Personally, I feel that the super-competant EU Fett is a brainbug: fans liked the character, so the EU authors keep inflating his power more and more with every story featuring him (and yes, I have my autographed photo of Jeremy Bulloch and am therefore guilty .) I would also agree with your assessment of what happened at the Pit of Carkoon: Fett was reacting irrationally to the appearance of a man wielding the weapon which his father was beheaded with. I would still have to say, however, that the act of charging a man armed with a lightsaber is completely insane.Pablo Sanchez wrote:Beyond Hope:
Fett did fail to use his capabilities to the fullest in the ROTJ firefight. I would tend to say that he was emotionally preoccupied and possibly frightened by the appearance of Luke, a saber wielding Jedi in much the same tradition as the one who killed his father. He made a stupid mistake and lost his rifle, but luckily not his life.
He ignored Han and Chewie because Han was completely blind and Chewie was for some reason preoccupied (I can't recall at the moment, he was either still restrained or trying to save Lando). If not for Han's very good luck, Fett probably would have killed Luke and turned to finish the others off.
As an aside, the novelization makes Fett look worse: he parries Han's first swing at him with his gauntlet, turns back around to shoot at Luke again, and then Han nails the "on" switch on his rocket pack in the novelization.
I just watched that scene again, and I'll second this... the Predator's targeting reticle was centered on the UV light on Keyes' shoulder, and the next time we see Keyes there's twisted, blackened metal where the lamp used to be. The burns and lacerations on his face would be the result of the UV lamp exploding and/or the close passage of the shoulder cannon bolt to his face. I would also note that the building's sprinkler system goes off shortly after the Predator's first shot in that sequence.Kamakazie Sith wrote:A couple points; That was not Nick Nolte. The blast didn't hit him in the head, and judging from the damage caused to Jesse Venturas character, and the fact that another character from the first movie was actually hit in the head which promptly turned his head into a canoe....
In the first movie, we have two clear examples of the shoulder cannon causing massive bodily trauma: the shot that amputates Dillon's arm and the aforementioned shot that cores Blaine. The head shot that killed Mac seems a bit more problematic to me: I would think that his head should have burst like a watermelon judging from the other two examples, but when we see his body (and later when we see the skull with the charred hole) the damage doesn't look that severe.
(I have the sneaking suspicion that the Predator also downed the first strike team's helicopter with the shoulder cannon, but the movie doesn't explicitly say so.)
There's an instance of the Predator shooting off a limb in the first movie: he amputates Dillon's right arm above the elbow with a shot from his shoulder cannon, then closes in to stab him through the chest with his wrist blades. It would also depend on what angle he's shooting at Fett from, since it looks to me like the sides of his torso are unarmored. It's hard to tell from the photos in Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary though.Pablo Sanchez wrote:It's probably not a forcefield as much as it is just being an airtight material and a sealed suit. Possibly the body glove has the ballistic characteristics of kevlar (or better)? Speculation aside... the Predator would probably aim for a center of mass shot anyway.