Why the Amount of Vader's Screentime Was a Mistake

*Struggles to continue being respectful*

Just kidding, of course. Joking aside, I used to love the prequels, and at one time would have absolutely agreed with you. I don't see what others see in them, but to each their own.

 

Star Wars fans overscrutinizing things? Hold on, I received several transmissions beamed to this ship that I have to read.

Yeah, like I said, to each their own. I don't love them, but I also think they get far more hate than they deserve. Movie fans can be an entitled bunch.

 

I, as well respect your opinion. There was a time when I liked the PT too (when I was a kid with not enough critical capability yet). But looking back at it (especially now), its not easy to sit through (maybe with the exception of TPM, which I still like despite it beeing probably the worst of the three writing wise). Its interessting to see however a film school graduate liking the PT and even holding it as high regards as the OT. To each to their own, I guess.

More like the 90s. Outside of the PT there isnt really any movie from the early 2000s which used CGI so bafflingly. Just compare it to the LOTR trilogy from the same era. LOTR is still a marvel to behold, while the PT, especially ROTS, looks like a PS2 cut scene...

Of course its great to see well known characters. I just wish they were developed more. I mean Obi-wan for instance gets little to no character developement during 3 long movies...What did we get to know about him as a person which wasnt known before the PT? He dosent like flying. OK, thats... interessting.
And what else?
I just simply dont like the representation of Yoda and Anakin in the PT.
Imo they depicted Yoda and the entire jedi council and slow old people who sit in circles crying about how clouded they are all day... They failed to see a sith lord emerging in the front of their eyes and failed to do anything to save the Republic...
Imo Yoda shouldn't fight with a lightsaber and Anakin's story along with his character should've been entirely different.

I think in retrospect the lightsaber duels are the weakest part of the PT. The characters are doing dance routines with glowing sticks. No atmosphere, no sense of danger.
Just compare any fight from the PT with the Darth Vader scene from R1. R1's is incredibly suspenseful and straight up horroristic. The guy is the symbolic evil himself. Sucks out the air from the entire scene. That imo is how a SW movie should handle a character with a lightsaber.

 

The Darth Vader screen time was really too little, especially since they haven't announced any stand alone films featuring the empire. I did watch this awesome interview with Darth Vader though that made me feel a little bit better about his time in the movie. Click Here for Full Darth Vader Interview

 

I mean, we only have one other standalone film announced so far.

Don't worry- I have a feeling these standalone films are kind of a "cheat" Disney is using to provide a pretty consistent stream of media featuring the GCW

 

IMHO the scene with Krennic in Vader's Castle was redundant, and I could have happily lived just with Vader and the Devastator arriving and acting as both did near the end of the film.

On the other hand the OP has a point, probably beíng right that this was the last opportunity to see more OT Vader.

And the original ANH dialogue suggested that we could or should have seen more of him in RO:

VADER
I have traced the Rebel spies to her. Now she is my only link to find their secret base!

Prior to RO's *solution* this had always sounded like a longer pursuit, so I think it's fair to say that some potential wasn't explored.

 

The Tantive escaped via a hyper jump, the Empire didn't know for sure where they'd gone, Leia's priority was to escape and then avoid capture, that may well have involved a big game of cat and mouse and she may well have been forced to go into hiding for a time, we just don't know. Your post is logically ridiculous - let me guess - a big fan of the PT? A professional slinger of balderdash indeed.

 

Not actually much of a fan of the PT at all, but thanks for asking.

And part of what has never worked about the PT for me is the way so many plot points require either thinly stretched lawyer's reasoning ("Well, TECHNICALLY if Yoda was Obi Wan's Jedi kindergarten teacher for about five minutes, that counts as being 'The Jedi master who instructed me'...") or else speculative leaps like the one you're making here.

I don't particularly like the way the PT made all hyperspace travel virtually instantaneous, but since that's the in-universe reality that we're apparently stuck with now, then it doesn't make much sense to assume that Leia would somehow have spent weeks zipping all over the galaxy to throw Vader off her trail. I completely agree that she'd have "serpentined" her way away from Scarif via a circuitous route before heading to Tatooine. I just don't think it would have taken all that much time, is all. Half a dozen or so hyperspace jumps prior to setting course for Tatooine, and they'd have eaten up about an hour's time or so.

On top of which, I really don't think Leia would have felt that they had days or weeks to deal with the Death Star threat. Yes, they had to throw the Empire off their trail, but then they had to pick up Obi Wan on Tatooine and high-tail it right back to Alderaan so that Bail Organa could present evidence of the new Imperial planet killer to the Senate (and so the plans could then be taken to the Rebel base and an attack planned.)

