the Force keeps you from getting shot

[Unorthodox]

Darth Vader, famously, not only does not get shot by Han Solo, he even causes blaster bolts to deflect or absorb in his palm. 

That always made me wonder as a kid:  Was it the force, or was it his robot hand?  The sequels would seem to firmly confirm the force effects blaster fire. 

[bvanevery]

IIRC the troopers on tatooine had a form of sniper rifle.  That could explain the supreme accuracy comment.   

Which doesn't get used much of anywhere else despite its inherent utility.  It packs a great deal of potential energy in an extremely efficient package...

They are quite effective in boarding Leia's ship. 

They are effective at killing mooks.  They completely miss the droid heroes that walk right through them.  Yes they were probably not aiming for the droids, but considering the amount of fire everyone was laying down... one wonders if they'd miss the walls.

The famously miss our heros in the death star, however, they are under orders to allow the enemy to escape, so this may be intentional. 

I'm not buying it.  Those Stormtroopers who returned fire, were actually dying.  You think it's their pay grade to make sure they die, just to be convincing?  It is also not strictly necessary for all of the heroes to escape, only Leia and 1 Falcon pilot.  The rest could be killed.  No, the Stormtroopers were fighting for real.  Command probably made sure the heroes faced very limited numbers of troops.  Once Vader hatches the plan.  They do have some fighting before then.

No problems hitting rebels on Hoth. 

They're mooks.

[bvanevery]

Was it the force, or was it his robot hand?

We never saw if Vader had a robot hand, nor was it ever said he did.  We know that he's "more machine than man now", but we don't know how much or which parts.  Clearly he needs a helmet and a breathing apparatus.  Must have something going on in the chest, 'cuz he's got a big chest plate with buttons all over it.  We can infer some kind of damage to his head.

So I don't see any reason why you should have believed it was due to Vader's possible "robot hand".  Not like robots or mechanical equipment were magically immune to blaster fire.  For instance if you want to shut a blast door, you blast its control panel.

If you got this idea from something that wasn't in the film, well then here we go again.

[Unorthodox]

We never saw if Vader had a robot hand, nor was it ever said he did.

You're kidding me, right?  Remind me AGAIN, how much better your memory is than me. 

Luke hacks off his hand in ROTJ  and makes a point of staring at the mechanical stump, and then his own mechanical hand. 

But Luke's hand can pass as human when it's not getting shot, and the only visible damage was to the 'skin', so the cybernetics is there.  Vader, clearly, is not even TRYING to pass as human.  Always made me wonder what all was different with his. 


(Not to mention you can see his skeleton when he picks up the emperor which fairly clearly shows mechanical crap attached at the neck and around the elbows.  Not that I expect anyone else to really look at the bones, but even back then I had issues.  And yes, it's just as likely the mechanics were for whatever was puppeteering the skeleton, but they happen to fit the injuries as well. ) 

[bvanevery]

Luke hacks off his hand in ROTJ  and makes a point of staring at the mechanical stump, and then his own mechanical hand. 

In ROTJ.  Vader blocks Han's blaster bolts in ESB.  So unless you never watched the movies in the original, and happened to rent them on VHS / DVD to play catch-up, you should never have formed that impression while watching ESB.  It's quite obvious that Vader's use of the Force is what's going on here, as he uses that very same Force to rip Han's blaster out of his hand.  To end the presumably itchy blaster firing.  "I think a fly landed on my finger."

We're talking about a 3 year gap between ESB and ROTJ.  There's no way you would have got "some other idea" if you watched the movies in order as they came out.

Heck for that matter, when Vader blocks the blaster bolts Luke hasn't lost his hand yet.  That's later in the same movie.  Luke isn't sporting a mechanical hand until the very end of ESB.  There's no way you're getting "musta been Vader's mechanical hand" outta ESB.

