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| - 25. Jar Jar Binks "Ex-squeeze me, but the mostest safest place would be Gunga City." Best Moment: All of RotS, except that scene he was in Worst Moment: Accidentally helping Palpatine in AotC, thus directly aiding in the ascent of the Sith Lord to power I really, really wanted to put someone surprising in the lowest spot, like Nute Gunray or something I don't know, but when it came right down to it, I could not justify putting anyone except Jar Jar here. I want you to know something. I have seen every single episode of every single series of Scooby-Doo, save the relaunch in the 2000s. I am as exposed to Scrappy-Doo as anyone. I will say to you now that Scrappy-Doo was a far better character than Jar Jar Binks. I cannot even fathom what George Lucas was going for with this character. With most other characters you can at least guess the idea: Lovable Rogue, Inexperienced Farmboy, Sleazy Businessman, but Jar Jar? "Comic Relief?" He wasn't comic. He wasn't funny. He wasn't anything but a CGI nightmare. I think it was when I rewatched PM after having seen AotC, and realized just how much CGI went into animating his goddamn tongue, that I said to myself "Oh my God, George Lucas has absolutely no idea what made the original trilogy so good." Jar Jar is a creation of a computer: he is a soulless, humorless blemish on a movie that otherwise could have been passable. Certainly, you will find few people will more contempt for the PT than me, but PM could have worked if not for Jar Jar. He comes into the movie and adds nothing. Nothing whatsoever. And the thing is, this is Star Wars. They certainly must have screened it before sending to theaters. There must have been people whose only job was to watch the movie and say what worked and what didn't. How did this character get by them? I mean okay, sure, he helps Qui-Gon find the Gungan city, but since the Gungans were never mentioned after PM who cares? The movie would have worked so much better without Jar Jar or the Gungans. I mean, he taints my very soul. I haven't watched PM in years and his voice is reading this sentence in my head as I type it. "There is a group of fans for the films that doesn't like comic sidekicks. They want the films to be tough like Terminator, and they get very upset and opinionated about anything that has anything to do with being childlike." This is a quote by George Lucas. To paraphrase Maddox, this is a series where Hayden Christianson has three limbs torn off, falls into lava, and has the stumps of his limbs catch on fire, after having slaughtered some toddlers. Yes, George Lucas. This is a series that could do with more childlike, goofy characters that are so cartoonish they wouldn't fit into Tiny Toons. Truly, you have not got insane, Lucas, for you are just such a font of ideas such as these. They should have left the amphibious-adapted Jar Jar on the desert planet of Tatooine when they had the chance. Alas, it was not meant to be, and we even have confirmation that he survived the OT off-screen, denying us even the satisfaction of his death. I will give RotS no credit for removing him; he shouldn't have existed to begin with. That's right. I just ended a sentence with a preposition. 24. Darth Maul " Fear is my ally." Best Moment: His climatic duel with Qui-Gon and death by Obi-Wan's hand Worst Moment: Being consigned to PM Darth Maul. Probably the coolest character design ever that did nothing of consequence. I'm serious: you can't not like Darth Maul's look, and even his hilariously impractical weapon is badass. The guy oozes coolness. And what do they use him for in PM? He is, with no joke here, a mook. He shows up on Tatooine and is all "Hey guys can I be in the movie too?" and when Qui-Gon tells him "No," he attacks. Then he mutters something about the Sith getting revenge on the Jedi because people really care about harming the descendants of the people who harmed their ancestors. For example, I'm Jewish, so I hate Egyptians. This is completely reasonable. In all seriousness, he is just such wasted potential. The only thing of consequence he does is kill Qui-Gon, the only interesting character in the entire damn movie. Maybe they were going for another Darth Vader, another guy whose very aura consists of ripping unborn children out of their mothers' wombs, but Darth Maul just kind of ran around, attacked the heroes for slights their ancestors (and not even their biological ancestors) committed, and was a mook of Palpatine (I would write "Darth Sideous" there, but it's not like they were hiding it even back then). I mean, it really does say something when a webcomic artist comes up with a more compelling and self-consistent backstory for your character than you do (read Darths and Droids. I command it.) And the really sad part is that he's the most recognizable part of PM other than Jar Jar. I mean, think about it: ANH: The climax where they blow up the Death Star ESB: "No, I am your father!" RotJ: Darth Vader chucking Palpatine down the hole AotC: Uh... the Yoda fight scene? RotS: "It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground!" I just feel that even if his actions had been identical, the movie could have been far better if he was a deeper character, given that he was the closest thing to a main antagonist PM had. I mean, give him a backstory about how he wanted to be Jedi but they refused him because he was too old, so he became a Sith. Give him a backstory where a Jedi killed a slaver who set off a bomb that killed his slaves, including Maul's father. Give him a backstory where anything happens other than a half-assed attempt at "I likes me some power and those Jedi are jerks." Even ANH Darth Vader had more depth, and that was back when Vader's personality was "Deep voice and mysterious." And everyone loves Darth Vader, while Darth Maul is only remembered as being the most remarkable part of an adequate movie. My ideal PM would have been sans Jar Jar and Darth Maul being more fleshed out. There are other changes I would make to the PT in general, but those are the ones specific to this movie. 23. Jango Fett "I'm just a simple man, trying to make my way through the universe." And continuing with the "Potentially interesting characters they failed to use properly" move, we have Jango Fett. Now surely this character would never have existed had it not been for Boba Fett's surprise popularity in the OT and pointless death (the movies are more canon than the books, EU fans), but whatever. It was cool that they revealed that Boba and the clone troopers were the same, save Boba's normal aging, but there was nothing really done with it. It was just "Oh, here's an interesting fact." I don't mean that Jango should have contemplated on the ethics of bringing up a son in a galaxy where he is responsible for an entire army's creation so his son will be incapable of being unique, the movie had enough poorly-written dialogue as it was, it's just that Jango didn't have enough going on. The PT didn't need as many villains as it had. What did the OT have? Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader, Jabba the Hutt, and Emperor Palpatine. What did the PT have? Darth Maul, Nute Gunray, Jango Fett, Count Dooku, General Grevious, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader again. It was overloaded with characters it didn't need. Not to mention that Jango's actions didn't make any sense. He hired the most incompetent assassin of all time to kill Padmé (she had like a minute before Anakin and Obi-Wan stopped her, she could have planted a bomb instead of using an elaborate poisonous worm gambit), and why was he hanging out on Kamino? He hated the Jedi, yes, but the army was already created. They no longer needed him, and he had to know Kamino was the place most likely to attract someone he didn't want to deal with (oh, I don't know, a Jedi), and later on he's acting as bodyguard to Count Dooku in an arena where a Jedi army and an army of droids are fighting. This is the rough equivalent of John McClane acting as bodyguard to the God-Emperor of Man from 40K against a dozen T-1000s: he doesn't need it, and even if he did, John McClane isn't going to do crap. Oh well. At least he got a completely pointless death, just like his son would twenty years later. 22. Shmi Skywalker "You can't stop the change any more than you can stop the suns from setting." I remember with my Star Trek write-up, I almost just wrote "OPINIONS CAN BE ARBITRARY AND I OFFER NO EXPLANATION" for one of the characters before deciding I could do better. 21. Watto "Mind tricks don't work on me, only money!" Now I know that George Lucas says Watto isn't meant to be a Jewish parody. I say to that "That's not a good thing." There is a point where it would be better to be racist than to be so completely ignorant of the goings-on of everything that you'd accidentally make a greedy moneylending alien slaver with a huge nose and Yiddish accent who cheats on deals and wears a black hat. I call this the Watto Line. Not to imply that Watto is the worst thing in the series (have you ever counted how many non-white, non-blacks there are in the OT? Precisely none, and there are only two black guys), but I mean come on. Now Watto was of course little more than a vehicle for the plot: they needed to find Anakin, they needed to rescue Anakin, and hey, what says "Fallen Hero" better than "I used to be a slave?" (Now if this were WOT, someone would quote me on that line and link to a pic of Israel) But Watto at least did his job and had a real motivation. I mean, sure, it's not particularly deep, but money is a real motivation and it's not like Watto was meant to be a huge series-defining character like I think they expected of Jar Jar. Watto showed up, talked a bit, rolled a die, and left the plot, and hey, at least he knew when he wasn't needed anymore. 