Well. Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope just ended on Spike.

And I still can't figure out why Chewbacca didn't get a medal at the end like Luke and Han. George Lucas has made all these digital changes to the original, he could have at least Photoshopped a medal on Chewie, for crying out loud.

in a newspaper strip that takes place the day after the battle. Leia has to stand up on a table to hang it around his neck, though.

And really when you think about it, without Threepio, Artoo, and Chewie, Yavin would've been space dust. But they get zip for their efforts.

I have to admit, I've never noticed that before. Maybe wookies and droids are both....er, non-humanoid, and thus don't qualify. Good question for George.

So the buddy who stood by through all that crap and nearly got squashed in a trash compacter along with the other two got no medal. I think they were anti-wookie or something.

Maybe they shoulda gotten one to clip onto his bandoleer or something. :P

Then again, why did Han get a medal? He just took out two TIE fighters, killing only one pilot. Luke managed to kill at least a million people with one shot. Since the Rebellion seems to reward war crimes and other criminal acts, Han had to do have done something pretty big.

It musta been good too-- look at the smile on her face... :P

Never hurts to be the love interest, I guess.

Everyone on the Death Star, from Vader to the KPs in the mess hall, was in some way culpable for the deaths of everyone on Alderaan. If Luke wouldn't have destroyed the Death Star when he did, they would have killed everyone on Yavin IV. So what Luke did was not a war crime.

I think Han got his medal for assisting Luke in the completion of the mission.

I saw a comment on the Internet about all this Star Wars fanboy stuff..."this is SOOOOOO much better than kissing a girl."

The Empire was well within it's rights to go after the Rebel Alliance. Like it or not, the Rebels started the armed conflict with raids on Imperial outposts and shipping traffic--they were the aggressors.

The Alliance had no territorial claim to the Yavin system, they were only using it as a temporary refuge to hide their temporary base of operations. Yes, the Death Star was there to wipe them out, but they didn't fire the first shot--the Alliance did. They launched a preemptive attack against the Death Star--an attack they were planning on making regardless of whether or not the Empire ever found the Rebel base and sent Tarkin and Vader to destroy it.

Luke killed at least a million people on the Death Star. He didn't even think twice about doing so and neither did the rest of the rebellion.

You can't try to justify it by citing the destruction of Alderaan either. Alderaan wasn't a part of the rebellion, they were a non-involved 3rd party. It wasn't destroyed as a strike at the rebels either. It was destroyed as a show of force. That's plenty reprehensible, but not justification for killing every last person (and droid) present as 'retribution.'

Palpatine overthrew the Senate, killed thousands of Jedi, purged his own government and ran the universe with an iron fist...which is why the Rebellion started up.

Yeah, this is MUCH better than kissing a girl!

To directly answer your question, no. It wasn't 'ok' for for the Empire to act like Nazis. Them doing so doesn't present a justification for massive retaliatory killings either.

To be even more specific, that Palpatine was a brutal dictator doesn't justify brutal acts of retribution against the people he commanded. Someone once said that 'eye for an eye just leaves a bunch of blind people,' because it's endless. You made the claim, upthread, that everyone on the Death Star was culpable in the destruction of Alderaan. I didn't really want to get into that, but now I do.

By making that claim, you are effectively saying that mechanics, civilian contractors, cooks, technicians, and everyone else performing a support role shares the blame. Why should they? Lets say that some kid saw the Imperial Navy as a glamorous career and signed up wanting to be an engineer. They wound as a hyperdrive engine specialist and got assigned a to the Death Star to help maintain the 100+ hyperdrive generators. Does this person share actual responsibility for the destruction of Alderaan? I think not. The only people who bear any real responsibility are those who gave the order and carried it out.

The Alliance made plenty of personal enemies with that attack. Did the family of the hyperdrive specialist react with jumps for joy at the news that their relative had been killed? Did the millions of other families who lost? How do they want to respond? By joining with the people directly responsible for the death of a loved one?

Not better than kissing a girl. Just to say.

Oh, and Palpatine didn't overthrow the Senate. He manipulated them into giving him the power of a unitary executive. 18 years later, he dissolved the Senate, leaving him as the only branch of government.

I was reading some Star Wars fan site, the kind where they discuss little semantics of the series like we're doing right now. And some guy went off on some little tangent, like the notion that blowing up the Death Star, which was built to ensure no planet would ever attempt to cross the Empire, was a war crime. He then made this comment, "oh, this is MUCH better than kissing a girl, or what I would imagine kissing a girl would be like." I just thought it was cute--Star Wars or girls, pick one.

Now, at the risk of never kissing a girl again, I note that in Episode IV the commander of the Death Star pointed out that the purpose of the Death Star was to instill fear in all the planets of the solar system--cross us, and we'll send the Death Star over to blow up your planet and kill all its inhabitants. Sounds pretty terroristic to me, and as we know it's okay to kill terrorists and their supporters.

But you may be the first person I ever heard of who thought of the cooks and mechanics when the Death Star got blown up.

A life is a life, and by killing a killer, you lower yourself to their level.

Where are their fucking medals? Course, R2 has no shoulders so I guess it would have to riveted in place.

...droids and Wookies. It's the only explanation.

You only get a medal if you remember to wear pants to the awards ceremony.

and that's just not respectable.

For Chewie, the display of a gaudy medallion of precious medal would be like you hanging a big, steaming turd around your neck for your prom.


Honestly, don't you know anything? Anything?!?

:evilgrin:

...it looks like he and a couple others are the last ones left, the other being shot to pieces.

So who are all the people in the crowd at the medal ceremony?

They preferred to stay out of the spotlight.

http://www.morningstar.nildram.co.uk/A_New_Sith.html">A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope
(Reconsidering StarWars IV in the light of I-III)

http://m.gmgrd.co.uk/res/991.$plit/C_71_article_1024649_image_list_image_list_item_0_image.jpg

They're for a spelling bee. And Chewie just couldn't cut it.

:-)

Poor Chewie.

Neither Luke nor Han can say that.

why the hell didn't Wedge and Keyan (the guy in the only Y-wing to survive the battle) not get any recognition! They were up there, too, fighting off TIEs. Oh well, Wedge got a book series and Keyan got a computer game, so I guess that's even, then.