• IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    92
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    2 months ago

    Meanwhile, in real life, we don’t have space wizards who can perform magic, yet we have generals who live in fear of magical leaders of make believe religions.

  • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    2 months ago

    When I saw this scene as a kid, I thought Motti coughed up the yellow button on the console. I didn’t know what it was at the time and thought Vader somehow put some yellow choking pill inside him. It was very disturbing to me. This was before I knew what a Force choke was.

    yellow button

    • teft@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      35
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      “Tons”

      The galactic empire (and the republic before it) spanned billions of inhabited star systems. If each world was billions or trillions of inhabitants that means the galactic population is 1018 or more people. There were only ~10,000 Jedi at their peak. The chances of any galactic citizen seeing a Jedi, unless they lived on Coruscant near the temple, are vanishingly small. They were mythical beings to almost everyone.

        • KomfortablesKissen@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yes, and with childlike naivety he believed those mystical heroes really exist.

          An admiral of the imperial navy is above such childish myths.

            • RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              17
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              That’s what the scene implies. The whole scene makes no sense after the backstory that the prequels added.

              The idea of the scene is that we, the viewer, have no idea what the force is yet. Just like character who learns the hard way. Because this is the first Star Wars movie and they haven’t even started calling it Episode 4 yet.

              • One of Many@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                2 months ago

                I consider Star Wars to be a movie that I have never seen for the “first time”. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t intimately familiar with every scene. I wish I could watch it now and not know what was going on.

              • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                2 months ago

                You could also say that his lackey-force-choking binge hadn’t started yet, because in A New Hope he wasn’t searching for Luke, and in the intro crawl for Empire it describes him as obsessed. Maybe he hadn’t choked anybody till this one guy needled him and he realised he had to get the word out that he was a serious guy.

            • Ricky Rigatoni@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              2 months ago

              Iirc one of the canon comic book series focuses on what vader was doing between III and IV and he was mostly in sith training and special jedi hunting missions for most of the time until IV and had minimal contact with the military. I still need to read it and am going off remembering the tvtropes page and a youtube video so don’t quote me on anything ever from now until the end of time.

            • KomfortablesKissen@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              2 months ago

              It’s been a few years but I think Tarkin introduces Vader a few moments before the choke to the admiral (Motti is the name, BTW)

              Even if he knew of Vader, knew of the force, he still didn’t really believe in it. If not shown to someone it is incredibly unbelievable. He definitely didn’t believe in the force being stronger than the death star, which was voiced and angered Darth Vader resulting in the choke.

              Also, Motti was a pretty cool character. From the linked fandom page:

              Whatever conclusions you ultimately draw about the incident taking place between myself and Lord Vader during yesterday morning’s briefing, he was wrong, and trying to crush someone else’s windpipe doesn’t make you any less wrong, if you’re wrong to begin with. Which he was. I do not concede the argument.

      • piskertariot@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        2 months ago

        If you want to play that way, technically using a 2000lb ton, you’d only need 20-30 Jedi for there to be “Tons”

      • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        I’m going off what was in the movies and other than Coruscant there’s nothing to suggest there’s that many individuals. There are a lot of representatives in the senate but that doesn’t say much about how populated the planets are.

        And, the Jedi had an actual HQ on the home planet of the republic, didn’t they?

        EDIT: And as another counter-example, there’s not that many Secret Service agents but most people in Earth probably know they exist.

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 months ago

        I am not familiar with star wars canon lore, but I am very familiar with astronomical data and I have a well-enough grasp of logistics. So I strongly doubt that any civilization would be able to administrate more than a few tens of thousands of star systems, no matter how efficient they are.

        • Wogi@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 months ago

          The Senate chamber only holds like 2000 senators. So probably that many planets.

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        billions of inhabited star systems.

        Suddenly that massive Galactic Senate Chamber seems cartoonishly tiny. Was the galactic Republic just a dictatorial empire to the high hundreds of millions of worlds/systems that didn’t have a senate pod from which to be heard/represented?

        • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          2 months ago

          I wonder if you could improve that system by creating localised star sector governments, and divesting the currently centralized power to them?

    • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      2 months ago

      The Jedi by that point were as accessible as the heads of the Catholic Church. To most poor people throughout the galaxy, the Jedi didn’t give a shit about you or your suffering, notice how they didn’t do shit about slavery in the galaxy? To most people the Jedi were nothing but self righteous religious do nothings that live in a big palace

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          2 months ago

          Ah yes, “You have criticisms of liberalism so you must love Trump.”

          I know someone will think I’m stretching with this but the parallels are so direct they can’t be avoided.

            • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              I know, I’m just pointing out it’s the same logic. My joke was that I was taking your joke too seriously, but I guess it didn’t come across.

              ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

              EDIT: Idk how to do my little shruggy guy on lemmy markdown. Does it read okay for everyone else? Three backslashes has worked on other markdown based forums I’ve used. Please people, lemmy needs lenny.

              Edit 2: On further inspection this appears to be a Proton frontend issue. I’ll pursue it there.

              • Wogi@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                2 months ago

                It was intentionally absurd. I was planning on pointing out that Nuke the Whales is something an imperial officer would do. It’s all good fun.

                Your shruggie seems ok on my end.

                ┐⁠(⁠´⁠ー⁠`⁠)⁠┌

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Is it really so hard to believe a guy never met someone who only existed in tiny fractions of the galaxy 20 years before. I think its clearly a joke about people who are skeptical of religion (me).

          It’s like asking storm troopers in the clone wars why would they shoot at a Jedi. They are people… Not droids. They made the logical leap a long time ago that the force is a fantasy and is to unlikely to exist, and by the time few of them saw it in real life… They couldn’t take back the first shot and were like… Fuck.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            2 months ago

            I think it’s hard to believe the fact that magic is a real thing wouldn’t get around in a common galactic civilization.

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              2 months ago

              The main character farms water on a planet that is mostly sand, orbitting two stars. He trades with people who steal and refurbish scraps of metal, and gets shot at by people who ride around on giant buffalo like creatures that produce blue milk. I don’t think far away magics were taught in their education system when no one could perform them and his “uncle” only knows the religion as causing corruption and ending in the deaths of millions. Likely just thought of as fairy tales.

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              2 months ago

              I’ve never met the Pope but people say he uses his special religious powers to turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ so they can consume it.

              I don’t believe that actually happens either.

        • dessimbelackis@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          2 months ago

          George was good at story, not so good at worldbuilding, and he was only kind of good at stories by following the hero of a thousand faces archetype

  • Curly722@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    2 months ago

    Imagine you were to do this shit after someone talking about how Jesus will strike sinners down, then suddenly a buff Jesus appears and chokes you out a little bit. Thats what this guy went through.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      2 months ago

      Leave Korean Jesus alone. He ain’t got time for yo problems. He busy. With Korean shit.

  • dev_null
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    2 months ago

    I don’t think he wasn’t believing in the force, he knew Jedi were real, he just wasn’t buying the mysticism surrounding it and didn’t think it’s such a big deal. He knew Vader is a powerful force user, but the Death Star is literally one shotting entire planets, so the force didn’t feel that significant to him in the grand scheme of things.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      He said he didn’t know about the force before he even knew the Death Star existed.

      I think it’s very silly to think there is a galactic civilization but the people in that civilization don’t know, even though there’s absolutely no secret about it, that magic exists.

      Is Han really that ignorant of what’s going on around him? I doubt he’d be that effective a smuggler if he didn’t pay attention to news and politics.

      • sheogorath@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 months ago

        How many Jedi are there during their peak? I think it’s around ten thousand jedi. Compared to the galaxy population of 100 quadrillion sentient beings spread across the galaxy, I’m not too surprised a lot of people thought they’re a myth.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 months ago

          Okay, but we’re not talking about a bunch of inconsequential people. This is an ancient order of magicians who has a lot of control over their government. And then one of the magicians becomes the emperor of the galaxy with his magic power. And all of that when Han Solo was alive. Young, but alive.

          It’s like saying a knowledgeable guy like Han Solo in our world wouldn’t know about Reagan getting shot. He was born in the 70s, he took history classes, he read up stuff on his own, he heard older people talk about it… but he didn’t know it happened.

  • CuriousRefugee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    2 months ago

    And he (Admiral Motti) got the first name of Conan by George Lucas while on the Conan O’Brien show!

  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’m sure he was celebrated for his strength. His body wasn’t just tossed out with the rest of the garbage. Not at all.

  • Jeffool @lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    People are complaining about Motti not knowing Jedi were real. But how many times did we see things written down, much less recorded video/holograms?

    In this essay on how recorded media was made illegal by the Empire to clamp down on shared knowledge and control the public, I will prove without a doubt…

    • JamesTBagg@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      He would have been in the military during the Clone Wars. They served as Generals in the Republic armies. If he had not witnessed the exploits of the Jedi first hand, he most likely would have seen and heard the reports.

  • RedFrank24@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    2 months ago

    He was correct too in a way. It wasn’t The Force that was keeping the Galaxy in line, it was economic and logistical power. If anything, it was the Sith’s constant need for conflict and backstabbing seeping into the officer corps that hampered The Empire, and the Tarkin Doctrine is what happens when you base your military strategy on the whims and wishes of an autocratic religious fanatic.

  • WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    2 months ago

    Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV

    And you think you’re so clever and classless and free

    But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see