20. General Grievous "GenerAL KENoBI." Now, I've never seen the CW cartoon, wherein I'm told Mace Windu is badass and Grievous isn't useless, so my first exposure to the guy was "Are they trying to make a worse Darth Vader?" I mean, okay. I can handle names. Skywalker, Solo, Gunray (XD at Skywalker being in the spellchecker but Gunray not). I accept that George Lucas is not a master of naming things. But this goes too far. In any case, Grievous' cool design does a lot for him, because if nothing else, he's at least unique. Sure, he's essentially Snidely Whiplash, but okay. Thing is, I was never really sure what he was after. Power? Fine, I guess. He just shows up, runs away, and gets killed by Obi-Wan in a complete filler sequence. Yes, yes, his death is what finally brings down the Separatists, but so what when we could be seeing well-written romance sequences between Anak Okay I can't even finish that sentence. He just seemed like a roadblock, is all. He needed to die, Obi-Wan needed him to die, so it just came off like George Lucas slapping on a top hat, Dick Dasterdly mustache, and monocle on a dude and calling it a day. It would have been better if Dooku didn't die so early and Grievous never existed, so Obi-Wan could hunt down the most interesting character instead. And of course he's the only non-Jedi lightsaber-user in the series (Han got that one scene where he opens up an animal's stomach, but whatever). I admit fully that that at least was pretty cool. But what was with the breathing? They already had a labored breathing character. It was over. Greivous sounded like a chain smoker. In fact, that would have been a better character. Greased up hair, leather jacket human/droid hybrid general with eight mouths, each with four cigarettes in them, trained by Dooku in lightsaber combat. Yes. I shall become a writer and then a Star Wars EU writer, and this shall be my contribution to Star Wars. 19. Padmé Amidala " Stop! Stop now, come back! I love you!" I don't think anyone was satisfied with Padmé, and it occurs to me that maybe that's because Star Wars has the worst female dialogue ever. I mean, Leia's defining line in the OT was "I love you," and only because of Han's response. I'll get to the acting later, but Padmé just wasn't a good character. My Padmé would have been someone Anakin had a creepy crush on that didn't reciprocate or something. My Padmé would have been a badass Jedi the same age as Anakin instead of a teenager when he was a child (which was CREEPY AS CRAP by the way). But no, we got George Lucas' Padmé. I have no real problem with her in PM, I mean, what can you say? She got the job done, but she didn't stand out. I'm not saying a cast as good as the OT would have made the PT a good trilogy, I'm just saying that a cast as good as the OT would have made the PT a good trilogy. Anyway, it's in AotC and RotS that she becomes incredibly bad, and it's because she was defined by Anakin. Sure, sure, she had the whole "Lawful Good senator of freedom" thing going on, but no one remembers those scenes because they were boring and stupid. The scenes we all remember were the sand speech scene and "Annie... I'm pregnant!" And now the acting. What is there to say? Terrible. Unforgivable. It wasn't even hilarious bad acting like Obi-Wan got ("YOU WERE MY BROTHAH, ANAKIN! I LOVED YOU!") or ridiculous bad acting like Anakin got ("FROM MY POINT OF VIEW, THE JEDI ARE EVIL!" and yes, it must be capitalized). It was just bad bad acting. Natalie Portman isn't a bad actress, so I can only blame the director, whoever he was. She said her lines in the flattest way possible every time. It was like two different levels of acting: Hamminess (Anakin and Obi-Wan) and just underacting (Padmé). It was right after the dream where Anakin sees Padmé die that I turned to my friend I was seeing the movie with and said "Oh my God... I think this movie is really bad." Padmé is this high simply because, story wise, I had no real problems with her. I think she should have been a Jedi and not a senator, I think that would have made it more interesting with Anakin doubly breaking the rules and deciding it was okay because he was Anakin Skywalker, and that Padmé would have been more interesting, and I think the PT needed approximately 900% less politics (negative politics is made up for in explosions), but fine. It worked, mostly, save for the fact that it was boring. No one goes to Congress for swordfights (not since Andrew Jackson, anyway), and no one goes to Star Wars for the Senate, and I think that was something so elementary that everyone in the world realized it except for George Lucas. Also I had to write her name out once and then copy-paste it every time I had to write it because of the é. Spread the word. Before I leave her behind, I can't forget to mention the "Liberty dies" line. Sure, Lucas claims the PT was written in the seventies and eighties, but whatever. He's lied before, the exact lines hadn't been written, and come on. That's ridiculously obvious political commentary. NO ONE CARES. 18. Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances." And so we come to the first OT character. If you've forgotten, Tarkin is the old British guy in Episode IV who keeps going on about how awesome the Death Star is and orders Darth Vader around. I know the real reason is that Vader's importance hadn't yet been established, but what was the *real* reason Tarkin got to boss around Vader? Anyway, Tarkin is this high solely because of his Britishness. This has been said before, but Brits make the best villains. And by Brits, I mean anyone with vaguely English accents. I am aware of the difference between England and Britain, but damned if I'm going to press backspace and fix this paragraph. Tarkin didn't quite have a style, like Vader did, for instance, but anyone who can be even remotely intimidating when he has "Moff" in his title is badass by definition. Tarkin essentially came off as the Empire's brains for the movie, since Vader seemed more like a high ranking officer than the real power (funny how that turned out), and the Emperor wasn't in Episode IV. Tarkin didn't really do much beyond threaten Leia and order things to be blown up, but that's fine: leaders don't really go out and kill things themselves. Look at Order 66: who survived it? Obi-Wan, who wasn't leading troops at the time, and Yoda, who was leading troops but was in the back. I liked Tarkin, and here we're reaching the point where I like the characters, but the fact is that Tarkin didn't really have a lot going on. He was just there to be slimy, and yes, he did do that very, very well. 17. Wedge Antilles "Red Two standing by." The Catholic Church recently proclaimed him to be the patron saint of minor characters people fall in love with. Wedge Antilles absolutely blows all the other competitors out of the water. Sure, have your Mako Tsunamis, have your Edwin Odessireons. No one even comes close to Wedge, and he had like eight lines in all three movies combined and one of them was an apology for running away. I'm told that in the EU he has the best ratio of screen time from the movies to importance in the books, even counting like those nonsense cantina characters who had a quarter of a second of screen time and get full backstories because Star Wars fans, the hardcore Trekkie-equivalents, are absolutely insane. I mean, I know the Trekkie stereotype is a fat bespectacled virgin nerd, but the Star Wars one ought to be a crazy nitpicking bastard who goes over every frame of every scene. Well, back to Wedge. If nothing else, he has a badass name. Can you imagine? "Hi, I'm Frank." "Lars." "Andrew." "Wedge." "Adam." Look, I suppose I'm affected too. There's no reason to like Wedge. He just shows up, happens to survive the Death Star run when more noticeable characters like Biggs and Porky die, and then I think he's in the final scene again. I don't even remember what he did in ESB, I just remember he was in it. I'm going to assume he fought the AT-ATs, because that was like the only scene with the Rebels in it. And then in RotJ he's all like "hay guys i herd you leik death stars blowing up." I mean, sure, Lando helping to destroy the Death Star makes perfect sense: he's a main character. Main characters get to do whatever they want. Wedge is an expert dogfighter but he's as minor as named characters get. In any case, Wedge is nonsensically awesome. There is really no reason why he's anywhere near as popular as he is, and yet, he is, despite being the Star Wars equivalent of Ludwig von Koopa in terms of importance in the movies (yes, I did go back and add those three words because I realized people would get on my case about how important he is in the EU). Hell, he even gets characters named for him in Final Fantasy. They were retconned as the two soldiers who complain to Cecil in FFIV about how evil the Empire now is, they were Imperial soldiers in FFVI, freedom fighters in FFVII, imperial soldiers in FFVIII, guards/blitzballers in FFX, and apparently he and Biggs weren't in FFIX or XI, and their names were mistranslated in XII into Gibbs and Deweg. Really. Deweg. I see how Biggs turns into Gibbs, sort of, but Wedge into Deweg? How do you even do that? Well in any case, everyone loves Wedge, and I'm no exception. I will not, however, allow my unjustifiable love for him overshadow the fact that while I can name him by memory he is only slightly more important than Admiral Ackbar. 