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ANH 5/??
It's weird how incredibly different this entire film feels.
Okay, to the Death Star! And TV Tropes!
-- A big Imperial ship flies towards a ... moon? Oh wait, THAT’S NO MOON! It’s the Death Star! Okay, so we go to the Death Star, and discover that it’s full of evil, evil British people.
Apparently an RP accent is a sign of ~purest evil.~
-- RANDOM IMPERIAL GUY: The Rebel Alliance is too well-equipped.
For...?
Honestly, I’ve never really been clear on how the Rebel Alliance actually works. There are a lot of important people in it, obviously, and Leia seems to have been a spy of sorts (though Leia as a spy is kind of laughable). But it’s true that they don’t seem exactly ragtag, so they’re getting resources from somewhere.
… or everywhere. It’s the Empire, after all. Everyone hates them. (Hm – if the Empire’s been around for awhile, as it seems to be, I wonder if the present regime is better or worse than it used to be? Or if it’s never changed at all?)
-- MOTTI: Dangerous to your starfleet, Commander, not to this battle station. *smirk*
This guy sounds like a bitchy high school princess. Seriously, if he had long hair he would have just tossed it.
-- IMPERIAL GUY: -- and the Rebellion will continue to gain support in the Imperial Senate!
He’s almost spitting with fury here. I continue to be curious about the Imperial Senate -- the officers definitely consider it something to worry about (even Vader has to invent a cover story to give to ‘the Senator’ – though the even might be debatable, since ANH!Vader doesn’t seem much more than one powerful minister among several), but it’s easily dissolved and never really heard from again.
-- TARKIN: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us.
See?
Also, he has the evilest voice of them all.
Also, his actor is Peter Cushing, who (1) was strangely attractive in an elderly aristocratic COMPLETELY EVIL way, and (2) played Darcy in a tragically lost version of P&P that I now really want to see. ‘Cause I’m suddenly thinking his might not have been the usual emo weaksauce Darcy and I would SELL MY SOUL FOR THIS. *gnashes teeth*
Moreover, he would have made an awesome old!Númenórean. Someone impressive and menacing like Denethor or even Ar-Pharazôn.
-- TARKIN: The last remnants of the old Republic have been swept away.
Again, this doesn’t give me the impression that it’s been less than twenty years since the fall of the Republic -- it sounds like they’ve been chopping away the framework for decades. (Which is kind of a stupid thing to do, but whatever.)
-- IMPERIAL GUY: Impossible! How will the Emperor retain control without the bureaucracy?
It makes me happy that somebody thinks of these things.
(Out of curiosity, is this the first time we hear about the Emperor? In ANH, he seems almost a figurehead while all these other people do the actual manoeuvring and so on, which I think wasthe original intention -- but otoh, the one sane person in the room obviously does not see him as a figurehead. Which should have been a hint, I guess.)
According to Tarkin, the regional governors -- whatever they are (I’m guessing the people who answer to the senators) -- will directly control their territory. Okay, I guess.
-- TARKIN: Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
He should just have EVIL tattooed across his forehead.
-- MOTTI: *gives an oily smile*
Him too.
-- Various Imperials natter on about how NOTHING can stop the station blah blah blah Rebels couldn’t possibly exploit anything blah blah and poor Imperial Guy is like but what if they do?
Why has nobody made him chief advisor to the Emperor?
I almost hope he makes out of the Death Star. But I’m guessing Luke blows him to smithereens. *sigh*
-- MOTTI: This station is now the ULTIMATE POWER IN THE UNIVERSE. I suggest we use it.
Wow, can I hate this man any more?
(Future!Elizabeth sez: Yes. Yes, you can.)
-- VADER: Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.
He doesn’t sound happy about the Death Star. Not horrified in the way a sane, decent person would be, but ... disapproving. I’d think it was Magic vs Science, but the emphasis is definitely on the word terror (not technological). Maybe he disapproves of the waste -- you know what will strengthen the Empire? Blowing bits of it up!
But I suspect he’s simply offended on behalf of the Force, like thegood bad devout Jedi that he is.
-- VADER: The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
*cough*
By the way, I find it interesting that ANH!Vader’s reverence is, like Obi-Wan’s, for the Force – not (only) the Dark Side. And it’s not that the Dark Side didn’t come up until later, like many (many, many, many) things – it’s actually introduced before the Force. By about a quarter-second, but still – not a retcon, obviously. Yet Vader emphasizes the Dark Side much more in the next two movies. It could be a matter of audience, I guess; he hardly has to convince Luke of the power of the Force when he’s already using it. That’d be like … sending missionaries to your own church, or something.
