• teft@lemmy.world
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      13 days 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
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          13 days 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
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              13 days 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.

              • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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                12 days ago

                It makes much more sense when you view Jedi/Sith as the trope of the warrior monk who has achieved enlightenment. They have gained mystical powers beyond mortal ken etc, but mostly they used it to hit people with laser swords and public knowledge could dismiss a lot of that as physical training and conditioning.

              • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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                12 days 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.

              • One of Many@lemmy.world
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                12 days 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.

            • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee
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              12 days 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
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              12 days 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
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        13 days 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
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        13 days 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
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        13 days 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
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          13 days ago

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

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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        13 days 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
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          13 days 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
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      13 days 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
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          12 days 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
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              12 days 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
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                12 days 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
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          13 days 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
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            13 days 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
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              12 days 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
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              12 days 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
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          13 days 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