User:Butch studley

Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

PM - Phantom Menace 		Chapter I		(4th film)	32BBY* AotC – Attack of the Clone 	Chapter II		(5th film)	22BBY RotS – Return of the Sith 	Chapter III		(6th film)	21BBY ANH - A New Hope 		Chapter IV		(1st film)	0BBY ESB - Empire Strikes Back 	Chapter V		(2nd film)	3ABY RotJ - Return of the Jedi 	Chapter VI		(3rd film)	4ABY

(BBY = Before the Battle of Yavin – ABY = After the Battle of Yavin)

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels.

As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Alderaanian Senator Bail Organa in 20BBY. A historical moment for the Rebellion was the signing of the Corellian Treaty in circa 2 BBY. Signed by Organa, Mothma, and Garm Bel Iblis, with Galen Marek and Rahm Kota also present, the document formalized the relationship between the Corellian, Alderaanian and Chandrilan resistance forces, respectively, from a loose coalition to an organized rebellion - the Alliance to Restore the Republic. However, Darth Vader arrived and his stormtroopers arrested Mon Mothma and everyone else. Marek was in fact Vader's secret apprentice, and unknowingly led the senators willing to rebel against Palpatine into Vader's trap. Vader's forces took the senators to the under construction Death Star I, while Marek fought with Vader. It seemed all was lost and the Rebellion was doomed before it even began. Marek was betrayed by Vader, who deceived him by telling him that they would use the Rebellion to overthrow Emperor Palpatine and rule the galaxy. Together with his pilot Juno Eclipse, Marek traveled to the Death Star construction site. There, Marek defeated Vader and held Palpatine off long enough for Mon Mothma and the other rebels to escape, after stealing the secret plans for the Death Star, but sacrificing himself in the process. After meeting on Kashyyyk, the rebel leaders found Marek's family crest, and Leia Organa suggested honoring Marek by using it as the symbol for the Rebel Alliance. Mon Mothma and the other rebels agreed. But their top field agent was R2-D2. Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organa orders 3PO's memory wiped but not R2's. He wouldn't make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, R2 must have made an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact. He has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy's top experts at hacking into other people's systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources agrees.

For the next 20 years, as far as C3-PO knows, he is the property of Captain Antilles, doing protocol duties on a diplomatic transport. He is vaguely aware of the existence of the princess but doesn't know much about her. Wherever 3PO goes, being as loud and obvious as he always is, his unobtrusive little counterpart goes with him. 3PO is R2's front man. Wherever they land, R2 is passing messages between rebel sympathizers and sizing up governments as potential rebel recruits - both by personal contact and by hacking into their networks. He passes his recommendations on to Organa.

Yoda is out of the picture by this stage, using the Force-infused swamps of Dagobah to hide himself from Vader and the Emperor. He is meditating on the future and keeping in touch with Obi-Wan via the ghost of Qui-Gon Jin, which as comm systems go has the virtue of being un-tapable. Obi-Wan, on Tattoine, kept in touch with Bail Organa and the other Rebel leaders by courier, more about that later.

As Star Wars opens, R2-D2 is rushing the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. What Leia puts into him in the early scene is only her own holographic message to Kenobi. Leia's own mission, as she says in the holographic message, is to pick up Obi-Wan and take him to Alderaan, or so she thinks. Actually, her father just wants her to meet Kenobi, which up to this point she never has. There's a reason for that.

During the first days of his exile, Kenobi visited the Lars homestead every day, always trying to stay clear of Owen and Beru so that they would not see him, in order to watch Luke from afar. Later Kenobi's intervention in the family business of the Lars would mark him an unwelcome man in Owen's eyes. Obi-Wan spent 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:

A) If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity

B) If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi, now.

But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then:

C) Sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret, but it'll save a lot of trouble later on. Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.

