PT Should Lucas Have Done More to Ensure TPM Didn't Disappoint Some Fans?

What exactly is so negative about Luke's situation? Pretty much ALL of his problems have been resolved. The Empire is defeated, with every chance that a new republic can be built. The Emperor is gone, the rule of the Sith over. The galaxy is at peace! Freedom and democracy can finally be restored. His sister has accepted the fact and is happy in her relationship. Another family conflict resolved! His father, who has lived a life in darkness and pain since Luke can remember, is finally redeemed and has found happiness. He died peacefully in his arms, and returned as a Force ghost with a happy and content smile on his face. He has become one with the Force and is at peace, so is Ben and Yoda. None of that can be said about Anakin in AOTC. We can't even compare those two situations, they are so fundamentally different. It's not that Luke has "moved on". All his worries have been resolved, there is nothing negative left for him to feel.

 

Let go darth-sinister? By pursuing his own agenda of saving his father instead of killing him and thereby granting the Emperor victory, as Obi-Wan said. By presuming to know better than Yoda about his father's destiny?

And that's the point. Luke's father is alive and in slavery. Instead of letting it go, Luke goes to try and save him and leaves the saving the galaxy to Han, Leia, Lando et al.

 

Exactly, Luke is following his personal desire to redeem his father, not Jedi dogma. He has to try, even if it means failure. I would say he's pretty attached to his father to the point, that he defies his masters Obi-Wan and Yoda.

 

Luke has already let go in that he thinks that he'll soon be dead and the Emperor and Vader with him because of his friends on the moon and the Rebel fleet. If anything what he is doing is hopefully distracting the Emperor if nothing else. Obi-Wan and Yoda want him to face Vader and they think for some reason that Luke can take them both out but with no clear idea how outside of thinking that he is the Chosen One and therefore will be able to do it.

They are wrong and it's not Luke. No one except Luke can even conceive that coming back from the Dark Side is possible (not any of the old guard would think this is possible).

Luke isn't doing this in a selfish basis to the exclusion of everyone and everything else like Anakin did with Padme.

Luke didn't completely let go of course but when he did then the unexpected happened.

What good was Luke being with the Rebels? None as it gave away that they were there (they didn't know they were anticipated) and Luke connected the Rebels and the Ewoks. The best thing he could do was to leave and face the Emperor.

 

That's what I meant. There is nothing to dwell on, but Martoto77 thinks he should be.

That doesn't mean that he is attached to his father. It means that Luke is showing compassion towards his father. Unconditional love. You keep confusing attachment which is possessive love with compassion which is unconditional love. And the Jedi never tell Luke that he has to kill Vader in ROTJ. Just that he has to confront him to become a Jedi. He makes the wrong conclusion at first. This was his Jedi trial.

 

Luke:

"I can't do it Ben. I can't kill my own father!"

Obi-Wan:

"Then the Emperor has already won. You were our last hope..."

Sure seems like Obi-Wan is suggesting Vader must die. The Jedi don't believe the Sith can be redeemed. How else are they going to be stopped? In the PT it is made even more explicit that the Sith must die according to Jedi logic. According to Jedi logic Luke must let go of his father, who is beyond redemption. Since Luke is unable to do this, by Jedi dogma he is attached. Hence, the Sith have already won according to the Jedi. The Jedi are wrong, but that's not the point. We're speaking about attachment as the Jedi view it, an unwillingness to accept the inevitable, and let go.

 

That's the point, it is a two fold mission. Part one is for Luke to figure out on his own what he has to do. That's his Jedi trial. They cannot tell him to kill his father, nor redeem him. He has to be able to trust his instincts and make his own decisions, not just be an obedient servant. The second point is that Luke has to accept that whatever decision he makes, there will be a consequence for it. He has to accept that he might not be able to save his father. That whatever he does, it will most likely result in his father's death and when that happens, he must be willing to accept his death.

Letting go of his father does not mean that he cannot try to save him. Letting go of him means that he must accept success or failure. That he must not use the dark side in confronting Vader. He must let go of the negative emotions that were present in his confrontation with Vader in the tree cave and again on Cloud City. These negative emotions are what drives him to almost kill his father. Once he has learned to let them go, which he does when he throws down his weapon, is he able to finally save him.

 

I disagree, Obi-Wan and Yoda make it very clear Vader cannot be redeemed. In ROTS Obi-Wan says:

"Send me to kill the Emperor I will not kill Anakin."

