More explanation was needed? Do we need to know all the mechanics? We don't need to know the details of the hyperdrive's workings. Why is this the exception?
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)
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More explanation was needed? Do we need to know all the mechanics? We don't need to know the details of the hyperdrive's workings. Why is this the exception?
Kinda hard to explain how the mystical mumbo jumbo of the Force leads to eternal life.
TCW devoted two or three episodes to it, and it still didn't make any sense.
TCW devoted two or three episodes to it, and it still didn't make any sense.
They did a good job in the ROTS novel. Qui-Gon also didn't disappear like Obi-Wan and Yoda did in the OT, so it begs the question of how the Force Ghost thing works. It's not a mechanical thing because there is no explanation given in the PT.
Qui-Gon dies but apparently can come back (voice over in AOTC, Yoda talks about him in ROTS). Apparently it is significant, but we don't need to talk about. That's not good storytelling.
There were a good number of explanations needed in the OT movies. Yet, for some reason, very few fans are willing to acknowledge this. Why? And don't tell me that the OT movies were perfect or near perfect, because I'm not buying that story.
And if you want the details about Qui-Gon's death and status as a Force ghost, may I suggest the Wookiepedia site? Apparently, that site seems wiling to fill in a lot of holes regarding the plots of ALL six movies.
And if you want the details about Qui-Gon's death and status as a Force ghost, may I suggest the Wookiepedia site? Apparently, that site seems wiling to fill in a lot of holes regarding the plots of ALL six movies.
Anakin didn't disappear either.
You don't hear me arguing that at all.
While I am usually more than willing to fill in plot holes (bring my own concrete, as I have heard it described) I know the details. I think the film should have gone in to something of details about it, even if it was 5 minutes.
But, let's put the onus on the audience to figure it all out.
While this is a fair point, Anakin's lack of disappearance begged the question as to whether or not Anakin was truly redeemed. Only at the end to, when he appears, does the question get answered.
Qui-Gon doesn't disappear because...?
Qui Gon himself says in the Yoda arc of TCW that his training was incomplete, which is why he was just a voice and couldn't manifest an image. It stands to reason that this is also why his body didn't vanish and why it took him years to reach Yoda, while Obi Wan told Luke to run mere seconds after he died.
Whether or not Anakin vanished is a bit of a weird one since while we don't see him vanish, apparently Lucas said somewhere that happened off-screen, which is why when we see the pyre, the helmet is back on the suit. Because why would Luke put that thing back on if his father's remains were still in there? He wouldn't, he's burning the suit which is the last physical vestige of Darth Vader. Indeed, why bring and reassemble the mask at all when he could have just left it on the hanger deck? To symbolically destroy Vader of course. No other reason makes sense.
On the other hand if that's the case then why didn't they show Anakin disappear? With all the monkeying around in those films over the years, that seems like a fairly easy change you could almost do in photoshop. My only half-way plausible idea is that he didn't want to confuse people when he later substituted young Anakin as the force ghost at the end.
Perhaps by that point, Vader's body was so much more machine than man that by the end, there was very little they could disappear. Perhaps even the outer layers of what was left of his head was already dead. It might also partly account for why his head was flesh coloured in tESB but ashen white in RotJ. I mean we've seen what force lighting did to Palaptine, no?
Whether or not Anakin vanished is a bit of a weird one since while we don't see him vanish, apparently Lucas said somewhere that happened off-screen, which is why when we see the pyre, the helmet is back on the suit. Because why would Luke put that thing back on if his father's remains were still in there? He wouldn't, he's burning the suit which is the last physical vestige of Darth Vader. Indeed, why bring and reassemble the mask at all when he could have just left it on the hanger deck? To symbolically destroy Vader of course. No other reason makes sense.
On the other hand if that's the case then why didn't they show Anakin disappear? With all the monkeying around in those films over the years, that seems like a fairly easy change you could almost do in photoshop. My only half-way plausible idea is that he didn't want to confuse people when he later substituted young Anakin as the force ghost at the end.
Perhaps by that point, Vader's body was so much more machine than man that by the end, there was very little they could disappear. Perhaps even the outer layers of what was left of his head was already dead. It might also partly account for why his head was flesh coloured in tESB but ashen white in RotJ. I mean we've seen what force lighting did to Palaptine, no?
