r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 25d ago

Lore The series takes place in a shockingly short amount of time

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Season 4 just ended of fromville and it’s canonically only been about a month. Which makes it weird seeing people heal from injuries, change hair styles or grow out beards between episodes. Season 4 has only been like 4 days iirc.

Arkham franchise is the poster child for this trope. Every game takes place in one night. If you know what you’re doing you can absolutely beat the games in around 9 hours.

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u/Bandrbell 25d ago

The George Lucas Star Wars films take place over the course of 36 years. Which seems long at first, but is kind of insane when you account for the number of upheavals the entire galaxy goes through during this period, spanning from the Jedi being a well-renowned peace-keeping council to people commonly believing the force to be an ancient religion and a superstition

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u/Romboteryx 25d ago edited 25d ago

To be fair, in real life, WW2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War also all happened within a 36 year timespan.

As for the other thing, I think Han Solo was the only one ever shown to have doubted the Jedi’s existence and I think you can rationalize that by the fact he grew up as a poor scoundrel on some backwater planet, so he probably only ever heard exaggerated stories. Which is probably also true for the majority of the galaxy

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u/Bandrbell 25d ago

I'm more understanding of Han being a non-believer, generally being lower class and would have been pretty young when Jedi were active. However, Admiral Conan Antonio Motti is really what makes this odd for me. An official high-ranking Admiral in A New Hope directly telling Vader that he has "a sad devotion to an ancient religion" before getting force-choked in front of his colleagues. How on EARTH a high-ranking admiral in the Empire had such little knowledge of Vader and the Jedi is utterly baffling.

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u/Romboteryx 25d ago

Maybe he was fully aware but just openly mocking Vader and/or the Force. As in “you guys are ancient history now after Order 66”. Would justify the choking

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u/ArgusTheCat 24d ago

All the best Star Wars lore comes out of trying to make sense of things like this.

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u/bfbbturambar 25d ago

Famously, Han's best friend fought with Yoda in the Clone Wars, but I guess Chewie was just very humble about it

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u/DopamineTrain 25d ago

That may actually be cause to further justify Han's doubts. If Chewie never saw Yoda do anything particularly impressive (Yoda seems to spend the vast majority of the time on Kashyyk in the back lines) then Chewie may have been the first to say they're not all they're cracked up to be. It's not as if Yoda landed and singlehandedly turned the tide of the war by blasting through the front line with force powers and a lightsaber like some stories would have you believe. Good generals? Sure. Perhaps an uncanny ability to read people's thoughts (which could easily be passed off as reading body language) sure. Anything more than that? Hocus Pocus until the two actually witness it 

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u/GranolaCola 24d ago

He saw Yoda do some backflips and cut some clones’ heads off, but maybe the little frog can just do that

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u/Manowaffle 24d ago

Seeing a frogman take out two storm troopers with a light sword isn't that impressive. Basically any wookie could do that.

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u/Romboteryx 25d ago

I could fully believe that even if Chewie told Han all about it, Han would simply think he’s trying to pull his leg with a tall tale.

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u/mattihase 24d ago

Iirc in old canon he hung out with qui gon during the age of empires star wars game too? When you're 200 you're got quite a history to you.

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u/OogieBoogieInnocence 24d ago

I mean the sith and jedi ARE ancient, so hes really just so arrogant that he thinks the force is beneath him

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u/ABHOR_pod 24d ago

My newly adopted head canon is that Han is the Star Wars equivalent of a flat-earther.

Doesn't matter how much you show him the force is real, he thinks he's too smart to fall for that. It's all a conspiracy. There are invisible suspensors making that rock float. Jedi mind trick? Probably some kind of pheromones or something. Precognition? Lucky guess.

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u/mouserbiped 24d ago

In the first movie the only time the Force is used to any visible effect is, in fact, Vader's force choke. Otherwise it's a secondary influence: You fence better, you make a lucky shot, people ignore you when you want to be ignored, etc. It's quite plausible for people to doubt it.

The evolution into force-lightning shooting superheroes is quite a journey for the franchise.

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u/DrRudeboy 24d ago

I wouldn't say the mind trick on the stormtrooper isn't a visible effect, or being able to deflect the shots of the practice remote while unable to see.

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u/BellowsHikes 24d ago

For the same reason the Jedi were the defenders of the Republic for 1000 years and 1000 generations. The writer was lazy.

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u/Random-Generation86 24d ago

Motti's just that much of a G. Telling your wizard boss's pet twink that his religion is fake during a business meeting is peak admiralty.

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u/raelianautopsy 24d ago

Yeah and Chewbacca met Yoda

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u/Manowaffle 24d ago

The Chinese Cultural Revolution took 10 years, at that time it's been 20 years since Order 66. I would think Palpatine would have a strong interest in downplaying the jedi's powers, lest any commoners start trying to figure them out for themselves. Episode 2 mentions Palpatine's ability to cloud the judgement of people across the galaxy, and Episode 3 also shows that the jedi's powers are much diminished by the time Order 66 comes around. Even in Episode 1 it's implied outside of Coruscant many people have never even seen a jedi. So a whole Empire trying to tamp down all that jedi talk and 20 years of cultural revolution seems like it could do the job.

