Comics Dark Empire Trilogy

@Jid123Sheeve and @Jedi Comedian

I see the concern about a shared Force being potentially undemocratic, but I think that’s part of what distinguishes the Jedi from the Sith. They don’t want to hog the power, they want to work on its behalf. And I don’t think there’s so little of it that the Jedi could not act effectively without restraining knowledge of the Force. Indeed, taking this idea to an extreme, I would wonder if perhaps an ultimate goal for the Jedi might be to nurture the galaxy’s beings so that sensitivity became a more common thing over time, so that more beings could be open to the Force and live in greater harmony.

The Sith, on the other hand, would definitely want it all for themselves. But that wouldn’t alter the message of Star Wars, since it’s not about becoming the strongest being, it’s about helping others who are in need, about doing the right thing.

A Jedi’s power, in other words, is always borrowed. Borrowed from the Force, and therefore from all living things. So the rightful way to use it is in the service of those living things. I do begin to wonder if the more Jedi there are the more there are beings who are born sensitive to the Force. So that their presence acts as a positive feedback loop, strengthening life, and therefore strengthening the Force, and so perhaps gently nurturing life to become more attuned to its growing presence.

That makes the Jedi purge even more obscene, because it meant not only the destruction of a religion, it put a hold on life’s very ability to continue to evolve and grow, for the cancerous benefit of a few greedy Force users (the Sith). But I don’t think the Jedi are elitist by choice. There just aren’t always that many of them, and making new Jedi can be a perilous task.

And I do still think the movies are about that power being potentially in anyone, while admittedly focusing on the few most gifted individuals. Like others have said, every movie works best when you consider it to have its own continuity, so in some movies the Force seems more democratic than in others. TPM and TROS are the worst offenders, but I think they do focus more on the role of the Force in galactic politics than the other movies, with the more mystical or psychological movies (TESB and TLJ) leaving a distinctive impression of the Force’s wider mysteries.

 

@Sauron_18

Well maybe that's something Rey and her Jedi can figure out in Ep 10

Good point...It's defiantly one those things where looking at Star Wars as individual films rather than on the whole and Vice-Versa.

Like looking at A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, they have very different focuses and mindsets and then even going into Return of the Jedi, it too has very different focus where even when you do try to mix the various elements of Star Wars one element does take over another.

Return of the Jedi is sorta the story that defiantly cemented Star Wars as the "Family Feud in Space" aspect far more than than ANH and Empire.

Even going to Revenge of the Sith, it's not really about the politics at the end of the day, that's strangely more of a B-Plot while the real focus is just Anakin worried his wife is gonna die so he goes to the Darkside to save her which is a far more personal story.

 

I think Lucas admitted that buffing up the Padme / Anakin plot and reason for him to turn to the dark side was done in reshoots, I think his political motivation and distrust of the Jedi may have been a primary in the first version. anyway Anakin saying "Just help me save Padme's life, I can't live without her" basically sells the whole bit. The political ideological motivation is still there though but it comes off as more Anakin justifying things to himself especially when he tells Obi-Wan "I see through the lies of the Jedi!"

 

Oh yeah he totally did and quite frankly I think that was the right move and made Ep 3 all the better for it in the long run.

 

I could definitely see Veitch disliking the Ysalimiri for this reason. I could also see Veitch thinking that Joruus’s role should have instead been given to an ancient Sith Lord who Thrawn revives from a tomb. I could see Veitch not caring for flash memories or clone madness.

Imagine the fan reaction if Rise of Skywalker had Sheev give orders to “Supreme Admiral Thrawn”.

 

I wish dark empire had ended with Palpatine winning this story could have been the killing joke of Star Wars

 

What do you mean? The Joker DIDN'T win in the killing Joke, he failed, completely to drive Gordan over the edge and Batman caught him.

 

The Dark Empire endnotes have been reprinted for the first time since 1995 in Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The New Republic Vol. 5, so that's neat. Glad the essays are more easily available these days.

