00:15:01 – 00:30:00
This chapter of the Star Wars Edition of 15-Minute Force opens with a long shot of the Jawa sandcrawler doing its thing, crawling through the sand. It’s a night shot and it looks very good to me, even though I realize the sandcrawler is a model that probably stands waist-high, if that.
One Star Wars wipe later, and it’s daytime again, and we’re at the first scene that I am aware is an addition for the special edition. Stormtroopers in dirty white armor are walking along the sand dunes of Tatooine. A couple of them are mounted on very fat CGI lizard creatures. One of the stormtroopers finds some sort of O-ring and makes the quick deduction that there were droids on board the escape pod. This is the most intelligent that stormtroopers will ever be depicted.
Back to the sandcrawler. Also a day exterior shot. During this sequence, C-3PO and R2-D2 are brought outside to form a lineup with an assortment of other droids. The sandcrawler is parked in front of what we know by now to be the Lars moisture farm. As Luke Skywalker and his Uncle Owen are coming out of that weird little sand igloo, Aunt Beru calls out for Luke and asks him to remind his uncle that if they purchase a translator droid to make sure they get one that speaks bocce. I assume they already have droids that speak croquet and bowling ball.
Since C-3PO speaks both bocce and the binary language of moisture vaporators, he is purchased by Uncle Owen along with another droid that’s not R2. Luke calls this not-R2 droid “Red,” although it is mostly white with red accents. To be fair, R2 is mostly white with blue and gray accents, although I always think of him as being blue. Anyway, “Red” blows a head gasket before they even get away from the sandcrawler. Luke diagnoses the droid with a bad motivator. Who knows how to properly motivate a droid anyway?
I don’t think it was a bad motivator at all. I think R2-D2 either sabotaged “Red” or else talked the droid into faking a bad motivator so that he could join his golden buddy. R2, in this scenario, would be a good motivator. Or else it was just a coincidence. Or the Force working in mysterious ways.
Even before “Red” blows up, Uncle Owen is ordering Luke to take the two droids to the garage and have them cleaned up before dinner. Luke whines that he had planned to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. Uncle Owen says he can go waste time with his friends after his chores are completed. Uncle Owen comes across as a stern taskmaster and a bit of a prick. Luke sounds like a petulant teenager. He sounds a lot, in fact, like his father did at a similar age.
This whole droid-buying segment had a sort of uncomfortable slave market vibe to it, especially when looking back on it as an adult. I think Luke’s aunt and uncle treat him as some sort of slave labor as well, so it’s no accident that he apparently relates well to droids.
When “Red” is returned to the Jawas, R2-D2 is the obvious replacement. I am redeemed when Uncle Owen refers to R2 as “the blue one.”
Cut to, the interior of the Lars moisture farm garage. C-3PO is being lowered into an oil bath, which has him as giddy as a schoolgirl. Luke is playing with a model of what looks like one of those bad-guy shuttles, like the Emperor, Darth Vader, and Imperial Director Krennic all ride in. Only it has what appear to be Rebel markings. Luke is more than a little mopey, and seems to hate his life on this backwater Outer Rim planet.
When C-3PO says he’s not sure what planet he’s on, Luke says this: “If there is a bright center of the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.” Tatooine should print that in its travel guides. Luke is being painted in broad strokes as a character who is young and immature, restless and perhaps impetuous.
After calling Luke “Sir Luke,” C-3P0 introduces himself with the title “human-cyborg relations,” which never really made sense to me, either as a kid or now. Of course, there are cyborgs everywhere in the Star Wars galaxy, it seems, including Darth Vader and, eventually, Luke Skywalker himself. Why protocol droids would be designed especially to cater to cyborg relations with humans is anyone’s guess. Come to think of it, the term “humans” puzzles me now. Are Aunt Beru, Uncle Owen and Luke considered to be “humans”? Even in a galaxy far, far away from Earth? Or, is this just a stand-in word, just as English is a stand-in language for Basic or Common Speech or Galactic Trader Language, whatever it’s called in Star Wars? These are things that never occurred to me at age 11. I kind of wish they didn’t occur to me now.
C-3PO also introduces R2-D2, whom Luke is in the process of cleaning, per Uncle Owen’s instructions. When Luke mentions that R2 has a lot of “carbon scoring,” implying that the droids have seen some action, C-3PO lets slip that they are lucky to be in as good condition as they are, what with the Rebellion and all. This piques Luke’s interest. He asks C-3PO about the Rebellion, but the protocol droid is too self-absorbed to be able to tell Luke much about it.