There's no ambiguity. The Jedi believe the Sith must die. Luke draws the same conclusion, that Obi-Wan and Yoda want him to kill Vader. He adds, that he can't do it, after which Obi-Wan concludes, that Luke's refusal to kill Vader implies a victory for Palpatine. Your interpretation is not really supported by the events of the films. According to Jedi dogma, Luke must let go of the idea of his father Anakin, a person who no longer exists.

 

no, just as Vincent Van Gogh shouldn't have done more to ensure I wasn't disappointed with his daffodils painting...

Edit: I mean Sunflowers. Good Lord I'm tired.

 

Yeah, the hype for those daffodils was enormous. That goes to show, you cannot trust artists with beards...

Edit: the sunflowers are part of the special edition. Van Gogh wasn't able to paint sunflowers originally, due to technological constraints. He was sorry that the fans fell in love with a half finished painting featuring daffodils, but the sunflowers represent his original vision for that painting.

 

That was twenty years ago. A lot can change. Again, Luke assumes that he must kill his father, which is the only outcome of a confrontation with him. It isn't until later that he realizes that he can confront him, but not to kill him. Obi-wan uses reverse psychology on him.

Not really. Letting go of his father means letting go of the fear, anger and hate that he has towards him for being Vader. That's why Yoda sent Luke into the cave. That's why he said that he failed in the cave when he killed Vader. Luke has to accept that the things that caused his father to become evil, are the same things that drive him. He has to see what caused his father to become evil, understand it and then let go of it. That is letting go of his father.

"He's still weak. He's gotta be strengthened. And Yoda's the one to do it. That's his job. Now, he has to go and explore a cave, because he's in training and this is what Yoda tells him to go. And there's a seriousness to Yoda's face here because he knows what's going to happen because actually he's setting it up, what's going to happen in the cave, because Luke is going to have to face himself. "

--Irvin Kershner, TESB Commentary.

"Part of the going into the tree is learning about the Force. Learning about the fact that the Force is within you, and at the same time, you create your own bad vibes. So, if you think badly about things or you act badly, or you bring fear into a situation, you're going to have to defend yourself or you're going to have to suffer the consequences for that. In this particular case, he takes his sword in with him which means he's going to have combat. If he didn't, he wouldn't. He's creating this situation in his mind because, on a larger level, what caused Darth Vader to become Darth Vader is the same thing that makes Luke bring that sword in with him. And so, just as later on we find out Darth Vader is actually his father - so he is part of himself - but he has the capacity to become Darth Vader simply by using hate and fear and using weapons as oppose to using compassion and caring and kindness. But that's the big danger of the series, is that he will become Darth Vader."

--George Lucas, TESB DVD Commentary.

"What Luke is doing in the beginning of Star Wars is finding his own responsibility for his place in the world. He thinks that his responsibility is with his aunt and uncle, and to do his chores. His ultimate responsibility is much larger than that because it deals with a much larger base of humanity—larger more cosmic issues. He is unwilling to look up and see those as something that relate to him. He’s much more looking at the ground and plodding along in his everyday life. So it’s that awakening, first of all, that is the performed by the insider, the magic of Obi-Wan that sends him on the path to self-discovery."

--George Lucas, Laserdisc Commentary, Star Wars Trilogy Definitive Collection, 1993.

"The part I am working on now is mostly about Darth Vader, who he is, where he came from, how he became Luke and Leia's father, what his relationship to Ben is. In Jedi, the film is really about the redemption of this fallen angel. Ben is the fitting good angel, and Vader is the bad angel who started off good. All these years Ben has been waiting for Luke to come of age so that he can become a Jedi and redeem his father. That's what Ben has been doing, but you don't know this in the first film."

--George Lucas, Star Wars-A New Hope: The Annotated Screenplays, 1997.

 

Yes I agree on the unconditional love which is not possessive but the wrong conclusion that he must destroy Vader and his Emperor is Yoda and Obi-Wan's.

That is why Luke is the hero. He can see what the Jedi and Sith can't.

It is a trial as such but for the Jedi you can have the love of his father but let go and destroy him but not of course with the Dark Side and in anger. The total detachment that would lead Luke to destroying his father would be to know as Yoda says to think that Anakin is gone and only Vader is left. Yoda as it turns out is wrong.

The Jedi are still not seeing the entire picture. They aren't wrong about detachment but their messaging on the matter is still circumspect. Luke and Qui-Gon before him were able to take risks that a fully trained from birth Jedi wouldn't.

There is no reason for Yoda and Obi-Wan to think that Luke could possibly defeat the Emperor unless he was the Chosen One who could do so. Certainly Obi-Wan believes that now in canon (and I didn't need that to think that was the case but it confirms the story point). Yoda is more wary and thinks that it could be Luke or even Leia (which covers off his belief in another that Obi-Wan doesn't have).

