Woody Allen and Mel Brooks will tell you that they turned them into real quotes… 
Thing that always got me - was that as far as Vader knew - he had no children.
(atleast according to Palpatine at the end of ep3)
But that’s one of those lines that works with the “you’re father would have wanted you to have this”
I’ve never really been bothered by that.
1.Obiwan was extremely disturbed by Anakin’s betrayal, he says as much that he loved Anakin and he was like a brother to him. It isn’t hard to imagine him holding onto a mental image of how Ani was before becoming Vader.
2.This memory of how Ani once was would have wanted his son to have his lightsaber.
Because in that really terrible situation, it was one of the few things that would be really, really worse for Luke, and it can always get worse.
That, and the music really sold it.
Our son was almost six, and we had no problem at the end of EMPIRE knowing that the “another” hope was Leia. There were plenty of clues, including the way that she resists Darth Vader’s interrogation in STAR WARS, takes control of the situation, and senses Luke hanging from the bottom of Bespin. There were a couple of other factors that I don’t remember, but we had no doubt that Leia was the one Yoda meant.
Re Leia its so obvious, that in ROTJ, it takes about 30 seconds to resolve.
Once again I need to remind people that “balance” doesn’t mean “balance between the light and dark sides.” The light side is balanced, the dark side is unbalanced.
I wasn’t paying attention to any of the grown-ups in that film. They obviously had no idea what they were doing. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were wrong, Luke was definitely old enough. The old farts on the Death Star were wrong, the Death Star was weak against the force, even their own freaking necks were weak against the force, despite their scorn for that “ancient religion.” I guess Chewie and Han are young adults, but Han is almost still idealistic and rebellious enough, but practicality is creeping in, he’d soon be worthless. The entire galaxy is un-idealistic enough to refuse to stand against a planet killing tyrant – gotta get those moisture farms up, crop coming in soon. So when Little Ani took out the ship in Episode 1, it all made perfect sense – to me.
Well, I thought it was a lie, about 19 at the time, and expected it to be reversed until Obi confrims in ROTJ.
It made sense if you were following the whole story. I’m guessing that young kids didn’t want DV to be Luke’s father, and so it was easier to believe that he was lying.
I saw the first Star Wars when I was 11, and ESB when I was 14, and I don’t remember having any trouble believing it. Sure, I was as surprised as everybody else, but I accepted it.
However, it was years and years before I got the confirmation in RotJ. Summer 1983 was when my family moved to a new town, and between being preoccupied with the preparations for the move, the move itself, and getting settled in, I never got around to seeing RotJ in the theater. Then it was still several more years before “everybody” had a VCR. I don’t think I actually watched RotJ until 1990 or so, maybe even later.
That’s the thing about AOTC/ROTS that really bugs me. They show that Owen barely knew Anakin at all, and never met Obi-Wan before he hands baby Luke over to them. So where does Owen get this notion that Luke is rash enough (having “too much of his father in him”) to go off with Obi-Wan someday to get himself killed?
(Mind you, the “damned-fool idealistic crusade” line is actually Obi-Wan’s, so he’s really projecting what he thinks Owen thinks of him. Still, Owen’s line about “that crazy old wizard” does seem to confirm this.)
My personal take on the sitch between 1980 and 1983 was this: DV was Luke’s father … but he was NOT Anakin Skywalker. (Or whatever his name was going to be). Obi-Wan told Luke that DV killed Anakin because that was true… but he didn’t know DV was actually the father. DV apparently loved Padme, who was married to Anakin, and had a liaison with her; then, his jealousy aided his turn to the dark side.
I had no problem believing DV might the father, but I could not believe (and still have a hard time believing) Obi-Wan would out-and-out lie to Luke about that. “Certain point of view,” my great-aunt’s fanny.
Who even knew he was human before he said he was Luke’s father?
I thought he was some sort of alien in need of that space suit environment. Or a robot.
He’s your father? How does that even work, I mean mechanically?
The force had it in for R5-D4. He must have been infected by some bad midichlorians or reject parts from General Grievous.
In ANH the first movie several mentions are made of the fact that Vader started out as a normal human, Obiwan says “he is more machine than man now”.
[QUOTE=CaptMurdock]
That’s the thing about AOTC/ROTS that really bugs me. They show that Owen barely knew Anakin at all, and never met Obi-Wan before he hands baby Luke over to them. So where does Owen get this notion that Luke is rash enough (having “too much of his father in him”) to go off with Obi-Wan someday to get himself killed?
(Mind you, the “damned-fool idealistic crusade” line is actually Obi-Wan’s, so he’s really projecting what he thinks Owen thinks of him. Still, Owen’s line about “that crazy old wizard” does seem to confirm this.)
[/QUOTE]
Here is my take on this based only on what Owen has seen and experienced.
Between TPM and AOTC Owen’s dad meets, purchases, and marries Shmi who became Owen’s stepmom. She likely told him about her son who went off to join that crazy wizard sect called the Jedi. Shmi gets kidnapped by sand people and Owen’s dad and a bunch of other men go after her, his dad is crippled and a lot of the other guys are killed by the sand people. So one day Anakin returns and Owen meets him, Anakin runs off into the desert alone and returns not only having rescued his mother single handedly but he also slaughtered an entire village of sand people :eek:(the same terrifying baddies that a whole party of men could not handle).
The next time Owen enters things Obiwan is at their door asking them to take care of Anakin’s kid, Obiwan I am guessing told them some version of what transpired to lead up to this.
I don’t think the line had anything to do with being rash at all, more like bat shit insane and psycho violent.
EDIT:Also is isn’t clear how much Owen understands about the Jedi, remember he is the equivalent of a goat herder in Afghanistan in our own world. Or maybe he knows Luke has the potential to do that crazy wizard shit too.
“Was Vader lying?” was a major lunchroom discussion topic at my elementary school before the summer of 1983… I honestly don’t remember which side I came down on.
Well sure, James Earl Jones could never have guessed he was playing a grown up Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen.
This line makes no sense whatsoever. 
I was not only sure that Vader was a clone-gone-bad of Luke’s father (whom he later murdered, and was then horribly disfigured in a fight with Obi-Wan), I made a bet with a friend and sealed my idea in an envelope a year before Jedi came out.
That would have made a helluva lot more sense than the way things turned out. It would also have cleared up the age discrepancy, which has always bugged me: Ben told Luke his father was “the best star pilot in the Galaxy … and a good friend,” implying the two were fairly close in age. Vader, on the other hand, was described as “a young pupil” of Ben’s, who had “betrayed and murdered” Luke’s father, implying a Thomas More–Richard Rich relationship between the two. Since Luke was in his early 20s in Star Wars, Vader would have then been about the age of Luke’s father when he was murdered (i.e., 40), which seemed just right.
Apparently, Lucas told David Prowse that Vader was going to say Obi Wan was Luke’s father and only told the real lines to James Earl Jones (duh) and Mark Hamil (so he could react appropriately).
I wonder how that version would have went down. It might have made Ben seem slightly less of a liar (your father wanted you to have this) and would explain the line in the novelization of Jedi where ghost Ben says Uncle Owen was Ben’s own brother.
Still would’ve had the “betrayed and murdered” lie, but I think it almost might’ve made more sense. Vader made him kill his General Kenobi big bad Jedi Knight persona and go off and live as a crazy old hermit. Makes at least as much sense as saying Anakin turning to the dark side murdered him.
IIRC, Lucas gave dummy lines to all three (in Prowse’s case, it wouldn’t have mattered what they were), and none of them knew which he would use until they saw the completed film.
I still like the clone-gone-bad version more than any of the others. It actually makes the most sense.