Brief Star Wars Thought

"A Jedi's strength flows from the Force, but beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side of the Force they are. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

I've been watching a lot of Star Wars these days, trying to reconnect with the reasons I've loved Star Wars since I was a kid, trying to separate in my mind the wise Muppet Yoda from the CGI lightsaber-wielding Yoda, and all that comes with both. The last line of the quote stood out for me.

Much has been made of "destiny" in Star Wars, and whether the paths of the characters are predetermined. The ability to see the future has been used to explain away lots of inconvenient plot points (although "always in motion is the future"), not to mention the giant plot device of the prophecy in the prequel trilogy. But this quote seems to present another type of destiny in Star Wars.

This quote suggests you choose your own path, and that path determines your destiny. Your destiny isn't a single line that's already been laid out, but rather a number of alternatives among which you choose by the paths you take. This feels much more like wisdom about the consequences our choices have rather than an assertion of predetermination. The two paths Luke's life could go play a big role in Episodes 5 and 6: will he choose to follow his father's path or forge his own? This is about choice, not a single destiny he's bound to obey.

The same thing applies to the Emperor's taunt of "I have foreseen it" and "it is your destiny" in Episode 6. It's possible the Emperor really has seen one possible path Luke's life could go, but his downfall is he doesn't leave room for Luke's own choices. He makes the mistake a lot of Star Wars fans (and EU writers, cough cough) seem to make: that destiny is something set for you rather than something you forge yourself.

Maybe I'm trying too hard to read into it what I want to be there, but I still find this encouraging, because on closer reading it doesn't seem nearly as deterministic as it does on first watching. Your destiny is the path you choose.

Why I Love Star Wars

It's difficult to explain why we love anything because love is a pure emotion. Never ask your significant other, "Why do you love me?" We can no more explain the reasons we love than we can explain the feeling of love itself. Poets have been trying since the dawn of language, and we are no closer, not for lack of flower and moon imagery.

But I can get into some of the memories I have with Star Wars, and the joy it has brought me. I can still remember when I was a boy and I watched Star Wars for the first time with my parents. My dad tried to convince me that the lightsaber was really called a "life-saver." He also tried to say that Obi-Wan was Luke's uncle. I'm still not sure to this day whether he was serious or just screwing with me. I do remember he had pictures of himself with some original AT-AT models, since he told stories about how he had met some of the guys who worked on them.

Most of all, it's the moments from the movies that stand out to me the most. I remember the thrill that went through me the first time Luke turns on the lightsaber in Ben's hut. A simple piece of metal turned into a glowing blade in an instant! After seeing that, everything vaguely stick-shaped for me became a lightsaber. I remember playing Darth Vader and lightsaber fighting my brothers when my bed still had bars on the side and legs. I was convinced for a while that Darth Vader was a robot.

I particularly remember that my parents were scared that the rancor would freak me out, so they told me not to look. Naturally, nothing terrifies a kid as much as his imagination when he hears something scary and is told not to look at it. What our mind paints for us is far more terrifying than anything a creature shop can whip up. I still can't watch the rancor scene without flinching a little inside.

I remember watching the Ewok movies on cable. I remember it as something of a dream: I knew Ewoks and Endor from Star Wars, yet they were set apart from the characters and stories I knew and loved. It is still bizarre to me to watch them, like discovering after all these years that The Bible has a Part 2 starring only the apostles.

Years later, when I was perhaps 7 or 8, my mom read my brothers and me the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn. I remember running to our bedroom every night, singing the Star Wars theme song over and over until she got out the big hardcover from the library with the glossy cover and started to read. She read to us on the bumpy roads through the desert, and when she took breaks when the road got too bad to see the pages, I would look out the window and imagine the rolling sagebrush scenery filled with blaster fire, whirling starships, and the glow of lightsabers.

A few years after that, I owned just about every Star Wars action figure you could imagine. I would play with them constantly, inventing new stories, based on the movies and the books I was reading. For a while, I had every published novel read (except Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which I would only read many years later, to my horror). I owned dozens of the books and made my way through them without much awareness if they were good or not. I remember being vaguely disappointed with Darksaber, which I see now is one of the worst books I've read.

