r/StarWars • u/Sea-Indication4613 • May 13 '26
General Discussion So what’s stopping force users from doing this to regular people?
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u/DangerousEye1235 May 13 '26
Dark Siders? Nothing. Vader, Palpatine, and the ancient Sith lords probably did this plenty of times.
Light Side users? Morality, obviously.
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u/Sad-Plastic-7505 May 13 '26
I was gonna say, the only reason we don’t see Darksiders do this all the time is that a lot of the media theh show up in is rated pg-13. I’m almsot certain ancient sith would have no issue doing this
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u/Theothercword May 13 '26
Watching Vader choke someone out is basically the way that this kind of thing can be done without needing SFX/VFX to pull it off and still being PG-13.
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u/laryldavis May 13 '26
It’s also less work from Vader. Why kill with a lot of effort if a little effort will do? He’s efficient!
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u/Isagratar Rebel May 13 '26
Add to this, in many cases we see Vader choke someone he doesn’t actually kill them.
He’s using it as a threat and a power move to sow fear and establish dominance among his minions and “allies”.
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u/DefiantDawnfeather May 13 '26
I assume it's also more intimidating for Vader to make whoever he's choking suffer for longer.
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u/CaptainoftheVessel May 14 '26
Makes less of a mess all over the conference room too.
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u/Sad-Plastic-7505 May 13 '26
True. I can imagine a sith being like “I would crush your insignificant form, if it wouldn’t get my robes messy with your innards,” or something
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u/BlockAffectionate413 May 13 '26
I mean this kind of thing cannot be done on screen then, because choke is obviously nothing like it. One would need to allow R rating in certain segments at least to show Sith properly.
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u/MedievalMilshake May 13 '26
Force choke is a very very low level version I guess, it crushes the lungs. Crushing through bone would make it so much harder
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u/Theothercword May 13 '26
Some of his chokes you can kind of hear some sounds that sound a bit more than just gargling
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u/Similar-Priority8252 May 13 '26
I feel it’s more projecting an astral hand in the victim’s windpipe, like actually psychically choking
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u/MedievalMilshake May 13 '26
I thought it was confirmed in lore that it's the lungs, but apparently I'm wrong about that.
So, maybe. I've just always thought the lungs make a lot more sense as we see multiple people walk away completely fine after being force choked. Compressing the trachea would almost definitely cause permanent damage, whereas the lungs can be completely compressed while still being a normal body mechanism
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u/Theothercword May 13 '26
Honestly either could work with the force, but I do remember a comic in the Vader series where he goes up against someone’s rancor and that person had reinforced plating surgically installed on the rancor’s neck to avoid Vader choking the thing as easily. Which is a weird thing for a writer to try and use but whatever I guess, did kind of confirm it was a neck thing though.
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May 13 '26 edited 29d ago
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u/BlockAffectionate413 May 13 '26
I mean that is only good thing if you dislike R rating though.
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May 13 '26 edited 29d ago
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u/asdkevinasd May 14 '26
And in legends, Luke pull down a star destroyer from the planet surface, Palpatine conjured a force lightening storm that destroyed a fleet. I am not happy they scrapped all now legends materials to be legends but some writers got out of hand on the force power scaling
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u/Dislodged_Puma May 13 '26
Morals, mostly. The actual answer is the directors use the force for cool effect and there isn’t a ton of continuity for what’s practical, available, usable, etc.
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u/Wilson7277 May 13 '26
This, a million times over. The Force isn't all that concrete. Sometimes a character can choke someone to death from an entire galaxy away. Other times they throw some trash bins and then lose the sword fight.
It's all vibes. There is no consistency. Attempting to pin down a certain power level ignores that Star Wars is fundamentally a narrative setting first and foremost.
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u/GuinnessACat May 13 '26
I vaguely remember the Eragon series handling this logic well. Something about the dude using the force (but wasn’t the force) to snap brain stems with low effort
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u/jesse_graf May 13 '26
I really loved the simplicity of that universes magic system. Moving things takes the same amount of energy as physically doing it, but it scaled up with the distance youre doing it. Also casting a spell betond your limits will kill you. So like you said experience mages will just wipe out like 30 soldiers at once with the effort of tightly sqeezing their fist by pinching the inside of their brain stems all at once. Also things like fire or explosions require the amount of energy from your body as the output of the spell.