[Unorthodox]

I said I wondered as a kid, not I wondered at the end of watching ESB.  I don't think I actually grasped the whole Vader just shrugging off the blast on my original viewing of ESB to be honest.  And it wouldn't have been until Jedi that I reviewed ESB, since it suffered from tasting funny when I was younger, and Raiders quickly grabbed my attention away when I wasn't being fed a steady horror diet in my viewing.   

[bvanevery]

I don't think I actually grasped the whole Vader just shrugging off the blast on my original viewing of ESB to be honest.

And that's the core of it.  In fairness, we've never seen a Jedi or Sith perform this feat before.  It's a new power.  Watching the movies in order, the Good Guys and Bad Guys are both gradually revealed to have stronger and stronger powers.  This nuance is lost if one watches the movies all the way from the prequels forwards.  One would then be inclined to wonder why Vader is holding back.

This unfortunately becomes most obvious and egregious in the transition from Rogue One to A New Hope.  Vader ends Rogue One by cutting many Rebel soldiers to pieces in a complete bloodbath. (If lightsaber wounds actually bled; I think they usually cauterize.)  That's the kind of thing Anakin did too, so it's not exactly wrong action, seen from the "world chronology" standpoint.  But then we have Vader entering Leia's ship in A New Hope, presumably not terribly much separated in time from the bloodbath (days?  hours?) and he merely lets the Stormtroopers do all the work.  He also takes "more crap" from an Imperial General when they're discussing the completion of the Death Star, than Anakin would have ever taken.  Like, uh, Mr. Imperial General, didn't you get the memo that you're talking to the biggest badass in the galaxy?

It's difficult to fully retcon a franchise spanning decades.  For instance, Darth Vader and Obi-Wan's lightsaber fighting is not bad fighting, in any classic swordplay sense.  It's probably fairly realistic: these are weapons that can kill you with a touch.  But the style of fighting looks nothing like the flashy curvy stuff they developed for the prequels.  Higher marital arts choreography budget, and greater audience sophistication about the martial arts, happened between then and now.

So, I'm still just wishing the prequels never happened, and that someone would simply erase that material from the canon.  It would be better for someone with better storytelling skills, to simply do it over, in the style of the original 2 Star Wars movies.  ROTJ clearly showed how bad things were going to develop, and it just got worse and worse and worse in the prequels.  What's the next Planet Endor we're going to do, to sell more toys?

[Unorthodox]

I don't think I actually grasped the whole Vader just shrugging off the blast on my original viewing of ESB to be honest.

And that's the core of it.  In fairness, we've never seen a Jedi or Sith perform this feat before.  It's a new power. 

Still makes sense I would have had the thought he was entirely robot except the head as a child, and therefore could be explained by weird armor. 

! No longer available

That TOTALLY looks like a head on a robot to a kid, especially with how he walks and given the more machine than man line.

It was about this time I was trying to recreate the brain that wouldn't die/Atom age vampire for halloween on my porch, so I had a headless fetish at the time, granted. 

[Unorthodox]

They are effective at killing mooks.  They completely miss the droid heroes that walk right through them.  Yes they were probably not aiming for the droids, but considering the amount of fire everyone was laying down... one wonders if they'd miss the walls.

That was a cross fire, and BOTH sides miss the droids, you can't point to it as an example of storm troopers being worse shots than anyone else.  The fact they are effectively killing mooks means they have to be at least as effective as the mooks. 

I'm not buying it.  Those Stormtroopers who returned fire, were actually dying.  You think it's their pay grade to make sure they die, just to be convincing?  It is also not strictly necessary for all of the heroes to escape, only Leia and 1 Falcon pilot.  The rest could be killed.  No, the Stormtroopers were fighting for real.  Command probably made sure the heroes faced very limited numbers of troops.  Once Vader hatches the plan.  They do have some fighting before then.

