Saga How the Dead are forgotten in SW

If you die in SW, odds are you will be forgotten quite fast. Let's take a few examples.

(1) Biggs Darklighter. Luke's best friend, childhood buddies. Get's killed in the Battle of Yavin. No tears. No comment. Never mentioned again.

(2) Uncle Ben and Aunt Beru. Raised Luke since birth. Horribly massacred in ANH. Brief Luke determined look (good music by John Williams, of course). But goodbye, never mentioned again.

(3) Most of the PT characters. Watching the OT, you would think that Yoda and Obi-Wan are the only to Jedi in the galaxy. Mace who? Qui-Gon who?

(4) Bail Organa. Senator of the Republic. Friend of Yoda and Obi-Wan. Raised Leia. Leader of the Rebellion. Gets wiped out by the Death Star. Gone. Bye-bye.

I'm not saying constant reminders or tribute is necessary, but at least some signal that they actually existed! Only exception I think is Obi-Wan...and the fact that he continues on as a Force Ghost makes references to him quite safe, since we see him all the time afterwards.

 

Indeed I agree. However, as usual you're only telling one side. What about Tarkin, Dooku, Needa, Jerjerrod, everyone that died on Death Stars or in battles? Absolutely *nothing*.

 

I agree with you on Luke and his so called friend, Biggs. He didn't even shed a tear for the people who raised him for crying out loud. Same with Leia and the loss of her father. Not to mention her entire homeworld.

Now I disagree about the PT characters:

Anakin obviously got very upset over the loss of his mother and look at far he took things over the mere possibility over losing Padme.

Yoda was also deeply saddened about the loss of his fellow Jedi and students. Padme was upset over the attacks at the Jedi Temple. Even Bail Organa.

 

I'd say some don't think 2 seconds of emotion cuts it.

 

Couple of points.

(1) I almost included a list of all the Imperials who were quickly forgotten. Cushing's Admirer's list is dead on. I had the same one! But, I think the "good" people list highlights the point, as in anyone can say that Imperials don't mourn their own.

(2) Good point about Shmi. But I guess my overall point is not that there are no tears for the dead, is how they are forgotten....as in never mentioned ever again. It goes to the issue of continuity...we always remember the fallen at some point and mention them, even in passing. I know it would be too much retroactive connection for the OT, but Vader never mentions his true love, his living mother, his first mentor. They are just skipped over. The PT tried to do it with Qui-Gon in ROTS, but the main point is that there seems to be a total lack of emotional continuity between OT and PT and within in the OT itself.

I'm not complaining! haha, just noticing an interesting phenomenon.

That's why I like that people survive the Saga, it allows them to keep on mattering, like Wedge...

 

Thank you but I think it is very narrow to make that assumption and it is a VALID point I will KEEP making: Imperials ARE people too. It's time we treat them like it.

 

What can I say...I agree, so they are!

 

Nope, them Imperial folks are not folks...

George didn't have time in is movies to devote 3-5 minutes per dead character for the living to wail and weep - and I kind of doubt George would have been satisfied with mere mentions alone. Not to mention, if it didn't advance the plot, it wasn't incorporated - just like the Padme with her family deleted scene, etc.

 

This exactly. I mean, sure, it would be nice for Luke to take time to grieve over Biggs, yeah. But in the middle of a space battle with Darth kriffing Vader on your tail is not the time to do it. Owen and Beru not being grieved over? Um, it was kind of the stimulus for Luke to start his hero's journey! As to other characters, the thing is these movies aren't much more than 2 hours long each, so there's not a lot of time to spend on scenes of characters crying. It's realistic, yes, but I think it can be implied to take place off-screen. If these movies were 3 hours or so long, sure, have a 5-minute scene of characters talking about dearly-departed; I'd be fine with that! But these movies honestly have a pace that would really be messed up if you threw that in as-is. Luke saying "I can't believe he's gone" about Obi-Wan is good enough for me.

