121 Days of Star Wars

Minute 39:00 of 121:00

During this 39th minute, we get to know a little bit more about Grand Moff Tarkin’s superweapon.

Grand Moff Tarkin’s other superweapon.

Once we meet Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin, we realize that Vader may be the Emperor’s right hand man, but on the Death Star, Tarkin calls the shots.

Literally…

The officers are having their high-level Imperial Quarterly Business Review, in which a bunch of old guys nod while an older governor explains how Imperial bureaucracy is reorganizing itself. On paper, this sounds about as interesting as this…

Or this…

Aboard the Death Star, however, the tension is high as these leaders play space-risk from the comfort of their boardroom. When Lord Vader takes offense to Admiral Motti’s claims that their new weapon is more powerful than the Force, Vader shows him that the galaxy’s energy field still has some uses.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

The Dark Lord uses the Force to choke the life out of Motti, but Tarkin stops it before it kills the guy.

Vader is quite the Force-zealot here. If he was going door-to-door selling the wonder and mystery of the force, I would not shut my airlock on his mask-face. He’d crush my larynx with his ghost-hands.

“I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about the healing and merciful power of the Force…”

Darth Vader’s a tough and unrelenting SOB who only gets more villainous as the story moves onto its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back.

This piece from Concourse by Albert Burneko, “What if the New Star Wars Sucks, Too?” explores the general arc of quality in the Star Wars franchise and argues that Return of the Jedi held the blueprints for the much-maligned direction the prequels would take. It’s a fun read and he makes some great points about our rabid fandom over the trailers versus the final products. He also argues that Vader’s ROTJ line to Luke, “I must obey my master,” serves as absolute character betrayal for a man who’s such a badass in the first two movies.

“I’ve made some mistakes…”

I’ll concede that Vader is a much more mellowed out character in Return of the Jedi (arguably, everyone loses some of their edge in that movie), but Vader’s always placed himself within the Imperial hierarchy. He’s happy to execute all the brute force he can, but in the end he knows it’s all in the name of the Emperor. He’s just following orders for the greater good. You see it here in this scene, when Tarkin tells him to stop choking Admiral Motti, and the dark one obliges without blinking an eyelash-less eyelid. Vader’s big triumph at the end of ROTJ is that he finally turns on the Emperor, who’s held such power over him for so long…

Once the choking stops, Tarkin gets back to business.

“We will then crush the Rebellion with one swift stroke.”

From here we jump cut back to Tatooine as C-3P0 and R2-D2 wander through the carnage of a smoking Sandcrawler. There’s no time for a cinematic wipe, and though we may not notice, this edit is jarring enough to fit with the situation. Here we see the Empire’s execution of their totalitarian police state.

These are our Jawa pals from earlier and now they’re all dead. Unlike the Rebel fighters from the film’s opening, these creatures were wholly innocent. There’s a certain level of bloodless violence (excluding the severed hand from Mos Eisley Cantina), that we don’t immediately associate with Star Wars because of its PG rating. The Empire commits war crimes as part of its normal investigation process. Somewhere, unfortunate Jawa families are getting a visit from a messenger droid informing them of all those souls lost on a Sandcrawler in the middle of the Dune Sea.

Luke and Obi Wan sift through the rubble, wondering why this all happened. And we’re left wondering why Obi Wan is with Luke. Last we saw them, Luke was just about to leave Obi’s timeshare and head back to the farm. Either Obi Wan’s last line, “you must do what you feel is right, of course,” guilted Luke into sticking around, Obi Wan mind tricked Luke into changing his mind, or Obi Wan felt “20 Jawa voices cry out in terror, then suddenly silenced.”

That’s why the Imperial board meeting scene was placed where it was, to keep us from asking these questions. But I’m onto you, Lucasfilm!

Anyway, Luke notices “there’s gaderffi sticks, bantha tracks, but I’ve never seen them [Sand People] hit something so big before.”

Obi Wan knows better.

“They didn’t, but we are meant to think they did.”

What does he mean? Is this some kind of cover up? Wait until Minute 40:00 to find out!

Rating: 19 out of 20 dead Jawas. But the only good Jawa is a live Jawa. How am I supposed to buy robots at great low prices?

Best Performance by a Human: Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin — calmly determined to destroy all forms of resistance.

Best Performance by a Non-human: Dead Jawa. Let’s take a moment to shout “Utinni!” in memory of our fallen comrades.

This one goes out to all my Jawas, who are now one with the sand…

Originally published at mindctrlaltdel.tumblr.com.