I got into the Star Wars video games. As a teenager, I owned Shadows of the Empire, but I never played it all that much. Later, I bought Jedi Academy, which is one of the better games I've played, and I particularly enjoyed playing it multiplayer. Every game eventually descended into flailing with lightsabers. I played a few hours of Battlefront and Battlefront 2, playing through the campaigns of each several times. I especially enjoyed the galactic battle modes. I played through The Force Unleashed and enjoyed it, but never played it again.

I've read and enjoyed much of the comics, especially Republic, which I hold to be head and shoulders above all other Star Wars comics I've read.

Perhaps my most striking memory is watching the Star Wars Holiday special with my brothers. For a while, we tried to make fun of it, but our quips and snarky comments became fewer and more hushed. Finally, we sat in stunned, awkward silence. It was like walking in on a woman you love hooking up with a drunk bald fat dude. It seemed like Star Wars, but the similarity only made it all the more awful.

Now, I enjoy (more or less) the Star Wars cartoon, and I eagerly anticipate the live-action TV show. I have a feeling that, despite everything that has happened, my love for Star Wars will stay strong. Those early memories full of lasers and lightsabers won't easily fade, no matter how many times I see Darth Vader say, "NOOOOOOOOO!" at the end of the Revenge of the Sith.

"Anakin. Go to the Senate and ask Chancellor Palpatine to speak with her about this matter."

I'm still on about Attack of the Clones. What can I say? I have a lot of hate stored up.

So Mace Windu, instead of trying to convince Amidala himself or asking Anakin or Obi-Wan to speak with her, tells Anakin to go tell Palpatine to tell Amidala to get out of Dodge? What!? That sounds like the kind of railroading a dungeon master might do.

But my real problem is still with the thin string that connects all the steps that lead to the Clone Wars. I know what fanboys will say: that the Force meant all this to happen, and therefore the wildly unlikely crap that goes down is all part of a greater plan. But let's go through this one step at a time:

1. Count Dooku hires Jango Fett to kill Amidala.
2. Jango Fett doesn't bother, you know, just shooting Amidala or something. Instead, he hires an assassin. Because nothing says badass bounty hunter like hiring a subcontractor.
3. Instead of, you know, just shooting Amidala, the assassin sends bugs into Amidala's room, giving Obi-Wan and Anakin the time to save her. (Did Jango Fett tell the assassin he doesn't REALLY want Amidala dead? Did Dooku tell Jango this in the first place?)
4. Obi-Wan and Anakin run down the assassin. Instead of, you know, just shooting the assassin with a blaster, Jango Fett decides to use a poison dart that is traceable to one particular world. This is the only time we see Jango use equipment other than his standard loadout. (Again, did Dooku tell Jango to not do stuff the logical way? As far as we know, blasters just leave burns that aren't traceable.)
5. "What you got here is a Kamino saber-dart." Yeah, because some greasy spoon hash-slinger knows high-tech weapons. Well, maybe he was someone else in his old life, but note that the reference to the weapon wasn't in the databanks, so instead of checking some other research source like some other library, Obi-Wan goes straight to the burger joint.
6. Obi-Wan takes the dude's word for it without any other evidence than a guy with grease all over him and a mouth that could swallow a yak telling him so.
7. Obi-Wan decides to research Kamino further, since apparently the weapon used is clearly linked to the assassination. That's kind of like if my enemy used an AK-47, I decide to check out a bunch of books about Russia.
8. Dooku erased Kamino from the Jedi databanks, but didn't doctor the files to adjust for the gravity of the star, so it's still obvious it's there. (I can only assume he did this on purpose to make it that much more suspicious.)
9. Obi-Wan decides to go check this stuff out by going all the way to the planet. At this point, he's still just researching the assassination, since he's probably not going to find out on Kamino why someone wiped the databanks on Coruscant. He hasn't researched who the assassin was or who hired him. He hasn't researched any of Amidala's political enemies or anyone else who might profit by her death. Instead, he runs down the source of the ammunition used to kill the assassin. Nobody gives a damn about the bugs that were used to try to kill Amidala herself, which could well be just as rare or specific to one world. We never even find out what those bugs are called. (Now, I know what you're thinking; maybe they did all that, but they just didn't show it. Well, they show so much useless nonsense between Padme and Anakin, that they could have filled in a little more of the plot holes. Just one line: "Everything else connected with this case has been a dead end, so I thought I'd research this dart.")
10. So what exactly is Obi-Wan expecting to do on Kamino? This is only what I imagine would have happened if there wouldn't have been a clone army on Kamino, which of course no one knew there was.

