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Has this been addressed before? RE: Vader Pursues Luke

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All right. If someone has addressed this before, I apologize for fobbing this off as original thought. To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't been discussed before in any SW forum I've been to.

ESB: Vader wants Luke Skywalker desparately. He is using a ton of Imperial resources to track down this one guy. (Of course, we do not yet know about their blood ties) True, finding Skywalker means finding the Rebels, but the course of the movie makes clear that finding the Rebel base is the second bird - Vader's one stone is aimed at Luke. (If that weren't the case, why did not Vader's ship try to follow the Rebel fleet out of Hoth instead of the Millennium Falcon?)

Boba Fett tracks down the Falcon in Vader's employ, and Vader captures Han and company simply to lure Luke to Bespin. Vader only freezes Han to see if it will work on Luke. When Vader is done with Leia and Chewie, he decides...to just leave them behind on Bespin. Sure, they can't leave Cloud City, but he can't be bothered to take two highly decorated heroes of the Rebellion captive. No, he captured Leia once - it's quite enough. In fact, Vader doesn't taunt the Princess as he once did on the Tantive IV - he doesn't even spare a single word for her. Only later does the incredibly powerful and shrewd Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, change his mind. "Yeah, I guess I'd better take the girl and the Wookiee slave with me, Palp will be probably get mad at me if I don't." But Vader doesn't feel anything for having captured two key Rebels - all they were to him was LukeBait!

Fast forward...

ROTJ: There is no reason to believe that Darth Vader doesn't still want Luke to join him, right? ESB established, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Vader wanted to partner up with junior and take over the galaxy. Vader has shown that he will use Luke's friends as bait to snare him. Vader has worked with Boba Fett before, and lo and behold, Fett is on Tattooine when ROTJ starts, and he can see for himself that all of Luke's closest friends, all important Rebels, are inside Jabba's palace. Vader knows good and well where Tattooine is. I presume Fett has to have Darth Vader on speed-dial -

SO WHY THE HELL IS VADER NOT IN JABBA'S PALACE WAITING ON LUKE?!? HOW INCREDIBLY, STUPIDLY, MIND-BLOWINGLY INCONSISTENT TO ESTABLISH DARTH VADER AS SOME SORT OF MASTER OF FORCE-POWERED DEDUCTIVE REASONING ("That's it. The Rebels are there!") WITH A HUGE BONER FOR LUKE'S FORCE POWERS IN ONE MOVIE, THEN IN THE NEXT MOVIE, WHEN THE PLOT CONVENIENTLY GETS ALL OF LUKE'S FRIENDS (LukeBait) TOGETHER ON ONE PLANET, A PLANET VADER KNOWS QUITE A LOT ABOUT BY THE WAY, HE'S NOT SITTING AT THE HEAD OF A DINING ROOM TABLE???

There is no room for debate here, ladies and gentlemen. The much-discussed Han rescue sequence, broken down brilliantly by Gaffer Tape, wouldn't have happened at all had the Darth Vader of ESB appeared in ROTJ. What, was the kinder, gentler Vader of ROTJ just giving Luke his personal space? Letting him "find himself"?

My personal SW universe is starting to exclude movies made after 1977.

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doubleofive said:

He hates sand?

;-P

I don't blame him.  It is coarse and rough and it gets everywhere.

Anyone else feel that the Jabba's palace sequence was just an excuse to revisit the Cantina experience from Star Wars as well as an excuse to throw a wacky musical number in the middle of a space opera?

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I'm still wondering why everyone waited a year to rescue him. I mean--A YEAR? Think about that. It's like if your best buddy was kidnapped before the wall street crisis and you only just now got around to rescuing him. I hope they never told Han what date it is, because I'm sure he was just assuming that it was like a week later. Luke in ESB says he'll meet them at Tatooine, it sounded like they were heading there the next day, as soon as Luke got a bit of rest.

The ESB Special-Special-Edition:

Luke: Good luck Lando. I'll meet you at the rendevouz point on Tatooine--in one year.