Anyway, I think it’s quite possible he doesn’t see himself as fallen, that it’s the other Jedi who failed, turning to sedition and treason and blinding themselves to the ~truth~ of the Force. So they had to be removed, leaving Vader alone as defender of the faith.
Or something like that.
By the way, ANH seems to treat Vader as a dark Jedi as opposed to, say, the member of a rival, Jedi-hating sect. JUST AS AN EXAMPLE. Several Imperials openly refer to Vader as a Jedi, including Tarkin, and even Obi-Wan insists that Anakin Skywalker was betrayed by the young Jedi Darth Vader. It’s obviously common knowledge that Vader is (still) a practising Jedi.
I’m not sure whether this makes him more or less attractive as a character, but it certainly amps up the creep factor by about ten.
MOTTI: Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader.
This man is either very brave or very stupid.
In other news, we continue to see fantastic terms like ‘wizard’ and ‘sorcerer’ used to pejoratively refer to Jedi. I’m still not sure whether they imply belief in their powers or not.
MOTTI: Your sad devotion to that ancient religion--
(Yet) again, that ancient religion? That doesn’t sound like something that went of style less than twenty years ago. Exactly how long have the ‘Dark Times’ lasted? Obi-Wan obviously remembers the Republic, so we might be able to guess from his age, but … all we know is that a young Anakin Skywalker left home to follow ‘old Obi-Wan’ on his crusade. Obi-Wan could be three hundred years old for all we know.
(Tangent: You know, I complain a lot about plotholes and things, but I really have to admire the presentation of the Black Hats here. Our first glance of the Empire is the notoriously badass Vader, his fearless helper guy, and genuinely creepy stormtroopers. Vader’s less a person than a representation of the Empire itself -- he’s terrifying and impressive, so it is too.
Then we discover the Empire’s opposite in the Jedi: where it consists of faceless soldiers in the service of galactic domination, the Jedi are an order of holy warriors in the service of the mystical, vaguely sacred Force. And Vader is a Jedi. A Jedi gone horribly wrong, of course, what with the evil and treason and all, but still, he’s repeatedly identified as a Jedi. The universe just got a lot more complicated. Vader just got a lot more complicated, before we even see him again -- he’s become a distinctive figure in his own right, the Fallen Hero (TM), not just the face of the Empire.
Only then do we return to the Empire, and to its real representatives: a bunch of bland, arrogant officers with evil British accents. They’re pretty thoroughly repellent, and none more so than Motti as he sneeringly dismisses Vader’s faith to his face.
This, I think, is where a lot of people really start to like Vader. Of course we admired him from the first -- Evil Is Cool, baby! But at this point, the narrative actually validates us by sticking him in a room full of people who are considerably worse than he is, in a completely unimpressive way, and pitting him against the slimiest of them. He’s the only person who isn’t an utterly contemptible asshole -- of course we root for him. It’s like Snape vs Umbridge, only scaled up so that 'being mean' becomes 'killing prisoners/incompetents' and 'torturing your victim by making him write in his own blood' becomes 'torturing your victim by blowing up her entire planet before her eyes'.)
MOTTI: --has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels’ hidden fortr--*choke*
Does this count as suicide by proxy?
VADER: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Most badass line ever: y/y?
And again: it’s the lack of faith in ‘that ancient religion’ that offends him, not the (apparently correct) assumption that he’s a member of it.
TARKIN: Enough of this! Vader, release him!
VADER: As you wish.
… why is Vader taking orders from Tarkin?
Final also: this line gave me flashbacks to The Princess Bride. BRAIN BLEACH STAT.
(1) The Rebellion has support in the Imperial Senate. It's not clear why anybody cares about what the Imperial Senate thinks of anything, since it's dissolved without repercussion, but ... apparently it did have some sort of power. It was also the last remnant of the Old Republic.
(2) Vader is not happy about the Death Star, largely out of loyalty to the Force.
(3) The Jedi were adherents to an 'ancient religion'; even as Vader, Anakin retains his religious affiliation. If anything, he's much more of a zealot about it as Vader.