According to Skywalker, his first use of the Force was when he was roughly six and, through the Force, located a lost screwdriver that was under the couch. He was severely scolded by his uncle, with the argument that he could only have known its location because he placed it there, and afterwards learned not to duplicate the stunt. To be fair to all concerned, Leia has shown no overt signs of a link to the Force. Luke on the other hand has. In his home-built hotrod aircraft, with no formal fighter pilot training and no decent instrumentation, Luke can regularly score centre-hits on 2-metre targets in complicated zero-altitude maneuvers (womp rats). Until he attends the briefing on Yavin, Luke has no way of knowing that hardened combat pilots would consider that nearly impossible. To him it's easy. Obi-Wan, (who is dead by now…) who saw Anakin's performance in the Pod Race (PM), is nervous.

Much of Obi-Wan's behavior in this film, and Yoda's in the next (ESB) can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become. Ben is also scared that he himself will make all the same mistakes he made with Anakin.

Now, with the existence of the rebellion at stake, Bail Organa has finally told Leia to go see Obi-Wan and has sent her along with R2. The original plan would then be for Obi-Wan (with optional Luke and/or Leia in tow) to leave his exile and take the Death Star plans to Yavin, where they can be put to use. R2 (with Leia if Ben doesn't want to take her) would then carry on to Alderaan to maintain the cover story. The original plan does not survive contact with a large Imperial Star Destroyer, and Darth Vader’s sensing “a presence I haven’t felt in a long time”. In fact, Darth gets these feelings every time he gets near one of his progeny or old teacher.

R2 and 3PO bail out in an escape pod, landing in vaguely the right area of Tattoine, where R2's first priority is transport. He allows them to be captured by a group of Jawas and, once on board their transport, he makes a deal with them (possibly using emergency funds stored about his person) to take him where he wants to go. The Jawas refuse to go directly to Kenobi for fear of marauding Sand people but they agree to R2's second request: transport to the Skywalker farm. They even get to keep the purchase price if they can sell R2 and 3PO there. The Jawas shake on it and go through with the plan.

Seeing 3PO fail to recognize the farm where he worked for 10 years gives R2 a moment's amusement but, as soon as possible, he gets away and heads for Kenobi. Luke and 3PO follow which may or may not have been part of the plan.

On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan gets a twinkle in his eye and calls him "my little friend". Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, he blandly says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid." Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as "You keep quiet. I'm not about to tell him everything just yet." Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. He wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth. This leads to hurt feelings in the later movies. As they begin to travel to the Owen’s farm, they discover the sandcrawler and the slaughtered Jawas. Knowing that the Empire now knows about the connection of the droids to the Owens’ farm, and unable to stop Luke, Ben uses the circumstances to insure Luke stays by him to start his training in the ways of the force.

Although the Death Star plans need to get to Yavin as soon as possible, Obi-Wan needs to make one more diversion first. If the Empire knows that Leia is a Rebel leader, then they also know about her father and the whole Organa family, they will need immediate evacuation. Fortunately, before coming to Tattoine, R2 had already arranged transport, which is waiting at Mos Eisley, under the command of one of the Rebellion's other field agent and espionage asset, Chewbacca.

20 years earlier, Chewbacca was second in command of the defense of his planet (AotC). He's there in the tactical conferences and there on the front lines and is a personal friend of Yoda's. When he needed reliable people to join the embryonic Alliance, who else would Yoda turn to but his old friend from Kashykk? Given his background, there is no way that Chewie would spend the crucial years of the rebellion as the second-in-command to (sorry Han) a low-level smuggler. Unless it's his cover, in fact, Chewie is a top-line spy and flies what is in many ways the Rebellion's best ship.

The Millennium Falcon may look like a beat-up old freighter but it can outrun any Imperial ship in normal space or hyperspace, hang in a firefight with a Star Destroyer or outmaneuver a dozen top-of-the-line TIE fighters. It's a remarkable feat of engineering and must have cost a colossal fortune to build. How does Han come to own a ship like that? He only thinks he does, actually it's Chewie's. Half-way through RotS, we see the Falcon landing at the Senate building on Coruscant. It was the personal transport of one of the Kashykk senatorial delegations - a much more likely source to commission its design. That delegation later joined the Rebellion and gave it the use of the Falcon.