Lando: Okay Luke! See you in a year. Me and Chewie will just, uh, I dunno, fly around and stuff until then. I hope Leia doesn't care THAT much about Han.

Leia: I don't. That's why I'm staying on this cozy white medical ship for a whole year, even though we already have plans to meet on Tatooine to get Han.

Lando: Boy, the EU is gonna have to invent a whole bunch of shit to explain why we just sat around for a whole year, even when we just said we should meet up on Tatooine to get Han back.

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 (Edited)

You disappoint me, Zombie.  There are plenty of valid reasons for the heroes to wait the year.

1. Luke had to wait the year to go to Dagobah to be at Yoda's deathbed.  One can't hear someones dying words when they are alive and kicking now can they?  Why would he go there with enough time to get the training he thought he needed?  Turns out he didn't need the training after all (convenient, ain't it!)

2. Lando had to wait the year to get full time at Jabba's palace.  Trust me, the dental plan alone is worth the wait.

3. Leia needed time to drop a few pounds and tone-up for when her attempt failed, she might be forced to wear an iron bikini.

4. Chewie.  Two words: Flea dip.

 

I'm sure there were plenty of other valid things the heroes could be doing in that year.

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zombie84 said:

I'm still wondering why everyone waited a year to rescue him. I mean--A YEAR?

 Where in the film does it say that it took a year? Going by what's on screen, it might have been a matter of weeks.

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Yeah, the movie never says it's been a year, that's just bullshit so they can sell extra junk with the original characters. It's right after Empire. Vader has been temporarily ordered off the Luke thing to supervise the Death Star and he wants to get back to it as soon as the Emperor lets him. But really, The Emperor just wants Luke to come to them since Vader screwed up doing it his way.

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 (Edited)

The ordering off only really happens on screen after Luke has rescued Han.

Which is why I suggested that the Empire try to capture the Falcon and Luke when they leave Tatooine on the ESB/ROTJ Wishlist and then only in terms of the Emperor knowing Luke will seek out Vader.

Vader doesn't want Palpatine in the way he wants to find Luke first so he can motivate him into working with him to dethrone the Emperor.

He must know Luke will return to Tatooine eventually have to save Han so it would make sense to leave a discrete Imperial taskforce to try and capture them all on the way out.

 

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Yeah, for me I always took ROTJ as being like a month after ESB. After all, Luke says he's going to meet Lando on Tatooine, and Lando is already on his way it seems, so I assumed that Luke left a couple days later while Lando infiltrated the palace.

But by official timeline, its a year. Never got that. It makes even less sense that Luke never went back to Dagobah either. Clearly it doesn't take place the next day, because Luke has matured more, he has a new Jedi outfit, continued training on his own, built a lightsaber, and Leia took the time to get a bounty hunter outfit while Lando somehow got a job as a palace guard. Its more than just a week after. But a year??

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Bingowings said:

The ordering off only really happens on screen after Luke has rescued Han.

 

 

Vader wants to get BACK to Luke after the rescue happens, but he'd been sent "to put them back on schedule" before that. None of those imperial weasels are going to work "secretly" for vader, they're more scared of The Emperor.

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That's why I also favor the Fan-O-Matic idea of having Yoda's death at the beginning (at least of Luke's part of the story).

I'm sorry I'm stuck in fan-edit mode and this is not the place for it but it really doesn't make sense for Yoda to hang on for all that time only to drop down dead in the middle of a sentence.

If he died after finishing Luke's training it makes so much more sense.

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As the self-appointed authority on crappy ROTJ Jabba-related story points, I must say I have laughed at this thread... hard.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Baronlando said:

Bingowings said:

The ordering off only really happens on screen after Luke has rescued Han.

Vader wants to get BACK to Luke after the rescue happens, but he'd been sent "to put them back on schedule" before that. None of those imperial weasels are going to work "secretly" for vader, they're more scared of The Emperor.

 I imagine they would all claim the Nuremberg defense and either way get choked up by the reaction of whoever they let down.

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Sluggo said:

doubleofive said:

He hates sand?