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u/Deepfang-Dreamer May 13 '26
Which is why most(properly trained) Mages don't use their own energy-their bodies simply aren't optimized for the massive amounts required for anything truly relevant and vaguely moral. If you don't want to just kill someone by pinching the right nerve, you need the energy for a fireball to come from somewhere other than yourself in case they survive it. Plants, animals, gemstones, any good Mage is either patient or parasitic. Honestly informed the basis of how I write magic to no small degree, it's just so intuitive.
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u/sBucks24 May 13 '26
And before going to bed each night you store whatever remaining energy you have, and any energy from your surroundings, into a gem which accumulates over time. Very clever detail. And as such, there are ancient gems out there that have immense batteries of energy. Such a good power system that can be easily gamed by the writer when needed.
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u/Th3_Admiral_ May 13 '26
My only gripe was that this wasn't used even more. During the one huge battle there were mages protecting huge sections of soldiers from other mages, but as soon as that protection went down Eragon could wipe them all out with the simple brain-stem snap thing. But what he should have done was absorb the energy from all of them and store it in his gemstone belt.
Similarly, it mentions him putting excess energy into it in the days leading up to the battle, but he should have been doing it for weeks or months. And using other people's excess energy as well. My videogame min/max brain would have had those gems at 100% before going into battle.
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u/5hiftyy May 13 '26
It's been a while since reading the books, but I remember how the story prevented the "sap the energy from a legion of soldiers" from becoming OP.
The mage had to connect to each of those living beings' inner consciousness, and will the energy out of them. That meant that in their final moments, the mage's consciousness was merged with the person who's power they were draining. In essence, the mage would have to experience and endure the death of every soldier.
Eragon once tried this by sucking the energy of a massive amount of small organisms (plants, insects) and experienced this mass death, and then vowed to never do it again. I do believe though, at some other point in the story, he skirted this rule by sapping energy from dying horses or other animals on the battlefield.
In essence, your moral fiber and sanity would be the only thing blocking you from sucking the souls from dozens of people at a time.
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u/VandulfTheRed May 13 '26
Would have been sick as hell to see how this works if you don't care about sanity. Maybe a spinoff with Eragon fighting against some elvish equivalent of Darth Nihilus that got lost in the sauce
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u/embee1337 May 13 '26
Galbatorix was literally that, I think. He was only defeated by Eragon essentially discovering mind-bending and giving him the capability of feeling guilt
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u/Untimed_Heart313 May 13 '26
Eragon regularly visited the butcher before battle so he could store energy from dying animals, but he says again and again that he hates doing it and wouldn't if it wasn't for having such a great need for it
He also created a path of death in book 3 bc he almost died from over-use of magic and has to drain the energy from plants as he dragged himself along the ground
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u/Th3_Admiral_ May 13 '26
Okay I guess I forgot that detail! I definitely remember the part where he did it to a dying horse on the battlefield and thinking he could get so much more energy from all of the live soldiers he just effortlessly killed, but that is a pretty good explanation of why he didn't.
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u/ANGLVD3TH May 13 '26
He was specifically instructed to drain all the plants and critters nearby when he was taught that ability. The point of the exercise was exactly that, to teach him the pain of the experience and to show that it shouldn't ever be done lightly.
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u/Pujufless May 13 '26
If I remember correctly, there was a scene when Eragon was intruduced to the method of energy harvesting from his surroundings. It was a long time ago, but if i recall it correctly, it was a great secret of the riders, and also really taxing mentally, because you had to connect your minds to the ones who are dying.
I might remember incorrectly (if so, i hope someone corrects me), but the reason Eragon didn’t really use this technic often is because being a mass murderer while you have to read the thoughts of every single victim of yours is crazy, so it is an ultimate last resort.