We don't need the mechanics. We didn't need any of it. The OT had Force Ghosts and didn't need to tell us how or why, that was just what happened when a powerful Jedi died. We can presume the details; there needs to be a connection or a great need or something perhaps but It was just part of the universe. The PT seemed obsessed with introducing seemingly important elements that added nothing to the story. Anakin had to be a virgin birth because. . ? Force Ghosts had to be something new because. . ? The Jedi had to be diminished and impotent because. . ? It is just bad storytelling, especially to bring such razor focus to it for a brief moment without any build-up or resolution. If Yoda had declared that Kuat of Kuat told him how to build hyperdrives and he would teach Obi-Wan off screen, it would have been just as bad.
I mean, preserving your consciousness through the Force, which in Star Wars is the only path to true immortality--which both Palpatine and Anakin sought (Palpatine for himself, Anakin for Padmé)--was all pretty central to the story of the PT. That's why we needed to know about it.
I guess it felt more like retroactive foreshadowing to the original trilogy more than anything else. It's also not the focus of the story, anyways. I mean, do we need to know what form of fencing Anakin learned between TMP and ATOC to accept that he can fight with a ligthsaber and knows what he's doing? If you thought it needed more elaboration, fair enough.
I think this was to give the character parallels to real-life religion, myth, and/or legend. Star Wars has always been doing this since ANH. This's nothing new. It's also sets up that this kid is no run-of-the-mill would-be Jedi.
This was largely an accident. Qui-Gon not vanishing after death was realized after the fact to be incongruent with Ben Kenobi and Yoda's deaths. Rather then just writing it off as a mistake, they decided to make a story out of it (and expand on Jedi culture, abilities, etc. at the same time).
The theme of the prequels is falling. The fall of the Old Republic. The fall Anakan Skywalker. The fall of the Jedi Order. That's the story we were signing up to see (esp. since we already knew it was coming).
On top of that, the Clone Wars was a trap for the Jedi Order, and they had walked into it by the time of ATOC, so by the time they realized that something wasn't right, they were not in a position to save themselves.
"Impotent?" Seriously? They sent a team to diffuse the blockade in TMP's beginning, sent the same team back for the specific purpose of baiting the mysterious Sith (Darth Maul) out of hiding by the movie's end, were actively working with Palpatine to resolve the Separatist crisis at the beginning of ATTOC (not their fault he was faking his part), arranged for the Padme assassination attempt to be investigated by their own, were trying to figure out what to do about the rise of the dark side clouding their use of the Force, took it upon themselves to intervene of Geonosis and got the clone army, by ROTS were serving in the military, decided to spy on the chancellor when the evidence began piling up against him, and acted swiftly to bring him when they realized he was a Sith (and were even working out beforehand what they would need to do if they had to remove Palpatine from office themselves before this). If anything, they were fairly proactive during the movies.
They actually foreshadow it in ATOC. Could they have done more with it in the movies? Maybe. But it didn't come from nowhere. It was also just a throwaway scene that gives a little more closure to Qui-Gon's passing and gives us an idea what was Kenobi was doing in part between the trilogies. It's hardly that important a scene, much less given "razor focus."
Did Palpatine seek it or was he just waving it as a carrot in front of Anakin? (In the non-canon Legends material, he did, but that was largely because of stuff written before the movies. Also, in canon, Palpatine seems to have a different objective in mind).
Also, did Anakin want actual immortality? It sounded like from the movie, he just wanted the knowledge needed to avert a death in a specific case, not living forever.
I can think of an excellent and obvious reason why Luke would put Vader on the pyre with his mask on: To conceal Vader's true identity from all the witnesses who might be watching. No one outside the small circle of trust among the primary heroes needs to know who Vader really was.
Since Anakin did in fact Force ghost (and so, his body did vanish), wouldn't that mean that Luke was just burning the armor, either as the next best thing to a real cremation, to represent that the Vader persona was gone, etc.?
No. Why must Force ghosts appear only if the whole body vanishes at the moment of death? Where is it said on-screen that "Force-ghosting" happens only if the body vanishes that way?
Obi-Wan and Yoda were unambiguously on the good side. Anakin obviously wasn't. Perhaps the implication we are supposed to get is that Qui-Gon wasn't wholly on the good side either, and that both of them, Anakin and Qui-Gon, needed to redeem themselves in a kind of purgatory before their spirits could appear back in the realm of the living. Perhaps Qui-Gon had to overcome corruption that had been inflicted upon him by his former master, Dooku. Perhaps Yoda and Obi-Wan "ascended" immediately only because they prepared themselves over their lives for their moments of death, as guided by Qui-Gon, who had blazed the trail ahead of them.
