Questions about the STAR WARS series

Cafe Society
1

I mentioned this in the other STAR WARS thread but will resume here to avoid hijacking. (Feel free to hijack this one with your own questions, incidentally.) During their final saber fight, Vader tells Luke to kill the Emperor and rule the Galaxy as father-son, that in fact “the Emperor has foreseen this”. Was Vader lying, or had the Emperor really foreseen this? (Father and son did work together to kill Palpatine, after all.)

Also, Vader recognizes Luke as his son sometime between Episode 1 and their first fight on Bespin. When this happens, why doesn’t he regard Palpatine with intense hatred? The old man had told him that his child was dead, after all.

Does Leia ever evidence that she inherited any of that magic midichlorian DNA, or is she the Danny Devito of the twins when it comes to the Force? Vader certainly doesn’t get any reading even when he tortures her, and yet he acknowledged “The Force is strong in this one” while he was chasing Luke through Hazard Coun… I mean, the Death Star.

Do you think that Lucas always intended for Luke/Leia to be twins or was this something he decided on the way to work during the last week of shooting Jedi? Any idea how much of Anakin’s backstory was already in the works during the First Trilogy?

Feel free to respond to these speculative queries or add your own.

2

Actually, what Palpatine foresaw was that “the offspring of Anakin Skywalker could destroy us”. He didn’t say the Skywalkers would team-up against him. Though, being Sith Lords, both Vader and Palpatine knew Luke would be great to have in their respective corners (Vader could take over from Palpy and Palpy can get a new apprentice to replace Vader who is really damaged goods).

Episode 1? Anakin was still a kid. You mean Episode 4. Vader didn’t know the guy flying the X-wing was his son…only that “the Force is strong in this one”. Although he did know the pilot’s name was Skywalker in Episode 5 (and this was before Palpatine revealed to Vader about the existence of a son).

Why wasn’t he pissed off? Who says he wasn’t under that mask? What’s he gonna do? Force choke the emperor? He’ll get his ass kicked six ways till Sunday if he did that!

Leia could ‘hear’ Luke calling for her at Bespin, remember? When she was already in the Falcon in pursuit of a frozen Han…she suddenly told Chewie to turn around because she knew where Luke was.

I don’t know why Vader couldn’t sense the Force in her. Maybe Leia had a lower midiclorian count compared to Luke? I don’t know…I got nothing.

Leia had a brother with a different name in Lucas’ first draft of episode 4, IIRC. And Luke was supposed to be a General, I think. Sorry, can’t help you here.

3

I think Vader was distorting the truth. Vader knows that among the Sith, a sufficiently powerful apprentice will kill and succeed his master. So what Vader was saying was, “if we team up and kill him, he shouldn’t be surprised, since that’s how we do things in the Sith.”

As for the Emperor, I think the dark side made him overconfident and boastful about his mastery of it, which is easy to understand. Since there’s only one Sith master at a time you kinda have to adopt the mindset that you’re the greatest bad-ass in the universe. As long as things are going according to his diabolical plans, the Emperor is more than willing to claim, “I have foreseen this.” But he’s struggling among all the possible futures he sees the same way Yoda does, but Yoda is humble enough to admit, “difficult to see, the future is.”

Both Yoda & the Emperor may have seen a future Luke Skywalker, but neither of them could nail the final outcome.

4

I think he decided on this during Empire Strikes Back, but didn’t voice it to anyone at that time, though if you go by the word of co-producer Gary Kurtz, the original idea of who the “another” was, was to be someone new from across the galaxy.

(I also think that George always had the “Vader is Luke’s Father” idea from the beginning, but did not write it down or tell anyone until the day that scene was shot for ESB)

5

I think levdrakon is spot on - of course the Emperor knows that Vader will eventually try to overthrow him; that’s how it works in the Sith world (apparently). The “there can be only two” saying and all that. I doubt the Emperor foresaw that Vader would try to do it with Luke, however.

6

Just saw a TV special that recounted this remarkable event. They’re shooting the scene in the air shaft on Bespin. Lucas pulls Mark Hamill aside and says, David Prowse is going to be saying one thing, but this is really what he’s saying to you: he’s your father. OK, Action! David Proswe apparently said his lines as, “No–Obi Wan killed your father.” Cue Mark crying for that apparent reason. Change the line in voice-over with JEJ.

7

I like this story, but what about the rest of the scene, where Vader talks about ruling the galaxy “as father and son” and such? How did that originally play out?

8

Since they were going to voiceover anything that Big Dave said anyhow, he could have recited Latin verb conjugations during the filming.

