When Luke Skywalker Meets the Ancient Sith Who RETURNED to the Light

San Diego city meetings are not known for heavy breathing, black capes, or threats against the Rebel Alliance. That changed when a speaker dressed as Darth Vader stepped to the microphone during an August 19 council committee meeting. He had only a few minutes, a voice changer, and a very modern piece of surveillance technology …

Darth Vader’s birth scene in Revenge of the Sith moves so quickly that the operation can feel almost immediate. One moment Anakin is burning on Mustafar, and soon after, the mask closes over his face. But the film never shows a clock, a calendar, or any clear measure of the time passing. To work out …

Anakin Skywalker’s green interceptor looks like one more piece of machinery left behind when his life collapsed on Mustafar. The movie never returns to it, and Vader soon becomes linked with very different ships. That makes the fighter easy to forget, even though it was sitting beside one of the most important moments in Star …

A Sarlacc is one of the nastiest ways to die in Star Wars. It waits beneath the sand, catches anything that comes close, and can keep its victim trapped for years. Yet Tatooine has another monster capable of turning that famous death pit into a hunting ground. The strangest part is not only what this …

For a few seconds during the Boonta Eve Podrace, The Phantom Menace cuts to a two-headed announcer who talks over himself in two languages. He is strange enough to be memorable, yet the movie gives viewers almost no time to understand what they are looking at. That makes his apparent disappearance from later films feel …

The Tatooine stretch of The Phantom Menace feels focused on a small group trying to repair a ship and get back to Naboo. Look more closely, though, and several people connected to the Force pass through the same part of the story. Some are central to the plot, while others appear so briefly that a …

Grievous was one of the most heavily modified cyborgs in Star Wars, yet his final moments look strangely easy to ignite. Obi-Wan fires several shots, and the Separatist general suddenly burns from the inside like his body was packed with fuel. The scene is quick enough that the important setup is easy to miss. To …

The prequel cast is suddenly closer to Star Wars than it has been in years. Hayden Christensen is playing Anakin again, Ewan McGregor keeps asking for more Obi-Wan, and old Clone Wars stories are finally appearing in live action. That makes one reunion idea feel far less impossible than it did a decade ago. The …

Darth Vader was hardly a friendly boss. He ruled through fear, punished failure brutally, and could kill a subordinate without warning. Yet Canon suggests that some stormtroopers genuinely admired him, not because he cared deeply about them, but because he was a powerful commander who fought beside them and usually delivered results. Some Stormtroopers Clearly …

Ewan McGregor has two very different ideas for getting Obi-Wan Kenobi back on screen. One reaches into the painful years after Revenge of the Sith; the other brings his character surprisingly close to Hera Syndulla. Both came up while he was talking about how much he still enjoys playing the Jedi. But the exact words …