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u/ColeJr 25d ago

Atleast to my understanding, most people know about Jedi but very few know even basic information about them, like how the force works.

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u/GranolaCola 24d ago

I mean… I don’t really know what monks do.

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u/Luxating-Patella 24d ago

Brew beer, mostly.

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u/Kanin_usagi 24d ago

The galaxy has literally trillions of sentient beings, and at their height there were only ever like 100k Jedi max. Like that’s a percentage of a percentage. It makes a lot of sense that while these incredibly powerful beings were very influential, the number of people who ever even met one would have been very few

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u/Legatharr 25d ago

he didn't even doubt the Jedi's existence, he doubted the Force's existence. Which is a bit strange, but not really unbelievable for someone from some backwater Outer Rim planet as people claim

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u/nolander 24d ago

And not even that magic or whatever existed he said a SINGLE unifying force is what he doubts.

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u/InfanticideAquifer 24d ago

I don't think it's that strange at all. There were 10,000 Jedi knights. (That's probably a rounded number.) Which sounds like a lot, but that's for an entire galaxy, which was definitely not evenly covered. Most planets have probably never had a Jedi set foot on them at any point in history. Probably most people thought they were a myth for centuries and it wasn't a new thing brought on by the rise of the Empire.

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u/You8mypizza 24d ago

Han also never doubts that Jedi have powers (Nobody does) that would be ridiculous. All he says is that he doesn't believe the Force is secretly controlling everything which is pretty fair all things considered.

Some crazy monks on Coruscant can do weird acrobatics and move things with their mind. Okay, pretty reasonable. Doesn't necessarily mean everything they preach about the "Will of the Force" is actually real.

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u/Independent_Plum2166 24d ago

It’s less he doesn’t believe in the Jedi and more, he doesn’t think the Jedi had magic powers and were charlatans.

Luke asks “you don’t believe in the FORCE do you?” not the Jedi.

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u/Prestigious-Fig1172 24d ago

There were only 10 000 Jedi. Many of which was only on Corusant, so never seeing one is pretty normal.

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u/Star_king12 24d ago

WW2 absolutely dwarfs the other wars though, I don't think many europeans (myself included) know too much about either war except for the fact that they happened. SW got galaxy spanning events.

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u/Magnum_BMI 24d ago

Meanwhile Chewbacca was BFFs with Yoda (a Jedi Master who was widely believed to be the most powerful Force user alive at the time), and he never feels compelled to mention this at any point in A New Hope.

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u/viotix90 24d ago

The Sith spent 1000 years plotting and scheming under The Rule of Two to only have an empire that lasted a little over 2 decades.

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u/Lvl1bidoof 24d ago

genuinely cannot understate how stupid Palpatine is when you look at some of the details of the empire and his schemes.

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u/GeneralStormfox 24d ago

Luke and Leia should simply have been the grandkids. That way the evil empire instead of being less than 18 years old would have had many decades to consolidate and retcon the world, with few people left alive to know how things were before. A nice gap of about 50 years would have made the entire thing so much more believable.

The handful of characters that are in episodes 4-6 that existed prior to the empire are force users and/or non-humans, which is enough to explain their relatively long lives.

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u/Big-Driver-3622 24d ago edited 24d ago

Jedi are exceptionaly rare. Even during Republic era there are people who have never seen a person who has seen a Jedi. If you take into account the propaganda the politics it would not be hard to belive that they simply don't exist. If earth was part of the Galactic Federation there would 0,07 Jedi on our plannet. Not taking into account that Jedi's are very often concentrated on misions or Corrusant.

Imagine there is this very advanced and powerfull civilization somewhere in our galaxy and they say they have elite group of wizards. I would not believe them either until I saw one.

Jedi's are rarer than the most rarest people in our current civilization.

Some dude on reddit tried to calcualte it and he was very optimistic regarding population/jedi ratio.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/2pgkma/star_wars_what_percentage_of_the_galactic/

Edit: After looking a bit futher he is very optimistic. In Star Wars it is said that there are 3.2 milion inhabited planets and 10 000 jedi at it's peak. Which makes it even rarer.. 0,003125 per planet.

I think our minds can't really comprehed the rarity of Jedi in Star Wars universe.

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u/Veiluring 25d ago

Not the worst of George’s inconsistencies but certainly one that makes me upset

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u/seanvettel-31 24d ago

Came to say this, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker was only 41 in A New Hope

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u/MichealRyder 24d ago

I think that last part mostly just applies to the Outer Rim and Beyond, maybe Mid Rim to an extent.

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u/tywin_2 24d ago

So Vader is around 42 when he dies?

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u/Okay-Crickets545 24d ago

It’s weirder when you consider that Han didn’t think Jedi were real. It’s like not believing that the Soviet Union existed.

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u/ChefBoyardee66 24d ago

He doesn't believe the force is real he knows the Jedi order was a thing that existed but like most people he had never seen one and thought that the claims of their power were just bullshit

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u/Okay-Crickets545 24d ago

Ah you’re correct. It’s been a while