16. C-3PO "It's against my programming to impersonate a deity." And now we come to a character that is lower than he otherwise would be because of the PT. C-3PO and R2-D2 should not have been in the PT, especially C-3PO. You could tell they were shoehorned in, I mean, come on. I'm totally willing to buy that a little kid, at an age when I was most concerned about whether Rugrats was going to be a new episode or a rerun, has built a pod racer. Okay. But he's also built a droid? I know it's not that great a stretch, but if he's spending all his time being a fulltime slave to Watto, where the hell is he getting all this time to build advanced mechanical equipment? Hell, you can't even claim that it was over a period of years because he's like nine years old and he couldn't have started when he was six. Anyway, with that out of the way, C-3PO should not have been in the PT in anything but a cameo capacity. He had no purpose in the movies, could you tell? He seriously did nothing in PM except make some "I'm not going a spaceship" jokes, he does nothing in AotC except be a load, and in RotS he seriously does one thing the entire movie: drag Padmé into a ship while she's unconscious. I suggest that the PT would have been more interesting if instead of C-3PO we had gotten HK-47. At least in the OT his presence made sense: in ANH R2-D2 needed him to communicate, he was his partner in any case, in ESB only he can speak to the Millennium Falcon and confirms the Empire's coding wasn't a language, and in RotJ... I don't know. Whatever. C-3PO always did come off as kind of a load, with R2-D2 being vastly more useful than him, and he could easily have been cut out of the plot if everyone could just understand Droidspeak, but okay I guess. I suppose C-3PO was probably the official comic relief of the movies, since he gets the most straight jokes and he's usually partnered with R2-D2, a character that just about everyone on the planet loves, but he never came off as too annoying in the OT, and when he did, it was usually a joke so it worked. I know a lot of people didn't like C-3PO, and in all fairness he's easily the most annoying of the OT's main cast, but I always did. I remember I first saw Star Wars in the 1997 rerelease in theaters and I was like "Get back to Luke" whenever C-3PO was on screen, but he never bothered me directly. But I'm still annoyed at his portrayal in the PT. He should not have been in it, you know? I'll go more into this in the R2-D2 write-up, but suffice to say I might have placed him higher if he hadn't been so utterly pointless in the PT. I mean, I understand that you can handwave it with "The Force," but isn't it ridiculous that Anakin built a droid that, purely by chance, would happen to be partnered with another droid so that they would both join a rebellion that formed to fight an empire that Anakin had a direct hand in creating, and happen to meet Anakin's son (who to hide from his father was given to his uncle: this is Jedi logic at work, people) who would take them to the Jedi that met Anakin's creation over twenty years ago when it was still being put together, and then lie about it to Luke (more on that in Obi-Wan's write-up). And also, why would C-3PO claim it's against his programming to impersonate a deity and then do precisely that five seconds later? I suppose this means that C-3PO was at his height in ANH. 15. Count Dooku "Twice the pride, double the fall." Best Moment: The fight with Yoda Worst Moment: Saying nothing while Palpatine betrayed him Yeah I don't really know why he's so high up here. Dooku was even more of a tool than most characters were and he had a silly name on top of it. "Duke Dooku" would have been better if they were going for full-blown silliness. Ah well. Count Dooku was sort of cool, I admit. It had almost entirely to do with his being a billion years old and yet keeping up with everyone else. In all seriousness he looks like he belonged in the Over 80 Basketball League with Abe Simpson and Mr. Burns. I remember before RotS but after AotC, there was some discussion that Dooku would be the Emperor from the OT simply because Palpatine was so obvious. That... didn't really pan out, I guess. I won't lie: I don't remember his role in AotC perfectly, and I can't force myself to sit through it again. As I recall, he was on Geonosis, tried to execute Obi-Wan, had Jango Fett as his bodyguard (the hell?) and then fought Yoda in a scene that I remember made the entire audience laugh at Yoda's tiny lightsaber. That I remember perfectly, if only because Yoda made a big deal in ESB about how the size of something makes no difference to the Force and lifts up Luke's X-wing, and yet here he struggled to lift a pipe. I remember when I went to see RotS and Obi-Wan and Anakin reached Dooku five minutes into the movie and killed his ass, I was just like "What?" He was a major antagonist in the previous movie and his role was cut to him jumping around like a jackass for two minutes before Anakin executed him. I mean of course it was Anakin's movie and Dooku needed to die so they could concentrate the real villain, but still. So I suppose that yet again I am forced to conclude this write-up with "Interesting, but poorly executed." I never thought about it before this list, but Star Wars has a lot of characters like that. Fortunately Dooku is the last one on my list. 14. Qui-Gon Jinn "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." Best Moment: Being the only good actor in PM Worst Moment: Making a conscious decision to not kill Jar Jar I think I speak for everyone ever born in the history of existence when I say that Qui-Gon Jinn was one of only two good characters invented in the PT (the other being Mace Windu). He was, without a doubt, the best part of PM. I mean, yes, it was he that explained midi-chlorians (ugh ugh ugh), but looking past that (and it's not easy) you see a character who was honestly interesting. Anakin got a pass simply because he was already Darth Vader, and Obi-Wan and Yoda also got passes because we knew they'd be interesting, developed characters... decades later. Qui-Gon was the only good part of PM, and it's telling that AotC was, and I say this with no exaggeration, at least as bad as the fifth Star Trek movie and it lacked him. I hate to admit it, but I may be giving Qui-Gon too much credit simply for being an adequate character surrounded by horrible ones. Anakin as a kid, Obi-Wan as a twenty-something, and Jar Jar were his competition for Best Character In Phantom Menace. This is like putting my friend Travis, who is 6'5" and 300 lbs, up against my thirteen year-old sister in an arm-wrestling contest. This is like putting Lucian Alliance ships up against a top-of-the-line Tau'ri vessel, or what should have happened argh Stargate continuity wanting an excuse to remake BSG. Qui-Gon wasn't a hugely compelling character, and in fact it's his fault the Empire ever existed. In addition to helping Jar Jar along on his way to becoming a senator and thus helping Palpatine take over, Qui-Gon ignored the advice of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Mace Windu and emotionally blackmailed Obi-Wan into training Anakin. After being explicitly told by Yoda that that was a bad idea. Granted, Yoda was the same person who can detect subtle emotional changes but not a conspiracy involving everyone in the entire Republic other than the Jedi, but still. Even if he had thought Anakin as a Jedi was the way to go, forcing his Padawan into doing it was a pretty impressively jackass move for a hero. And I am willing to say that that symbolizes Qui-Gon's flawed nature, simply because I want to be able to say that at least one character in the movie was good, because I saw that pile of crap four times (once expecting it to be good, once for my friend's birthday, and twice since as "I'm going to watch the entire series all at once" deals) One fun fact is that Qui-Gon is sixty. Didn't know that, because he looks forty? Here's another: Obi-Wan in ANH is also sixty, and yet he looks like he's the same age as Dooku. There is absolutely no explanation whatsoever, because every single Jedi aged slowly except for Obi-Wan. I mean, yes, "He lived on a desert planet. That's got to suck," but whatever. The stupid PT messed up continuity, too. 13. Princess Leia "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." Best Moment: Tricking the Empire in an attempt to save Alderaan? Worst Moment: Realizing the Empire let them escape, and leading the Millennium Falcon to the Rebel base anyway You know what's weird? That the "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" thing never became a true internet meme. I can only theorize that it simply burned itself out back in the seventies and eighties so even today it's even more off-limits than AYB references. Looking back, Leia was only important in ANH. She was necessary to lead the group to the Rebel base and help introduce the villains (since Darth Vader doesn't meet the rest of the cast until the last part of the second act and Tarkin never meets anyone but her), but in ESB she just hanged out with Han and was there to be rescued by Luke (not that Luke had anything whatsoever to do with her rescue since Lando was the one who did it, and indeed she had to rescue Luke, but whatever, I guess). She was the one who convinced everyone to go back to rescue Luke, but that was like it. I can't even remember her doing anything in RotJ other than speaking with Luke, interacting with the ewoks (argh) and falling in love with Han. Oh, and nearly getting killed by those walker things in the forest when she and Han try to open a door. I get the feeling that half the reason she existed was to be a girl. I heard that before she was created, Lucas realized ANH had no girls in it and almost rewrote Luke to be female, but I can't confirm that. And you know what? Star Wars has almost no girls. I'm not talking about the main characters, the only girls I remember in the entire OT are Leia, the "many bothans died" woman, some of Jabba's slaves, and Aunt Beru. I have seriously sat here for the past minute trying to think of another one and I have failed. PT can screw off for all I care. I suppose I should mention this: I first saw Star Wars in the 1997 rerelease, and I remember my thoughts perfectly when I saw RotJ: Luke: "We're brother and sister." Leia: "I knew... somehow, I always knew!" Me: "Oh wow that is the creepiest thing I have ever seen and I know a kid named Maxwell Kreep." Well, I guess that's it for Leia. She wasn't a hugely compelling character and her acting wasn't really there in RotJ, and she's this high mostly because she's a main character from when the franchise was good. 12. Chewbacca "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Best Moment: Smugly "beating" R2D2 in weirdo chess Worst Moment: Being in RotS Well, it's time for another fan favorite. In retrospect, Chewbacca was not quite useless to the plot, but could have easily been written out. In ANH, how did the prison guards buy Chewbacca being a prisoner for a second? No one had been found in the Millennium Falcon, they were presumably nowhere near Kashyyyk (damn you KotOR for making me remember the wookiee homeworld), and everyone on the Death Star was human. Chewbacca wouldn't have made sense even as a prisoner, had they not known of him before, which they did not. Why the hell did the Death Star even have a prison large enough that the guard desk can't keep track of all the prisoners? Sure, they needed somewhere to keep Leia, but this is a superweapon, not a... thing where you have prisons. He did nothing of importance in ESB except find C3-PO (who was also somewhat pointless to the plot, given that all he did was complain, tell Han Solo the odds, and state what we'd already realized) and strangle Lando (heheh, more on that in Lando's write-up), but at least in RotJ he got that moment when he beat up some Imperial dudes and stole a walker. You may notice here that Chewbacca is even more peripheral to the plot than Wedge is, but hell, come on, we all love him. He was huge, furry, strong, and awesome, and spent basically all of his screentime intimidating things or beating things up, depending on which was more useful. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the three best known alien races in fiction are kryptonians, vulcans, and wookiees. Hutts and klingons place high, too. I heard that in EU Chewbacca has a heroic sacrifice to prove that things are serious for real (because, you know, the movies weren't about the galaxy's most tremulous time, no, it's the books that detail that) during the Yuuzan Vong arc. To my understanding, the Yuuzan Vong are tattooed masochists organic technology-worshipping psychopaths who are from another galaxy and believe twins are magically destined to duel to the death. I knew a pair of twins back in elementary school, one of them, Adam, had the same name as me. From what I remember, all they did was play Oregon Trail a lot. One of them collected crystals. They never dueled to the death because of destiny. I get the feeling that I've missed only insane plot twists by not immersing myself in the EU. I mean, a galaxy where Boba Fett died? Unfortunate, but livable. A galaxy without Chewbacca? Madness. Like Wedge, it was impossible to not like Chewbacca. Sure, he was really only there to be a sidekick to Han, but Han rocked your race off, so whatever, man, so what if Chewbacca didn't actually have any lines beyond "Rargh" and communicated only with impractical futuristic crossbow technology? I think everyone loved Chewbacca, honestly. Is there anything not to like about him? He didn't really steal any scenes like Han did or anything, but come on. Chewbacca. Who doesn't love him? 11. Boba Fett "He's no good to me dead." Sorry Fett, you've gone as far as you're going to go. I love you, and I was willing to let slide the fact that you're about as important as Wedge, but sorry. So according to the Star Wars Wiki, Boba Fett didn't originally have that weird (New Zealand?) accent, and it was overdubbed for the special editions because Lucas figured "Hell, why not?" Strange, because his completely out-of-place accent was pretty cool. Alright, I should get this out of the way: if Han Solo's hyperdrive was out of commission until he reached Cloud City, how did he reach it? If he was in the same solar system as Cloud City already then why did he go over with Leia potential planets to go to, if there was only one option? How could the Empire not guess Han was going to the one place he was physically capable of getting to? And although it's unclear how long it took them to reach Lando, it certainly wasn't the years and years it would have taken to travel through the depths of space at sublight speeds. Anyway, Boba Fett. The guy is like Wedge squared. He does one important thing and the fandom falls in love with him. I'm serious, Boba Fett tracked Han Solo down and that was it and the fans cannot get enough of him. I've heard his accent is getting its own book. They even retconned Fett back to life even though he was in no uncertain terms eaten by the torture worm thing. How does such a lifeform even evolve? It couldn't move around, it was large enough that it had to eat frequently, and nothing comes to random areas of the desert. The only person who even seemed to know about it was Jabba. Well, in any case, Fett just had this aura. It was unexplainable: he wasn't a Jedi, he wasn't a Sith, he had no superpowers or anything but his wits. He was armed with a blaster, some cool armor, and an accent, and yet he managed to be the first (and for decades, only) non-Jedi to actually harm a Jedi (even if Luke quickly overcame him). And it was believable! In the OT and PM, the Jedi were invincible warrior-ninjas who easily overcame everything that didn't have a lightsaber EXCEPT for Boba Fett. There was no reason for it. He was just that good. Of course then AotC came along and mass-produced random-ass battle droids were able to kill Jedi (not main characters, of course) and then Order 66 had them gunned down by the dozen, but AT THE TIME BOBA FETT WAS MADE OF AWESOME. It was believable simply because Boba Fett was incredibly mysterious and radiated cool. Of course he was edged out cool-wise by Darth Vader in ESB, but in RotJ during act one when he's palling around with Jabba the Hutt (why, again? He already had the money for Solo) there was no one even slightly cool around except him. Jabba was Henry VIII as a slug monster, Luke was believable as a newbie Jedi but as a full-blown Jedi Knight had issues, Harrison Ford had put on like pounds since ESB (carbonite does that to you, it seems), Leia wasn't even in the same room as badass, and the droids don't count, leaving just the Fett. He took center stage even when he was in the background, which was all the time. I wish he hadn't been in AotC. No one cares about badass' non-badass childhoods. You would think they learned that from PM, where instead of busting out of his mother's womb and strangling men, Anakin was a whiny slave child. And then we have young Boba Fett, who is only moderately more cool than young Anakin. Why? Who cares? Minor background characters that get huge followings get them because there's not enough of them, so they're mysterious and cool. I get the Star Wars EU gimmick is "There will not be a single unexplained facet of this universe. You will know which tailor designed the plastic things at the ends of the shoelaces that Luke Skywalker wore as a farmboy," but come on. No one wanted to see more of Wedge Antilles. He didn't belong as anything but a dogfighter, and Boba Fett? Didn't belong as anything but a weirdly-accented badass bounty hunter. Did we need to know that his father was a jerkass who got pointlessly killed by Samuel L. Jackson? WAS THIS SOMETHING CRITICALLY NECESSARY TO KNOW? Well, in any case, Boba Fett died in the most fantastically stupid and pointless way possible, to a point where it was very possible that the main characters didn't even realize they'd killed him. I have no idea where Lucas was going with that. OH MY GOD LUKE SOUNDS LIKE LUCAS. WHAT THE HELL, I JUST NOTICED THAT. OH MY HELL. 10. Jabba the Hutt "This bounty hunter is my kind of scum! Fearless and inventive." And in other news, stupid cameos are just that: stupid. Jabba shouldn't have been in PM, but hey, at least Lucas was wise enough to realize he didn't need a major role like C3-PO did. I don't know what it is about Jabba. Maybe is the space gangster vibe that reminds of A Piece of the Action (a Star Trek episode where there's a planet of 1930s Chicago gangsters). Maybe it's the ridiculous opulence combined with the literal two movies of build up to him. Maybe it's his honestly creative design. Maybe it's that he was the inventor of the golden slave bikini thing. Whatever it is, Jabba got only a few minutes of screentime, dying horribly at the end of act 1, and you never at any point believed he stood an honest chance against the heroes, but he made just so much of the time he had. You know, in an instant, what he is: an evil overindulgent bastard. There's no doubt, and even his language sounds gluttonously evil, although, with my knowledge that Huttese was an actual, real-life language (Quechua), maybe I shouldn't mention that. Hey, want to see Jabba's original design? Damn did we luck out. Can you imagine a race of interstellar gangster... yellow dudes? Of course, when you actually think about it, I'm somewhat unsure of why a slug would live in a perilously hot environment, and it was clearly hot even in his palace, but okay, I guess. Whatever. Jabba just had a vibe. You knew he was this unforgivable gluttonous slug gangster, and that that was all he was and nothing more, and the deepest thought he had the entire movie was "This guy is my kind of scum," and yet he did it so well (which is impressive, given that he was a puppet and couldn't be acted) that you couldn't help but like him. Which sucks, because from a storyline perspective, act 1 was completely pointless other than rescuing Han. The events are never mentioned again and only serve to show that Luke is full-fledged Jedi now, making Jabba totally superfluous. 9. Mace Windu "I sense a great deal of confusion in you, young Skywalker. There is much fear that clouds your judgment." Best Moment: The duel with Palpatine Worst Moment: Trying to execute Palpatine in the most elaborate way possible, thus allowing Anakin to murder him I will not lie: Mace Windu got here based on the strength of his actor. If someone less interesting than Samuel L. Jackson had portrayed him, doubtless I wouldn't have put him on this list because I'd just forget about him. In fact, it's entirely possible his role wouldn't have been that big anyway simply because Jackson was probably one of the better actors in the PT. I don't mean Jackson is the best actor of the actors in the PT, I mean that he was the best actor in the PT. I mean that he's the only non-puppet who delivered his lines believably and didn't ham up or under act in every single scene he was in. He came on, and you were like "Oh, it's Mace Windu," instead of "Jesus goddamn Christ 'Annie, I'm pregnant!' really? This is how you deliver a line, Natalie Portman?" My suspension of disbelief is not something I give easily, and when your story involves psychic ninja-paladins with laser swords fighting evil psychic ninja-paladins with red laser swords, you had better have acting that doesn't push the suspension of disbelief any further. The OT had adequate acting, and the PT, save for Windu and Qui-Gon Jinn, quite simply did not. Jackson didn't even have to have great acting, and hell, I won't claim he did: I don't remember. I just remember him being believable, and I guess in a movie with lines like "YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE" and "I HATE YOU" (and yes, they must be capitalized) that was what was necessary. So, Windu as a character. He was cool, but I'm not really sure what his point was. In the movies he was a human straight-laced never-tempted warrior with no major personality problems who served as a mentor to Anakin despite having recommended against his entry into the Jedi, but did I just describe Windu or Obi-Wan? Okay, Windu's fighting style did involve channeling the dark side or something, but that was never mentioned in the movies, that's ambiguously canon EU stuff (all EU stuff is, to me, ambiguously canon, though I won't claim to understand the impossibly complex Star Wars canon system). And also he inspired years worth of topics over whether he could have taken Palpatine in single combat, since Palpatine's plan revolved around Anakin coming to "save" him, but then again, Windu was supposedly the best duelist ever. And I heard he was pretty cool in CW. And his pointlessly purple lightsaber. Gotta love that. And being one of three black people in the Star Wars galaxy (the others being Lando and an X-Wing fighter with, no joke, a third of a second of screentime. I think his name was Gix Fixit or something like that). I am concerned that I placed Windu higher than he deserved, but product of his environment, right? Of course he's going to seem like a golden bastion of awesomeness when he's next to Padmé and Jar Jar. If he'd somehow been in the OT (it's my understanding that something like sixty Jedi survived the OT offscreen in the EU, which kind of dilutes the "Last of the Jedi" thing Luke had going on) he'd have been not a fraction as notable as he was. Ah well. He was cool, you have to give him that. I mean, regardless of your opinions on the PT, and you'll find few people more contemptuous of it than me, you have to give him credit for being cool. Even his name was cool. It's almost enough to make you forget how little personality he had and the fact that he decided Palpatine wasn't entitled to due process (admittedly, he had a damn good reason, but still). 8. Lando Calrissian "Come on, Han, old buddy, don't let me down." Best Moment: Blowing up the Death Star Worst Moment: Releasing Chewbacca before explaining his plan "Hey George, great movie, everyone loved Star Wars." "Thanks." "One quick thing though: why was it Leia and Beru were the only women and there were no non-white people?" This is how I assume Lando to have been born, and I refuse to put any effort into researching it. I wonder why he was a real main character, you know? It would have been easy to have him pull a heroic sacrifice during the Cloud City scene and write him off as EU Han backstory fodder. Redemption equals death, and such. Part of the reason Lando is this high up is that he retained his personality even in RotJ, as opposed to Han. Lando was still a slightly slimy scoundrel even in RotJ when he was at his straightest, most heroic. The movie needed a character like that. Lando just swaggers (yes, swaggers) onto the scene in his light blue silk thing and cape, an honest to God cape, and is all like "I'm black Han Solo, except I'm successful." He even has a city in the clouds, and seriously, as far as cities go, a cloud city is top billing. Check out the episode of Star Trek were the cloud city for more information: everyone in it is awesome and ancient Greek-themed, and everyone not in it wishes they were. Lando may have gotten played by Darth Vader really, really easily, but hey, in the end he proved to have the chops to do the right thing, and even helped rescue Han (who... kind of didn't call Lando on his betrayal) and it was he who personally blew up the second Death Star and ended the threat of IG-88 forever (okay, okay, in all seriousness, it's things like IG-88 that make the EU hilarious to me). Wedge was there too, they got drinks afterwards. Fun fact: of all the OT main characters, Lando has the second most interaction with Vader, after Luke and beating even Obi-Wan. Lando worked best, obviously, when working with Han in a scene, which is a shame because they didn't have enough opportunities for that. Other than that, he had no real connection to any other major character except Chewbacca, which kind of hurt him. I mean, he basically hit on Leia, joked with Chewbacca, and rescued Luke, and that was it for his interactions with other characters. He was essentially a loner character, since most of his scenes in RotJ were with that weird alien guy with the gigantic ears. I heard the original plan was for him to have a heroic sacrifice with the Falcon and blow up the Death Star, but they changed their minds at the last moment. I've heard that from a screentime-to-EU importance ratio, Lando gets the worst of any character. Sucks. And come on. That is the sexiest name ever. It rolls off of the goddamn tongue is what it does. Lann-dough Calrissian. Lando also managed to dodge being in the PT, although I admit, it would have been cool if instead of Tatooine, PM had taken place in the Cloud City, with a cameo by Lando's dad, and Anakin being a wealthy spoiled teenager instead of an annoying nine year-old and the prequel trilogy being a completely different story with nothing in common with the one we got. 7. R2-D2 "Beep." 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Han Solo "I know." Well, I know a lot of people expected Han to be number one, or at least be in the top five. Sorry folks. This is how I roll. The characters from the OT were all archetypes, and Han was the most archetypical of them all: lovable rogue. That was it. And yet he was incredible. No one will ever tell you they didn't like Han. There are people who didn't like Han in RotJ, but they still liked him overall. And it is because he contrasted to straight-laced hero Luke so well that every scene he was in he came off as even cooler than he already was, because let's face it, Luke may be great and everything, but he'd be lucky to be a fifth as cool as Han. He flies around in space! In a greasy bucket of bolts. He has daring adventures against bounty hunters! Because he's an incompetent smuggler and they work for his boss. He helps the heroes against the Stormtroopers! Because they have his money. He'll stage a daring rescue for the sake of a rebel princess! Because she has LOTS of money. He was also by far the most entertaining person in the series, with the largest number of actual jokes, since the rest of the team was serious most of the time or couldn't speak. And Harrison Ford had the best lines. Leia (heartbreakingly as the man she's fallen in love with against her will is torn away from her, seemingly forever): "I love you!" Han: "I know." I remember I watched the OT in a film class in high school once (RotS hadn't come out yet), and almost everyone burst out laughing at that. One girl who had never seen the movie before was all like "Oh my God..." and looked like she was hurt, personally. Plus there was the part where he tries to bluff the prison guards on the other end of the radio in ANH, the part where he single-handedly saves the day (by the way, I get why the X-Wings could maneuver through the laser turrets, but how could the Falcon, which was huge comparatively, shoot down Vader's fighter if the turrets could get anything bigger than "a small, one-man fighter?" And of course essentially everything in ESB. It wasn't merely that Han rocked on his own, which he did, but that he rounded out the group. Luke was the hero, Obi-Wan was the old guy, Leia was the official girl, and Chewbacca ran around a lot and hurt things. Han was the only one with style after Obi-Wan died and before Lando joined. And this brings me sadly to RotJ. I liked RotJ, but the problem was that Han Solo was like a different character. I know, I know, "character development," but come on. ANH Solo would have ripped those ewoks a new one for trying to eat him, but RotJ Solo is a straight hero like Luke is. No longer does he contrast the heroes by being the antihero, he's simply a third main character. I mean, it's subtle enough and over a long enough period of time, and his major concern (Jabba trying to get him) had been dealt with by Luke and Leia, but come on. Also, funnily enough, Han has one of the highest named character kill counts, having killed Boba Fett and Greedo. Leia took out Jabba, Luke took out no one named unless you count his destruction of the Death Star, in which case he killed Tarkin, and Obi-Wan, the Emperor, Yoda, and Lando took out no one in the OT. Only Darth Vader beats Han, with Obi-Wan, the Emperor, and that admiral and captain he force choked for incompetency. This helped Han, you know? You knew he was going to place his life above his passengers' because he was a slimy antihero, at least until RotJ. He tries to abandon the Rebels twice, casually strolls out of a bar after killing a bounty hunter after him for reasons that are entirely his own fault, cracks jokes about the Force, only does anything in ANH for the promise of money, and the only unambiguously GOOD thing he does, that does not in any way benefit himself, in the first two movies is save Luke from freezing to death. He also became the only non-Jedi movie character to wield a lightsaber, if only for a second, which is something. It just annoys me that RotJ dilutes this. Sure, it would benefit him to see the Empire fall, but come on. In any case, I can't not mention Greedo. It is a goddamn travesty that Lucas made Greedo shoot first, and that is all I will say about it. I liked Han, everyone did. Star Wars was my first exposure to his archetype (antiheroic rogue), so I extra-liked him. I heard he's the one who finally kills the Emperor in the EU, too. That's stupid. 