Even in the new canon, Palpatine sought a way to avoid death so that he could rule his empire for all time. Anakin was probably more focused on the short-term goal of preventing his visions of Padmé dying, but from there it's a short hop over to trying to prevent her from ever dying. He even said in AOTC that some day he would be powerful enough to keep people from dying. This was shortly after his mother died in his arms. His attachment to the physical world and his unwillingness to let go was his ultimate downfall.
Fair enough, that was an assumption on my part, based on how ANH and ROTJ showed it. (I may have also gotten the old Legends Jedi Academy Trilogy mixed up in canon, since that specifically stated that Anakin vanished after dying, presumably moments after the death scene ended.
)Never thought of that before.
However, the Lost Missions season of The Clone Wars specifically explains why Qui-Gon was only partially a Force ghost (e.g. was a Force ghost but couldn't physically manifest himself and seemed to have limited interactions in the real world); he hadn't learned the full process at the point of his death. (But still, having a limited afterlife is much better than no afterlife at all!)
Okay, I know that the Tarkin novel establishes that Palpatine saw the Empire as less important than his real work; becoming powerful enough to use the Force to literally warp reality itself as he wished, so I suppose you're right.
Good point.
Because former Jedi Darth Vader was clearly mystified by Ben's disappearance in ANH.
WebLurker said:
From the ROTJ script: Luke sets a torch to the logs stacked under a funeral pyre where his father's body lies, again dressed in black mask and helmet.
CorporalCaptain said:
No, I don't think so.
CorporalCaptain said:
That's more like it.
Right off the bat, I can see two major problems with that idea.
First off: Luke was alone. He apparently landed some remote clearing in the forest and built that pyre before making his way to the Ewok village. They even show him arriving late.
Secondly: the last time *anyone* saw Anakin Skywalker it was over 20 years ago and he looked like Hayden Christensen, not bald, pale white and heavily scarred Sebastian Shaw. Short of a DNA test, nobody is going to make that connection, especially not in the short amount of time it took Luke to drag the body from where he landed the shuttle to where he built the pyre.
It's just not a credible explanation.
If I recall, Yoda was let in of the secret near the end of the Clone Wars and presented it as new info to Obi-Wan in ROTS, so I would buy that that Vader didn't know about it.
Scripts are not always the most accurate depictions of the story, given ad libbing, post-production editing, changes of premises in later movies, etc. So that idea, while the intent at the time, may not be the case now.[/QUOTE]
It needed 5 more minutes. As I said, the novel handled a brief moment between Yoda and Qui-Gon in 1 page. That's a minute of dialog if done right. I don't need an entire film or the "focus of the story" to be Force Ghost, but you don't tease that it will be explained and then shrug it off.
To use an example that you bring up about Anakin's lightsaber skills-Obi-Wan mention's in passing that Anakin needed to practice more with his lightsaber, indicating that he does already practice. It's a brief line but illustrates Anakin's training.
Yes, but the Jedi treat it has routine to them, but it isn't routine to the audience. If you're going to add to the lore
The theme of the prequels is falling. The fall of the Old Republic. The fall Anakan Skywalker. The fall of the Jedi Order. That's the story we were signing up to see (esp. since we already knew it was coming).
On top of that, the Clone Wars was a trap for the Jedi Order, and they had walked into it by the time of ATOC, so by the time they realized that something wasn't right, they were not in a position to save themselves.
Impotent may be a strong word, but they also don't feel very proactive or successful in their efforts.
Yes, they are supposed to end up falling as Palpatine outmaneuvers them but it feels very much like they fail constantly, or Jedi die in their failed attempts. It doesn't generate a lot of sympathy or motivation to celebrate them if I don't really feel like they can succeed.
And, yes, I have no doubt that I will here a lot of examples of the Jedi making efforts to unravel the mysteries of the Sith and expose the plot to destroy the Republic. I am aware of the novels, the Clone Wars, etc. I'm strictly talking about the films, and in the films it feels like the Jedi stumble their way through. So, impotent? Maybe not, but certainly not proactive.
This is one of the reasons I like ATOC so much (my favorite prequel film, hands down). It feels like Obi-Wan is pulling the pieces together and has moment of clarity. And then, it gets sidelined by the war.
"Where this Clone Army come from?" "Don't know." "Let's use it anyway."
There are great bones of a story in the PT, but they get sidelined by weird details and thin characters. It just doesn't feel like real people reacting in a real situation. Like I said before, I like ATOC, and I like Obi-Wan in it, and I like Padme in TPM, but there isn't enough meat there to really satisfy the story that is attempting to be told.