Han is Chewie's front man. Solo was a young lieutenant in Imperial service and saved Chewbacca from being whipped to death. The two escaped from Imperial influence with a small bounty on their heads, and Solo was drummed out of Imperial service. "Chewie", as Solo affectionately called him, became the Corellian's close companion as a smuggler, standing beside him, partly out of friendship, and partly as a result of his life debt to Solo. Chewie used to work with Lando Calrissian in a similar way but Lando wanted to settle down, so Chewie arranged for him to lose the Falcon in a card game to Han Solo, an even better choice as partner. This lets Chewie wander the seamy underside of the galaxy pretty much at will, making contacts, gathering and passing information with no-one the wiser, especially not Han. Han and Chewie's working method is pretty much what we see in the Chalmun’s Cantina scene: Chewie makes the contacts and sets up the deals, and then turns them over to Han who haggles over the price and gives the final yea or nay. The Wookiee knew Kenobi from their time on Alaris Prime. Chewbacca's friendship with Yoda during the Clone Wars clinched the decision to help Ben.

Chewie also persuaded Han to do business with Jabba the Hutt so he could make regular runs to Tattoine, where Chewie could pass messages between Kenobi and Organa through the only other agent on Tattoine, the reluctant Owen Lars. When R2's urgent message came through only days before, the only way for Chewie to get back to Tattoine in time was to make the "mistake" that forced Han to dump his cargo of glitterstim to avoid capture. As a down side, this led to Solo's getting a death mark out on him from Jabba the Hutt. Chewie was a bit upset about the need for that but figured they weren't going to be dealing with Tattoine for much longer.

En route to Alderaan, R2 and Chewie play stop-motion chess. This is the latest in a series of games they've played over the year in the back rooms of space stations and cantinas across the galaxy, but this is the first time they've done it in front of their respective straight men, so they put on a big show.

Then it all goes wrong again. Alderaan is gone and the Falcon is caught and brought aboard the Death Star. Only Han, Luke and C3PO don't know just how much trouble they're in but Obi-Wan has a plan in mind and seems confident (but Jedi always do). Soon afterwards, R2 finds Leia in the detention cells and shouts that they have to rescue her, to which Chewie can only agree. If Vader learns he has a daughter, then they're all in deep trouble, so Chewie does his bit to persuade Han to go along with Luke's plan.

Then, on the verge of escape, Vader himself turns up only yards from both of his children, one of whom is leaking Force all over the place. Obi-Wan stages a distraction by letting himself die and go into the Force while the others escape. At this point, Chewie suddenly realizes that he's been left in charge, not only of the Death Star Plans and the survival of the Rebellion but of the secret son and daughter of Darth Vader. With the Organa’s and Kenobi all dead, only Chewie, R2, and Yoda know who Luke is, and Leia is only known to the Wookiee and Yoda. And only Ob-Wan knew where Yoda has been hiding. Chewie is stressed out by the responsibility and R2 (who keeps making crude jokes about the whole affair) is being no help at all.

Chewie's first problem is what is happening between Luke and Leia. With a psychic link they can feel but don't understand, thrown together in a life-or-death escape, they are looking at each other with an intensity that Chewie gradually recognizes as Romantic Tension. He's no expert on human relationships but Chewie is fairly sure that that's wrong, so he does the only thing he can under the circumstances, he throws Han at her. Han is at first not interested but after a while starts to warm to the idea with an intensity that gives Chewie new worries.

When they reach Yavin, Han decides to take the money and run and Chewie has to go with him. Looked at in cold light, it's for the good of the Rebellion. Even if Yavin is destroyed, there'll be one agent who knows what's going on who can try and put something back together, but he doesn't feel good about it. When Han decides to turn around and join the attack, Chewie is all for it.

Han and Luke get medals but Chewie doesn't. Actually, Leia offers him one but Chewie turns it down. He got one of those things from Yoda about 20 years ago (AotC), but there's no way he can tell her that.

As the film ends, the three founders of the Rebellion are all gone. Bail Organa is dead, Yoda is out of contact and Obi-Wan's ghost can only talk to other Jedi. (That would be Yoda & Luke) Thus, the field leadership of the rebellion has just been turned over to the daughter of Darth Vader. Chewie is really hoping that someone with an official rank greater than hers will get here real soon before he has to think really seriously about option C.