5. Luke Skywalker "Red Five standing by." Best Moment: The final Vader/Luke fight on the second Death Star Worst Moment: Giving Jabba like eleven chances to surrender, knowing perfectly well it was a waste of time There are people who will say that Darth Vader was the protagonist of Star Wars, being the only character to be alive in every movie (droids not actually being "alive" and Yoda and the Emperor not being in ANH), the prequels revolving around him, and half of RotJ being devoted to his redemption. Those people are communists, because Luke will forever be the main character of Star Wars. Hell, he's the main character of science-fiction. What Superman is to superhero comics, what Dracula is to horror fiction, and what Sherlock Holmes is to detective stories, Luke is to science-fiction. Hell, he was literally designed out of a book on how to make heroes. He was built, ground-up, to be a hero and nothing else. They even knew that blue was the color of heroism and gave Vader the red lightsaber. Luke could be nothing but the hero. I don't know a single person who doesn't like Luke. Oh, everyone likes some other character more, but in terms of greatest appeal Luke wins pretty much everyone. So in ANH, he starts off not knowing anything about anything. He's a normal dude who's still living with his aunt and uncle and is frustrated at how boring his life is. He's put his commoner skill point into farming, droid maintenance, and complaining. Then BAM it's Obi-Wan Kenobi there telling him he has an honest-to-God goddamn DESTINY. And what does Luke do? He goes and rescues a princess and blows up a superweapon. I can't imagine a farmboy had any experience flying an X-Wing before, but he does so anyway because there needed to be a main character in the climax and Obi-Wan was dead, Han and Chewbacca were busy, and Lucas would be damned before he let a girl do anything important. Luke uses the Force despite having had about two minutes of actual Jedi training and saves the galaxy. Then in ESB, after the "nearly freezing to death" fiasco, Luke takes down some AT-ATs and then single-handedly destroys one on foot before getting some training from Yoda. Now, just so you know this: Han and Leia had the whole "run away from the Empire" thing at about the same time Luke reached the Dagobah System, and he left Yoda about the same time they reached Cloud City. Which means Luke, with possibly a week of Jedi training, is able to fight-though-not-match Vader in single combat and even then he DARTH VADER IS YOUR FATHER HOW DO YOU REACT? Of course in RotJ he wasn't as cool. The simple fact of the matter is that Luke was a believable "Jedi-in-training" but kind of lacked the dignity to pull off being a real Jedi Knight. Oh sure, he handles Jabba easily, but all things considered Jabba was a punk and died like one. He didn't even go down to a Jedi and he died in a painful-looking IT TURNS OUT YOU WERE SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO YOUR SISTER HOW DO YOU REACT? Not at all, apparently. "Luke, Leia is your sister. Sorry for totally not telling you all the times I could have and saving you the retrospectively awkward kiss. Yoda knew, too. Apparently Leia did as well, which she explicitly tells you. R2-D2 knew, and C2-PO used to know. Hell, it's not even impossible that Palpatine knew." "So Vader and I were the only people who didn't know." "AND Han." I remember watching ESB in that class I mentioned earlier and half the class making "ugh" faces when they kissed. I absolutely love the Luke-Vader lightsaber battle in RotJ. It's so perfect. I won't mention Palpatine's part in it (I'm saving that for his write-up), but Luke's absolute devotion to his father going beyond logic, and the already-established "Anger makes you evil" part of Star Wars, made it one of the only Power of Love scenes in fiction that honestly completely worked, especially because Luke comes within a hair's breadth of succumbing to the Dark Side when Vader threatens to turn Leia to the Dark Side. It's just so well acted and well done, and interspliced with the best space battle in cinema. It's kind of funny that Luke devotes himself to saving Vader only because he's his father, and doesn't even bother with Palpatine. He even offered to let Jabba live, but Palps? Luke doesn't even try. By the way, what was with the voluntary disarming himself when he refuses Palpatine for the last time? I get the refusal, and it actually wouldn't really have mattered since Lando was about to blow up the Death Star in any case, but Palpatine was kind of the most evil man in existence and Luke needed him to die. In any case, Luke is just a pillar of fiction. He's a classic. He was the perfect example of The Hero's Journey, and he's one of only a handful of heroes I can think of that didn't get a love interest (well, sort of, but everyone ignores the short-lived Luke-Leia-Han love triangle in ESB), so he had nothing in the way of just heroing around. 4. Obi-Wan Kenobi "Use the Force." Best Moment: Letting Vader strike him down to become "more powerful than you could possibly imagine" Worst Moment: Knowing perfectly well that every single Jedi other than Qui-Gon Jinn said not to train Anakin, including Yoda, and training him anyway Before we go any further, what is with Obi-Wan's obsession with cutting peoples' limbs off? He pulls this with Darth Maul in PM, Anakin in RotS, that creepy guy in the barfight in ANH, and because Grevious had no organic limbs he blew up the only organic bit of him left, the heart. In every movie he was capable, he made sure someone's limb got chopped off. You can even make a case for ESB, because he sends Luke to Dagobah, where he gets enough training that Vader has to hack off his hand to avoid killing him without being killed himself. And this wasn't just something HE did, no. He passed it onto his padawan, who proceeded to unhand (DOHOHO) Dooku and Luke. I mean, okay, certainly nothing gets your point across better than removing a man's arm, and I can definitely see Vader using it as an alternative to the force choke, but it just comes off as weird enough that you have to question whether or not it was purposeful on Lucas' part or if it was coincidental that Obi-Wan kept removing body parts from people. Additionally, did you know that Obi-Wan is a gigantic liar? In the OT he tells Luke the following: - "Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father" - "There you will meet Yoda, the Jedi master who trained me." - "I don't remember owning any droids." The Darth Vader one is a complete lie and Luke almost calls him on it, and the other two are only technically true (Yoda trains all the children before they get a real master, and the droids are owned by the Jedi as a whole) but could only be said for the sole purpose of misleading someone. I get that these were all retcons, what with Vader not being Luke's father until ESB was written and the PTs turning him into a liar, and that Obi-Wan had every reason to avoid telling Luke who his father was, had no reason to mention Qui-Gon Jinn when Luke needed to find Yoda, but why lie about the droids? What possible reason could he have to conceal his past with R2-D2 from Luke, especially when he flatly decided to go on Leia's mission and told Luke he was a Jedi? Also, Obi-Wan was supposed to be 60 in ANH, because he was only 40~ in RotS. Ridiculous, especially since Qui-Gon Jinn was 60 and every single other Jedi aged well. Even Dooku, who must have been a billion years old, looked pretty good for an old guy. Yes, Obi-Wan lived alone in the harshness of the desert for two decades, but come on. I wanted to alert you guys to something: Obi-Wan loses to Jango in AotC (level ground), performs averagely in the arena in AotC (level ground), loses the fight with Dooku (almost level ground on a ship's bridge), and loses the fight with Vader in ANH (level ground). He wins the fight with Darth Maul (varying levels of ground if you count the gigantic hole in the floor), Grevious (varying levels of ground, including a cliff), and Anakin (varying levels of ground, and also lava). It is clear to me that Obi-Wan isn't a pure Jedi and instead has a few levels in Geomancer (note also that he only appeared as a ghost in a forest, a swamp, and a frozen tundra. In ANH's climax when Luke is in a fighter instead of on a planet, he only whispers to Luke). Now let's get started on the write-up proper. First of all, and I say without irony or anything of the sort, Obi-Wan Kenobi was the manliest character in Star Wars. Look. At. That. Beard. LOOK AT IT. Fine, fine. In ANH he's introduced with a nontrivial amount of fanfare: Luke mentions his name about ten minutes previous, Owen bans Luke from seeing him, he scares off some Sand People that would have killed Luke, and he saves the droids. Then he goes and drops the lightsaber bomb on us. I'll paraphrase what he said to Luke: "Here's a lightsaber, the most distinctive fictional weapon ever that British people will continually misspell the name of. Your father was murdered by Darth Vader, all of us fought in a war together. I am one of the two last psychic ninja-paladins. Wanna have an adventure and be a psychic ninja-paladin?" The scene where he allows Vader to kill him is well done, too, as well as all of his interaction with Han (Obi-Wan, by the way, sees through the "I made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs" line while Luke does not, if you look at their faces when Han makes that boast). And of course basically every single thing he says in ANH is quotable. "Wretched hive of scum and villainy." "As if a million voices cried out and were suddenly silenced." "Your senses can deceive you." "That's no moon..." "Only a master of evil, Darth." The guy was a one-liner MACHINE. I really don't think the Empire was trying that hard to find him. His alias, that he used for no less than two decades on the planet Anakin was born on and that he had visited himself, involved a shortened anagram of "Kenobi." I mean, yeah, you can tell me that Vader had FEELINGS that he let get in the way of tracking down Obi-Wan but there's no way the Empire was putting that much effort into tracking Obi-Wan down when he go around, on the Empire's second-in-command's (was he? I always just assumed) home planet, only a few a miles away from his family members, calling himself an anagram of his real name. In ESB he shows up a few times in ghost mode, tells Luke to go visit Yoda, and twists Yoda's arm until he agrees to train Luke, showing that Obi-Wan learned quite a bit from Qui-Gon Jinn. All acceptable behavior from a ghost. But in RotJ, see, the problem is that he out-and-out tells Luke that Leia is his sister. My issue here is that it's fine for a ghost to lead him around, to be mysterious and such, but when he sits down on that rock and spills the truth to Luke (finally) it's not mysterious. It's not old wise guy-ish. It's just... a discussion between Luke and Obi-Wan. Ah well. Obi-Wan was not as wise as Han or Lando and instead chose to have a major role in the PT, the second biggest after Anakin. And man did he suck. I won't lie and pretend I really remember his role in PM or AotC, so I'll just skip straight to RotS. "YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!" "WE WERE LIKE BROTHERS, ANAKIN!" "It's over Anakin... I have the high ground!" By the way, how did that give Obi-Wan the victory instantly? From what I heard, having the high ground like that is a disadvantage for one-on-one duels because you have to protect your legs while the person below you only has to protect his torso. Yes, it gave him the win anyway, but only because Anakin launched the one most stupid attack he could possibly manage. Look, the truth is that the PT was ****. It was grade-A, no joke, ****. And Obi-Wan was in the middle of it, because he was one of the two main characters in the ****fest. It didn't hurt as much as it could have simply because, while his performance was ungodly terrible it was still miles better than Anakin's and Padmé's (which, by the way, ought to tell you what I think of them in the PT). When it all comes down to it, when you see all of his backstory in the PT, he loses a lot of the mystique he had in the OT. No longer is he this incredible mysterious old master. No longer is he the last hope of the galaxy who passes on as much knowledge as he can to his apprentice. Now he's a teenager/twenty-something (I couldn't actually tell) whose master emotionally blackmails him into training the antichrist. Good going, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Good. Going. 3. Emperor Palpatine "So be it... Jedi." Best Moment: "So be it... Jedi." Worst Moment: Being in the prequels Okay, so let me make this clear: I consider his portrayal in the PT as bad as anyone else's. He is this high based solely on his part in RotJ. The only thing the PT did right with him was furthering the already obvious fact that he was space Hitler by showing his rise to power. He was by a wide margin the best acted. Ian McDiarmid could really sneer and be a credible threat. Could really act just childish enough to get offended by Luke while still maintaining the aura of evil he had. Luke insults Palpatine's overconfidence? Palpatine shoots right back and insults his faith in his friends. If only Sora had fought Palpatine... ah well. You knew, from the moment you saw him in person, that he was bad news. Weird face, evil black robes, scratchy voice... everything about him screamed "EVIL." He had yellow eyes for God's sake. But he was a different kind of evil than we'd seen before. Tarkin was evil simply because it was expedient. Jabba was a gluttonous fool. Boba Fett was a serious bastard. Even Darth Vader was permanently melancholy until his final moments; his tone was either sullen or angry for three solid movies, showing positive emotion only when he thought he'd trapped Luke in the carbonite and confidently said "All too easy," and when he laid dying in Luke's arms. Palpatine was manipulatively, magnificently, truly and irredeemably evil. He lived it up, and he knew it. Palpatine was someone who'd been told "Justice will prevail!" and responded with "Nah." You don't know his history in RotJ. You don't know anything about him other than that he's got DARTH GODDAMN VADER (for comparison, "Goddamn" is Vader's actual middle name) working for him and is building a second Death Star. Hell, it wasn't even clear he was a Force user until he went all lightning on Luke's ass. Sure, he boasted of feeling Luke's emotions, but that was different. It was one thing to feel emotions and mess with people's minds and jump around like an acrobat and it was entirely another to SHOOT LIGHTNING OUT OF YOUR FINGERNAILS and easily defeat the protagonist in less time than it took me to write this sentence. Palpatine made the most out of every second he was on the screen. Until Vader threw him down that pit he was in complete control of everything in that room and you just knew it. There wasn't a variable he hadn't considered and he could play Luke like Luke had played Jabba. Darth Vader was physically imposing, but this guy? This guy played games within games within games and Luke was to be his reward. And it was all a result of McDiarmid's excellent acting, because Palpatine didn't actually do anything except taunt Luke until after Luke refuses him for the last time. And so finally Luke tells Palpatine "I am a Jedi, like my father before me." And you can see Palpatine see that he's failed. His horrifying, monstrous visage sink from the aura of confident villainy it had projected to an angry realization that Luke would never be his. And Palpatine's response? My favorite line in all six movies, and the one I put up there. Words cannot do it justice, because it wasn't merely a line, it was a sneer incarnate. In those four words Palpatine said more than entire religions have said to their followers, said more than Obama could hope in a lifetime, said more than any other four words in any other work of fiction have ever said. He could have delivered a speech about how he despises the Jedi and all they stand for, how he executed legions of innocent people and saw the Empire rise because power is the only thing he values, how he had schemed for decades just for the hell of ruling the galaxy and regrets nothing, but instead he said to Luke just four words. It was so perfectly delivered and the ideal end to Palpatine's mind games. McDiarmid put more emotion into the comma between "it" and "Jedi" than most actors could put into a death speech. And as he died, undone by the one thing he'd overlooked (that the ridiculously idealistic and naive, barely-trained Jedi he'd so easily played the entire time might not have been completely wrong about his father), so died with him his presence. Sure, he was essentially, in retrospect, the topping point for Empire. Just a challenge, a final boss that hadn't really interacted with the main characters until just then (actually, none of the main characters ever met him except Luke). He hadn't been mentioned in ANH and got essentially a cameo in ESB. He was until he met Luke basically Sauron: technically behind everything but not a direct threat to the heroes (although Sauron got a lot more build up than Palpatine ever did). But he was just so perfect. And then there's the PT, where instead of being essentially manipulative evil compressed into a human body he was an old guy. Of course he played all sides, ruthlessly sacrificed Maul and Dooku, matched Yoda and nearly matched Windu, but it just wasn't the same. He was, as I said, final boss material, not... "Interact with everyone a lot" material. He was boring until RotS, and because of RotS' terrible directing and line delivery he was boring even then. I get that he pretty much had to be the villain and have a direct impact on the movies, but he was just so unengaging. Gone was McDiarmid's incredible performance as this absolute evil, and in its place was simply an old man that lied to everyone. Not to insult Yoda, but here's basically what happened: "I am the most powerful Force user ever. I can detect anything that flows through the Force, but I can't detect a conspiracy involving everyone in the entire Republic." Okay I stole that from Maddox but the point is that he was a whole lot less impressive in the PT than in RotJ. Who the hell cares that he manipulated the Jedi. The Jedi weren't mysterious invincible warriors of infinite insight like they had been in the OT, they were just people. In the OT they'd been Obi-Wan and Yoda, who you just KNEW had more experience than any normal person could even conceive of, and Luke, who had turned from farmboy to warrior-sage before our eyes. They rather skipped that with Anakin. Anakin starts as a slave with dreams of grandeur, and then in the timeskip between PM and AotC he's a fullblown Jedi. Except that we get too much of the Jedi. Sure, Yoda was okay, and Mace Windu and Qui-Gon Jinn were pretty interesting, but there's a certain level of overexposure and the PT reached it. Did we really need that one Jedi Master with the gigantic neck and tiny head in the background? Did we need the old lady librarian Jedi? The Jedi were no longer mysterious, they were decidedly human, so wiping them out to the last man was no longer as impressive. But still, Palpatine was a truly excellent villain. I made, WAY back in like 2005, a Top 10 Video Game Villain list (if you have a memory stretching that far back, you might remember I got to #2 before letting the topic purge, heh), but had it simply been a Top 10 Villain list Palpatine definitely would have placed in the top three. 