Vader's being the last 'face' you see before being locked in a carbonite coma would be bad enough, but imagine the utter nightmare of waking up and the first face you see is the Emperor? Such a method proved unnecessary since Luke voluntarily turned himself in, but in addition to Vader's wanting absolutely nothing going wrong I just think he was that brutal.
Did he turn himself in, I think he fought Vader until he couldn't fight anymore and then attempted suicide by throwing himself into the abyss.
Luke turned himself in during the next movie - ROTJ - and was promptly delivered to the Emperor without the need for carbonite.
It was a pretty dramatic climax for the movie...the duel, revelation, and suicide attempt. I believe it was the first time I ever saw anything like that in a movie when I was little. I was shocked.
Honestly, this is the one element of the movie that doesn’t really work for me. Not the suicide attempt itself, but how he survives it through that weird chute system. I love everything else in the movie, but I’ve never liked that.
I don't see that as attempted suicide. What I saw was a desperate attempt at escape, albeit one with a very low probability of survival, risking near-certain death to get away from the monster just revealed as his father. He wasn't trying to die, but he was risking death to escape. He put his faith in the Force to save him or let him end his time as crude matter. And the Force came through for him. If it hadn't, he'd have become the luminous being Yoda talked about, and he was OK with that. But I've never believed he was trying to kill himself.
I honestly think Luke gives up, all his beliefs have been smashed to smithereens, everything he thought he knew was a lie. I'd have to check the novelization and the script again but I think it makes it clear he wasn't trying to escape.
Luke just kind of gives up. As a kid I was like whaaaaat Luke dies? But then he gets saved. But there is no way Luke could have known that.
I agree, that was not a suicide attempt. He was willing to risk dying as opposed to accepting Vader's offer, but he seemed to have some slim hope of escape, be it via the Force, chance, etc.
That’s fair. Personally, I always interpreted it as an “I’d rather die” moment. I just never liked the escape. Even as a kid, that escape was something of a head scratcher and never made much sense to me. Even Roger Ebert mocked that chute system in his review. It’s really the only part of the movie that I don’t like. I also don’t like that it set a precedent for the tension-killing device of Jedi being able to fall from great heights without getting so much as a scratch: It just strikes me as an example of Lucas and Kasdan wrote themselves into a corner and they really weren’t able to come up with a good way out of it. (It helps that what comes immediately before and after that escape is powerful enough that it doesn’t wreck the movie.) I should also add that I still consider The Empire Strikes Back one of my Top 10 favorite movies ever.
I'm more curious about what happens after the chute fall. Like, why did Vader just leave Bespin and go back to his orbital ship instead of trying to retrieve Luke? It was a long fall, but he was still in a generally close proximity, and it seems unlikely that he'd think Luke had died from it. The way Vader immediately goes to his ship makes it seems like he somehow knew Luke would end up rescued by his friends.
Honestly, I’m just gonna say “bad writing”. I just really don’t think that Lucas and Kasdan ever figured out a good way that Luke could have his dramatic “I’d rather die” moment, but also have him escape alive. It helps that Luke does look pretty battered, exhausted and sweaty when he enters the Falcon (much better than having Anakin fall hundreds, if not thousands of feet, and come out utterly uninjured and still perfectly groomed), and I do like the scene where he’s handing on the edge and calls out to Leia, but that chute fall just really never worked for me.
I think it makes sense that a trained Jedi like Anakin would be able to cushion his fall with the Force. Probably not what happened in Luke's case, that was likely just luck / plot armor. But it works fine, IMO. I don't see it as bad writing. I don't look for much in the way of realism and logical details with Star Wars.
That is at least how my ten year old self interpreted it when seeing the movie the first time. Before all the overthinking …
Meh. It just really confused me when I was 8 years old and I still don’t like it. (Again, these ARE children’s films, and I’m telling you right now that it just baffled me when I was a literal child.)
When I first saw it back in 1980 I thought Luke got sucked into the pipe, then the gradual levelling out of the pipe allowed his momentum to slow. Well that was how a 7 year old reasoned it at the time, it made it work even if it should've been preposterous. But then a dead man's spirit appearing to Luke, Vader and Luke moving objects with their thoughts and communicating to each other with their minds is equally preposterous...
It’s pretty easy for me to accept ghosts, psychokinesis and telepathy in a fantasy environment. That chute thing just feels like a plot convenience. They needed to have Luke demonstrate that he’d rather die than join Vader, but they also needed Luke to survive.
The issue I have is that unless Luke uses the force to slow the speed of his descent he wouldve been knocked unconscious from the impact alone of hitting the chute so Im going to say the force cushioned the impact. As for freezing Luke, Vader wasnt taking any risks with his son and potentially his ability so freezing him was safer.
Agreed and of course bringing realism into star wars means you would never hear any space battles as there is no sound in space so no tie fighters wailing, no laser sounds, no explosion sounds., nothing.
I always just assumed the difference in air pressure slowed his descent. I don't know what's going on in that massive tube that the carbon freezing section of Cloud City is hanging in, but it's obviously windy in there. An updraft could have slowed Luke down. And as far as plot conveniences... Those tubes must serve some sort of function, most likely getting dangerous gases from the carbon freezing process back into the open air outside the city. Luke just happened to get sucked out of one. The interior's of Cloud City, Death Star, and other locations always fascinated me because there are always these area's where you can just fall and die. These structures are made for function. No one factors in safety. I love it.
Mark Hamill recounting Harrison Ford's statement that Star Wars "ain't" the "kind" of movie in which people would be concerned about his hair out of getting out of the trash compactor. Similarly, when Luke falls downward, he fell in that opening due to the will of the Force. I mean, could a human survive carbon freezing in real life? No. But in this universe, it's possible.