(4) For some inexplicable reason, Vader takes orders from Tarkin. Apparently Luke blowing up the Death Star got his dad a promotion.
Okay, to the Death Star! And TV Tropes!
-- A big Imperial ship flies towards a ... moon? Oh wait, THAT’S NO MOON! It’s the Death Star! Okay, so we go to the Death Star, and discover that it’s full of evil, evil British people.
Apparently an RP accent is a sign of ~purest evil.~
-- RANDOM IMPERIAL GUY: The Rebel Alliance is too well-equipped.
For...?
Honestly, I’ve never really been clear on how the Rebel Alliance actually works. There are a lot of important people in it, obviously, and Leia seems to have been a spy of sorts (though Leia as a spy is kind of laughable). But it’s true that they don’t seem exactly ragtag, so they’re getting resources from somewhere.
… or everywhere. It’s the Empire, after all. Everyone hates them. (Hm – if the Empire’s been around for awhile, as it seems to be, I wonder if the present regime is better or worse than it used to be? Or if it’s never changed at all?)
-- MOTTI: Dangerous to your starfleet, Commander, not to this battle station. *smirk*
This guy sounds like a bitchy high school princess. Seriously, if he had long hair he would have just tossed it.
-- IMPERIAL GUY: -- and the Rebellion will continue to gain support in the Imperial Senate!
He’s almost spitting with fury here. I continue to be curious about the Imperial Senate -- the officers definitely consider it something to worry about (even Vader has to invent a cover story to give to ‘the Senator’ – though the even might be debatable, since ANH!Vader doesn’t seem much more than one powerful minister among several), but it’s easily dissolved and never really heard from again.
-- TARKIN: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us.
See?
Also, he has the evilest voice of them all.
Also, his actor is Peter Cushing, who (1) was strangely attractive in an elderly aristocratic COMPLETELY EVIL way, and (2) played Darcy in a tragically lost version of P&P that I now really want to see. ‘Cause I’m suddenly thinking his might not have been the usual emo weaksauce Darcy and I would SELL MY SOUL FOR THIS. *gnashes teeth*
Moreover, he would have made an awesome old!Númenórean. Someone impressive and menacing like Denethor or even Ar-Pharazôn.
-- TARKIN: The last remnants of the old Republic have been swept away.
Again, this doesn’t give me the impression that it’s been less than twenty years since the fall of the Republic -- it sounds like they’ve been chopping away the framework for decades. (Which is kind of a stupid thing to do, but whatever.)
-- IMPERIAL GUY: Impossible! How will the Emperor retain control without the bureaucracy?
It makes me happy that somebody thinks of these things.
(Out of curiosity, is this the first time we hear about the Emperor? In ANH, he seems almost a figurehead while all these other people do the actual manoeuvring and so on, which I think was
According to Tarkin, the regional governors -- whatever they are (I’m guessing the people who answer to the senators) -- will directly control their territory. Okay, I guess.
-- TARKIN: Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
He should just have EVIL tattooed across his forehead.
-- MOTTI: *gives an oily smile*
Him too.
-- Various Imperials natter on about how NOTHING can stop the station blah blah blah Rebels couldn’t possibly exploit anything blah blah and poor Imperial Guy is like but what if they do?
Why has nobody made him chief advisor to the Emperor?
I almost hope he makes out of the Death Star. But I’m guessing Luke blows him to smithereens. *sigh*
-- MOTTI: This station is now the ULTIMATE POWER IN THE UNIVERSE. I suggest we use it.
Wow, can I hate this man any more?
(Future!Elizabeth sez: Yes. Yes, you can.)
-- VADER: Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.
He doesn’t sound happy about the Death Star. Not horrified in the way a sane, decent person would be, but ... disapproving. I’d think it was Magic vs Science, but the emphasis is definitely on the word terror (not technological). Maybe he disapproves of the waste -- you know what will strengthen the Empire? Blowing bits of it up!
But I suspect he’s simply offended on behalf of the Force, like the
-- VADER: The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
*cough*
By the way, I find it interesting that ANH!Vader’s reverence is, like Obi-Wan’s, for the Force – not (only) the Dark Side. And it’s not that the Dark Side didn’t come up until later, like many (many, many, many) things – it’s actually introduced before the Force. By about a quarter-second, but still – not a retcon, obviously. Yet Vader emphasizes the Dark Side much more in the next two movies. It could be a matter of audience, I guess; he hardly has to convince Luke of the power of the Force when he’s already using it. That’d be like … sending missionaries to your own church, or something.
