers.

This is one of the reasons that I tend to avoid the EU, because that idea is

It must have been very sub-conscious given that he had no idea the Imperial troops were getting the snot beat out of them by Ewoks or that the shield generator was destroyed.

Exactly. But moreover---aw never mind, I'm not even going to bother.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I had trouble buying into Zahn's take on the Emperor's role in the Battle of Endor upon rewatching the film with that in mind, because events don't quite line up so neatly as to imply that the Emperor's death played a role in weakening the Imperial forces during the battle. The Rebels have already turned the tide while the Emperor is still alive.

I think this was Zahn's attempt to address something that used to bother me about ROTJ...that the whole Luke/Vader/Emperor plot didn't seem to bear any direct relevance to the "larger" battle going on outside. That is one plot point in the OT that the PT actually strengthens...the central role of the Sith in the formation of the Empire. The Empire was Palpatine's baby, and it makes more sense in light of the PT that it would fall apart without him.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

I think this was Zahn's attempt to address something that used to bother me about ROTJ...that the whole Luke/Vader/Emperor plot didn't seem to bear any direct relevance to the "larger" battle going on outside. That is one plot point in the OT that the PT actually strengthens...the central role of the Sith in the formation of the Empire. The Empire was Palpatine's baby, and it makes more sense in light of the PT that it would fall apart without him.

I don't think it was clear in the OT that the Empire wouldn't exist without Palpatine and that the Empire was formed by deceit on the Emperor's part. It just wasn't fleshed out until the PT.

It would have been nice of the original films went into more detail about what led to the Empire forming and why it was allowed, but Lucas' strength is clearly not political intrigue.

 

[Ghrakh]

Excellent point, Yoda did tell him not ready was he. Had he stuck around, further into his training perhaps Yoda might have clued him in. Then again even on his death bed he was being evasive so I'm not sure where they stood.

Thanks In the ROTJ novel there is additional insight, where Yoda resisted answering Luke because he thought "This boy was not yet a man complete".

Also, just want to add another Ben defense, in that him telling Luke about his father was before they knew about Leia's plea for him to bring R2 to Alderaan; it's not like Ben planned on that happening as he found out about it at the same time Luke did. Initially he just wanted Luke along because he was getting too old, and he's just as caught up in the events as anyone. Luke pretty much came to him, so it's hard to view it as some big, planned scheme from the outset.

The only thing I don't understand is
A: Why they didn't do it themselves in the twenty intervening years. Obi-Wan was still a kid compared to Dooku And about the same age as Palpatine in the PT and I'm sure Yoda could have still contributed something.
And B: Just what were they expecting Luke to be able to do that Mace and three senior Jedi masters couldn't.

In the end The only real hope they really had was for Luke or even Leia to appeal to any parental instincts still left in Anakin. Luke was a wise man.

Cant' really address the first question but I think you answered the second.

 

[Kegg]

Honestly I thought it was obvious that the existence of the Empire was dependent on the Emperor... in the original Star Wars movie. They point out that the Empire is his creation, he's dissolved all other centralized forms of power like the Imperial Senate (leaving local power in the hands of the Imperial governors) and fear is, clearly, an essential motivating factor to keep the Empire in line. The Emperor was like, in a way, Alexander the Great, without him the whole thing would unravel.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, obviously the officer corps had a legitimate fear of, oh, being Force strangled. Take your Star Destroyer out of formation against orders at your own peril. But with the Vader and Emperor both dead, that fear is no more. That much does make sense to me.

But Vader and the Emperor couldn't be everywhere at once, so the Empire must have had other tools to keep order, like a secret police. I can't imagine that those wouldn't have some inertia, even after the events of ROTJ.

Plus some of officers probably had a long list of enemies, because they were guilty of war crimes. Those and their followers likely wouldn't be motivated to surrender to the new republic.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Well, obviously the officer corps had a legitimate fear of, oh, being Force strangled. Take your Star Destroyer out of formation against orders at your own peril. But with the Vader and Emperor both dead, that fear is no more. That much does make sense to me.

