I think about this guy and also Admiral “There Are So Many Uncharted Settlements” Ozzelfrom Empire sometimes.
My pet theory is that, from their perspective, Vader is primarily a gigantic pain in the ass. He has no official rank; he’s just the Emperor’s buddy. But he’s constantly commandeering Imperial resources, up to and including entire fleets, diverting them away from carefully coordinated military planning, because he has “a feeling” that some survivor of Order 66 is hiding out on some backwater.
So then the entire damn fleet needs to go on a side quest, possibly destabilizing some other part of the galaxy where they’re supposed to be part of a blockade ordered by the Admiralty, and Vader goes down with a platoon of expensive troops and equipment, and maybe even a bunch of them get killed or lost, and Vader flies back up to the Star Destroyer and announces “mission accomplished,” because he managed to kill one guy that no one has even heard of.
So now the fleet is out of position, the Admiral is probably all pissed off because his orders got overridden, and you better believe that neither Vader nor the Emperor is going to hand out any medals for any of this. And God forbid Vader doesn’t find the guy he’s looking for! If that happens, he’s even more pissed off than usual, and liable to cause even more property and personnel damage when he gets back to the ship. You’re trying to run a fleet and subjugate a galaxy, and the Emperor and his Best Buddy with no discernible military experience whatsoever are constantly screwing it up with their weird personal vendettas.
So it’s no wonder that the serious-minded military types are totally fed up with them, and maybe this guy figured that now that they can blow up planets they won’t have to tolerate any more of Vader’s bullshit.
No discernible military experience, wasn’t he a general in the clone wars? Ah but they wouldn’t know that
Sure, he has combat experience, but he knows nothing about occupation and running a military empire. Can you imagine Vader doing the paperwork it takes to maintain supply lines?
Yularen knows. Which is probably why he transferred over to running the ISB and seemingly does nothing all day.
It’s likely that Tarkin does as well, given his direct interactions with Anakin towards the end of the war.
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Just change a few words in there and you basically described Trump’s first 90 days in office. Vader is Elon.
True… But much, much less cooler. Would explain that picture of Muskrat standing behind Mr. Trump with arms crossed. Maybe he wanted to specifically imitate that.
Might be right in general, but Ozzel did screw up. The Rebels at Hoth had little time to evacuate after running into the probe droid. The Empire could have easily camped the hyperspace exit from a distance and picked them all off. Ozzel chose to come in too close, and that made them vulnerable to the ground ion canon.
The whole rebellion should have died that day. Vader knows plenty enough about planetary sieges to figure this out.
Didn’t Vader tank that on a subliminal level by sensing his daughter’s presence? Ozzel might have been influenced to screw up there on purpose
I think that has too many wishy washy assumptions about the Force.
I guess you could say this whole thing is a matter of destiny, but that’s the problem with using the idea of destiny that way. You can use it to explain away anything.
… Vader didn’t know he had a daughter at that time?
But his subconscious did. Search your feelings. You know this to be true
“Sister… So. You have a twin sister.” -Return of the Jedi
That was the moment Vader discovered he had a daughter.
consciously yes
did The Force know tho
He had a prior run-in with Leia, no? He might not have known that she’s his daughter, but I believe he had quite the vendetta against her.
There’s no evidence he thought of her as anything special. “I told you she would never consciously betray the rebellion” is a fairly neutral take, not overtly showing fondness or disdain.
Him having a “vendetta” against her, as you say, would not justify him sabotaging the attack on Hoth, which is the theory I was replying to.
I could have sworn there was some bit somewhere about Vader getting pissed at someone else hunting Leia because she’s his prey. But maybe that’s no longer canon, or never was, or is a Mandela effect candidate, or is a product of my own imagination – I can’t find it again, in any case.
Anakin wasn’t ever known for being level-headed and strategic, even before he gave himself over to his hate and anger. It’s plausible that he would sabotage an attack if his emotions got in the way. But like I said, the premise of my argument was a vendetta I can no longer find any evidence for, so my case is void.
Ummm, Anakin Skywalker was highly regarded as a military strategist throughout the clone wars. Non conventional maybe, but highly effective
But no one is supposed to know that Vader is Skywalker, so that reputational credit doesn’t transfer
Vader is known for singlehandedly taking on armies though, which even Anakin never did.