Luke says that R2 has something jammed in one of his many slots. As he forces whatever the object is out of the little astromech droid, he activates that famous snippet of the Princess Leia hologram.
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”
R2 claims that it’s just a malfunction. Luke wants to know who the girl is. He thinks she’s beautiful.
C-3PO says he’s not quite sure, but he thinks she was a passenger on their last voyage together. Again, this never occurred to me in ’77, but I think this means that C-3PO is consciously lying to his new owner (or “master” as he calls him, perpetuating the whole slavery vibe). In our last chapter, we heard C-3PO say the line, “There will be no escape for the princess this time.” This was moments before he and R2 climbed into the escape pod.
We know R2 isn’t telling everything he knows. And since C-3PO finds it easy to lie as well, that implies that droid programming doesn’t prohibit telling un-truths. Isaac Asimov would never have allowed this.
R2 goes on to claim that he is the property of this “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” who apparently lives in the area. No matter how you look at it, that is a bald-faced lie. Then he tricks Luke into removing the restraining bolt that the Jawas fitted him with, claiming that he can show the remainder of the message with the bolt removed. After the restraining bolt is off, R2 feigns amnesia and can’t play the hologram at all. At this point, I’ve no reason to believe that all droids in this galaxy aren’t lying and scheming all the time.
As he removes the restraining bolt, Luke makes the comment that R2 is too little to run off, which implies that the restraining bolt is the Star Wars tech equivalent of slave chains. How much do you want to bet that R2 is going to make a beeline to the Tatooine equivalent of the Underground Railroad?
After, Luke wonders aloud if “Obi-Wan” could be “Old Ben” Kenobi. The Jedi seem to know very little about hiding under assumed identities. Anakin Skywalker’s son, Luke, was taken to the home of Anakin’s stepbrother for safekeeping, and still has the last name Skywalker. Obi-Wan changed his first name but not his last. Maybe Kenobi is a common surname in the galaxy, the Star Wars equivalent of “Smith.” Or maybe—just maybe—the backstory of these characters was still in a state of flux when Star Wars first came out, and George Lucas didn’t realize at the time that this didn’t make as much sense as it should.
Old Ben, it turns out, is a strange old hermit who lives out beyond the Dune Sea. Since Obi-Wan is on Tatooine to keep an eye on Luke, it makes a kind of sense that Luke would know him, even if he doesn’t know his real first name. I can’t imagine that Obi-Wan, as a hermit, knows many people, so it is fortuitous that the droids end up at the home of people who knew someone named Ben Kenobi. They might have been purchased by the Hutts. The Maker works in mysterious ways. Or the Force does. Or something.
Luke is called to dinner by Aunt Beru. Here we get our first look at the infamous blue milk. If I’m remembering my Star Wars trivia correctly, this is supposed to be bantha milk. During the meal, Luke tells his aunt and uncle that he thinks the R2 unit may have been stolen. He tells them that R2 is claiming that he belongs to someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi. Owen and Beru share a meaningful look with each other. Oh, yeah. These two know who Obi-Wan Kenobi is. Luke wonders aloud if this Obi-Wan character might be related to Old Ben.
“That wizard’s just a crazy old man,” Uncle Owen says. Calling Kenobi a “wizard” implies that there are such things as wizards in the Star Wars galaxy. Or else the Jedi Knights were considered to be magic-wielders of some sort. What is the Force but some sort of magic, right? It’s not exactly science. At least not until the midichlorians get involved. There’s zero mention of midichlorians in the original trilogy, of course, so we’re going to pretend that they don’t exist.
Uncle Owen tells Luke that tomorrow he wants him to take that R2 unit into Anchorhead and have its memory erased. That will take care of all this Kenobi talk.
Luke asks what if this Obi-Wan comes looking for the droid.
Uncle Owen says that won’t happen. Then he claims that Obi-Wan died around the same time as Luke’s father. The droids lie better than Uncle Owen does, since he just implied that he didn’t know who Obi-Wan Kenobi was. But, he’s either telling a double lie, since Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are both, technically, still alive, or he’s predicting the future, since both die just a few years apart from each other. You know, later in the trilogy. It seems like everyone lies in this movie.
Uncle Owen brusquely shuts down any further conversation about the subject, telling Luke that he wants both of the droids up on the south ridge in the morning working on those condensers. Wait. Is this before or after Luke takes the R2 unit into Anchorhead for a memory wipe? And if its memory is wiped, how will it be able to work on the condensers? Luke doesn’t ask these questions.