Kaminoan: Hey, a Jedi. You could have just called, you know, but I guess you came all the way out here. That's cool. Whatever. So, what's up?
Obi-Wan: Yo. I found this dart in the neck of a dude who tried to kill someone. I need to know who you sold it to. Does it have barrel grooves or a serial number or something that we could nail down?
Kaminoan: Hell no, since it's never mentioned in the movie.
Obi-Wan: So you have no way of tracking down who you sold that to.
Kaminoan: Dude, we might not have even sold it. He could have stolen it or taken it from the body of someone he killed. We don't even know how recently he came by it. We'd have to go through years and years of sales data.
Obi-Wan: Well, shit. I guess I went through all that for nothing.
Kaminoan: Don't let the sliding door hit you in the ass on the way out.


And just where the HELL does the clone army come from? I'll tell you where. Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas apparently bought an entire army because he FORESAW that the Republic would need it through the Force. Because, you know, the logical solution to troubling premonitions of war is to buy an entire army. Because the Jedi are all about warfare and armies and stuff like that. As Yoda once said, "Wars not make one great. Wars make one BITCHIN' AWESOME!"

And who the hell is Sifo-Dyas? He was an old Jedi buddy of Dooku, which is why Dooku knew about the clones and could set up the whole sequence of events that would lead to the formation of the Grand Army of the Republic. Dooku killed him and incorporated his clone army into his long-term plans. But I've got a few questions:

1. Where did a Jedi come up with the cash for an entire clone army, not to mention weapons, equipment, and starships? He must have gone through a lot of couch cushions to come up with that kind of dough. Dex stresses in his conversation with Obi-Wan that the Kaminoans are a very mercenary lot, so I doubt they're doing it for charity and a tax writeoff.
2. Why didn't Sifo-Dyas tell anyone he was doing this? This isn't the kind of thing you just keep to yourself, is it? "Mace Windu, what are you up to these days?" "Oh, you know, meditating. Keeping the peace. You?" "Nothing, really." "You're not purchasing an entire clone army complete with warships and everything, are you?" "Erm... what makes you think that?" "Hell if I know! I just ask that sometimes for shits and giggles." "Oh... right."
3. And what about this presumed conversation on Kamino: "So, Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas, who would you like to use as the basis for your clone army? A Jedi? An honorable soldier from a Jedi-aligned world, perhaps?" "Yeah, maybe something like that. I haven't really thought about it." "Well, if that's the case, we've got another option we thought you might like. How about an amoral bounty hunter who kills for money?" "Shit yeah! Even better. Let's get this assembly line moving!" Of course, it's possible the Kaminoans just came up with using a bounty hunter on their own, but is that really the kind of decision you just delegate to the long-necked weirdos and hope for the best?

A Faith Betrayed

I watched Star Wars Episode 2 again today. In the past, I have defended Lucas because of all the things he's given me, characters and stories that have shaped me and given me great happiness. I have been loyal, and I have suffered and endured patiently. But no loyal servant deserves that. That movie is a travesty against the name of cinema. Not only is the dialogue horrible, the logic is completely incomprehensible. Why is there a secret army no one knew about? Why does Obi-Wan traipse around the galaxy following half-baked clues like a Jedi version of Carmen Sandigo? Whyyyy? Why couldn't they just debate and decide to FORM an army, rather than have to decide whether to USE THE ONE THAT MAGICALLY APPEARS? I believed in you, George. I TRUSTED YOU, GEORGE!

Crunching the Numbers On... Star Wars

It's complicated to imagine what a galactic war would be like, but I can't imagine it would be much like what's shown in Star Wars. The numbers just don't add up: the war would be much, much bigger than the one we're shown. Don't get me wrong: I love Star Wars passionately, but the numbers just don't make sense.

