Registered: Mar 2013
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it had all the depth and chemistry of a tom and jerry cartoon.
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Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
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That was a good ol' script re-writing problem (same reason Luke's story in ROTJ becomes essentially pointless to the film plot as the Death Star blows up anyway- it was originally somewhere else).
Maul was guarding the ground-based droid control unit in the early TPM script, but when they moved that out they forgot to give Maul a decent point.
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Last edited by queeq on Dec 22nd, 2015 at 07:57 PM
I seem to remember this was explained by arguing that Palpy was so focussed on Luke that he lost control of the battle outside. But, yeah, this was a Raiders thingy. (Ya know: if Indy hadn't done anything at all, the outcome would have been the same. )
Yeah, when Lucas started taking free reign rom ROTJ on, things started to slip. In case of TPM, they did need the toy commercial though.
Registered: Mar 2013
Location: in your mind, rent free
not exclusive to just raiders. it's an indy thingy. like, if he chose to just be a postal worker, nobody would have been in any danger.
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Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage.
How is that? Luke was able to drag Anakin all the way to a shuttle and even able to have a breif conversation. I'm sure Palpatine would have been easily able to escape as well.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
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On what? Is it an invulnerable, invisible shuttle? The Empire lost the whole battle, somehow. The Emperor was boned. The Rebels didn't need Luke at all.
People can speculate about what might have happened otherwise, but you're not meant to have to speculate; the film should make the stakes clear. Maul probably would have killed Padme if the TPM fight hadn't happened but it's not up front and centre. These things work better with a very direct and clear connection as to what outcomes can be changed.
And when you look at the draft process for ROTJ, it all becomes clear- the victory over the Empire was meant to be a combination of the Death Star destruction and, simultaneously, Luke/Anakin defeating the Emperor at the Imperial capita. They combined the two and forgot the stakes.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 22nd, 2015 at 09:12 PM
The Rebellion won but that doesn't mean they destroyed every single ship there. Imperial Shuttles also have hyperspace capabilities. Palpatine escaping the battle is a very real possibility.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
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You're getting increasingly speculative there. No Imperial ship was seen to escape as is and the Rebels seemed to have total control of the area. They could have blown away every ship leaving. After all, blowing up the Death Star with the Emperor on it was actually the Rebel's plan. "Bye bye, Mr. Emperor" goes Wedge. Story over.
They;d won the war. That was it. The Emperor didn't have a plan beyond 'win the battle'- there was nothing in particular for Luke to stop. It wouldn't have taken much to give some shenanigans for Luke to shut down, but there was nothing there.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 22nd, 2015 at 09:23 PM
I'm not the one speculating. Sure, that may have been the Rebel's intention but that doesn't mean it will happen as they plan it to. Furthermore, the now canon novels, indicate that Imperial ships did escape. So no, story not over.
And the Rebels won the war because the DS was destroyed and because the Emperor was killed. It fractured the Empire.
Luke got the Ewoks on board. So pretty unlikely they would have destroyed the Shield Generator without him.
Plus Palpatine's fleet was holding back on his orders(to slowly sway Luke) but being distracted by Luke he didn't even realise the battle was shifting.
And yeah I'd agree there would have been a possibility of Vader and Palpatine escaping together. After all Vader escaped the destruction of the first Death Star.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
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That is literally 100% what you are doing. Your entire post there is a giant speculation.
Whereas my point that we are not given a direct and clear positive consequence from Luke's actions is not speculative at all- that's exactly what the film gives us. It needed to be clearer.
You keep having to make up reasons why the Emperor would be ok- that's exactly a sign of the problem.
Whereas I see every single Imperial dying there in the film, in an area of space dominated by victorious Rebels. You have to make a big leap to say the Emperor gets out of that one- and that's simply poor storytelling. And, again, you can see where it went wrong by looking at the writing process for ROTJ. Originally, Luke/Anakin really was the only way to kill the Emperor, but they lost that with re-writes.
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The Rebels had closed into the Imperial fleet, so the ships holding back at first meant nothing. The Imperials were not leaderless- all the Emperor was doing was watching from his big window (if anything,, it was losing Piett that wiped out the command structure; he was running the battle). Like I say- the Emperor's plan was 'Use Death Star to win battle'" And there was literally nothing he could do about it when that plan failed.
Luke and the Ewoks was nothing to do with the final confrontation- it was all from earlier.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 22nd, 2015 at 10:08 PM
You're original point was that if Luke didn't kill Palpatine he would have died on the DS2 is speculation. It's not a bid leap at all to assume that Palpatine would survive considering a) Luke escaped in an Imperial Shuttle and b) other Imperials did escape.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
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My point is that we are not given any reason to think that wouldn't happen, seeing as everyone else dies- everything I comment on is 100% from the film, and that you have to speculate to try and explain the situation is also exactly the problem as I have laid out.
It's enough of a leap to be a weak plot point. It could have been much stronger if they had kept the re-writing under control. They just needed a stake tied directly to the Emperor being alive, on-screen and unambiguous. It's pretty basic.
As for 'other Imperials escaping'- if you are relying on a ret-con by a novel written decades later, that's a rather desperate way to excuse poor storytelling.
And they were hardly going to shoot down Luke!
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
1. Luke got the Ewoks on board before leaving for the Death Star.
2. Palpatine was clearly holding back on his fleet attacking during that fight. Admiral Piett even says "Our orders are to stay right here. The Emperor has something special planned." Obviously we know the "special" thing he had in mind was to Slowly show Luke how futile it was to resist the Dark Side.
So Luke being on the Death Star clearly did distract Palpatine from winning the fight.
^ So even going by just the film, it seems very unlikely the Death Star would have got destroyed if Luke hadn't come along.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
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Indeed, the 'something special was the Death Star, and the holding back was, as I said, irrelevant as the Rebels closed on on the imperial fleet themselves.
It's not Luke 'coming along', it's Luke going to the Death Star and confronting the Emperor/Vader- and there we have no reason at ALL to think he made a difference to the Rebels. They won anyway.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Wow... and I thought that exploding Emperor at the bottom of the reactor shaft would be proof enough that he died. But yeah, I'm sure did a Force float at the bottom of the shaft, ditched a thermal detonator to throw of Luke and Vader and got himself s shuttle...
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Last edited by queeq on Dec 23rd, 2015 at 02:20 PM
No we're talking about IF Luke wasn't there could the Emperor have survived.
Luke still got the Ewoks on side, so I don't think the Shield Generator would have got destroyed without the Ewoks. In which case the Rebels wouldn't have been able to destroy the Death Star.
Dec 22nd, 2015 07:43 PM
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