 

That's awesome to see, especially as someone like me who's never read them until now. I love the approach these collections have been taking!

 

Sweet, I could read the endnotes if I can ever find where my single floppy issues of DE from the 90s are.

Technically, one way to interpret the final few panels of Killing Joke is that Batman strangles Joker to death at the end (title of the book is Killing Joke, which Batman does right after Joker's joke). Up to the reader/viewer, though.

 

That only works if you assume the story was meant to be noncanon ala. Moore's own "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" But the intention to set it in the main DC universe was there from the start, it's why Barbara retired from being Batgirl just before the story happened.

 

Yah the canon status of Killing Joke seems to be a malleable thing, y'know just like The Joker's backstory himself. I don't think Moore intended it to be canonical, it was supposed to be the dark flipside of his Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow but DC decided to make it canon anyway with Barbra paralysis and even Joker referencing it



That final panel is a doozy though with the implications of what happens (only Batman is still laughing at the end there, Joker cuts off) I'm fine with the ambiguous nature of the ending. Like the man himself said, if I have a backstory I prefer it to be multiple choice.

 

Of course, in DC now there are multiple Jokers so it could be that he killed one of them...

 

Remember we're talking of the same genre that but a few years later had Green Lantern's girlfriend killed, dismembered and stuck in a fridge.

Which is also really hazy, as Johns started that one running in his Justice League run but concluded it in a Black Label story that's supposed to be entirely separate.

 

I was reading Dark Empire’s endnotes this week and was once again struck by how much parallelism exists between the comics and the sequel movies. Many of these parallels have been discussed, but I wanted to highlight how they both treat the Dark Side and its teachings as the true enemy.

The Sith as a group hadn’t really been introduced when DE was written and published. The comics were of course based only on the original movies, and this was seemingly the same approach followed by Abrams, especially for The Force Awakens. From this point of view, the true enemy behind the Empire and the First Order would only ever be referred to as the Dark Side.

Both the Emperor and the Supreme Leader gained their powers by uncovering Jedi knowledge and learning the secrets of the Dark Side. They were not part of a specific cult or tradition, but they had the innate talent, the resources, and the will to take all the knowledge of the Force they could find and become powerful Dark Side magicians. Their specific origins were not relevant. They were conquerors who had learned to use the Dark Side. And the only real threat to their power were the Jedi Knights, and so they both turned a Jedi to the Dark Side to help them eliminate their enemies and to serve as their primary enforcer.

Dark Side teachings were the true enemy. They were a corruption of Jedi teachings, not a tradition of their own. With knowledge of the Dark Side, a magician like the Emperor or a Jedi Knight like Darth Vader could conquer the galaxy.

I want to share an excerpt from Dark Empire’s endnotes that really captures that idea of Dark Side teachings as the enemy:

“Dark Side wisdom is strangely practical, crude and even uninspired. Its entire purpose is the perfection of the will, and the expansion of personal power. It is knowledge that can be terribly seductive, because of the ease with which powers and abilities are attained.​

The true Jedi understand that powers that come easily are only the beginning of understanding. A Jedi is warned to not cling to these powers, and to move on to the more difficult levels of training.​

Those who are seduced by the Dark Side know only that their individual will has been enhanced. All that is required, for them, is a sensitivity to the energies of the Force... and an act of surrender to the path of anger and violence, regardless of the consequences to others.​

The Emperor has become a Master of the Dark Will and its abilities.”​

 

You know I gotta wonder outside of TROS how much of the Dark Empire parallelism here come from more Story Group and not the movies themselves.

Like if Colin Trevorrrow's cut of Ep 9 came out how much will we be saying that that the ST is Legacy of the Force paralleling (Given that Kylo was gonna be a straight up bad guy)

I mean sure there some LOTF stuff since you know...."Evil Solo/Skywalker Kid" but some ideas are low hanging fruit from the get-go, some things just happen regardless if anyone knows.