So you expect them to identify who the pilot is ?  (also pretty sure it's covered the falcon kinda needs a co-pilot if you're not Rey)

AFAIK the only "real" fighting before THE PLAN is the surprise in the jail.  You've adequately covered how surprises work, even against Jedi.  Once it was clear there was a rescue attempt underway, the plan would have been in place, and the tracker being installed on the Falcon.  The storm troopers from there were then just delaying things long enough for the tracker to be installed. 

For that matter, are we really so sure it was R2 that shut down the trash compactor? 

And yes, it's probably better to be shot and potentially only wounded than whatever Vader is going to do to someone.  He's shown to have a penchant for torture.  (before you claim not till ROTJ, that wasn't a pleasure floaty orb he was bringing in to 'interrogate' Leia.  And just because it will get to you, yes, the torture scene is in the radio drama too...)

They're mooks.

Which doesn't matter when your argument is troopers are lousy shots in general.  One of the AT-AT drivers manages to shoot down Luke as well. 

So it boils down to troopers are fine shots when not shooting at the heroes, and the only time they actually SHOOT at the heroes, they are being let to escape.  The whole Troopers are a lousy shot thing really doesn't add up for me. 

[bvanevery]

Still makes sense I would have had the thought he was entirely robot except the head as a child, and therefore could be explained by weird armor. 

 

But he has lungs.  He spends all this time breathing heavily, from his very 1st appearance.  So it's reasonable to assume he's got a head and chest.  Don't know if he has a real heart, but he could.  I'm only realizing now, we don't really know if he eats!  Does he have a working digestive system?  His mask certainly would make eating awkward and very personal.  Does he take a dump?

We don't see any droids in the original movies that have completely organic, fluid body movement.  Rather, they move about "robotically".  It is not reasonable to assume that Darth Vader is all robot.  We're not sure how human he is, and at the end of ESB we see that cyborg tech is reasonably advanced, so it's like "how much of his arms and legs?  Some / all of them?"  We don't know.

That TOTALLY looks like a head on a robot to a kid, especially with how he walks and given the more machine than man line.

This is where, in a reversal of our debating roles, I had the benefit of knowing a little bit about the intended movie lore.  While waiting for ESB, many of us had heard rumors that Obi Wan and Darth Vader got in a big duel in a volcano.  Obi Wan chopped him up and Vader got burned.  That's why Vader has a number of replacement parts.  It turned out this rumor was true.  I was quite surprised at just how much of Vader they burned off in the 3rd prequel.  I had never supposed he'd sustained that much damage.  "Serious burn victim" I would have thought would be enough to justify the suit.

You see a head mounted on a robot.  I see a support collar for a burn victim.  I happened to have been right.  The film is ambiguous, and probably deliberately so, to give writers maximum wiggle room.  But it is a certainty, that the guy at least breathes, with mechanical assistance.

In any event, we never see any robots or any kind of body armor in Star Wars that's immune to blaster fire.  The only substance that shows any basic immunity to blasters is "blast doors".  It's just not credible, given the rest the universe, that Vader has a physical protective capability that nobody else has got.  Why use shields if they have such materials?

In fact, we are made to wonder why Stormtroopers wear body armor at all.  It doesn't seem to stop anything.

Just remembered: the garbage compactor is "magnetically sealed".  Why that causes blaster bolts to ricochet I really couldn't tell you.  Star Wars physics?  Why use it for a garbage compactor and not for other stuff?

[Unorthodox]

But he has lungs. 

Don't put logic into my childhood. 

! No longer available

We don't see any droids in the original movies that have completely organic, fluid body movement.  Rather, they move about "robotically".  It is not reasonable to assume that Darth Vader is all robot.  We're not sure how human he is, and at the end of ESB we see that cyborg tech is reasonably advanced, so it's like "how much of his arms and legs?  Some / all of them?"  We don't know.

Exactly, and could the be bullet proof is not unreasonable IMO. 