2. Yoda "Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?" And so we finally come to Yoda. Is there anyone know does not love him? I'll set aside how easy it is to make Kermit jokes and jokes about his speech pattern and simply say that Yoda is great. I don't remember if when I first saw ESB I realized the annoying green thingy was going to turn out to be Master Yoda, but whatever, I guess. I can't even really think of anything to say about Yoda. I just really like him. He's wise, knowledgeable, and he consistently made only the right call every single time someone asked for his advice, as opposed to, oh, every other character. Every time he's on the screen he just rocks your face off. Just look at him He's nine times older than you will ever be, and that's if you live a hundred years, and yet there is absolutely no doubt that he could murder your ass by blinking too hard. And yet he doesn't use pure power, he's more of a precision kind of guy. He even has the old master robes and a cane. He kicked as much ass as Obi-Wan did in the OT and he didn't even have a lightsaber. Come to think of we saw Yoda's training of Luke on Dagobah, so how precisely did he train Luke in lightsaber combat without a lightsaber of his own? From what we saw of him, Yoda just made Luke exercise and concentrate to use the Force. According to Wikipedia, this guy played Yoda during walking scenes in PM. But I didn't like his fight with Palpatine in RotS. It was just... so what? You knew neither of them could win or even harm the other because they both were fine in the OT. There was tension. I get that, for some reason, they wanted a Force fight instead of the more common lightsaber fights, especially since it was intercut with a lightsaber fight, but it just came off as silly. "Oh, the Emperor threw a senatorial pod at the green guy and he spun it around like a top" (I'll take 'sentences I never plan to say for 500, Alex). Ah well. As the OT character with the best appearance in the PT, and a staple of my childhood, I can do naught but give Yoda the #2 spot on my list. 1. Darth Vader "All too easy." I don't think there was any real doubt that Vader would be in the Top 3 at least. Sure, sure, no one had a worse portrayal in the PT than Anakin, but really, the sheer badassedness of Vader in the OT makes up for it. Even at his weakest Vader was cooler than the entire rest of the cast combined. With his slick black armor, almost-but-not-quite samurai helmet, freaky breathing, incredibly awesome weapon, being effectively invulnerable to anyone who isn't a Jedi (and there is actually debate as to whether he blocked Han Solo's attacks with the Force or if his gauntlet absorbs blaster fire), and the most badass voice I have ever heard, Darth Vader is incredible. What's really incredible about him, though, is that his redemption actually worked. It was believable, and yet he kept all of his badassedness (although it's at least partially because he had the good sense to die immediately and avoid mucking it up with good deeds after killing the Emperor). As I mentioned in the Palpatine write-up, Vader (whose name is accepted in Microsoft Word's spellchecker, SUCK ON THAT LANDO CALRISSIAN) had his own type of villainy going on. He was melancholy: sad or angry, but not to a point where it got annoying. In RotJ it's clear that he's resigned himself to his fate, telling Luke that he can't pull away from the Dark Side. He obviously knows he's on the wrong side even as he espouses the Dark Side to Luke. Okay, so let's take this movie-by-movie. Darth Vader is introduced to us in ANH as the first named villain and you instantly know he's hot ****. He just stands there, surrounded by flunkies with some fog coming from somewhere. He chokes a guy, makes a few threats, and has his dudes go down to the planet to find the Death Star plans. You see a few more times over the course of the movie until HOLY CRAP HE JUST KILLED OBI-WAN! And Obi-Wan timed it for maximum drama! In the climax Vader is there, kills Biggs (grr) and is basically just a bastard, killing Luke's copilots left and right. Only Wedge survives, and only because Vader let him. And there's no doubt Vader, as the only competent person on the Death Star (see, Tarkin would have sent some stormtroopers at Obi-Wan, but Vader knew perfectly well that Jedi are essentially immune to non-Jedi attacks, at least back in the OT), would have shot Luke's ass down. Did he know Luke was his son back then? Anyway, Han Solo to the rescue and Vader is clearly knocked away in a way designed to let him return for the sequel. And he does, obviously. Vader shows up again, Force Chokes a dude and promotes Admiral Piett, and is basically a badass again. He, unlike those under him, knows perfectly well how important Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon are (containing Luke's friends, after all) and orders his guys to keep scanning the asteroid field because they need them, thus displaying that he is, again, one of like two competent people in the Empire again. Three if you count Boba Fett. So Vader is all "Hey Lando you work for me now" and Lando is all "Okay" because that is how Lando rolls. Man, even he looks pretty cool. There aren't a lot of sci-fi characters you can reference and expect ordinary people to get. "Use the Force" and "These are the journeys of the U.S.S. Enterprise" are among the few, but you can say virtually anything in a Yoda-like way and everyone will understand it. According to Wikipedia, Yoda's original name was "Minch Yoda." It, uh, seems we lucked out. In any case, I guarantee you that Lucas regrets not having had Yoda in ANH. Given how hard he worked to shoehorn C3-PO into the PT just to make sure every character he could manage was in every movie (the only major OT characters that aren't in the PT are Han and Lando, both of which were too young to be in PM) there's no doubt he'd CGI Yoda into Mos Eisley Cantina if he thought he could get away with it. So, in the movies. In ESB Yoda just annoys Luke for a bit to test him, and then trains him. In RotJ he in no uncertain terms tells Luke he's the last of the Jedi. The reigning theory to reconcile this with the EU's sixty-something other Jedi surviving RotJ seems to be "Well, they weren't fighting the Empire anymore, so they weren't REALLY Jedi." This is stupid, and this is top among the reasons I'm not an EU fan. Yoda explicitly tells Luke he's the last. Obi-Wan and Yoda both agree and make clear that Luke is the galaxy's last hope (well, except "for another," but it was "for another," not "for sixty-or-so others"). Yoda managed to avoid coming off as a doofus in PM, showing up only to say "Don't train Anakin." I remember when I first saw AotC, when Yoda pulled out his lightsaber half of the theater started cheering, then he's ping-ponging around and fighting Dooku... I admit, that was actually an okay scene, especially in light of every other aspect of AotC. However, it didn't work as a serious scene, it was more the surprise of Yoda himself fighting that made it a good scene, otherwise it was silly. And then Vader captures Han Solo, embarrasses him, tortures him for the hell of it, and throws Leia and Chewbacca in jail. Then he freezes Han in carbonite, exposition courtesy of C3-PO, and gives him to a ruthless bounty hunter to be hung as decoration in a space gangster's lounge. Harsh, man. Then he fights his son for a bit (pay attention to when Luke jumps up and takes the high ground, and Vader gets annoyed and Force Throws his lightsaber at Luke. Clearly he learned from the LAST time someone took the high ground). Luke is doing pretty well, and he of course has hero immunity and nothing bad can really holy crap Luke has been... disarmed. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH Anyway, Vader then drops the "I am your father" bomb on Luke (how did Vader know that, anyway?) and gives Luke the choice between death and joining the Empire. Bet that put a crimp in his style for a while after Luke made that choice. Luke survived anyway, but not because of anything either of them predicted. Then in RotJ Vader is more directly under the command of Palpatine. He spends a bit of time pumping up Palpatine's reputation for the stormtroopers (and really, for the audience), and has the single best battle in the series with Luke. Forget Obi-Wan/Anakin. Forget all the other battles. Vader/Palpatine/Luke was the best in the series. Vader taunts and harasses Luke, Palpatine does what he can to push Luke ever closer to the Dark Side, and Luke tries to remain the hero. It's all perfectly done. So Vader is finally overwhelmed, and is in the same position Luke was in at the end of ESB: disarmed, weakened, and ready to die. He's freaking pathetic is what he is at this point. Then Luke refuses to kill him, Palpatine sneers, and the positions are switched: Luke is weakened and pathetic, and Vader is on his feet. Then Vader chucks the Emperor down a hole. The Empire really ought to have installed guard rails. Then we get the scene where Vader is dying, Luke removes his helmet, and Sebastian Shaw thanks Luke for saving him and has anticlimactic last words. Now, in the original version, Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Vader show up as ghosts and Luke smiles at them. In the new, canon version, Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Hayden Christian show up as ghosts and Luke smiles at them. This is what I imagine was going through Luke's mind: "Aw, it's Obi-Wan. And Yoda! That's great. I love those guys. Who's that, though? He's like my age... Jesus, um? ... Is it Obi-Wan's master? Qui-Gon... something. It must be him. I better just keep smiling." Like Luke is going to look over there and have any idea what his father looked like twenty years ago before he took a lava bath. Vader is about the only character you want to be a karma houdini. He kills a zillion people, murders children, and helps to bring about the end of the Republic and freedom and so on, but when you see SEBASTIAN SHAW there next to Obi-Wan and Yoda you're okay with it. Now, I know everyone expects me to riff on Anakin in the PT. I really don't know what I can say here. We all know he was a bad character with stupid lines and was acted terribly. We all remember his sand speech to Padmé which could practically be put in a video on how not to speak to women ("You're not coarse and you don't get everywhere." "Um, thanks?") and his I HATE YOU and IF YOU'RE NOT WITH ME, YOU'RE AGAINST ME and FROM MY POINT OF VIEW THE JEDI ARE EVIL (subtle, Lucas. Subtle), and yes, all of those must be capitalized to properly display the depths of Hayden Christianson's awful acting. I really have nothing to say about it. He was a stupid character from start to finish, and I feel it would have been more interesting if his fall to evil was better. Like if he had to use some Dark Side power to save Padmé or something, or was tempted legitimately by Palpatine instead of all at once. So I'm going to end this write-up by summing up RotS for you guys. "Anakin, you've trained for over a decade in the Jedi Code. Sure, you slaughtered those Sand People, but they murdered your mother and so you were extremely emotional at the time." "Yes. Now, to murder Dooku even though I have no actual emotional connection to him whatsoever." "Gee, I hope Palpatine isn't evil." "Master Windu! Palpatine is evil!" "Oh goddammit." "Anakin, would you like to join the Dark Side?" "Well... my only impetuous to do so are some vague dreams which may or may not mean anything, but I do like red lightsabers..." "Excellent. Your liking for red lightsabers and desire to save Padmé from pain that may happen based on vague dreams are good reasons for murdering children."
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