zombie84 said:
Being able to "see" beyond our normal senses like our eyes is not predicting the future. Luke "stretches out with his feelings", sensing wherethe bolts will come. Spidey sense, basically, or a form of super-human (aka paranormal) reflexes. As I said, this would be akin to Obi Wan "knowing" that he can make the jump to the droid. This is much different from the complex, long-term prediction Obi Wan has to make following this:
-That the droid will support his weight
-That it isn't rigged to explode, or won't intentionally or unintentionally run into a building...or traffic.
-That the sniper who has her scope on him will for some reason shoot the droid and not his head.
-That when he freefalls as a result of this he won't hit traffic or the bottom of Coruscant but will slip gracefully into the padded leather interior of Anakin's speeder.
He clearly knew none of this. That's part of the suspense and drama of the sequence, Obi Wan made a rash choice and now he's hanging on for dear life and who knows what will happen or how he will get out of it. Obi Wan isn't going "its fine, don't worry, I read the script, er, saw the future cuz I'm a Jedi." He's going "SHIT, WTF am I gonna do here??" Thats where the drama comes from, if there is any.
I agree that's where the drama comes from. (although being that he lives in the future, he might be able to make a good guess that the droid could support his weight)
I fail to see the difference between being able to super-sense where a blaster bolt is going to come from before it's fired and seeing the future. Since, excepting one instance, we never see a Jedi move faster than a normal person, their apparent super-human reflexes must be the result of precognition (without superspeed, reacting to a blaster after it's fired would do no good).
I think the Jedi's limited foresight (compare Qui-Gon's "he can see things before they happen" and Yoda's "Hard to see the future is") explains why they can do what they do, and because of it they make a habit of just jumping into situations trusting in their Jedi abilities (and in Obi's case their trusted buddies) to get them out of trouble.
If the little robot had exploded, or the chick tried to shoot him (which he might have sensed), Obi probably would have reacted in a similar apparently haphazard manner and trusted the Force to see him through.