I just don't see any real logic for assuming that days or weeks passed between the end of Rogue One and the beginning of Episode IV. And again... having to make those kinds of logical leaps to resolve rough edges around the plot are one of the things I couldn't friggin' stand about the PT. Fortunately, there isn't too much of that in Rogue One.

 

Although I'm a die-hard OT old fossil, I have to mention in defense of the PT that "instantaneous" hyperspace travel (that's the only thing I would change in the OT if it were possible) was introduced in ESB.

Captain Needa looses track of the Falcon, shuttles to the Executor, gets killed by Vader and then Admiral Piett informs Vader that if the Millennium Falcon went into hyperspace "It'd be on the other side of the galaxy by now".

Unless we assume that Vader mostly killed Needa for arriving way too late, then hyperspace really cuts down interstellar distances rather dramatically.

 

Ok you didn't particularly like the PT, apologies for that traumatizing suggestion. However, I still don't see anything concrete that debunks my suggested turn of events, like me, you've put forward an opinion which includes speculative leaps. The possibility remains that the Tantive, while attempting to evade capture(Leia's priority surely) could have been held up in various other locations for an unknown period of time before making it to Tattooine. I prefer to believe that just because SW movies are a couple of hours long, the same isn't necessarily true of the events depicted in those movies.

 

If that works for you, then fine. To me, the notion that Leia went on some days/weeks long adventure whilst toting around the Death Star plans sounds way too close to the convoluted justifications that PT fans always came up with to fill the myriad plot holes and continuity problems that riddled the PT films.

 

Assuming that surviving Rebels witnessed the terrible weapon power of the Death Star and were able to report it, I doubt that Leia would have unnecessarily delayed her voyage home to Alderaan after a stop at Tatooine (in ANH she didn't take detours after her Death star escape - assuming Solo would have allowed these as he wanted to be paid ASAP).

The new thing that irritates me a bit about RO (if I take the novelization seriously which I fortunately do not) is that in the original ANH novelization Vader remarks that the ship was in a bad condition (providing a believable explanation it got accidentally destroyed for Vader's cover story). So it looks to me that going to Tatooine was under the pretense to have the ship repaired, while inofficially it was to recruit Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Since that question ("What are you doing in the Tatooine system?") was never brought up in ANH, I believe that the bad condition of the ship itself was sufficient reason, that Vader didn't feel it necessary to inquire.

(Now don't anybody dare to call this farfetched, as Lucas himself revisited the "have the Princess' ship repaired on Tatooine" theme in TPM...)

 

Well, at least you've modified your smug and mocking attitude somewhat and even admitted to the quite plausible possibility of a serpentine route for the Tantive IV. I don't really see why you felt the need to display that attitude to my original post, as it's really quite a straightforward contention and not that difficult to believe or convoluted as you put it. Perhaps you're easily bamboozled Dekka.

 

I don't think so. "A New Hope" seemed like the type of movie that would easily appeal to kids - especially with the "misadventures" of R2 and 3P0, and the film's somewhat black-and-white morality.

 

I'm not sure why you feel it necessary to try and start something over this. I disagreed with you on a minor point about the movie. That's the interwebs for ya. I suggest you crack open a nice Friday evening beer and let it go. (I've already managed step one, and am well on the way toward step two.)

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 14, 2017, Original Post Date: Jan 13, 2017 ---

Rinzler's "Making of Star Wars" book specifically mentions that the demographic that Lucas and company were shooting for with that original film was the 12-18 year old range (it may have been 12-16, but it was definitely that junior high/high school crowd.)

It appealed to kids, absolutely. But it wasn't specifically aimed at them. I was 9 at the time, and it was not at all the standard "kiddie fare" that we usually got stuck with. Hell, the villain audibly snaps the neck of a guy in the first five minutes of the movie, and then we see a closeup of the smouldering skeletons of the hero's family about a quarter of a way into the picture. To me, as a nine year-old kid, that sure beat the hell out of Herbie the Love Bug!

 

Spot on.
There's this weird thing now where any non-R rated humor is "kids humor".

 

Well said. ANH never felt to me like a kids movie and I rewatch the OT (the despecialised edition) every year.
I've first seen ANH when I was 6, and never really liked it too much back then. I was most certainly a prequel fan at the time. It took me some years to fully appreciate the OT and to realise why the PT sucks.