Question: This is a two part question. Question 1: during Obi-Wan and Darth Vader's duel aboard The Death Star, Obi wan spins around, briefly exposing himself and giving Vader an opening within which to strike. Why didn't he take it and stab him through the back? Question 2: towards the end of the duel, at 91 minutes 28 seconds, why does Obi-Wan's lightsaber dim to the point of where it looks like it's going out?
Chosen answer: In response to your first part, its simply a case that Vader missed the opening, he clearly has no issues with striking down someone unarmed as he demonstrates later. In response to your second question, its a fault with the effects used at the time that when the lightsabers were held at certain angles, the effects used to 'paint' on the shimmer of the lightsabers couldn't be applied because there wasn't enough of the required colouring.
Question: When Obi-Wan and Darth Vader are dueling aboard the Death Star, why does Obi-Wan's lightsaber fizzle out?
Question: Is there any information, either from the the films or EU, about the specifications of the various weapons in the saga, such as Solo's blaster, or the Stormtrooper's rifles? How do they work? What do they fire etc?
Answer: Being fictional weaponry, precise details can be hard to come by and may potentially be contradictory as different authors provide different interpretations. Much information on the different types of weaponry used across the Star Wars universe and what's known about how they operate (often very little) can be found here.
Question: I haven't read all of the Star Wars books, but one mentions Prince Xizor being involved in Owen and Beru's death. Was he?
Answer: No, he wasn't. Xizor didn't learn about Luke until the events of The Empire Strikes Back, when he listened in on the holocomm conversation between Vader and the Emperor, a couple of years after Owen and Beru were killed by the stormtroopers. He had no reason to be interested in a couple of moisture farmers.
Question: What's with Obi-Wan disappearing when he dies? I mean, I've never seen anyone else in the Star Wars 6-logy do it.
Answer: Yoda does it as well. This is linked to the bit at the end of Episode 3 when Yoda tells Obi-wan that his old mentor Qui-gon has managed to 'return' through the Force and instructs him to learn how this can be done. As such, when they die, both Yoda and Obi-wan are, in some unexplained manner, absorbed into the Force - this is what allowed Obi-wan to continue to communicate with Luke during the subsequent films.
Question: How long is it between the three films, "A New Hope" and "Empire Strikes Back" and then "Return of the Jedi"? Did it take years or merely months? I'm sure they wouldn't wait for a year to save Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt.
Answer: There's about three years between ANH and ESB, with the best part of a year elapsing before the events of ROTJ - it was indeed that long before they were able to break Han out of captivity.
Question: How was it possible for Vader to survive when his ship was dashed out into space from the Death Star before it was destroyed? When the TIE fighter crosses Millennium Falcon Obi-Van says "A fighter that size couldn't get this deep into space on its own" and "It would be as well to let it go, it's too far out of range" and Vader's ship is about the same size. Could we assume his ship was some sort of special long-range fighter, or that he was lucky enough to reach an imperial base or catch up with a convoy?
Chosen answer: Vader's ship was a prototype of the TIE-Advanced, an enhanced model that ultimately proved too expensive to be mass-produced. Part of the reason for that expense was that the fighter was equipped with a hyperdrive, allowing Vader to reach safety with little trouble.
Question: What exactly is or was the "Shadows of the Empire?
Answer: "Shadows of the Empire" is essentially Episode 5.5: the story of what happened between "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi". It was a multimedia project created by Lucasfilm in 1996, with a novel, comic series, computer game, RPG sourcebooks, toys and even its own soundtrack - everything except an actual movie.
Question: How is it that Princess Leia, in the hologram, knows who Obi-Wan is? And yet Luke doesn't. How could she possibly know who he is when, in Episode III, the only time she "sees" Obi-Wan is when she is an infant.
Answer: She's never met him, but has been told about him by her adoptive father, Bail Organa, who gave her the mission to go and collect Obi-Wan.
Question: Is there a difference in the opening scroll between the original release and later versions? I'm specifically wondering if "Episode IV: A New Hope" was included in the original theatrical release, or added later.
Answer: In 1977, the original release just said "Star Wars". Lucas didn't want to confuse everybody. However, one year later, when re-released because of its popularity, he had renamed it "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope".
Question: Maybe this will be explained in Episode III, but Leia is "princess" of what? The Rebellion? Of Alderaan? And who is her (fake) father that she mentions to Obi-Wan?
Answer: Leia was adopted by Bail Organa (played by Jimmy Smits in Episodes II and III), who was a member of a Royal family on Alderaan, so when she was adopted by Bail, she became a royal princess.
Question: One of the corrections says that there is a scene where Obi-Wan talks about duck with Luke. Where is this scene? I can't seem to find it.
Answer: There's no version of the film that this appears in, and I've checked the original, the special edition and the DVD release. I believe that it was in the original novelisation, but that the scene was either cut before release, or the author simply added it to flesh things out. In any event, it shouldn't be considered a canonical scene, so the correction in question should probably be considered invalid.
Question: Did they change the CG Jabba the Hutt's appearance? It looked like he was a lot more green than in the original special edition. If they did, then why? I thought he looked fine in the original.
Answer: Yes, they have altered Jabba a bit - after he appeared in Episode I, they tweaked the model used in the special edition to bring it closer to what we've seen elsewhere.
Question: Han Solo is famous for his Kessel Run, but can anyone explain to me what it is?
Answer: Near the planet of Kessel (the prison planet), there is a cluster of black holes (called the Maw). Smugglers will skirt by the black holes as an escape route, this route is called the Kessel Run. For further details (including an explination of parsecs), view this page: http://www.starwars.com/community/askjc/jocasta/askjc20020221.html.
If you watch the movie, Solo, you will see the Kessel run, as it is an important moment in the film.
Question: Why does Obi-Wan freely admit he is a Jedi, when he is supposedly in hiding from Vader? He sure made no secret of his last name.
Answer: It's a very large galaxy - Vader's hardly going to track down some old hermit living out in the middle of nowhere on a backwards planet based purely on a surname that, for all we know, might be quite a common one, and remember that nobody knows him as 'Obi-wan', only as Ben. The only person that he admits to being a Jedi to is Luke, who's not going to go running to the Empire to turn in a man who was a friend of his fathers. Everyone else seems to regard him as a crazy old hermit, not a Jedi Knight or anything like that. Okay, he cuts loose with his sabre in the Mos Eisley cantina, but (a) he's about to leave the planet anyway and (b) it's not as if he had a lot of choice. By the time that Vader might hear about it, he'll be long gone.
Question: It's obviously simple to build a robot that can understand and speak English. Even droids working as short order cooks can speak English, as far back as Episode 2. So why can't R2 talk? He's a friggin' mechanic, he needs to be able to speak with the humans he works for. I know his primary function isn't communication but if 90% of the droids in Star Wars have a speech function surely R2 could have one.
Answer: R2's job is astromech droid and in-flight mechanic, which means that he's supposed to be locked into a fighter most of the time. When that is the case, he can communicate with the pilot through the computer (as seen in Empire Strikes Back, I believe). Since the builders didn't anticipate how much wandering around he would be doing, they didn't see a need to build in a speech function and instead spent that space on extra tools and repair programming. How many astromechs do you see wandering around the Star Wars universe and interacting with people?
Chosen answer: Originally, Han shot Greedo outright. The next releases of the films were altered, the first with Greedo firing roughly a second before Han does, and in the subsequent release, Greedo firing just slightly before Han does. Many fans felt that Han seemingly shooting in self-defence took away from his scoundrel character.
Darius Angel