star wars - Would the Emperor have exploded if he were beheaded by Luke?

When the Emperor died, he made a big explosion. From the Return of the Jedi script

[...] Darth Vader hurls the Emperor's body into the bottomless shaft.

The Emperor's body spins helplessly into the void, arcing as it falls into the abyss. Finally, when the body is far down the shaft, it explodes, creating a rush of air through the room. Vader's cape is whipped by the wind and he staggers, and collapses toward the bottomless hole. [...]

Just before that, Luke made an attempt to kill him, but was prevented from doing so by Vader.

I just remember that bad guy from the Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II video game also exploded and that I used to think that it would be the case for other Sith. That was until the deaths of Darth Maul and Dooku, who didn't explode when they were killed.

If Luke's attempt had been successful, would the Emperor have exploded? Or was the explosion caused by something down the pit?

Answer

It's entirely possible that the Emperor would have reacted the same way no matter how he was killed.

Dooku and Maul, if you recall, were only apprentices. It's certainly possible that his death was the Sith equivalent of the Jedi disappearing corpse technique.

As DavRob60 pointed out in his answer, this phenomenon is called (by fans, nothing official from Lucasfilm yet) the 'Dark Side Burst'.

Comments

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

story identification - I'm looking for a book about an experiment a couple decided to do on their child to make him smarter

I'm looking for a book I read in the 90's...it was about an experiment a couple decided to do on their child to make him smarter. I think the child ended up being too smart or something but I remember it getting kind of scary...his brain got bigger and bigger. I know I'm being vague but I was really young when I read it and it was way too advanced for me but I'm trying to find it!

Blog

Search This Blog