And besides that, in the new canon novel Heir to the Jedi, after a certain character dies, it allows Luke to pour out his grief over all the deaths in his past, like Owen/Beru, Obi-Wan, and Biggs. These things, I think, are good for exposition in novels. Page-time isn't limited like screen-time is, so you can have a long discourse on grieving the loss of those who died. In movies that are generally meant to be light-hearted adventures, it just doesn't fit as much. Like I said, Luke's moment of grief over Obi-Wan, the funeral of Qui-Gon, Yoda's passing, etc. are about all we need, in-film, to show the characters' grief.

 

Well, you know what Star Wars says about attachments, so...

 

grieving is done off screen later.

 

Eh... seems pretty realistic to me. This is a war (it's right there in the title) and in wars, people die pretty frequently. Not just the ones we know the names of but how many unnamed mooks on both sides, poor anonymous rebel soldiers and stormtroopers, they were all someone's son/father/husband/wife/daughter etc etc. Sadly, dying and being forgotten is pretty much a fact of life... well, lack of life anyway. And hardly exclusive to Star Wars in purely filmic terms either!

 

I always wonder this during the opening scene of ANH when the Stormtroopers kill all the Rebel soldiers, including the guy held up, choked, killed, and thrown against a wall by Vader.

Also, the Royal Awards Ceremony always makes me uncomfortable. That a bunch of guys died during the utmost important battle of the whole Saga, that a few dozen X Wings and Y Wings were dispatched to go fight against the Empire and only a few made it back, yet here we are celebrating these two guys and their furry sidekick as if they were the only ones in the battle.

And yea, I agree with your whole assessment. Both Rebel Alliance and Empire soldiers get killed, civilians get killed, there's Aldeeran obviously, all the maintenance guys and administrative staff on the Death Star, and it's all just glossed over. From that opening scene in a ANH we get a trail of bodies violently put to their deaths that just continues on throughout the entire saga. When you think about it, all the death and warfare and violence that takes place, the deep seeded hatred between two sides, Star Wars is actually quite a dark and violent series of films.

 

Originally, Luke did have tears in his eyes when he went to fire the torpedoes, but it never made it into the film.

Yoda and Obi-wan are the only Jedi who are capable of retaining their identities and being seen. Qui-gon has probably moved on into the Force.

Leia says that they will mourn Alderaan later. This falls under Lucas's philosophy that you can mourn when the time is right, but to not cling onto that emotional pain because it will drag you down.

Captain Antilles.

You've never see an awards ceremony in the real world, have you?

War is not a pretty, nor a civil action. That's why it is called, "Star Wars".

 

For sure, I don't only reference lack of mourning (which we saw for Obi-Wan, but poor Biggs was forgotten in an instance). I also mean the lack of future reference to those characters as if the never existed in the first place. No anecdote, no reference, no connections. It weakens saga cohesion.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I'll be sure to keep it in mind.

And yea, I have seen awards ceremonies. There is always mention of the dead. I've seen guys get awarded the Medal of Honor who only chose to receive it as a symbolic gesture to honor the guys they served with who didn't make it back.

 

There's more important things going on.

Right, but this is the end of the film. It would be clunky to stop to honor the dead at the end of the film. That's why you don't see such things in movies like this.

 

Sorry, but that's not enough! Over-arching stories make references to past events (Clone Wars, Jedi Knight history, start of the rebellion) and to past characters (yet this is missing here). History is the connecting force behind the saga, since it spans so many decades. One would think reference to past, now dead characters would permeate. It's part of the retconn problem.

 

The living are mentioned. The dead, not so much. Retcons are not the problem. Lucas never mentioned these things within the OT when it was made originally. George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan were not Joss Whedon. They wrote what was relevant to the story.

 

I agree that a lot of the mourning probably happened off-screen.
I can imagine Luke shredding some tears over Biggs after he blew up the Death Star (and before the medal ceremony).

 

I'm more concerned about this sort of thing happening in books, or soaps,

in movies...not so much.

 

I haven't read the original novel in decades, but IIRC after Biggs died, it said something like, "Luke angrily brushed the tears from his eyes. They were blurring his view of the target scope."

 

luke didn't reply immediately. his eyes were watering and he angrily wiped them clear. They were blurring his view of the targeting readout.

 

We will always be a pair of shooting stars. We will never be stopped.