Let's start with a little math (and then move on to much more math). How many worlds are there in the Old Republic (by world, I mean populated mass, whether it's a planet, moon, or something else)? To answer that question, we look to the Galactic Senate. Remember those shots of the huge Senate room with the floating platforms? Each of those represents not just one world, but one system, which may have several worlds in it. How many worlds is that? Thousands. And that's just the Republic members. Even assuming most populated worlds are members of the Republic, that's a lot of populated worlds.

According to Wookiepedia, George Lucas once said there are 24,372 worlds in the Republic. Even taking that with the typical grain of salt that all of Lucas's statements that aren't directly in a movie come with, let's use that as a baseline. 24,372 worlds with at least enough population and development to qualify for membership in the Republic.

Now, let's come to Earth. We have a population of roughly six billion. Of those, perhaps two billion live in what we could call reasonable comfort (less than luxury but better than poverty). According to Wikipedia, the world has 17 million active duty troops. Even assuming a third of that (taking just the part of the world that lives okay, because Star Wars worlds generally seem to do all right for themselves) that's at least five million troops.

In other words, we have five million troops from a planet like ours. Admittedly, Earth is pretty well populated... until you consider that the planet is mostly ocean and our agricultural practices are pretty slim. Naturally, we'll have a higher population than Tatooine or Mustafar, but I assume Coruscant must balance worlds like that out.

Then again, according to Wookiepedia, Naboo (which seems outrageously fertile), only has a population of 600 million, making it one-tenth the Earth's population, and one-third the number I stated as a benchmark. But you repeatedly hear Naboo referred to as a small world, so I have to assume it's an exception. Ryloth is listed as having a population of 1.5 billion, and that's a pretty backwards agricultural planet. Corellia weighs in at 7 billion, so I seem to be pretty close.

So, let's assume that my previous numbers are sound. Two billion people per world, five million troops per world, and more than twenty-four thousand worlds. That comes to 120 billion troops.

Okay, so say that the vast majority of worlds in Star Wars aren't warlike or don't feel like having a standing army (and can't raise one in an emergency such as the Clone Wars, either, which is a stretch). So let's take that number by one-tenth, because I'm being generous. Twelve billion soldiers, being, as we've seen, a very conservative estimate for the amount of soldiers that we can call on.

Devaronian's advocate: Many worlds, if not most, are ill-suited to serve as regular soldiers. Several races in Star Wars (Ewoks, Toydarians, Tusken Raiders, etc.) could never be in a galactic army. Counter: Let's be honest: the majority of worlds in Star Wars are human or close enough to human; the rest are rare exceptions.

Devaronian's advocate: Many worlds, such as moons and colonies, are vastly underpopulated, therefore my average of two billion is too high. Counter: Come on. Coruscant has one trillion people living on it. That's 500 worlds right there. Besides, in order to have representation in the Galactic Senate, there's got to be at least some people living there. According to Wikipedia, Alderaan has about 2 billion people living on it (pre Death Star), and there's nothing to suggest it's exceptional in its population.

Next, let's add some more numbers to try to understand how many soldiers there would have been in the major battles of the Clone Wars. Total number of clones from Kamino? Wookiepedia lists three million clones as the general standing number. There's some disparity about numbers, but even assuming the very highest number they guess at, which is 700 million, that's still very slim.

How slim? Let's take those 24 thousand worlds again. That's about 30,000 clones per world. The podunk city I live in has a population of 42,000. Assuming we're particularly scrappy, we could take those clones by ourselves.

Let's look at it from another perspective. Remember that our planet has 17 million active duty troops? It also has about 45 million reserve troops. Assuming those would be called up if the planet was threatened, we'd be looking at about 1/11 of the Grand Army of the Republic right here on Earth.

How many major campaigns theaters are there in a war encompassing Earth? Half a dozen at least. And yet in each major planetary campaign, we see only one big battle. They're even referred to as battles: the Battle of Kashyyk, the Battle of Mygeeto. If you're really trying to conquer a planet, you would have to fight long campaigns over vast theaters, not conquer one big city and call it a day. And for that, you need many more troops.