;-P

I don't blame him.  It is coarse and rough and it gets everywhere.

Anyone else feel that the Jabba's palace sequence was just an excuse to revisit the Cantina experience from Star Wars as well as an excuse to throw a wacky musical number in the middle of a space opera?

The "Star Wars to Jedi" documentary makes Lucas' desire to redo the cantina scene perfectly clear.

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vote_for_palpatine said:

I presume Fett has to have Darth Vader on speed-dial -

SO WHY THE HELL IS VADER NOT IN JABBA'S PALACE WAITING ON LUKE?!? HOW INCREDIBLY, STUPIDLY, MIND-BLOWINGLY INCONSISTENT TO ESTABLISH DARTH VADER AS SOME SORT OF MASTER OF FORCE-POWERED DEDUCTIVE REASONING ("That's it. The Rebels are there!") WITH A HUGE BONER FOR LUKE'S FORCE POWERS IN ONE MOVIE, THEN IN THE NEXT MOVIE, WHEN THE PLOT CONVENIENTLY GETS ALL OF LUKE'S FRIENDS (LukeBait) TOGETHER ON ONE PLANET, A PLANET VADER KNOWS QUITE A LOT ABOUT BY THE WAY, HE'S NOT SITTING AT THE HEAD OF A DINING ROOM TABLE???

I look at it as Fett just not giving a damn.  I don't think this "bounty hunter" has any real personal feel into the Rebellion/Empire conflict.  So I just like to think once Boba sold Han, or whatever, to Jabba, the fat man offered him a job as a bodyguard, or something.  Fett takes the job, makes his home on Tatooine, and gets a fat, regular check for whatever it is he does.  Probably sponge baths for Jabba, but I hope not. 

And since a whole year has passed, Vader couldn't just be sitting at Tatooine for that whole time.  He's still second in command of the Empire and he's got stuff to do.  He's got errands to run for the Emperor, as he's now been "pussified" into saying, "Oh yes, boss.  I'm useless.  What?  No!  No, I wasn't planning to overthrow you!" 

You don't get it, boy.  This isn't a mudhole.  It's an operating table, and I'm the surgeon.

Vader vs. Luke

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 (Edited)

Actually, you know not many people pick up on this, but near as I can tell, Jabba was not based on Tatooine at the time ESB was made, and none of the heroes knew where he was.

Think about it: Lando says, they'll find Han, and sets off to do so. Why would they need to do this if Jabba is just sitting around on Tatooine?

Luke says they'll meet on Tatooine--but he doesn't say that this is to rescue Han. Its just a rendevouz point. Its out of the way, and Luke's old haunting ground. Lando is taking off to get a head start on tracking down Han, and in a few days time they are going to have a secret meeting on Tatooine to regroup.

Jabba is on Tatooine in ANH, but that's because its a spaceport and he had to track Han there to shake him down for money; there's nothing that indicates he was indiginous to there, anymore than Greedo was. They just had been able to trace Han while he had a brief stopover. Because if Han was trying to avoid Jabba for fear of his life, why would he be hanging out around the corner when the entire galaxy was open to him? That's what makes the Jabba element in ANH so unexpected to him, that even when he's hiding out in a remote desert planet his debtors still catch up with him.

It's interesting to consider the possibilities of the ESB climax, where Jabba is unknown and has to be tracked down, with a Tatooine rendevouz to regroup after Luke is healed.

Luke: I'll meet you at the rendevouz point on Tatooine...Good luck you two.

Lando: Princess, we'll find Han. I promise.

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That's a pretty good point, zombie84! I don't think even the Marvel comics in between films ever specified the location of Jabba's base of operations. And Lucasfilm was keeping an eye on those if only to make sure they didn't unintentionally do a plotline similar to the sequels.

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 (Edited)

zombie84 said:

Actually, you know not many people pick up on this, but near as I can tell, Jabba was not based on Tatooine at the time ESB was made, and none of the heroes knew where he was.