 

All you are proving is that the audience has to provide their own motivation plus the will and the desire to wrap the characters and their expressed desires up in a whole bunch of pseudo-science and hypocrisy in order for you to imagine that Luke's ton of feathers weighs less that Vader's ton of lead.

 

The motivation is provided by the story and characters. It's all there in the movies. It's up to the individual audience member to take what they want out of it. The more they do the more they get out of it. If they want to simply have a good entertaining time then that works just fine. If they want more then it's there for them. One of the reasons why Star Wars endures and is so fascinating is because of the broadstrokes that allow for multiple interpretations but in what is still a clear story. What creates the drive is the actual characters. You can interpret them one way or follow the path Lucas himself sets down.

Today there is a lot of time spent obscuring characters to create interest in them as opposed to laying down a clear story path that can be interpreted different ways. In stead it's like first you have to hunt down the actual story path in the first place and all it's possible interpretations before finally maybe getting the actual story path.

 

They aren't provided by the films. It is not clear if you have to use double standards to differentiate between Luke and Vader. What's clear to everyone who saw Return Of The Jedi at the time was that Luke's attachment for his father and vice versa saved the galaxy from the Emperor.

Story path? You do realise that virtually none of the story we get in the prequels was conceived or existed until years after the OT was completed and even less of the motivation, don't you?

 

If you want them to they are. As I said anyone can choose to not bother and just go along for the ride.

What is unfair about it? The story as first seen in the OT works on it's own level. Adding the PT afterward expands it all out but the focus on Luke's journey itself is the same. That we now can compare and contrast Luke and Anakin is terrific but in the moment of the movies themselves at the time Luke's story is just that. His story.

Clear to everyone? I don't think so. For one the Death Star was not destroyed by Luke this time. That was the Rebels. Luke was bound to face the Emperor and Vader regardless of his attachment. What drove Luke to anger and threat of Dark Side manipulation was his attachment to his friends, Leia and his father. In Empire Luke's attachments to his friends were used against him. In Jedi it was about letting go of then which obviously was not easy. What drove Luke to anger and action were those attachments to his father, sister and friends. Then he let go and affirmed he was a Jedi (like his father before him) and so he finally was a Jedi. At that point on that declaration the Emperor knew that he couldn't turn him and so had to destroy him.

This is all in the movie itself. Vader's motivation is also now about being Anakin again and once again being a Jedi. He has compassion again through his son and is doing something for someone else that can't possibly benefit himself personally.

Luke's attachment to his father and friends followed by his detachment is what brought the Emperor down.

Which matters not in the least because the story in it's complete form exists now.

In the complete story we now understand the characters, story and overall events but that only adds to what was already played out.

 

They weren't judging him. They were stating simple, objective facts about Anakin's emotional mindset.

The problem with Anakin is that he wasn't trained up from infancy in the Jedi way. That's not his fault, but it's also not the Council's fault if that makes him unfit to be a Jedi.

In modern industrialized society, children generally don't have such hefty responsibilities thrust on them at such a young age. In Star Wars, sometimes they do. It's a fairy tale.

Except that all Yoda tells him is that he must confront his father, and all Obi-Wan tells him is that he must be willing to kill his father if it comes to it.

You'll notice that Luke does confront his father, and he only refuses to kill his father when his father has become helpless and defeated and to do so would be no more than hate-fueled murder. If Luke is completely unwilling to kill Vader under any circumstances, even justified ones, simply because they happen to share a familial relationship, then Luke's final act of mercy toward him means nothing. Luke spares Vader not because there's still good in him, and not because he's his father, but simply because it is the right thing to do: Hate and revenge are not the Jedi way; the Jedi way is one of mercy and compassion toward all, even our enemies.

At no point to Obi-Wan or Yoda ever tell Luke to do anything that contradicts what he does in the end. They simply fail to give him all the answers, because that's not their role. Luke has to learn the final lesson for himself. It's something that can't be taught.

e: Luke's love for his father as his father sets him on the right path to learning the final lesson, but he needs more than that in order to succeed in the end. That's part of the philosophy of the Jedi as well, as expressed by Obi-Wan's ghost: Our feelings for our loved ones do us credit, but they can also be used against us. The key is to be able to feel love for someone while still being able to see the bigger picture. Otherwise, our love can be twisted into hate, as Luke's love for Vader as his father is briefly twisted into hatred for a man who seems to no longer be his father at all. Luke has to look beyond that and come to feel a kind of love even for Vader, not just for the part of him that is still his father Anakin.