Devaronian's advocate: Although the clones form the core of the Republic army, the Grand Army of the Republic is actually composed of local forces who fight within their own sector. Counter: In virtually every representation of the Clone Wars, we see clones, not local soldiers, fighting. The reason given for forming the Grand Army was so there wouldn't have to be an army drawn from the worlds; there was an attempt to create a separate army in the comics, but it failed, which suggests the clones form at least the majority of the Republic's army.

Remember the battle for Hoth? The Rebel Alliance was more or less quartered within a base the size of a standard military base. How many troops could possibly have been involved in that fight? Not even a million. Considering some of the numbers we've been bandying around (24 thousand worlds. Twelve billion troops.) that's a drop in an ocean the size of every ocean in the galaxy combined. How could a force this size possibly hope to face off against the Imperial navy? For that matter, why would the Imperials only send a few Star Destroyers to destroy the Rebel base if they knew it was their chance to crush the Rebel Alliance once and for all?

Now let's look at the navy. An Imperial-class Star Destroyer has a mass of 25 million tons (I got this from a disreputable source, but bear with me). An aircraft carrier might weigh around 70,000 tons. That comes to about 1/350th of a Star Destroyer. The world today has 22 aircraft carriers (again, thank you Wikipedia), which means about 1/20 of a Star Destroyer (I'm using rough numbers here). I've done some quick math and I assume we can double that easily with the rest of the world's navies; this brings us to 1/10 Star Destroyer. Going back to 24,000 worlds, this gives us an estimate of 2,400 Star Destroyers in the Empire. Wow.

Where are they all? We see none when the Death Star comes for the Rebel base on Yavin 4, and only perhaps a hundred at most at the Battle of Endor. Wouldn't the Emperor focus all of his Star Destroyers at the place he can destroy the entire Rebel Alliance--not to mention needing them for his own protection? Wouldn't he bring in at least half his fleet?

Then there's the question of the number of starfighters we see in space battles. According to Wookiepedia, the average complement of a Star Destroyer is 100 ships, of which 48 are fighters. Compare this with a modern aircraft carrier, which can carry more than 90 fighter aircraft. Consider again that an aircraft carrier is 1/350th the size of a Star Destroyer. Of course, a Star Destroyer also carries soldiers, assault vehicles, etc, but if even a tenth of it was dedicated to fighters, it should hold 35 times the number of fighters as an aircraft carrier (not to mention a TIE fighter is only about 6 meters and a TIE Interceptor 10, while an F-16 is about 15 meters, more than double the length of a standard TIE fighter). That means each Star Destroyer should be carrying more than three thousand fighters. Considering Earth is currently listed as having 28,000 fighter aircraft (a third of which is about 9,000, going by our earlier-used ratios), we see that there would be more than enough to equip those Star Destroyers. Phew! Take that, Rebel scum! So if there were even one hundred Star Destroyers present at the Battle of Endor (not unreasonable, considering the vital importance of the battle), there would be three hundred thousand Imperial fighters to contend with. Those TIE fighters might be crappy, but that's a lot of green laser beams!

By the way, can a 16 meter X-Wing ever really hope to destroy a 1,600 meter Star Destroyer? I'm not C-3PO, but I'm going to say the odds should be 100 to 1. And that's not including the Star Destroyer's fighters.

It could be argued that the majority of the Imperial army and navy are occupied with controlling the Empire elsewhere, and only a fraction is free to fight in any given battle. Some evidence for this would be the presence of stormtroopers on Tatooine. I would argue that those stormtroopers are only there to search for the droids and the stolen plans; local pacification is probably done by locally recruited troops, if it's needed at all, as in Vichy France. Surely the majority of Imperial worlds don't need a standing garrison. They should be able to focus on the major threat to their dominance. Even if there is rebellion on other worlds, an overwhelming defeat of the Rebels at Endor would destroy hope and go a long way to re-establishing order.

Not to mention there are no Star Destroyers or even more than a couple dozen fighters on the whole first Death Star? What in the world was the Empire thinking?

Let's be honest with ourselves: Star Wars is a story, not a simulation of real galactic warfare. The numbers just don't add up. As a story, it draws its influence from our modern experience: each planet becomes a city in scope of battle, so that the galaxy becomes the planet. Explained this way, we see why the battles are really on a planetary, not galactic, scale. The writers can only create a world as far away as their own imaginations can go... and those didn't go far from this planet we call home.