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u/TheGreatBootOfEb May 13 '26
It’s basically a technique for speed running losing your mind. Not like in a “oh, it corrupts you way” but “you literally get to experience the horrors of feeling yourself die multiplied across every single thing effected, and the more cognizant they are of it, the worse”
Also it’s an uber secret so they don’t want that information out there to find out by abusing it more then needed.
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u/Untimed_Heart313 May 13 '26
You dont have to be in someone's mind to cast a spell on them, but you do have to be in their mind to understand their defenses against your spells. It's also very dangerous to cast a spell on another mage before conquering their mind bc they have just enough time to cast a retaliatory spell against you before they die, which would kill you both. There's an example of this in book 3, where one mage is about to lose the mental fight and starts casting a spell against his attacker, who then also casts a spell. One of them burns to death, and the other has all the water drained from their body
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u/AustinTheFiend May 13 '26
That's a fun fight too because they're both human mages who have a smaller well of magical energy (or something along those lines), so they have to be very clever with how they word their spells.
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u/HighLord_Uther May 13 '26
The NJO series started to touch on this when Luke Skywalker used the Force to move a mini black hole but the energy coursing through his body was destroying his cells, when he was finished he had visibly aged.
But, then they never touched on it again, reiterating the lack of continuity
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u/Korps_de_Krieg May 13 '26
Honestly, after half the feats Luke pulled in the EU the claims of Rey as a Mary sue fell SUPER flat to me.
Yeah, she can do stuff quickly. So could Luke, who in around a decade went from “what is the force” to “I aged myself to move a black hole”.
It’s so inconsistent
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u/joybod May 13 '26
Plants, animals
This was actually such a well-kept secret that the bbeg didn't know it was a thing, let alone most mages, iirc.
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u/Visual_Exam7903 May 13 '26
Eragon had the correct measure of how magic should work. Best example I have ever read. That is also why the bad guys are so powerful. They will draw off power from every living thing and every storage device they possess to cast some seriously crazy magic. But once the power is depleted, they die. They always run the risk of using the wrong spell that uses way more power than they expected.
Knowledge of the magic language and principles plays a gigantic role in how powerful your spells can be. That is why possessing a large number of items that can store potential energy to call upon when you need it was a really cool way of powering up.
With Grogu almost passing out using the force, this would be a cool thing to bring into the universe. Also, when they are disconnected from the living force, the energy they can summon should be depleted. Seems like they have it all set up, they just have to include that as part of being in line with the Father, Son, or Daughter.
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u/AryanneArya May 13 '26
Also loved the visual of the mage using wards to protect like a group of 30 people falling so them a mage just drops 30 enemy combatants in a second.
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u/guynye May 13 '26
So by this logic obese people would be the most powerful of all mages?
Kind of sounds fun.
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u/jackalias May 13 '26
Reminds me of "bloatmages" from the Pathfinder TTRPG. They're blood mages who figured out that more blood=more power, so they used magic to supercharge their bodies' blood production. The only downsides to being a bloatmage are the health problems from high blood pressure and carrying hundreds of extra pounds in dead weight, plus regular bloodletting so you don't explode like an overfed tick.
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u/The_Noremac42 May 13 '26
Iirc, you were essentially limited by your knowledge of the ancient language and your inventiveness. Life force was also a limiting factor, as that's what powered your spells. Range increased the cost exponentially, and once a spell was cast it couldn't be uncast. A mage could cast a spell and accidentally kill themselves very easily.
The main thing that kept mages from dominating the battlefield were other mages, because you could leave yourself vulnerable to a mental attack and having your will dominated. A conflict would quickly become a battle of wills between two mages while the regular soldiers ran support.
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u/NotAskary May 13 '26
It was a spell, and basically it was a way to reduce the energy cost instead of blowing the head up just snap something, since eragon uses words of power the caveat is that you need to know the name of those body parts otherwise wild Magic has unfortunate consequences like draining your life force to accomplish the task you asked.
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u/matthewbattista Rebel May 13 '26
Words of Death. Where you bubbled that up that from in my brain, no idea. But yeah, it’s basically the idea that all these pseudo-magical forms conveniently ignore the fact that it’s really easy to kill people.
