Fluff time: how powerful is the Force really?

Because its not real?

They didn’t lose their weapons because they have been trained how to fight someone else’s manipulation of the force. It doesn’t always work.
The ability to move objects is my favorite, but I suspect someone who leans toward the dark side would prefer the power of life and death, or the lightning coming out of their hands. These are used to inflict pain or to kill, and someone who connects with the good side would not value them as much.

It is weaker than Dr Doom

Randall Munroe, the physicist/cartoonist of xkcd wrote a paper on this very subject. I do not have the answer in front of me but I remember how he went about the calculation.
There was a scene in one of the Star Wars movies where an X wing fighter was disabled and sunk under water. Yoda lifted it out of the water using the Force apparently with great effort.

Munroe estimated the size and mass of the fighter: similar size to an F-16 . He noted how high Yoda lifted it. He estimated the force of gravity from the gait of the people walking around (similar to Earth’s). That data was used determine how much energy was required. Then he looked at how long it took to raise the fighter and divided the energy by the time to get Power.
He reported the power in MW. That number he defined as one Yoda . Then he compared other power sources in number of Yoda’s. He answered questions like “How many homes could one Yoda power?”
It was brilliant. But I can’t find it. Maybe it was in one of his books.

The Force is not a tractor beam, or a manipulation ray, or an antigravity manipulator. It is The Force, the deeply imbedded spark of goodness in all things. It works through focus of itself on the inherent good purpose of each thing.

The purpose of an X wing is to fly, not to be at the bottom of a bog.

The Force is not a super computer target finder, it focused Luke and his craft on the path to the target of destruction of the Death Star, their inner desire and goal and purpose.

The force is midichlorians

@zenvelo Yoda used the Force to lift the X-wing here . He appears exhausted after the lift.

Munroe did the calculation of power and total energy delivered based upon that video.
We can assume Yoda was lifting as fast as he could. If had more power he wold likely have raised it in a shorter time. The assumption is “Did what he could do, he did”.
That effort was defined as one Yoda.

@LuckyGuy
A very old and decrepit Yoda.

The thing I find most satisfying about the force is that the mind control powers associated with it are useless against my personal hero of the series Jabba the Hut, the most over the top “personification” of vice and decadence to yet appear in a feature film. I love Jabba just for the sheer exaggeration on the concept of villainy. There is not a single aspect of him that isn’t a metaphor for some vice. Greed, lust, gluttony, cruelty, they’re all there wrapped in a corpulent useless exterior slathered in slime. And just to top it off (so even the toddlers get the message) he has BAD BREATH. During the 3 or 4 minutes of screen time given over to Jabba, I just sit grinning from ear to ear, but you gotta ask yourself, how is it that a fat slug that qualified for a handicapped placard at birth can rise to head the penultimate criminal organization in the galaxy? And even better, exactly what sort of sexual plans had the great Jabba envisioned for Lea , and the rest of the scantily clad hotties in his slave girl retinue?

@LuckyGuy You, and Mr Munroe, are missing the whole point. It is not a physical Force, something that can be reduced to a calculation. Yoda was summoning the true intent of an X wing while also dealing with the true intent of the bog and the true intent of the gravity of the Planet.

To reduce to a calculation is to miss the wonder of the metaphysical.

Such as you can use the Force to control people’s minds, to make them agree with you,

I’d call that a suggestion rather than control.

you can create noise to distract someone as Obi Wan did on the Death Star, use it to shoot precisely as Luke did when he destroyed the Death Star, use it to pick up items as Luke did his light saber when the snow beast was about to make a snack of him, Yoda used the Force to raise an X-wing fighter sunk in a bog, and Darth Vader used it to pummel Luke with debris to knock him into the carbon freeze unit and even use the force to flick the switch. If the Force is powerful to do all of that, why is it not powerful enough to work on people? I mean, if Darth Vader was powerful enough with the Force why not just use it to drop Luke in the carbon freeze, hit the switch via the Force and voila, frozen Luke ready to deliver to the Emperor . Why could not Qui-gon Jin use the Force to take Darth Mal’s light saber pugil stick from him? For all the Force seems to do, it seems to be powerless against use on a human less the few times Darth Vader choked people with it.

Good question. My sense is that it’s because living things have their own fields, which resist direct manipulation by others. As Obi-Wan told Luke right away: ”[The Force is] an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” It may also be harder to do to other people who are tuned into their own fields, which would explain why Vader could choke material-minded people, but never tried that on people who use the Force themselves.

Everything @zenvelo said is right. This is why the Star Wars franchise can get away with a lot of the apparent contradiction in whether or not the Force “works” in any given situation. Its power depends on the user’s religious faith; any failure of the Force to do a thing can be blamed on the weakness of the user, not any weakness in the Force. And the amount of effort exerted in using it also depends on the user, which is why I actually thought that scene where Yoda lifts the ship was poorly played, or more likely poorly directed. Lifting the ship should not have been difficult for Yoda, and his physical state should have had no bearing whatsoever on his ability to perform the task.

The force is powerful enough for me to be a life long anti-star trek fan. lol
I honestly do not get the appeal and I grew up with the original series surrounded by trekkies. Gah. My housemates now in their mid to late 40’s are die hard ST fans and watch it all the time. I have never been a sci-fi enthusiast at all, just not my thing.

A few movies have been good, the Men in Black films, and I did see Chappie awhile back and enjoyed that but the whole ST obsession escapes me.

@Coloma
I guess some people are just not interested in depictions of a positive and uplifting future for humanity and the examination of contemporary moral and ethical issues through the lens of science fiction.

@Coloma You have committed the unforgivable heresy of confusing Star Wars with Star Trek.
The resulting fear for my own life prohibits me from further association with you. It was nice knowing you.

@ragingloli Sure I am, but sci-fi just isn;t my genre.
@stanleybmanly Oh no…well, you see, true to form I don’t know the difference between star battles. If you’ve seen one inter galactic war you’ve seen ‘em all. lol
Wait…Beam me up Scotty vs. May the force be with you. Got it!

For god’s sake, do not compound your blasphemy. The 2 bitter factions have long reach with memories to match. We must now put our affairs in order.

^ LOL whatever you say Captain!

@dappled_leaves Its power depends on the user’s religious faith; any failure of the Force to do a thing can be blamed on the weakness of the user, not any weakness in the Force.
From what I got, the Dark Side was stronger than the Light Side. If that were true and it was off the faith on the Force the user had, if Darth Vader could choke someone to death remotely by the Force (Admiral Ozzel), and directly in front of him (Admiral Needa Ozzel’s successor) why did the Emperor before he became hideous did not just choke the leader of the Jedi out instead of using that lighting hand thing? If it can choke someone when you are miles away and see them through a future Skype, and lift an X-wing fighter, I would think it could choke out your opponent or snatch a weapon from them (which in fact it did in the case of Landau on the City in the Clouds).

@Hypocrisy_Central … why did the Emperor before he became hideous did not just choke the leader of the Jedi out instead of using that lighting hand thing? Because it wouldn’t work, per my explanation above. Vader can do some things to people who don’t know how to use the Force (it was Han’s blaster, not Lando’s BTW). And IIRC some strong Sith in the later film can kind of shove some weaker Jedi a bit, but what they can do is clearly less on living things (which makes some sense per Obi-Wan’s explanation I quoted above) and less on skilled Force users. (If Vader could move Luke around, he could’ve kept him from falling into the pit in Cloud City, too.)

Ya, it’s a good question, but clearly the answer is they can’t or they would have.