Why doesn't Luke cry in ROTJ?

I just finished watching ROTJ because I am going to create my first YouTube music video using the Saga. I don't think there is a topic for this but I was wondering why Luke sheds not a single tear at the end of ROTJ. When Anakin/Vader dies, he looks sad and puts his head down. At his father's funeral pyre, he doesn't cry, he looks sad but he doesn't cry. Does anyone else find this odd since he was supposed to be so emotionally involved because it's his father?

 

Different people express emotion in different ways. Perhaps crying just wasn't a part of Luke's response to sadness.

 

I just find it a wasted opportunity to show the emotional connection Luke had to his father. I think he would have cried if ROTJ were made today.

 

Well, he is well on his way to becomming a Jedi and controlling his emotions.
It's certainly more bittersweet and sad as well.

 

He may have cried... when he puts his head down it appears (to me anyway) that he's sobbing. Who knows. A Jedi isn't really supposed to show that kind of attachment, but who knows. Maybe Yoda didn't teach such things to Luke.

 

I could swear I saw a tear after he lights that fire.

Anyway, in the novelization he does cry. He cries quite a lot. There's even a sweet moment when Anakin feels a drop of water on his lips and he thinks it's raining (delirious and stuff), but then he tastes it and it's salt water and he realizes his son is crying. Because his father looks so hideous. And then he tells him:
"We are luminous beings Luke, not this crude matter."

man, that moment gets me every time.

 

Actually Luke has a tear going down his face in the wider shot, before it goes to the closeup and he drops his head. Of course you can see it a lot better in ANAMORPHIC.

 

Because it's called Return of the Jedi, not Cry of the Jedi??

 

Luke may not have wanted his father to die but the event was actually one of the most happy days in the Skywalker family history. Anakin beat himself out of that terrible shell of a being that was Darth Vader. Had Luke never come along and the empire would have survived, how many more years would Anakin had to endure with his body and heart encased in total darkness? "I've got to save you!" "You already have, Luke, you already have."

I think if Vader had survived he would never have been able to reach a state where he could accept himself. He was content with dying at that time. His last action as a living being was to teach Luke a lesson that he himself had failed to learn as a Jedi - how to let go....to rejoice for those among us who have transformed into the force. To see Luke sobbing with grief due to the loss of his father would have been an act of selfishness. It would have been an indicator that Luke still may be doomed to walk his father's path.

Carnage

 

Maybe by the end of the movies he's stopped being such a nancy-boy, and after all the death and destruction, he can't bring himself to cry. The Galactic Civil War already cost him his family and best friend from back home, not to mention innumerable people along the way. Maybe he's just resigned to how things are.

 

I thought he cried during the funeral pryre. Anyway Luke doesn't look like the crying type.
The annoying and moaning type, well...
Masteryoda5 [face_alien_1]

 

He didn`t cry when Obi-Wan died either!

 

he was going to cry when he couldn't pick up any power converters

 

^^ heh heh.... I'm sorry, but that's just funny.

 

Guys didn't cry in 1977. Unless they were...well...unmasculine. That's the way it was. Now after the LOTR trilogy, guys are crying all over the place. Anakin cried in ROTS, but I think it was the contacts bothering him, franklyOr it was the CG ash getting in his eyes.

 

Guys didn't cry in 1977. Unless they were...well...unmasculine. That's the way it was. Now after the LOTR trilogy, guys are crying all over the place. Anakin cried in ROTS, but I think it was the contacts bothering him, franklyOr it was the CG ash getting in his eyes.

LotR was published in the 1950s, and Tolkien began scratching down notes about Middle-Earth back in the 'teens. It featured men crying at times, and Samwise, especially, bursts into tears at the drop of a hat. And Luke does cry in the RotJ novel. Can't remember if he does in the Star Wars novel or not. Men have been weeping in literature for a long time.

In any case, I think the poster who said that different people express emotion in different ways, is bang-on. Luke may not shed tears everywhere, but that doesn't mean that he isn't crying, or that he is not feeling and expressing deep emotions. Those moments (in Star Wars, at the death of Owen and Beru; and in RotJ, with Vader/Anakin) are among the most poignant in the trilogy, and in my opinion, at least, they do not lose their powerful impact merely because there aren't a lot of visible tears.

 

I meant in the movies. But then again, I never noticed if he shed a tear or not in Jedi either.

 

He DOES cry. Otherwise I wouldn't have fallen for him. ^_^

 

Luke may realize that while his father is no longer a corporal being he's been freed of the suffering and pain that his life had become and that as Anakin said, Luke had saved him.

 

The above posters are right, I forgot that he doesn't cry when Owen & Beru are murdered or when Ben dies in ANH. I also do think that if these movies had of been made today, then he would have at least shed 1 tear(I'm not talking about blubbering like a baby ). I do understand that he isn't the crying type but cinematically speaking, showing a tear indicates deep sadness. Curiously, no one is crying at Padme's funeral either

 

While we don't see him cry during the close ups of him after Owen and Beru or Vader die. I'm willing to believe that storywise during the near identical shots of Luke facing the homestead/Vaders pyre(which are shot from behind him) could be the points where he would have cried. As for Old Ben he didn't have time to cry. He would have eventally when he was talking to Leia but he and Han did have to deal with the TIE fighters. then when the get on Yavin he finds Biggs and then has to go up against the death star. All the deaths around Luke in ANH would have probably hit him shortly after the medal ceremony or after the evac of Yavin when he would have time to think about things.

Edit: Seems I have trouble typing coherently at 1:30 AM.

 

I'm with those that say Luke is a Jedi now and no longer weeps for sadness.