A Fateful Moment In Star Wars

Today, I want to talk about one little scene at the beginning of Star Wars. It’s not a scene most people remember, and the two characters involved don’t even have names. But it presents us with an amazing “what if” scenario.

As I'm sure you know, the movie opens with an Imperial Star Destroyer attacking a rebel ship, supposedly a diplomatic shuttle from Alderaan. On board this ship is Princess Leia with stolen plans for the Imperial Death Star. On board the Star Destroyer is Darth Vader. After stopping the rebel ship, Imperial Stormtroopers board the rebel ship and capture the crew. During these events, Leia puts the plans to the Death Star into R2D2, and he and C-3PO head for an escape pod. Our scene takes place right after they launch the pod.

As the pod leaves the rebel ship and heads toward Tatooine, an unnamed Imperial trooper notices the escape pod and asks his commander if he should destroy the pod. The commander, in a decision that will bring down the Empire, decides that they don't need to bother because they scan no life signs in the pod.

If those two bozos had destroyed the pod, R2D2 would have been destroyed along with the plans that eventually allow the rebels to destroy the Death Star. Even more significantly, had R2D2 not reached the surface, there would have been no reason for Stormtroopers to kill Luke’s family, giving Luke no reason to leave Tatooine or to fight the Empire. Moreover, there would have been no reason for Ben Kenobi to begin training Luke -- seeing as how he never bothered to contact Luke until he tried to take R2D2 to Anchorhead to have his memory erased.

Thus, by not destroying the pod, these two unnamed troopers allow to be set into motion a series of events that will eventually bring down the entire Galactic Empire.

What’s even more interesting is that if Vader had not pursued Leia in the first place, there also would have been no reason for them to go to Tatooine and to bring Luke into the story. And since Luke is the one guy in the universe who can destroy the Death Star and ultimately bring down the Empire, Vader essentially sets into place the chain of events he's trying to prevent.

Cool huh?

Lots of movies have little moments like this that often go unnoticed, moments where some minor action on the part of an insignificant character either causes a series of events or fails to prevent a series of events that have galactic importance to the story, or moments where a character’s actions bring on the very events they are trying to stop.

I think it’s a clever bit of writing that inserts these sorts of moments into films because it adds a sense of irony and raises questions of fate. How would things have gone if these two troopers had fired? What if Vader hadn’t decided to chase Leia? What if these weren't the robots you are looking for? I think these are interesting questions for us because we are very good at seeing our mistakes in hindsight, but we're very bad at seeing the future consequences of our actions. Seeing this in film is a way to live vicariously. . . to wonder if we shouldn't have shot down a few more pods in our lifetime, or if maybe we aren’t causing our own problems?

Thoughts?