Think about it: Lando says, they'll find Han, and sets off to do so. Why would they need to do this if Jabba is just sitting around on Tatooine?

Luke says they'll meet on Tatooine--but he doesn't say that this is to rescue Han. Its just a rendevouz point. Its out of the way, and Luke's old haunting ground. Lando is taking off to get a head start on tracking down Han, and in a few days time they are going to have a secret meeting on Tatooine to regroup.

Jabba is on Tatooine in ANH, but that's because its a spaceport and he had to track Han there to shake him down for money; there's nothing that indicates he was indiginous to there, anymore than Greedo was. They just had been able to trace Han while he had a brief stopover. Because if Han was trying to avoid Jabba for fear of his life, why would he be hanging out around the corner when the entire galaxy was open to him? That's what makes the Jabba element in ANH so unexpected to him, that even when he's hiding out in a remote desert planet his debtors still catch up with him.

It's interesting to consider the possibilities of the ESB climax, where Jabba is unknown and has to be tracked down, with a Tatooine rendevouz to regroup after Luke is healed.

Luke: I'll meet you at the rendevouz point on Tatooine...Good luck you two.

Lando: Princess, we'll find Han. I promise.

I've wondered about that. In the end of ESB it clearly sounds like they don't know where Jabba is. The mention of Tatooine there confuses the matter slightly, but nobody asks why Lando is wearing Han's clothes, except in Family Guy.

___________________________________

As for the topic of the thread, I don't see the point in nitpicking the logic of the OT. The OT WORKS. It just does, logical faults and all. So there's no need to kvetch over bad logic (this includes the Han rescue question). Save that logic nitpicking for the PT, which doesn't work. When a story convinces imaginatively and emotionally, it can survive logic faults, but when it doesn't, logic faults become a problem.

Anyway, I always figured Vader and the emperor were letting Luke develop by himself between ESB and ROTJ because they figured that development would benfit them. Like as if Vader had sown the seeds of the dark side in Luke in ESB and they would grow and bring Luke back to them or they could pick him up when he was more developed in the direction they wanted.

 

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SilverWook said:

That's a pretty good point, zombie84! I don't think even the Marvel comics in between films ever specified the location of Jabba's base of operations. And Lucasfilm was keeping an eye on those if only to make sure they didn't unintentionally do a plotline similar to the sequels.

The story in the Marvel comics was the search for Solo. They were looking for Han because they didn't know where he was.

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Even if the heroes knew Jabba had a base on Tatooinne, perhaps it's secret.

It's not near any settlement. Maybe it's Jabba's secret party palace, where he goes to get away from work, and only the scum of the galaxy have the location.

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In Star wars, knowing what planet something is on is knowing where it is. Not knowing where Jabba is is not knowing what plenet he's on.

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Maybe they were stationed at Jabba's palace for a while. If it was an entire year between ESB and ROTJ, I can see them giving up and waiting for the next opportunity to capture Luke. Like someone already said, Vader had other things to do.

"Fuck you. All the star wars movies were excellent. none of them sucked. Also, revenge of the sith is the best."

- DarthZorgon (YouTube)

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Vaderisnothayden said:

SilverWook said:

That's a pretty good point, zombie84! I don't think even the Marvel comics in between films ever specified the location of Jabba's base of operations. And Lucasfilm was keeping an eye on those if only to make sure they didn't unintentionally do a plotline similar to the sequels.

The story in the Marvel comics was the search for Solo. They were looking for Han because they didn't know where he was.

I meant to refer to the years between SW and Empire. Han ran afoul of Jabba a couple times during this era of the comic.

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SilverWook said:

Sluggo said:

doubleofive said:

He hates sand?

;-P

I don't blame him.  It is coarse and rough and it gets everywhere.

Anyone else feel that the Jabba's palace sequence was just an excuse to revisit the Cantina experience from Star Wars as well as an excuse to throw a wacky musical number in the middle of a space opera?

The "Star Wars to Jedi" documentary makes Lucas' desire to redo the cantina scene perfectly clear.

That's right.  I knew it felt familiar as I was typing.