Anyway, I think it’s quite possible he doesn’t see himself as fallen, that it’s the other Jedi who failed, turning to sedition and treason and blinding themselves to the ~truth~ of the Force. So they had to be removed, leaving Vader alone as defender of the faith.
Or something like that.
By the way, ANH seems to treat Vader as a dark Jedi as opposed to, say, the member of a rival, Jedi-hating sect. JUST AS AN EXAMPLE. Several Imperials openly refer to Vader as a Jedi, including Tarkin, and even Obi-Wan insists that Anakin Skywalker was betrayed by the young Jedi Darth Vader. It’s obviously common knowledge that Vader is (still) a practising Jedi.
I’m not sure whether this makes him more or less attractive as a character, but it certainly amps up the creep factor by about ten.
MOTTI: Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader.
This man is either very brave or very stupid.
In other news, we continue to see fantastic terms like ‘wizard’ and ‘sorcerer’ used to pejoratively refer to Jedi. I’m still not sure whether they imply belief in their powers or not.
MOTTI: Your sad devotion to that ancient religion--
(Yet) again, that ancient religion? That doesn’t sound like something that went of style less than twenty years ago. Exactly how long have the ‘Dark Times’ lasted? Obi-Wan obviously remembers the Republic, so we might be able to guess from his age, but … all we know is that a young Anakin Skywalker left home to follow ‘old Obi-Wan’ on his crusade. Obi-Wan could be three hundred years old for all we know.
(Tangent: You know, I complain a lot about plotholes and things, but I really have to admire the presentation of the Black Hats here. Our first glance of the Empire is the notoriously badass Vader, his fearless helper guy, and genuinely creepy stormtroopers. Vader’s less a person than a representation of the Empire itself -- he’s terrifying and impressive, so it is too.
Then we discover the Empire’s opposite in the Jedi: where it consists of faceless soldiers in the service of galactic domination, the Jedi are an order of holy warriors in the service of the mystical, vaguely sacred Force. And Vader is a Jedi. A Jedi gone horribly wrong, of course, what with the evil and treason and all, but still, he’s repeatedly identified as a Jedi. The universe just got a lot more complicated. Vader just got a lot more complicated, before we even see him again -- he’s become a distinctive figure in his own right, the Fallen Hero (TM), not just the face of the Empire.
Only then do we return to the Empire, and to its real representatives: a bunch of bland, arrogant officers with evil British accents. They’re pretty thoroughly repellent, and none more so than Motti as he sneeringly dismisses Vader’s faith to his face.
This, I think, is where a lot of people really start to like Vader. Of course we admired him from the first -- Evil Is Cool, baby! But at this point, the narrative actually validates us by sticking him in a room full of people who are considerably worse than he is, in a completely unimpressive way, and pitting him against the slimiest of them. He’s the only person who isn’t an utterly contemptible asshole -- of course we root for him. It’s like Snape vs Umbridge, only scaled up so that 'being mean' becomes 'killing prisoners/incompetents' and 'torturing your victim by making him write in his own blood' becomes 'torturing your victim by blowing up her entire planet before her eyes'.)
MOTTI: --has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels’ hidden fortr--*choke*
Does this count as suicide by proxy?
VADER: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Most badass line ever: y/y?
And again: it’s the lack of faith in ‘that ancient religion’ that offends him, not the (apparently correct) assumption that he’s a member of it.
TARKIN: Enough of this! Vader, release him!
VADER: As you wish.
… why is Vader taking orders from Tarkin?
Final also: this line gave me flashbacks to The Princess Bride. BRAIN BLEACH STAT.
(1) The Rebellion has support in the Imperial Senate. It's not clear why anybody cares about what the Imperial Senate thinks of anything, since it's dissolved without repercussion, but ... apparently it did have some sort of power. It was also the last remnant of the Old Republic.
(2) Vader is not happy about the Death Star, largely out of loyalty to the Force.
(3) The Jedi were adherents to an 'ancient religion'; even as Vader, Anakin retains his religious affiliation. If anything, he's much more of a zealot about it as Vader.
(4) For some inexplicable reason, Vader takes orders from Tarkin. Apparently Luke blowing up the Death Star got his dad a promotion.