Martial prowess and military high command are two different disciplines.
The latter requires skill in coordinating multiple operations running in tandem to support each other in achieving some strategic objective, dealing with the inevitable friction of things not going to plan, balancing momentum with logistical limitations while trying to cover your own vulnerabilities and extrapolating enemy movements from incomplete intelligence.
The former just requires superhuman strength, reflexes and precision aided by preternatural awareness and literally breathtaking telekinetic powers. Well, “just” makes it sound like it’s trivial, so don’t get me wrong: Vader is powerful and dangerous and will rightly have a reputation for his lethality. But those skills don’t transfer to what an admiral would be expected to bring to the table.
From their position, he’ll be a tactical weapon, a murder machine to tear a gaping hole into the enemy ranks and an even bigger one into their morale, spearheading assaults with devastating effect…
…but please stay out of their business.
Especially when he was clearly alive while that religion and its teachings were still actively being demonstrated to be true every day and its adherents were shaping the galaxy.
EDIT: ITT people defending their space wizard fairy tales with Doylian arguments.
Did he know the emperor was a Sith who had powers, or was he just one of billions or trillions of people who had never actually interacted with anyone who openly used the force?
Sure, later movies made force use way more commonly used within a couple decades of this guy’s bold choice, but at the time of the movie’s release it was supposed to be an uncommon thing that hadn’t even been around for a very long time.
So not a G, but just stupid.
I mean, Han Solo did the same. I don’t think that Lucas thought that it would really be much more than the three movies, and evidently didn’t come up with much lore or backstory. I don’t think they ever touched on what happened to Darth Vader and Sidious that put them into power (it’s been a few years since I’ve seen them, could be wrong). Closest thing we got was a mention of the Clone Wars, with about no description of it.
Lucas didn’t even plan for Vader to be Luke’s father at the start. Leigh Brackett, the main scriptwriter for ESB, never even knew that (she died of cancer when the script was in the final stages). That’s why there’s this awkward “certain point of view” discussion with Obi-wan in RotJ to explain away the cave conversation in the first movie; Lucas didn’t plan that from the beginning, and he had to patch over a plot hole.
He very much made it up as he went.
Exactly. We have to ignore a couple lines that don’t make much sense, but that’s not a big obstacle to enjoying the stories.
i’m not familiar enough with the source material to know what these conversations were offhand. little help? links to parts of the script or youtubes or whatevers?
There’s very few Doyalist arguments in the replies here. Besides my own argument about how Lucas doesn’t plan things out, but that’s not exactly complimentary to the narrative.
Watsonian: there are very few Force users in the galaxy. At its height, the Jedi Order is a few million Jedi in a galaxy of trillions of sapient beings. Force users were always more legend than something people saw on the regular. If you ever saw one lightsaber in person, it’d be a day you remember forever. The propaganda job wasn’t even that hard. Just pretend they never existed and most people will go on with their lives.
Even as far as Motti is concerned, the Jedi were never that prominent. Just a sad old religion. He would have internalized Imperial policy against Jedi, and he only makes any exception at all for Darth Vader because people above him say he’s important.
That random force lady on Yavin that Andor met? Andor has a good reason to believe she’s a charlatan. Pretty much anyone you meet claiming to have force powers, even before Order 66, is probably a grifter.
In the book “from a certain point of view” Admiral Motti complains about Vader chocking him to the empire’s HR department!
And do they do anything about it? Or is a certain amount of chokage to be expected as an occupational hazard on an Empire vessel?
Imagine the PR flunky trying to writeup Darth Vader, along with signing a form promising not to do it again.
Did they draw straws? Get the intern to do it?
As soon as I saw the picture I thought, Robot Chicken did it. Also Kevin Smith in the Cinema Sins video, if you enjoy Smith but never seen it,you’re missing out, though it does back and forth like they just let everyone say their own sins, but seriously is this the dudes the first day as a senior officer on the death star?
“This could have been an email.”
“email me harder, force daddy”
But, the “stupid religion” turned out to be actual magic. Shut him up PDQ.