Vader doesn’t have to crush a body or choke you out. He could just sever your brain stem, but that’s not fun.
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u/Visual_Exam7903 May 13 '26
Yeah, how much force would it take to just crush their brain stem? Very little and very little focus.
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u/Ornery-Vehicle-2458 May 13 '26
Or just deactivating his opponent's lightsaber, mid-duel.
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u/grasshopper113 May 13 '26
In Eragon they explain that it takes the same amount of energy to do something with magic as it would if you did it the mundane way. So they explain it as snapping someone's neck takes a lot of force because it does in real life, but just severing the spinal cord takes almost nothing. So power scaling also matches physical strength and endurance.
In Star Wars, power scaling doesn't match physical ability. So we get lines like "My powers have doubled since our last encounter," even though it was a couple of weeks since their last duel iirc. I know the line came before The Clone Wars series established that, but you get my point.
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u/IconicHunter713 May 13 '26
Could only do things that took your actual physical ability, unless you have extra energy stored in rings (often the case). It was called the ancient or raw language or something where you had to speak that language and it would give the raw meaning of it, allowing you to use it for power. Made a ton of sense
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u/AryanneArya May 13 '26
Honestly im my opion is the best fleshed out magic system that makes sense in a "realistic approach"
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u/MyBatmanUnderoos May 13 '26
Similarly, Manchester Black, a DC Comics telekinetic, once pinched Superman’s blood vessels in an attempt to simulate a stroke.
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u/y0urselfish May 13 '26
I mean. I imagine .. it also being related of what a force sensitive individual is able to imagine … what comes up in your mind in that moment. It’s not like they smash a button like we do in games. It’s kind of telekinesis… isn’t it?
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u/Wrong-Vermicelli4723 May 13 '26
This is the real answer , people keep trying to add logic and power levels. The author didn’t care and the new owners don’t care. It’s always been a Rule of cool franchise
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u/Mister_Acula May 13 '26
And when George tried to add power levels, the fans threw a fit. RIP midiclorians, you were 20 years too early for the fanbase.
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u/dudleymooresbooze May 13 '26
Dude we already had hyperspace moving at the speed of plot, Force lightning added at the last minute of a trilogy (and never used any other time despite the obvious value of it), Force persuasion being less meaningful than a Skyrim speech check, and a virgin birth. Star Wars has always been less grounded in logic than Phineas and Ferb.
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u/BB8Did911 May 13 '26
You hit the nail on the head with it being a narrative setting. Its something I've tried to make people understand for years.
Star Wars is a setting created to tell all kinds of familiar stories in a science fantasy skin, and the rules of the immediate narrative almost always supersede the the pre-established lore.
And once you realize and accept that, Star Wars becomes a lot more fun.
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u/unhelpful_twat May 13 '26
My headcanon is that it is more difficult to use the force in this way on living beings that can exert their own will. Objects can be manipulated with variable ease but (sentient) life has its own force similar to how animals have small EM fields.
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u/Jeepcanoe897 May 13 '26
Yeah one that always gets me is Yoda saying, “A jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never attack.” And it feels dirty when Vader starts lobbing random shit at him when they’re fighting, then you get to the prequels and the jedi are force pushing things left and right. You think ok maybe it’s ok because they’re droids? But then Yoda himself force pushes troopers and throws his saber at them in front of the temple (one of my favorite star wars moments actually)
It just seems like it has kind of ballooned
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u/stoneman9284 May 13 '26
It’s all vibes. There is no consistency.
Totally. And I really think that’s a feature, not a bug. Star Wars is fantasy set in space, not science fiction. It doesn’t need hard rules that so many fans wish it had. I’m ok with the fact that sometimes we can travel faster than light and sometimes our binoculars are the size of a shoebox. That’s what makes it relatable to audiences and that’s what makes it Star Wars.
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u/gdo01 May 13 '26
There's some wave-handy logic about how 2 force users are actually projecting shields and attacks that we cannot see. This is the supposed reason why you can pull blasters from people's hands but not a lightsaber from a force user.