This is where, in a reversal of our debating roles, I had the benefit of knowing a little bit about the intended movie lore.  While waiting for ESB, many of us had heard rumors that Obi Wan and Darth Vader got in a big duel in a volcano.  Obi Wan chopped him up and Vader got burned.  That's why Vader has a number of replacement parts.  It turned out this rumor was true.  I was quite surprised at just how much of Vader they burned off in the 3rd prequel.  I had never supposed he'd sustained that much damage.  "Serious burn victim" I would have thought would be enough to justify the suit.

I don't remember at which point that came out in the fan club stuff. 

You see a head mounted on a robot.  I see a support collar for a burn victim.  I happened to have been right.  The film is ambiguous, and probably deliberately so, to give writers maximum wiggle room.  But it is a certainty, that the guy at least breathes, with mechanical assistance.

In any event, we never see any robots or any kind of body armor in Star Wars that's immune to blaster fire.  The only substance that shows any basic immunity to blasters is "blast doors".  It's just not credible, given the rest the universe, that Vader has a physical protective capability that nobody else has got.  Why use shields if they have such materials?

In fact, we are made to wonder why Stormtroopers wear body armor at all.  It doesn't seem to stop anything.

Logic don't work on children. 

[bvanevery]

Exactly, and could the be bullet proof is not unreasonable IMO.

This is a galaxy of blasters, not bullets.  And unlike Dune, nobody in the original movies has a personal shield.

Logic don't work on children.

IIRC you were 5 when you saw the original Star Wars?  I was 7.  ESB comes out 3 years later in 1980.  I'm 10, you're 8.  I'm not seeing that there should be that big of a logic gap between us.  To put it in perspective, when I was 8, I was mastering AD&D as a Dungeon Master.  I think 8 year olds are capable of quite a lot.

Ok I admit it, I was a math / logic / good at chess kid.  Made it to the 1st table of the Golden Gate Junior Chess Association back then, at which point I was summarily creamed by 3 other players who were massively better than I was.  I think that's mostly a benchmark of how many trained chess players the GGJCA could draw in; definitely not me!  But you've made it to a SMAC forum, which means you have paid a certain amount of brains as an entry fee, or you wouldn't be here.

I'm not buying that "your brain didn't work / didn't know logic" when you were 8.  Maybe you liked your idea better than what was logically shown in the film, and just refused to notice all the stuff that was at odds with your idea you liked.

Maybe you saw some other film that conditioned you to think about Vader's biology, the way you actually did.

[Unorthodox]

You don't want to get in to how [messed up - or loved very much] up I was by age 8. 

By that point I'd see the result of a murder/suicide, had begun being regularly abused by mom, and was working with Kevin Yagher (invented Freddy Krueger's makeup).  My film catalog at that age would make most adults cringe today.  The plethora of horror and scifi (usually in combo) films did condition you that the big bad robot guy was typically resistant to bullets/blasteres/whatever.  It's kind of a trope to be honest.  So, I don't think I would have given it a second thought.  It's cliche, really, and I don't think it much of a stretch at all.  It's the first time he was shot at.  You saw magical powers being his shield, I saw robot body being his shield, neither view detracts from the story. 

Looks like I might have picked it up from the book.  Which is just more proof my reading that it's his limbs and not force isn't so far out of whack...  He CLEARLY gets HIT, it just does no damage.  That reads a lot more like special armor than force power to me. 

! No longer available

[bvanevery]

Didn't wish to be that right about your childhood film influences.     Whereas I avoided horror like the plague because it scared the crap out of me.

I'm not clear what that novelization actually said on the subject.  The video maker seems to be spinning and riffing on things not said.

Very few things in the Star Wars universe take no damage when hit by blaster fire.  Although on closer inspection, one might wonder if "the environment" is magically immune, because otherwise wouldn't all these stray bolts be causing a lot of destruction everywhere?  I'm sure they didn't want to turn the film into "squib hell" so just ignored the problem.

[Unorthodox]

Very few things in the Star Wars universe take no damage when hit by blaster fire.

Supposedly mandalorian armor, though I don't think we ever see it.