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We Dare You to Explain Luke’s Plan to Rescue Han in ‘Return of the Jedi’
- OrganicMSG 9y agoLuke was never meant to enter. He was supposed to be the getaway pilot. Lando, R2D2 and C3PO are supposed to break out Chewie, fetch Leia and Han, then all escape and get picked up by Luke. Luke is just winging it after everybody missed the rendezvous, as Leia underestimated just how long Jabba and his entourage could wait silently behind a curtain. The lightsaber was carried in by R2D2 as a backup weapon for Leia, who also came up with the plan.
- saagarjha 9y agoLeia, who has no training with a lightsaber?
- OrganicMSG 9y agoShe's got grenades and blasters down, so I suspect she could work out where the pointy end goes.
- farnsworthy 9y agoIt was like the idea behind a lot of startups: "We're gonna bring a lot of really talented people together in the same space to collaborate, and just see what happens." In another galaxy far, far away, the palace ended up as .jabba, a trendy coworking cafe. You had Boba Fett hacking away in the corner on his space-food delivery startup (bounty hunting's the day job), jawas on their ridesharing service (can't ever understand the damn drivers), C-3PO his AI blockchain chatbot, etc.
- AlimJaffer 9y agoWho are the VC's? Emperor Palapatine and the Siths?
- dec0dedab0de 9y agojaba would be the VC, the empire would be the large corporations aquihiring
- thegreatcosmo 9y agoI'll do one better and explain how and why disney saves Luke in episode 9. How: Time travel Why: Money
- ProAm 9y agoforce ghost
- daodedickinson 9y agoYep, they just added time travel to the Star Wars universe with the Rebels cartoon.
- cgriswald 9y agoScooby Doo ending.
- xapata 9y agoI always assumed they were there independently. Oddly it hadn't occurred to me that Luke, Leia, and Lando might have tried to coordinate.
- combatentropy 9y agoLuke's plan was to destroy Jabba the Hut. Jabba had been chasing Han since before A New Hope. If Luke just were to break Han out, then Han would be back in the same thicket he was before: running from Jabba. The group was tired of that. The plan is rough, yes, but in a confident way: "If we just get us all inside the palace, it will be like planting dynamite." Was it dishonest then, for Luke first to ask Jabba nicely? No, I don't think so. If Jabba sincerely gave up Han, then that means that Jabba's heart would have changed and would no longer be chasing Han. Therefore both goals would have been reached without blood (free Han and end the hunt). I don't think Luke counted on this. But even though Luke had a plan B, the chance presented to Jabba was real.
- ovao 9y agoI like the explanation, but here's where I get hung up on it: at what point did Luke — in his collective scheming with the gang — inform Leia that she'd probably be put in a bikini and licked upon by a slug gangster if anything went even slightly wrong? Or was Leia in Jabba-bondage part of Luke's plan all along, and he is, in reality, just kind of an inconsiderate dick?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- _emacsomancer_ 9y agoRelatedly, at what point did George Lucas inform Carrie Fisher of the same?
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoFrom what I remember reading, this was Carrie Fisher's idea.
- pweissbrod 9y agoIt's interesting to wonder how crowds would receive Empire Strikes Back if it came out today. I wager it would get roughly the same praise about special effects in action and criticism about bizarre story as the most recent Disney episode
- uiri 9y agoThe most recent Disney episode was basically Empire Strikes Back but more poorly done. All the major plot points are there, although some out of order and some new ones just to make sure it makes even less sense. Jedi student training with an old, grouchy master on a far away planet? Check. Betrayal by a new character introduced during that episode? Check. Rebels trapped in their base, about to get attacked by AT-ATs? Check. Jedi student abandons training to rescue friends? Check.
- InclinedPlane 9y agoThere's a cool 2 part video series by Mikey Neumann that delves into the immediate post-release reception for each of the Star Wars films, it's pretty interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5fWCAnBPY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5fWCAnBPY
- jimmytucson 9y agoThis sounds like a question Sci-fi Stack Exchange would make mince meat out of. For example: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/182014/why-does-the-death-star-have-a-trash-compactor https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/182014/why-does-th... But seriously, little inconsistencies like these make me think Star Wars was just meant to be a kids’ movie and not a sacred document to be handed down and analyzed by generations like the Tanakh or something.
- mlevental 9y ago>But seriously, little inconsistencies like these make me think Star Wars was just meant to be a kids’ movie and not a sacred document to be handed down i'll give you a hint: almost every piece of modern fiction is like this. look to the old masters for very very thoroughly fleshed out stories (there are hundreds of characters in war and peace and they all have full lives consistent with each other - no surprise it took tolstoy a decade to write it)
- _sdegutis 9y agoHaving first watched the originals as an adult, I really don’t understand the mass appeal.
- michaelchisari 9y agoStar Wars was just meant to be a kids’ movie and not a sacred document I saw The Last Jedi, had a great time, and came home to find Star Wars fans apoplectic about it, picking apart all kinds of things ("how does rey know how to swim?", "how does leia survive space?", etc). The original trilogy would never survive similar scrutiny. I went to see a kids movie about space wizards, and that's what I got. It was fun.