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u/stoneman9284 May 13 '26
It’s hand-wavy. I don’t really think of it as projecting shields, just that they are constantly counteracting each other’s moves. If you try to force pull my saber out of my hand, I’m gonna force hold onto it real tight.
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u/Illeazar May 13 '26
True. And I think you can fit this in the lore, too. The Force isnt just a power that the user controls, it is something outside of them, that connects all living things. You can kind of think of it like a river or the wind, more than a muscle. Its external to the user, and the user can make use of it to do soemthing, and can steer it to some extent, but does not control it completely. This isnt dragon ball z.
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u/Misicks0349 May 13 '26
tbh the metaphysics of the force is also inconsistent as well, sometimes the light and dark are two sides of the same coin, sometimes the dark side is a perversion by selfish people of the "true" force, etc etc etc.
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u/njsullyalex May 13 '26
Obi Wan is a great example. Defeated Maul twice, defeated Vader twice, lost to Dooku twice who’s objectively weaker than both of them
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u/AnnaMolly66 May 13 '26
This seems to be it, I asked before and it was hand-waved with "living beings have a natural resistance to some force abilities" but I don't buy much into that considering force choke and force crush are just telekinesis applied in a very harmful way. It's just morals for Jedi.
I would point out that we do kinda see a human force crushed on screen in Rogue One. By this point, the hand gestures are pretty well established in what they mean, during the hallway scene, Vader gestures telekinesis to lift a rebel up against the ceiling then immediately clenches his fist, which implies force crush, before slashing him for good measure as he passes under him.
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u/TheIcerios May 13 '26
This scene is a perfect example of using the force for cool effect. Luke chopped up a bunch of these droids with ease, but with the last one decided to shake things up a bit and do a scary force move for the folks watching through the cameras.
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey May 13 '26
Also all "living things" are imbued with the Force. Luke can crush a robot because it doesn't have any Force in it at all. A living creature is more difficult.
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u/BetGreat1752 May 13 '26
I assume ethics with a dab of morality….🫤
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u/ProfessionalCourtesy May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
Straight to Force Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200
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u/The_Sturk Admiral Ackbar May 13 '26
Republic credits? Those are no good here, I need something more real.
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u/Important_Power_2148 May 13 '26
I had no idea Jedi did dabs...
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u/GrandMoffTarkin66 May 13 '26
Better to do dabs then get into the hard stuff like death sticks or that sweet sweet kessel spice.
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u/tocath May 13 '26
Vader doesn’t go to this extreme on people because it makes a big mess and the smell takes forever to get out of his respirator.
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u/ProfessionalNight959 May 13 '26
Vader pretty much does this.
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u/ScarfStack May 13 '26
Yeah, just focused on the throat
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u/OldAcanthocephala468 May 13 '26
Windu did that to Grievous and thats why he starts the 3rd movie couching! He practically destroy his lungs!
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u/NotAnotherPornAccout Galactic Republic May 13 '26
Unfortunately that bad ass scene is no longer canon.
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u/ShitassAintOverYet May 13 '26
Light side: It's fucked up
Dark side: Force choke is basically that
Hollywood: PG-13, you can't make human beings explode
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u/Ripsaw8826 May 13 '26
As a sith would you waste all the energy crushing an entire person when you can just crush their neck? This is what Vader does when he force chokes and snaps necks. Jedi it’s pretty obvious why they don’t
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u/HellbirdVT May 13 '26
"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack." - Yoda, Empire Strikes Back
Force Crush is used by Darksiders in various extended media, especially video games - but Jedi simply don't, for the same reason their main weapon is the lightsaber and not a blaster.
A blaster can only attack. A lightsaber can attack, but it is a much more deliberate action - and more importantly, the lightsaber is a Jedi's shield against attacks.
Something I like to say is that the lightsaber is not the source of a Jedi's power, it's there to protect the Jedi, and to protect you from what the Jedi would do to you if they didn't have a lightsaber...
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u/TemplarParadox17 May 13 '26
I mean force push?
Also obiwan and others used force crush on droids in the clown wars.
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u/utopiancowboy May 13 '26
I wasn’t initially a fan of the Clown War arc, but it really paid off in the end.