If all it took to turn Vader back was for Luke to express love for the Anakin part of him, then everything would have been resolved on the walkway underneath the landing platform on Endor. The missing ingredient is for Luke to also accept the Vader part of him, and yet still love him enough to show him mercy as an enemy.

 

Not true. In 1981, Lucas relayed the backstory to Kasdan, Marquand and Kazanjian. In the backstory, he laid out the general story that became ROTS.

Some of the details did change, but Lucas had quite a bit of detail in 1981. The changed details were based on actually sitting down and writing a script based those notes, which isn't uncommon in screen writing in general.

 

Some details?

No mention of your selfishness, greed, possessiveness, obsession et al. Those are supposedly crucial to understanding both Vader's fall. And they definitely should be there because they are supposedly just as important to the story of Vader's redemption by Luke in RotJ but, as I already said and you've just proved, none of that had been thought through because it has nothing to do with RotJ.

Father is attached to son. Slave to the darkside but can't kill son.
Son is attached to father. Tempted by the darkside but won't kill father.

Emperor will kill son for not turning. Vader kills Emperor.

That's the story. No matter what try to do with half assed, ill founded retconning of loosely and illogically applied motivations.

 

Lucas didn't mention them specifically because he had not figured out what causes Anakin to turn. The only thing that was established is what is in the script and in the films.

OBI-WAN: "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force."


OBI-WAN: "Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I have told you was true... from a certain point of view."


OBI-WAN: "To be a Jedi, Luke, you must confront and then go beyond the dark side - the side your father couldn't get past. Impatience is the easiest door - for you, like your father. Only, your father was seduced by what he found on the other side of the door, and you have held firm. You're no longer so reckless now, Luke. You are strong and patient. And now, you must face Darth Vader again!"


Each time, it is written and stated that Vader was seduced by the dark side. That is the lust for power and an obsession. He is greedy because he thinks of himself and not of his duty to the Jedi and the Republic, much less his own family. Possessiveness was the only trait that really developed with the PT.

And both father and son give up their attachment to each other and become Jedi. Lucas is basing this on Upādāna, the Buddhism beliefs regarding attachments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upādāna

Remember, Kasdan introduced Lucas to Buddhism back in 78 and it is from that the Force was defined. What the Jedi seek through non attachments is known as Appamāda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appamada

Anakin becoming Vader is based on Upādāna and Vader becoming Anakin is Appamāda. Likewise Luke breaks away from the former and embraces the latter.

 

If Lucas hadn't figured it out what causes Anakin to turn then you cannot ny any honest means retroactively impose any of the loosely harnessed gobbledygook about selfishness and greed and possessiveness, lust for power and obssession (with not having a prematurely and violently dead mother and wife, god forbid) to Vader or Luke's motivation in the OT.

Luke refusing to kill his father is not letting go of his attachment to him.

And neither is Vader attacking the Emperor to save his Luke the letting go of the attachment to his son.

You would have to be completely dissociated from human emotions and basic logic to try and maintain otherwise. Thankfully, Lucas and his screenwriters were still dealing in realistic, recognisable human dilemmas for their sake at the time of the OT, rather than haphazardly employing speciously and perversely invoked notions in a vain attempt to obfuscate the inevitability of a story outcome specified to the audience decades before.

 

I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble following you because your sentence is a bit difficult to understand. I'll try my best. In 1981, the only thing Lucas knew for certain was that he was blinded by a lust for power. What motivated the lust was not figured out until later. Just as he already knew at that point that Anakin was a slave in his youth. He didn't know who the slave owner was, or what type of being it was, but he had already figured that part out. Just as he knew that Luke's mother had been long dead, but not the how or why of it. That doesn't mean that when he did come up with these motivations in 1994, that they couldn't apply to the OT as well. In fact, they're partially based on the story presented therein. Particularly that Luke has to let go of his friends and has trouble doing so, due to his attachments to them. Since Lucas already decided that the father and son would follow similar, but different paths, he could go this route.

Anakin Skywalker's final confrontation with the Emperor occurs during Luke's final confrontation with the Emperor, which compliments his father's dealings with the same man many years earlier. Indeed the life of the father and the life of the son are commentaries on each other.

--The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 221.

"You’ll see, as this goes on, Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with. Anakin says yes and Luke says no."

--George Lucas, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005.

Yes, it is. Luke lets go of his father. He is letting go of his fears, his anger, his hatred. They're all tied to his father. That is his attachment. His Upādāna is his desire to destroy the monster that his father has become. That he must destroy the dark side. He must let go of his attachment to his father and show him compassion.

