The Force is Irrelevant in Star Wars
By @edent
· Star Wars · 5 comments · 550 words
I've been watching the new 4K77 fan-releases of Star Wars (AKA - A New Hope). It is amazing seeing the graininess of the original picture and hearing just how lush the original stereo soundtrack is. There's even some good bonus content in terms of a long-lost LaserDisc commentary.
But rewatching the film made me re-asses what I thought I knew about The Force. My childhood was dominated by trying to perform telekinesis and mind-reading. In retrospect, those are mostly artefacts of Empire and Jedi.
In the original Star Wars, it feels like The Force is irrelevant to the plot. The tiny glimpses we get of a Jedi's awesome powers are (in order):
- Obi-Wan screams at the Sand-People to make them run away. I'm not sure if that's a retconning of a Jedi's powers, but it certainly made no impact on me as a kid.
- Darth Vader uses The Force to choke an Imperial officer. Despite, during the opening scenes, physically choking an Rebel soldier.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi uses The Force to convince some Storm Troopers to let Luke pass without identification. "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded". Yet, a few minutes later in the Cantina, Ben chooses violence and chops off a dude's arm rather than gently mess with his mind.
- Obi-Wan "senses" the destruction of Alderaan. But that doesn't change the ship's destination.
- Luke is able to sense the remote and deflect its blasts - even with the blast-shield down. But, again, not really relevant to the plot.
- Vader thinks he senses Kenobi's presence. This eventually has a pay-off when he reveals Kenobi's presence to Tarkin.
- Kenobi distracts the Storm-Troopers who are guarding the tractor-beam. That's probably the most impactful use of The Force in the whole film!
- Finally, at the end of the movie, Luke switches off his targeting computer and manually fires his proton torpedoes. Does he guide the torpedoes into the exhaust port with the force? Is it skill or luck?
Basically, what I'm saying, is that if The Force didn't exist - the story of Star Wars would remain unaltered.
Think about all the times The Force could have been useful.
- Obi-Wan could have helped Luke get more money for his speeder - and could have convinced Han to ask for less money.
- Obi-Wan didn't sense that they were being followed by Garindan (the guy with the long nose) after selling the speeder.
- At no point does Darth Vader use The Force to read Princess Leia's mind - indeed, he says "her resistance to the mind probe is considerable". Implying that mind-reading isn't in a Sith Lord's skillset?
- Similarly, he doesn't realise that Leia's confession about Dantooine is a lie - although obliquely suggests he know she wouldn't "consciously betray the rebellion".
- Vader's abilities don't seem to extend to distracting the X-Wing pilots he's targeting - nor sensing the Millennium Falcon approaching.
Perhaps my entire childhood was a lie? The Jedi are nothing more than cheap magicians and their main source of power is distraction!
@Edent actually this is one of the things I liked about the Star Wars movie: the Force was kind of ambiguous and mysterious. Did it have an impact or not? Maybe Han was right about it being a lot of "simple tricks"? Maybe it was just an "ancient religion"? Even Obi-Wan disappearing at the end (which you've missed off) was mysterious and ambiguous. The Force got a lot less interesting in subsequent movies - and don't get me started on Midi-chlorians.
@blog I think that falls into the category of...with great power comes, great responsibility. You don't always have to flex with the force. At least at the time of the original trilogy, the force was for the better part an unknown. We learned about it alongside Luke.
To me, that's how it should have stayed, but with each movie, they felt the need to "invent" new forces tricks. Don't get me going about the "forcetime" calls between Rey and Kylo or Luke fighting via Zoom.
Back in the day there was a theory that the mind trick only worked on stormtroopers, likely because they were clones.
@Edent
In the podcast Story and #StarWars, which I think went defunct before Episode VII, the guy argued that the climax of A New Hope was not the Death Star exploding but rather the moment when Luke turned off his targeting computer.
His broader theory was that the original trilogy's conflict was not empire vs. rebellion or technology vs. nature or even good vs. evil, but harmony vs. disharmony. The Empire was wrong because it attempted to impose unnatural & unbalanced uniformity on the galaxy. It could never work, regardless of its badness or goodness. Like you argue (I think), in the first movie the Force was presented as more of a sensitivity to the natural rhythm (harmony) of things. Only later it became more of a traditional comic book superpower of telekinesis and fighting ability. starwars
@Edent the Force is like the speed of the Starfuries in Babylon 5. They move at the speed of plot.
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