Instead, Luke tries to change to subject to his being able to transmit his application to the academy this year instead of next, if the new droids work out. Uncle Owen shoots that plan down as well. Maybe after the next season, after the harvest. Now, they are moisture farmers, so I’m not sure what moisture harvesting entails or what the seasons are, but if we accept the parallels to, let’s say, vegetable farming, I guess I get the gist of it.
“It’s only one more season,” Uncle Owen says.
“That’s what you said when Biggs and Tank left,” Luke says, then gets up from the table. We don’t know Biggs and Tank, but in context it seems safe to assume that they were Luke’s friends, who already left for the academy. Whatever the academy is.
“Where are you going?” Aunt Beru asks.
“Looks like I’m going nowhere,” Luke responds, in a huff. “I have to go finish cleaning those droids,” he adds, which means he didn’t have his chores done before dinner, as Uncle Owen had instructed.
After Luke has left the room, Aunt Beru tells Owen that they can’t keep Luke there forever. Most of his friends have already gone, and it means so much to him. Uncle Owen says he’ll make it up to him next year.
“Luke’s just not a farmer, Owen,” Beru says. “He’s just got too much of his father in him.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Owen responds.
Dun-dun-Duhn! This definitely seems to foreshadow that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker, although I’ve heard it said that this wasn’t necessarily true during the first movie. Maybe this exchange was a special edition change.
We are treated to some sad John Williams Star Wars music as Luke watches the twin suns of Tatooine setting on the horizon. Poor Luke. All of his friends have left him alone on this hick planet. His aunt and uncle are holding him back, making him drink blue milk.
Luke returns to the garage to find C-3PO hiding from him and R2-D2 missing. It seems that the little astromech droid (I wonder when he’ll be referred to as an “astromech” for the first time?) wasted little time flying the coop once his slave chains were removed. Luke and C-3PO head up to the surface and we get our first Star Wars binocular usage. Not the last.
During this exchange, as if he heard my question, C-3PO does refer to R2 as an “astrodroid.” Not quite “astromech droid,” but suitable shorthand, I’d say.
A scan of the horizon turns up nothing. C-3PO asks if they could go out after him. Luke says it’s too dangerous at night with all the sand people around. “Sand people” comes across as a derogatory term. I think Luke may be a racist. He really needs to get off the farm. Luke tells C-3PO that they’re going to have to wait until morning.
Luke and C-3PO light out early the next morning before Uncle Owen is up and about. There is a quick scene in which Aunt Beru says that Luke had something he needed to do before getting started this morning, and that she thinks he took the two new droids with him. Uncle Owen says Luke better have those units on the south ridge repaired today or there will be “Hell to pay.” Other than C-3PO’s “Thank the Maker!” as he slipped into his oil bath, we’ve had no evidence of religion on Tatooine, but it seems that the concept of Hell is known. Either that or “Hell” is the name of the bank officer who floated Owen a loan until harvest time.
Next, we get our first view of the landspeeder. Either the effect has held up pretty well, or it was “fixed” for the special edition. Then we get our first shot of Tusken Raiders, whom Luke referred to as “sand people.” His father didn’t think too highly of the Tuskens either, as I recall. We see a couple of the Raiders riding atop huge mounts that are obviously elephants wearing costumes. I feel kind of sorry for the elephants, but they look good in the shots, even if they remind me a little of Mr. Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.
This is not the Muppet-heavy Star Wars movie. That would be Return of the Jedi. ‘Nuff said for now.
Luke and C-3PO catch up to R2-D2, but are then attacked by Tusken Raiders. Luke grabs the longest rifle ever manufactured from the landspeeder and then uses his binoculars again, spying on the Tusken Raiders in the distance but completely overlooking the one standing right in front of him until it’s too late. During the scene in which Luke is attacked, there is a moment that I wish had been tinkered with for the special edition. It’s when the raider begins gesticulating wildly with his stick weapon over his head, where the film was obviously edited to loop several times, giving the moment a jerky, unrealistic appearance. This plays out pretty much as I remember it.
So, Luke is unconscious, and R2 is hiding under an overhanging rock, while Tusken Raiders are throwing parts off of the landspeeder. The attackers are scared off by the sudden appearance of a figure in a hooded dark brown robe who is making some strange howling noise. As this chapter of the Star Wars Edition of 15-Minute Force comes to a close, the hooded figure is leaning over the unconscious Luke Skywalker, its hand on Luke’s face.
We will be formally introduced to this new character in our next chapter. Until that time. . . .Tosche Station Is The Place To Go For Power Converters, Or To Waste Time With Your Friends When You Still Have Chores To Do . . .And May The 15-Minute Force Be With You.
firewatersite 