SE's Daily Blog

On Thursday we watched Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope, and...It sure had been a while since the last time I watched the Star Wars saga, and there were some things I truly did not remember, one being quite gruesome, but eh, it was not that bad. I enjoyed it of course, and I actually got to understand a lot more about the development of things in the story now that I'm not a little kid anymore.

Obviously I was also awaiting the arrival of Darth Vader since we are working on redesigning him for class, but then again it did not take long for him to show up, and it was quite interesting seeing him again. I remember I used to think he was the leader of all the Imperial armies, yet under the Emperor's rule, but re-watching the movie, I realised he was more of a henchman at the time. He obviously does have a position of power in some way, but some others still disrespect him because he speaks of the Force, which they do not seem to quite believe in. It was also interesting to see that, even though he was ordered to terminate Leia "immediately" at some point in the movie, he did not quite do that, and instead later said she could still be of use. Well, I guess there may or may not be a reason he did not execute her on the order (in the later movies), but this is an other story.
Eventually when he confronts Obi-wan on the Death Star, even though the troopers saw them fighting and came closer for possible help, no one interfered and it is as Vader wanted-- to deal with his former master alone. He was not accompanied either. So in a sense, he is still respected/feared, and some things clearly require his permission to be done. He also seemed to be quite perceptive of enemy tactics and plans, and was often seen giving the Imperials orders to help them better handle their opponents.
Vader claimed to have become superior to Obi-wan before they started fighting, however, when Obi-wan let go, and let himself get killed by Vader, he seemed to be focusing greatly, as he closed his eyes and vanished instead of being cut by Vader when he swung his saber in a final blow. This kind of made it look like Obi-wan came to learn even more about the Force than Vader could ever imagine.
Darth Vader even checked Obi-wan's clothes that were the only thing that remained (and Obi's light saber too), as if he did not really understand what had just happened.

As for other characters, I noticed quite a bunch of similarities between Vader and Luke, and mainly with how Luke came to train as a Jedi Knight himself, and his enthusiasm for piloting, as well as his skill at fixing/building robots.
3PO and R2 also added a nice touch of humor to the movie, which I did not quite catch back then.
I did not quite remember how Han Solo used to act clearly either, but upon seeing it again, he does add to the story quite well too. His character is fun and entertaining to see on screen, unlike what I remembered.
The movie special effects also looked better than I remembered, heh.
The timing of the battles was well done, I especially loved the battle between the Rebels and the Death Star, and how everything was a race to survive in a sense. Although the Death Star had nothing to do but wait for the Rebel base to be in range, its troops still had to defend the one weak spot Rebels were aiming for. Three waves of Rebels fighters came to try and attack that weak spot, and 2 of them were destroyed by Vader and his wing-men. The last one succeeded with only one survivor, so eventually the Rebels won that battle, adding a thanks to Han's intervention to help Luke. However, since Vader was still alive, I suppose we can say it is only partly a victory, in a sense. They may think they destroyed the Empire's most powerful weapon, yet, the way I see it, Death Star was only one of the Empire's great weapons. An other one escaped, being Darth Vader himself. So I guess a battle won, just not the war. But obviously they would not win the war in this episode, duh!

I'm not going to include things that were not seen in the movie in this post obviously, but it was great watching it again and understanding things more! \o/