It is, because he is giving up his attachment to Luke. That attachment is to the dark side. The desire and fuel, his Upādāna to destroy Palpatine and convert his son, so that they can rule. He is giving up his attachment and shows compassion for his son. They both reach Nirvana, the place where there is no self. No thought of self. They give up their desires which is connected to each other. They then make sacrifices, showing that they have given up those desires and have become selfless people.

These things are realistic and human traits. Always have been. You're defining attachment based on Attachment theory, which is a simple psychological study of parents bond with children. Nothing wrong with that. But Lucas has been working from Buddhism, since the late 70's. So he has a view based on those beliefs regarding attachment and compassion and they defined the story.

"The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion—of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides—the good force and the bad force. They're the simplest parts of a complex cosmic construction."

--George Lucas, Time Magazine article, 1999.

"The Jedi are trained to let go. They're trained from birth," he continues, "They're not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can't form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 213.

"It really has to do with learning," Lucas says, "Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can't be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he's caused. He doesn't right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the Saga is simply Anakin saying, I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I've grown to love- primarily the Emperor- and throw away my life, to save this person. And I'm doing it because he has faith in me; he loves me despite all the horrible things I've done. I broke his mother's heart, but he still cares about me, and I can't let that die. Anakin is very different in the end. The thing of it is: The prophecy was right. Anakin was the chosen one, and he does bring balance to the Force. He takes the one ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 221.

And so that is letting go of their attachments. I encourage you to read those links about Buddhism and attachment. It is enlightening.

 

George wouldn't have changed anything about the way he made TPM, but perhaps there should have been an effort by the marketing to emphasize how different the film would be from the OT.

 

What some people seem to not be understanding is the fundamental reason why Luke gets so mad at Vader when he threatens Leia. It's because, in Luke's mind, Vader proves in that moment that he's utterly evil and irredeemable. He proves that even after everything, after everything he's experienced with Luke, after everything Luke's said to him, after all the pain and suffering he's put Luke through, Vader's still willing to do the exact same thing all over again to his own daughter. Nothing Luke has said has gotten through to him. Like Luke said on the landing platform earlier, his father truly is dead. This, together with Luke's attachment to Leia, sends him off the deep end and into a murderous rage. He wants to destroy Vader. He hates Vader. Vader isn't his father. Vader is Vader.

But then at the last moment before the fatal strike, Luke sees how truly pitiful the helpless and defeated Vader is. He looks at his own gloved, mechanical hand and sees that he himself is in the midst of truly becoming Vader. These two things--feeling pity for Darth Vader (not Anakin Skywalker), and recognizing Darth Vader in himself--are what inspire Luke's act of mercy towards the villain. He's let go of his attachment to his father because he no longer hates Darth Vader for murdering him. He's let of his attachment to his sister because he has given up the opportunity to kill Darth Vader and prevent him from corrupting her. Everything that happens in that final moment centers around Luke letting go of his attachments and instead committing himself to the Jedi way, like his father before him, even if it has turned out that his father no longer exists to embrace him at the end of the journey like Luke had hoped.

Luke's love for his father has become unconditional. He loves him even if he really, truly is Darth Vader and not Anakin Skywalker. He loves him as a human being, even if not as a father, which is why he shows mercy to him.

This was the only way to bring Anakin back. To show him that unconditional love was possible. To show him that it wasn't too late, that despite all the terrible things he did, he was still a human being both worthy and capable of love.

That's why Luke failed on the bridge. His strategy hinged on reminding Vader of the good man he used to be, and insisting that he was still that good man. But Vader knows what he did. He knows he's a sinner. He knows those sins can't be erased. To him, the good man Luke claims to love never even really existed. The real Anakin was a flawed human being with human weaknesses, who had done evil things even before he became Darth Vader. Anakin needs someone to acknowledge all those facts and still love him in spite of them, just as Padme did many years before.

 

OB1 moved on from Qui-Gon? Did you miss the first movie where OB1 wanted nothing to do with Anakin, but agreed to train him simply because he wanted to honor "the dead".

And don't forget the change in OB1 fighting Maul. We see the difference of Jedi (Qui-Gon) and Sith (Maul) as they are waiting for the *door* to open so they can continue fighting. Maul is restless. Qui-Gon is calm. When Qui-Gon dies and it is OB1's turn to stare down Maul, he's more like Maul was before than even Maul. OB1 just saw his mother tortured and killed and he can't wait for his piece of revenge.

Mace can't wait to kill Palpatine.

It seemed the Jedi law only applied to Anakin.