While more Story Group controlled elements could add in more of the world building or buildup to the Sequels since TFA was a little light on the world building so they just decided "Well Dark Empire seems to be our best example of this so...will go with that"

Then TROS happens and it's full on Dark Empire at that point but I can't imagine JJ or Terrior (Maybe Terrio) read Dark Empire.

 

I'd love for them to reissue the entire DET audio drama one of these days, to my knowledge you can't officially get Empire's End anywhere these days. I'd buy a CD set and script book a la Jedi Lost in a heartbeat.

 

The description about foregoing the easier, more seductive Force powers or signs also puts me a bit in mind of what I read about Siddhis (powers) in some Buddhist literature, about the path to Satori - although I never got a very detailed description of how that was supposed to work, at the time.
That one was to let them pass by, on the way to greater understanding or samadhi.

 

Palpatine being so strong in the lore dont matter what canon its very unlikely to him being defeated so easy i always believed that someone like Palpatine would make a plan b if something bad happen to him even if his return in both canons are weird

 

I mean, it's perfectly in-character for him to want immortality, being the most self-centered guy in the universe and planning to rule everything forever, saying he never once thought about living forever is a bit silly, because to rule forever you have to live forever as well, right? This is also the same guy who makes plans within plans to get what he wants and countless contingencies in case something goes wrong, always having a back-up plan, in a weird way, the Prequels kind of solidified this "Mastermind Palpatine" even more than prior material did, making his contingency make perfect sense as to what kind of guy he is.

It also gives a little bit of added depth to his taunts to his would-be apprentices (something that gets alluded to in Empire's End) when he asks someone to kill him so they go to the Dark Side, he does so also thinking about how death isn't even permanent for him, just one more step in his plan to turn you over to the Dark Side completely.

"Yes, kill me, and you'll go to the Dark Side, and i won't really need to die to turn you! haha!" -Palpatine's head, probably.

 

Apparently that was their starting point of thought when george told them to bring Palpatine back. "Why would he be so keen for Luke to kill him".

 

I thought the starting point was

Darth Vader -No Go

But George was okay about Brining back Palpatine cuz..."Not my canon" ;p

 

Not Vader a guy dressed as him, George said no but if you can bring Palpatine back. He also loved the comic and gave it as a Christmas present one year.

 

You mean in the original outline for the Sequel Trilogy, before it was established that Leia was Luke's sister (Palpatine was supposed to return in that too as far as i know, he would have been the villain)? In Dark Empire itself i think it was Veitch's idea, kind of like an in-universe justification for Palpatine's weird suicidal tendencies.

And also because bringing back Vader would have been completely stupid.

In many ways, Dark Empire grabs some things from that unseen Sequel Trilogy, with Palpatine as the main bad guy in all three movies, Luke's sister "the another last hope" as the main focus, etc.

In fact i think Dark Empire is the story that gives Leia her definitive place in the Skywalker mythos, as that of the redeemer of Luke, in the end she was the last hope of the Galaxy, if it wasn't for her, the Sith would have won.

That idea can also be seen in the actual Sequel Trilogy, since Leia was supposed to be the one to redeem Kylo Ren in Episode IX from day one (at least that was the general idea) and that's what we ultimately got.

Generally it seems all "Sequel Trilogies" carry the "there is another" hint with Luke's sister, in that, despite Luke failing in his hubris, Leia was there to help get things right again, both of Anakin Skywalker's children being pivotal in restoring the Balance of the Force.

 

No I was meaning Tom and Co when they pitched to Lucas. He said no to Vader suit man, but if they could bring Palpatine back do it.

rebold; Yes, which is part of why I love it. It really gives Leia her time in the sun, she isn't a support player she is a main star. She is a jedi in her own right and has her own strength, she saves Luke, like Luke saved Anakin, with love.

Also the ending when Luke declares that the jedi will rise agin.

Lucas did call Dark Empire the closet thing there was to his Sequel trilogy.

Also both STs have Palpatine return. More parallels.