2. Marcus's response
No Campbell, YOU are wrong. And I shall prove it.
> Yes, alright, the Rebels do lose Hoth, but it’s not as if they’ve been wiped out or anything. Presumably they had to abandon Yavin after the end of Star Wars, but we never say the Rebels lost that one. Just because they don’t blow up a Death Star, doesn’t mean they got a trashing.
True the rebels aren't wiped out, but it's not as if they are engaging in a planned strategic withdrawl. The empire has caught them with their pants down and they've had to skedaddle double-time. The only thing that saved them from complete annihilation was the ion cannon. If the empire had got to that, the rebels would have been truly ass-f***ed. Let's also bear in mind that they are completely unsuccessful in saving the princess, one of their key figures. She's whisked off by a pirate who openly previously only wanted in for the money and is now more concerned about saving his own neck from Jabba than the rebel cause.
> Luke loses his lightsaber hand, but gets a robotic one instead. In “Return of the Jedi” this ends up helping Luke, as it helps highlight the similarity between himself and his father, who’s hand he removes in a similar fashion, which may help Vader return from the Dark Side (I’ve got no real evidence for this, actually, but it’s not the main point of my argument anyway so I’ll leave it).
Shut it you twat. The only possible way that losing a hand can have an up-side, is if it's replaced with a super-strong terminator-style hand with gun attachments. And Luke's isn't. Should've got Jude Law's hand.
> In pursuing the Millennium Falcon through the asteroid belt, the Empire takes considerable losses, which may range from a handful of Tie Fighters, which we definitely see, up to a whole Star Destroyer, which we sort of see. Either way, it’s a lot of losses given the end result (it‘s Boba Fett that tracks them down). So it is wrong to say the Empire doesn’t take any real losses.
Let's just have a look at the empire's "losses". Some TIE fighters. Well, they're certainly not just mass-produced super-cheap unshielded, non-hyperdrive capable expendable goods at all, are they? Only about 5 seem to get wasted anyway. As for the star destroyer, we see the bridge being hit, but no more. Even so, the empire has a vast fleet, so I doubt one would be missed, although it is a fairly expensive loss to take, but Vader has recognised the usefullness of his prey as well beyond that of an ISD.
> The main point of my argument (at last)
Darth Vader’s objective throughout the whole of ESB is to capture Luke Skywalker, as evidenced by his lines:
His first plan is to capture him on Hoth, along with as many other Rebels as he can, but Luke gets away from Hoth, after first destroying multiple ATATs.
“The Rebels are there, and I’m sure Skywalker is with them.”
“He will join us or die, my master.”
Luke gets 1 ATAT, Wedge gets another. That's a grand total of 2 for the rebellion, whilst their troops are massacred by a hail of laser fire from the empire. Luke does escape from hoth having been shot down by the empire in his speeder. And he was distracted by the probe droid landing which let the wompah get him. If you can use the hand thing, I can use the probe droid.
> Vader’s next plan is to lure Skywalker to Cloud City by capturing Han and Leia and torturing them so that he knows of their pain through the Force. Once there he will either persuade Luke to join him or, if Luke is too goody-two-shoes, kill him. Boba Fett can then take Solo away and Vader will (presumably) take Leia, Chewbacca, C3P0 and R2D2 off with him.
I doubt Vader ever plans to kill luke. Yes, he does want to turn him, but I am in the "Vader wants to kill the emperor with luke and rule" camp. But anyway...
> Vader’s first mistake is to let Boba Fett take Han off before he actually has Luke properly captured, not merely present in the City. This results in Vader not having a further lure when the rest of his plan goes pear-shaped. This is why Han’s capture isn’t a plus for the Empire, as if they’d hung on to him it would have meant the Rebels having to get him back from the Empire’s maximum security stockade.
Of course Han's capture is a plus. The Rebels lost a man that the guy on hoth (whose name I forget) said they would sorely miss. That's like saying that the allies capturing Rommel or Goering in WW2 wouldn't have been useful. Don't be crazy. He could have been used as Bait, but I think Leia, Chewie, C3P0 and R2D2 are probably sufficient.
> Next, Leia and co. escape, thanks to Lando. So Vader’s second mistake was to insist Leia got taken with him rather than being left on Cloud City (who bets Lando wouldn’t have minded that so much, eh?).
No, the real mistake here is that Vader neglected to simply kill everyone on Cloud city as soon as he arrived and then wait for luke behind the landing platform door with a big stick. And taking Leia with him then gives him a powerful bargaining tool as well as a military advantage over the rebels.
> But Vader’s big, BIG mistake, the one that gets him a big L, is that he doesn’t manage to capture or kill Luke. He gets away. Even though he’s rubbish. In the whole fight, Luke only gets one decent hit on Vader without using the Dark Side (that’s the one where he zaps Vader with the broken pipe spewing dry ice, if you’re wondering).
So where did old Darth go wrong then? I don’t know at exactly which moment he lost, but it may be that there was nothing he could have done to make Luke turn to the Dark Side, in which case he would have had to Carbon freeze him or kill him. Vader had ample opportunities to kill Luke, but didn’t take any of them because he wanted to turn him. He only had one chance to freeze him, when Luke fell in the machine, but he blew that one by underestimating Luke’s incredible jumping powers.
How was Vader to know about Yoda's training? He thought all the Jedi were gone. It was only by Yoda's cunning hiding that he survived. We shouldn't forget that Vader completely kicked Luke's whining ass in the fight. It is also sheer luck that luke survives, after throwing himself off the platform at the top of cloud city. And I find it a mite suspicious that Leia, with no jedi training, can hear Luke's thoughts. Luke doesn't turn, Vader beats him down, Luke decides to risk his life instead of turning (which would have suited Vader) but, miraculously, survives. Anyway, even after luke escapes, he can hear Vader "talking" to him. And luke starts to lose faith in Ben, which I'm sure Vader was really unhappy about.
> Vader’s final attempt to capture Luke is very much an emergency-back-up-plan-B, as it’s the one where he has his men deactivate the Falcon’s hyper drive. To add insult to injury, this one is foiled by R2D2.
That ain't no back up plan. It was done well in advance of Vader seeing luke jump. Unless there was a team of imperials on board the falcon as it took off. R2D2 only knows about it 'cos he was pissing around talking to the cloud city computer instead of opening doors. IF R2D2 wasn't such a feckless dreg they would never have escaped.
> So Darth Vader is the big loser of ESB, as he gets defeated by Han Solo’s spaceship, which doesn’t even work properly, then by his own son, who beats him by having his own hand cut off and then jumping to his doom, and then by the droidfriend of a droid he built.
Let's just survey that again.
Vader: Intact, lost a couple of ships. Empire very much alive.
Rebellion: Scattered, no home base, one general frozen in carbonite, last jedi nicknamed "lefty", ground forces depleted from massacre on hoth, head honcho is a fish. Enough said.