Darth Vader’s Plan

The non-awaited sequel to "The Emperor’s Plan"

4. His response to my response to his response

After heavy editing...

>> True the rebels aren't wiped out, but it's not as if they are engaging in a planned strategic withdrawl.

> Perhaps this would be true if they hadn't caught and identified the Probe Droid, but they did, so the Rebels knew the Imps were coming and so had about as much advance warning as the Imps did that the Rebels were on Hoth - Imp invasion plans vs. Reb evacuation plans.

Right, so if they were so well organised, how come they were still there while the imperials landed and started slaughtering their troops? The imperials have a temporarily disabled craft and lose 2 ATATs, while the rebels lose a base, undoubtably a lot of equipment and loads of troops. They are much less able to take the manpower losses than the empire. Again, it is purely the ion cannon that saves them, not any careful plan.

>> 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.

> B'NUH? Rather than respond to this with a similar non-sequitur, I stand by my argument which is based on what eventually does happen.

Right, I'm sure Luke thought, as his hand was severed from his arm "goodness, it's lucky that happened. In the future that will save the galaxy from a fate worse than death." My arse. To continue the WW2 metaphor, I'm sure when Hitler took france he thought "we're going to lose now." Be wise. Also, you simply can't make a reference to an end result of luke's hand loss in a different film. I'll elaborate on this later.

>>> 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.

> Given the end result, any losses can be seen as comparatively large.

What the hell are you talking about? Comparatively large? The end result is that han gets captured, tortured and frozen. He has to flee from the imperials to a nearby system where they are waiting for him anyway. And don't say "it's only because Fett follows him". Who hired Fett? Vader.

>>> 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:
“The Rebels are there, and I’m sure Skywalker is with them.”
“He will join us or die, my master.”

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.

>> Luke gets 1 ATAT, Wedge gets another.

> Yes, sorry, I am wrong here - I forgot it was Wedge who gets the tow cable one.

>> 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.

> Eh, what? Sorry, what's this about?

If you can link the loss of luke's hand in a tenuous manner to Vader becoming good (see above) then I can make the probe droid distracting luke a viable argument. Yes, it is a crap argument, but no less crap than yours.

>>> 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.

> You contradict yourself here. Earlier you claim that Han "previously only wanted in for the money and is now more concerned about saving his own neck from Jabba than the rebel cause"

How is that a contradiction? He is more concerned about saving himself, but at the same time he is an inspirational figure for the rebellion. You can do both. You've seen the new "planet of the apes"? Marky don't-act Mark doesn't give a crap about the people around him but still inspires them to rebel. It's that sort of situation.

>> That's like saying that the allies capturing Rommel or Goering in WW2 wouldn't have been useful.

> Only if they then handed them over to the Israelis (or similar - not sure how far this metaphor will stretch).

Shut up now. Vader gives han to Jabba. Now are you trying to say Jabba likes Han? A better metaphor would be if The allies handed their captive over to the french resistance, or the australians (they were on our side).

>> 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.

> Thank you, that's yet another mistake from the "Dark Lord of Sith" (as he is described on a poster I have).

>> 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

> "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."

Campbell, by all rights Luke was whupped and should have been dead. It is f***ing 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.

> I think Luke broadcasts to Leia. Either that, or Leia hears because she's the other Skywalker - but that asks the question how did Luke know she would hear? Other than the fact that his alternative choices are Chewbacca, C3P0 and R2D2.

As I said, a mite suspicious.

>> 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.

> You misunderstand me here. It's an emergency-back-up-plan-B in case the Rebels escape and try to leave Cloud City on board the Falcon, which they do.

Fair enough.

>> 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.

> But completely failed to accomplish the one thing he spent the entire film trying to do. And that is my point.

No, Luke survives thanks only to luck and Vader has put a massive dent in the rebellions military capability. Does the striker whose team wins 63-0 lose if HE doesn't score? I think not.

>> 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.


But neither would I