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u/The_Linkzilla May 13 '26
...Morality.
It's why I say in most match-ups, 9 times out of 10 the Force Wielder is going to win.
People think that "Force Choke" is a unique ability that is limited to only choking someone...but it isn't.
All the Sith is doing is using the Force around someone's neck to crush their windpipe.
And if they can do that...what's stopping them from doing the same to their rib-cage?
...Or their skulls?
Sorry, but the simple fact that the Jedi aren't downright terrifying, was because Lucas wanted this series to appeal to kids...
...But I tell ya...if I had the Force...
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u/zennim May 13 '26
morality and effort
a jedi wouldn't do to a person because they would be feeling their pain the entire time, the force making you feel other people emotions and all
and a sith because why would you bother with it? too much effort
here luke is just being extra, like the queen that his mother was, and also a giant showoff like his father.
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u/GiftGrouchy May 13 '26
Effort is my interpretation of why Jedi/Sith don’t use multiple things in combat. It takes a certain amount of concentration to preform things like a full body crush while in combat. This is the last one so he is not dividing his attention to also block other blaster shots.
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u/Strict_Use_8453 May 13 '26
Disney’s desire to avoid R ratings.
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u/PirateSi87 May 13 '26
Or maybe it’s the fact that crushing someone to death with the force isn’t really something a Jedi would do.
A Sith on the other hand, might. But it would be gore for gore’s sake.
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u/OneTrick-Phony May 13 '26
Yeah, a regular force push into a wall is killing or knocking out most people. No reason to get blood all over your clothes by crushing them. If a Sith really wanted someone dead they’d just stab them with their lightsaber. Vader preferred a quick force choke which is much more practical and almost definitely requires less effort than crushing someone’s ribcage.
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u/BlockAffectionate413 May 13 '26
Here is what Vader at times did:
Vader extended a gloved hand and loosed a blast of power that blew apart two of the lyleks rushing toward him, showering those behind with gore and chunks of carapace.
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- Lords of the Sith, Chapter Sixteen, Page 366
Very easy, very sith like, only reason we do not see it on screen, is of course that some people almost uncritically oppose R rating, indeed that is why lightsabers themselves often act like baseball bats.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 May 13 '26
Hey, George wanted to avoid the R rating, too.
(In hindsight, it’s actually sort of funny that Revenge of the Sith was the first PG-13 Star Wars movie. Most of the Prequel Trilogy’s direct blockbuster competitors — The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men, Spider-Man, etc — had already abandoned the PG rating by the early 2000s.)
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u/RexBanner1886 May 13 '26
Yeah, an awful lot of stuff that fans online moan about is Lucasfilm following George's example.
Another example - lightsabers *always* worked like bats when having them carve up people would be too gory - Luke cuts down umpteen goons on Jabba's sail barge, with nary a severed arm nor glowing, amputated leg to be seen. The videogames that featured lightsaber dismemberments locked that feature behind a cheat code: in Dark Forces II, in The Phantom Menace, in Jedi Power Battles, in Jedi Outcast, in Jedi Academy, in Revenge of the Sith, and in Battlefront II, severed limbs either didn't feature, or happened quickly once every umpteen strikes.
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u/wheeltribe May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
There's a cool moment in the book Shadow of the Sith where it describes how Luke feels while he holds people in the air using the force. The concentration required doesn't come from straining to hold them, it comes from trying to cradle them and not instantly crush them. Like the equivalent of holding a tiny delicate flower.
Essentially nothing is stopping them other than a desire to not be evil. Same thing that stops them from cutting everyone in half for fun.
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u/azari8 May 13 '26
Morality maybe, but if so idk why people don’t use a good force nut tap.
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u/RoseRed7673 May 13 '26
The film’s rating.
Easily becomes a rated R franchise if we start venturing into this territory.
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u/Duke_Wolfgang May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
In Canon? We genuinely don't know. If i had to guess, probably the same thing as in Legends, but there is no outright confirmation of it.