- discoursism 9y agoObviously, everyone is entitled to enjoy what they want, but this movie was difficult for me, even by Star Wars standards. If we can just destroy entire enemy fleets by jumping to lightspeed with one ship, why are not all battles fought that way. Also, why couldn't the captain leave and have the computer pilot the ship? Maybe it's just that the original trilogy slipped in to me before I got old enough to where I think about such things. Maybe it is a double standard. But I don't feel like it is. And that's all I have to go on. But, I don't begrudge you enjoying the movie! Wish I felt the same.
- saudioger 9y agoI assumed that they really just didn't communicate with each other well. Leia showed up on her own (and failed), Luke sent the droids as part of _his_ plan (also failed), Lando was trying to get Han out from the inside (interrupted by the other plans)... they just didn't coordinate.
- protomyth 9y agoYeah, it was one scene away from all those older heist movies where everything went wrong because everyone was trying their own play at the same time. It really seemed like everyone went their separate ways.
- cgriswald 9y agoAt the end of ESB, Luke and Leia are together with the droids in the medical frigate, while Lando and Chewie are together in the Falcon. They have plans to meet on Tatooine to rescue Han. It would be surprising if, after meeting on Tatooine, they all went their separate ways to try their own plans.
- jancsika 9y agoSomeone should start a movement to point out the plot holes in Star Wars from wipe transitions that would obviously have killed the characters in the scene being wiped. Yet later, there the characters are again, no explanation given.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoIt's simple. Luke had no clue what to do. He just trusted The Force, like he was trained. It worked out fine.
- jbob2000 9y agoThe Force works in mysterious ways.
- glenra 9y agoI have a similar question about a different movie: in Die Hard, Bruce sure whines a lot about how the police are following the Plan. But...what were they supposed to do, if not follow their best available Plan? What did Bruce want them to do, if he had his druthers? Should they...NOT follow The Plan? Follow the second-best available Plan? Going forward, how ought The Plan be modified? Should they add a "now we roll a 20-sided die!" step, so future terrorists can never again be sure what'll happen?
- 5555624 9y agoI've always thought he was whining because he knew the Plan would not work, because things had changed. The Plan was designed for someone taking over a building, holding hostages, and demanding a ransom of some sort. Indeed, Hans even makes it seem like this is the case; assuming, correctly, that the police will follow standard procedures for such an incident. McCain (Bruce) knows the truth, that Hans is going to blow the building and it's not about hostages. Pre-9/11, if a plane was hijacked, it was flown somewhere and there was some sort of ransom; no one thought a plane would be hijacked and flown into a building, so no one resisted.
- blacksmythe 9y agoThe "How it should have ended" series is great. How Return Of The Jedi Should Have Ended https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdukWtJwlPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdukWtJwlPU
- IgorPartola 9y agoThey did coordinate. It does not make any sense that they wouldn’t after the ending of Empire. Lando was not going to rescue Han. He was there just in case they needed backup. Leia was going in to unfreeze Han. When they needed to get away quickly, they couldn’t carry him frozen, and he needed time to come to after being unfrozen. My guess is that they planned to hide out until Luke came in, or Leia planned to go “well I don’t know who unfroze him. Probably Chewy, but definitely not me, I am just a bounty hunter.” Getting caught was not a part of the plan. The droids came in to sneak in the lightsaber. Luke knew they weren’t enough to pay for Han. Jabba would have never accepted that. The plan for Luke was to mind trick Jabba. If that didn’t work, it was to grab his lightsaber and fuck shit up. He got caught because Leia got caught. If Leia was still set up as an undercover bounty hunter, and R2D2 was close by, he could have just started slicing and dicing. Instead he had to fight the Rancor. In the end, it was sheer luck that Jabba was doing the typical villain thing instead of just shooting them on the spot. To be fair, he clearly had a weakness for being theatrical. That’s why he kept Han frozen. But. Star Wars is full of ret conning by fans and by Lucas. None of this crap was thought through before filming. Well not a lot at least. I believe the basic plot was, but details were not. Like I don’t think that Lando’s character existed before ANH was filmed. Which does drive me kinda nuts because people hail SW as such a complete universe. In reality, Lucas did a lot of just random stuff in the first three movies and then it had to become canon, sometimes through really crazy explanations. See the gaffe with parsecs being a unit of distance and how what makes the Falcon so fast is it’s navigational computer (a detail that was never mentioned in any movies for any ship, including the Falcon), and not because they screwed up how measurements of space and time work to sound cool.
- krapp 9y agoTo be fair, I think the parsec line was supposed to be intentional. Han was making up some obvious nonsense and wanted to see whether or not these two suckers were smart enough to call him out on it. For some reason, this was retconned to the Kessel Cluster being a maze of black holes and parsecs being used correctly, because of how difficult it was to navigate around all of those gravity wells in hyperspace. Even though that makes even less sense.