Couldn’t Vader Simply Stop and Turn That Freighter Around With the Force?

When I first saw Vader rip that transport out of the sky in Obi-Wan Kenobi, it immediately made the ending of Rogue One feel strange. In the show, he walks out onto a landing pad and drags a ship back down with the Force; in the movie, he cuts through a corridor of Rebels, reaches the hangar, and then watches as the Tantive IV blasts away into space without him even raising a hand.

So the question is simple: if he can do that on Jabiim, why doesn’t he just stop that fleeing corvette and pull it back?

Why the Jabiim Transport and the Tantive IV Aren’t the Same Thing

When you line up the two scenes, the first obvious difference is the ship. In Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vader is dragging down a single transport that’s just lifting off a pad. It’s close, it hasn’t built up real speed yet, and it’s basically a big metal brick shoving against gravity. 

In Rogue One, the Tantive IV is a full CR90 corvette – about 150 meters long, multi-deck, heavy engines, the kind of ship that normally runs with a crew and support from a capital fleet. By the time Vader reaches the hangar, it’s already clear of the Profundity, its main drives are lit, and a few moments later it’s in hyperspace. Trying to grab and turn something that big, at that speed, from the mouth of a corridor is not the same job as yanking a much smaller shuttle straight down off its initial climb.

Then there’s Vader himself. In Kenobi he’s not calm at all. He sees Obi-Wan getting away again and just snaps. He doesn’t stop to think if he can or should; he reaches out and tries to crush the problem in front of him right now. That version of Vader is still volatile and easy to bait, which both Obi-Wan and Palpatine point out in the show.

By the time of Rogue One, he’s colder and more controlled. He’s standing there watching the corvette go because he knows two things: one, it’s a much bigger target than that Jabiim transport, and two, the Empire’s ships and trackers are already in play. He doesn’t have to gamble on a huge Force feat when he fully expects to run the Tantive IV down the regular way.

So Could Vader “Just” Turn the Tantive IV Around?

On paper it’s tempting to say “he stopped one ship, so he should stop any ship,” but the way the Force works on screen has never really been that simple. Vader isn’t a walking tractor beam. Even in Kenobi, yanking that shuttle down is treated like a big emotional spike, not something he throws around every time a ship takes off. We do see him pull off similar brute-force moments elsewhere, stopping an AT-AT that Han and Leia try to walk over him with in the Star Wars comics, or catching a falling walker in Rebels and pushing it aside – but in all of those cases the target is right on top of him and all of his focus is on that one object.

Could he try to grab something that size at that stage? Yeah, maybe. Based on those other feats, it’s not insane to think he might be able to make a corvette at least stagger if all the conditions were right and he threw everything into it. But in that Scarif moment, he doesn’t actually have to. The Tantive IV is already at full burn, he’s just fought his way down a corridor, and he knows there’s a tracker and an Imperial fleet ready to chase it down the normal way. From his point of view, risking a massive Force stunt there isn’t worth it when the tools of the Empire are already doing the job.

So the short answer is: yes, Vader has shown the kind of raw power that makes a move like that believable – but in Rogue One he chooses not to use it. Dragging down a close, lifting shuttle in a rage is one thing. Letting a fleeing corvette go because you’re confident you’ll catch it with Star Destroyers and a tracker is a different call, and that’s the one he makes.