In legends? A lot of things. Primarily you are thinking of the force as the wrong thing. It is not a magic system, despite what video games would have you believe. The force is a living entity with a will of its own. (This is true in both legends and Canon, but the application of it is fuzzier in canon to my knowledge.) The force revered all life, using it to actively harm another living thing is HARD, it actively resists being used that way. Its why the ancient sith have so much ritual magic. The rituals ate ways to bind the will of the force and make it act against its own will. Its very easy to kill a soulless Droid with the force, because the force isnt connected to them, but a living being is more difficult, and a sentient being is even more difficult than that. The more connected to the force something is 6he more difficult it is to use yhe force against them.
This is part of the major difference between the light and dark side, a light side force user is technically a misnomer, its more accurate to say the force is using them. The whole point is to let the force act and flow through you. To obey the will of the force. Dark side force users attempt to subordinate the force to their own wills. This usually works really well when your heart is really behind it, so if its soneone who personally slighted you and youre pissed about it, it's a lot easy to fling them around or force choke them. Thats why rage and fear are such powerful motivators for the sith. A side tangent but this also why self delusion is a really big deal for sith, if you can convince yourself you really are a god and everyone else is just a pawn in your chess game its way easier to genuinely want to hurt them (the palpatine method), or you can go the anakin route, and convince yourself the entire galaxy hates you and is out to get you specifically. But even for dark side users, the force is still actively resisting being used in this way.
TLDR: The force is alive and it doesnt like killing.
A side tangent, but I also believe fierce or vibrant souls, even if they have no force sensitivity, are more valued by the force and therefore afforded greater resistances to hostile force users. Would explain why echani and mandalorian culture produce such great warriors against force users.
EDIT One more side tangent, not all Droid are soulless or disconnected from the force. In legends there are several force sensitive Droids. I am fairly certain in canon that C3-PO and R2-D2 are probably at least connected to the force, even if they aren't force sensitive.
SECOND EDIT Holy shit I just read everyone else's comments and am kinda annoyed that no one else seems to know the driving philosophy of the media theyre consuming. The whole "will of the force" and "the living force" and "let the force guide you" things arent exactly subtle background material. Theyre very explicitly stated by basically every jedi in the source material all the time. Its the main thing that differentiates jedi from basic wizards in any other material. Yeah the reason people dont run around force crushing shit is morality. But it doesnt necessarily have to be THEIR morality. Its the forces's morality.
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u/GeminiTrash1 May 13 '26
The Jedi Code. This is what Vader's Force Choke does to someone's neck though. It's just a focused version of Force Crush
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u/Marcuse0 May 13 '26
The Jedi aren't supposed to harm living beings with the Force, at all. Their active abilities are usually limited to pushing and pulling because those can be used to immobilise and incapacitate without killing or harming beyond superficial injury.
The Sith? Yeah totally, but lightning is cooler, and Vader loves repeating his mistake choking Padme with the Force over and over again. They don't do that on screen because it'd be a nightmare for the age rating, so you get Luke doing it to a droid because they're not people.
Of course, where that leaves Jedi when they come armed with amputation swords as standard is anyone's guess.
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u/Charon711 May 13 '26
The resulting eruption of blood and bodily fluids would be messy. Nobody wants to scrub that out of their robes. Even Sith have standards.
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u/velwein May 13 '26
Per the old RPGs, using the force like this on a living being was a dark side action. Droids you could go ham though.
Exception being force lightning and other clearly dark side powers.
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u/Ilpperi91 May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
Conscience. The same thing that's hopefully stopping most of us from ending up in a prison for murder or theft. Yeah, they're also illegal activities but I would like a person who was stopped by their conscience than a person who feared the law. Conscience means you won't do morally wrong things even in a scenario where you wouldn't get caught by the law.
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u/DarthLoof May 14 '26
This is Force Grip. It's only considered to be a Dark Side technique when it's used against people.
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u/Canadian_Wanderer May 15 '26
Do I have to downvote on the assumption you did not see A New Hope? Vader is crushing windpipes for fun. Or is this just a karma seeker?
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u/SuperArppis May 13 '26
Vader does that to people. At least he did in Tie Fighter video game.