But you would think there's SOME sort of chain of command, or at the very least someone with AMBITION.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

Well, obviously the officer corps had a legitimate fear of, oh, being Force strangled. Take your Star Destroyer out of formation against orders at your own peril. But with the Vader and Emperor both dead, that fear is no more. That much does make sense to me.

I don't know. The way I see it is, even though there were tons of star destroyers at the end of Jedi, after seeing the Death Star destroyed, their troops on the planet defeated, and the Emperor and Vader dead, they probably retreated to regroup and figure things out.

 

[Kegg]

Well, obviously the officer corps had a legitimate fear of, oh, being Force strangled. Take your Star Destroyer out of formation against orders at your own peril. But with the Vader and Emperor both dead, that fear is no more. That much does make sense to me.

But Vader and the Emperor couldn't be everywhere at once, so the Empire must have had other tools to keep order, like a secret police.

Well in the aforesaid first movie we both see that there is an Imperial Starfleet with apparently a large amount of personnel, and there is, again, mention made of Imperial governors.

My point is the absence of any other centralized authority. With the Emperor and Vader dead, there is no clear heir, and consequently the dissolution of the Empire into seperate parts - with the competing interests of various Imperial figures.

 

[DarthPipes]

Yeah, I think the Empire was very centralized on Palpatine. His mighty will held it together, with Vader as his attack dog. Once they were gone, the Empire was dissolved and whatever remained would be too busy fighting each other for control. Maybe someone like Tarkin might have been able to retain some control but without Palpatine, it was done for.

In the novelization (based on GL's earlier screenplay) it states in the prologue that Palpatine used a manner of different means to obtain power and eventually the Imperial bureaucrats gained more power than he had. Clearly though, that was quickly dismissed.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Keep in mind that the expository Imperial conference in ANH establishes that all those years later, the Emperor still had to keep the Senate around to give the illusion of democracy in order to control the populace. The reason it was disbanded in ANH was that the Death Star was supposed to finally allow him to rule through fear/brute force alone. This implies that the conventional Imperial military, however vast it was, wasn't enough to do that job for him.

The PT reinforces this by showing how Palpatine manipulated himself into his position in the first place by using the Senate and pretending to serve democracy.

No Emperor, no Death Star...the galactic populace rises up and takes the galaxy back world by world. Anyone who thinks that military force alone can control an unwilling population hasn't been watching the news in the last decade.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The Old Mixer, your points are good. However, the Rebellion itself notwithstanding, the Empire did manage to survive without a Death Star for the whole TESB, and also through ROTJ right up until the Emperor was killed. In ANH, Tarkin seemed to suggest that the "regional governors" wear capable of controlling systems not local to the Death Star. Or am I reading that wrong?

TARKIN: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.

TAGGE: That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?

TARKIN: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.

 

[Kegg]

The Old Mixer, your points are good. However, the Rebellion itself notwithstanding, the Empire did manage to survive without a Death Star for the whole TESB, and also through ROTJ right up until the Emperor was killed.

Quite. But there's still an Emperor and a large Imperial military loyal to him at this point. Destroying the Death Star is deeply damaging to the Empire because it exists as a rebellion deterrent (for all we know the Rebellion became a bigger problem after A New Hope), killing the Emperor and leaving him without an heir sunders the entire Imperial system.

In ANH, Tarkin seemed to suggest that the "regional governors" wear capable of controlling systems not local to the Death Star. Or am I reading that wrong?

That was the quote I was thinking of when talking about Imperial governors.

 

[Whofan]

The regional governors/moffs are also mentioned in a few ROTS deleted scenes (On the DVD, not the new blu-ray).

 

[Mach5]

That was indeed from Heir to the Empire; I'm pretty sure that later sources have retroactively applied the "battle meditation" label to it, though.

I love the Thrawn trilogy. They need to be made into a film trilogy someday. Recast the main characters if they have to, but get it done!

No.

I second the "no". There is no Star Wars beyond ROTJ.