9

I would assume Prowse was essentially saying the same thing but slanting it as… “How can you trust the guy who killed your dad… Join me… I ain’t so bad… look at my fist!”

I think there’s this unspoken understanding between Sith… The master and apprentice understand the dynamic. “Eventually I’m going to kill you.” “Eventually I am going to have you killed before you get the chance to.”

10

I suspect he was somewhat sore about it. The problem is, Vader is pretty beholden to Palpatine, and one could even say he’s pussy-whipped. If you watch Ep. IV, you’ll notice that Vader is basically a thug and bully(and a cartoonish one at that), who needs tarkin to hold his leash on behalf of the emporer. As the series goes on, you’ll notice that his demeaner seems to change and I supect the whole son thing was wearing on him. By Jedi he’s ready to throw the emporer down a pit after he gets pushed over the line.

11

I think Vader already hated Palpatine, starting to when he told him that “You killed Padme”. I’m guessing for years that he was just waiting for the right moment to off him.

12

the force lightning thing was a big barrier for vader to cross.

after the “unpleasant incident” he lost quite a bit of force power, and even though he crushed quite a bit of the lab, he was unable to crush palp. losing everything including padme he only had the emp. to hold to.

until luke he really didn’t have any reason to change things. he seemed really uninterested in ruling the galaxy on his own. he tried to lure others in to be with him.

13

If you use the “logic” of the series, Vader DID kill Padme.
From a certain point of view. You know, the way Vader “killed” Annakin.

14

In truth the lines are:

“We have a new enemy. Luke Skywalker.”
“He’s just a boy. Obi-Wan can no longer help him.”
“He could destroy us. The son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi.”
“If he could be turned, he would be a powerful ally.”
“Yes, yes. Can it be done?”
“He will join us or die, Master.”

But later, Vader gives Luke a different spin:
“You have only begun to realize your importance. You can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny.”

And still later in ROTJ:
“I feel the good in you. The conflict.”
“There is no conflict.”
“You couldn’t bring yourself to destroy me before and I don’t believe you’ll destroy me now.”
“If you will not fight, you will meet your destiny!”

Both times, Vader is correct about Luke’s destiny: his destiny is to destroy the Emperor, and he achieves it by not fighting. The Emperor’s vision isn’t quite as good; he’s worried Luke will destroy them (whoever they are: Vader and Palpatine, or perhaps the Empire at large).

LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU. :smiley:

Given the amount of experimental drafts of the script Lucas went through, one could make all kinds of justifications for what he “originally intended.” Originally, Luke was a woman, and Han Solo was a green globby guy. Of course, Luke was also originally a space midget, too, and an aged general, so space only knows which idea came first. Depends on which page of Hero With A Thousand Faces he flipped to when he lit the bong, I guess.

Lucas admits during the commentary of TESB that killing off Obi-Wan in Episode 4 was a mistake, forcing him to invent Yoda as a mentor to further Luke’s training. Based on that confession, I’d say almost none of the details of Anakin’s or Obi-Wan’s backstory were in place; Ben says “There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me,” but we all know it wasn’t Yoda at all, it was Qui-Gon.

Maybe in a loose way, Lucas knew the backstory idea as a Campbellian mythic archetype: the angel who fell from grace. Apart from that, I’m not going to cut Lucas any slack.

15

Actually, that’s not true that Yoda wasn’t the one who instructed Obi-Wan. Yoda taught EVERYONE at the Temple. He was pretty much the head of the Order.

16

“You must go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Qui-Gon, the Jedi who… oh wait, you can’t. He’s dead. And he’s not at Dagobah. Well, learn from Yoda, he also instructed me when I was just a little kiddie, or youngling as we called ourselves for some reason.”

Or he could’ve written the line somewhat more compactly. Which he did.

17

I suppose Alec Guinness deserves some of the blame then too. The gossip I heard was Guinness found Obi-wan’s lines to be so unbearably trite, he convinced Lucas it would be more dramatic to kill him off.

18

Actually…

“You will go to the Tatooine system, again. There you will learn from Qui-Gon, the Jedi Master who instructed me.”

or maybe

“You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, one of the several Jedi masters who instructed me. I had Yoda in first period Astrophysics and Lightsaber Combat, actually. Make sure you bring a pen! And be on time! And bring him root leaf stew, he likes that.”

or maybe

“You will stay here and freeze your ass off while I teach you more Jedi shit. There’s nothing stopping me from talking to you here, really, except… oh, to hell with it.”

Bottom line: However you parse the “you will go” line, Lucas didn’t have the backstory written.