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OK, but maybe Yoda was saying that if Luke stayed and completed his training, he could reestablish the Jedi order in a way that didn’t just promptly go to shit and leave him depressed on a far-flung mountaintop 30 years later…while his best buddy Han, on the run from multiple equivalents of Jabba the Hut this time, gets savagely betrayed and murdered by his son, and the new version of the Empire blows up multiple planets. Hell, maybe Yoda on some level sensed that it would be a bad thing for the galaxy if Han and Leia are able to have a child together.
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Yoda; I did not realise who was a Sith despite working with him for 15 years?:dubious:
But then we come up against the other thing you’re troubled by: the ending of JEDI, with Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as luminous beings who appear entirely pleased – just look at that smile! – prompting Luke to earnestly smile before a smiling Leia brings him back to hang out with a smiling Han, and music is playing and everybody is hugging each other and happy times and end credits.
So explain that away – and, too, explain away Yoda saying earlier in JEDI that “No more training do you require; already know you that which you need … One thing remains. You must confront Vader. Then, only then, a Jedi you will be … the Force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned, Luke; there is another Skywalker.” (Obi-Wan adds: “The other he spoke of is your twin sister!”)
Now, I don’t need to explain those; I just need to point at 'em, is all.
But I don’t see how you can figure Yoda had everything right in EMPIRE – and then acts like that in JEDI. I don’t see how Obi-Wan, who was convinced that the Emperor had won if Luke refused to kill his father, was right to disregard Padmé’s last words and Luke’s earnest hope that there was still good in him. (Anakin adds: “You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister you were right.” (That’s in re Leia asking why Luke has to confront him, and Luke saying “Because there’s good in him; I’ve felt it … I can save him. I can turn him back to the good side. I have to try.”))
We would say, as we of course already do, that murdering innocents is wrong and horrifying. And we would add, in your scenario, that Eric eventually realized this and saved what innocents he could and died in the process of taking a murderer down with him. And we would add that, if you’re ever in so bad a place that murdering innocents seems to be the answer, you should resist that sick temptation and reach out for any help you can get in keeping yourself from tragedy; but if you ever find yourself in the middle of such a situation, it’s never too late to have a change of heart and switch from murdering innocents to saving them.
It’d be a weird message, and a mouthful, but it’d be accurate.
There has been a lot of worry about copycats of the Columbine killers. So would making a hero out of one of them really help in that pursuit?
Bottom line: after all the fear and pain and death Vader caused, nothing he could do would make him deserving of any honorifics during his life or after his death.
Asking me to explain away various nonsense from ROTJ…no. That will never fly.
Well, you’ve presented your best fictional example; you apparently couldn’t come up with a real-life example, and so imagined up a version of Columbine that went differently while still retaining the unchecked horror of what actually happened.
So let me reply with an example that requires less in the way of counterfactuals: say there’s a guy who helps the Nazi war effort, but eventually realizes the error of his ways and switches sides. It goes without saying that we want to discourage people from helping stuff like unto the Nazi war effort – but what do we make of that man? Do we make a movie about how great it was that he turned against the bad guys he’d served? And by “we” do I mean “the producer is one of my fellow Jews”?
No matter how much evil someone has done, there’s still value in him becoming a better person. It doesn’t make up for all the bad he did, but it’s still worth doing. Especially in Return of the Jedi, since the jedi go extinct if Vader doesn’t turn on the emperor and save his son. Luke dies, then they all get blown up in the Death star, assuming Vader and the Emperor don’t get away the same way Luke did, which is an even worse outcome. A Sith and his master loose in the galaxy with no jedi to oppose them. Yikes!
Long before Star Wars, the concept of good men going bad and bad men going good has been a fascinating subject for writers. We love redemption stories. Especially when the bad guy becomes good and then dies heroically. Then we don’t have to grapple with how to deal with his crimes. Very tidy.
Did they make a blockbuster movie celebrating his change of heart?
No, of course not, so obviously I meant someone else. Let me, though, ask you this: did Hess risk his life to save any innocents? Or in an effort to kill Hitler? No? Okay, give him a life sentence instead of a death sentence – but how is he relevant?
Well, I’ll give you that there’s nothing I recall ruling OUT her being Leia and Han’s daughter, but that would really be a stretch of internal logic. Random questions that come to mind are:
Why did they raise Ben (at least to a certain point), but hide her away on Jakku?
Why wasn’t there a glimpse of recognition from Han when he met her? Even if he wanted to keep her parentage from her, there was nothing that implied he knew who she was (or suspected who she was)
When Han saw Leia, why didn’t he say something like “I saw our son, oh, and by the way, the daughter we stashed away on Jakku? He’s got her as well. Whew! It’s been quite the day!”
Yes, the possibility exists that Leia had her with another man, and while that’s plausible in a real-life situation, it really wouldn’t be a satisfying plot device because it would draw in another dude out of the blue for a really major part. Sort of a deus ex Leia!
Anyway, we’ll know in two (or possibly four) years. So we can meet up here at that point, and one of us will be able to say “told ya!”
Is Snoke actually Plagueis? If so, the gash on his head might have been the result of Palpatine’s long-ago attack on him. Maybe he not only discovered the secret of immortality, but of rising from the dead, as well. A zombie Supreme Leader!
But really though, the biggest problem with RotJ is that the Rebellion should have been crushed with Vader and Palpatine ruling the galaxy together, reinforcing the message that Evil will always triumph because Good is Dumb.
Is there any reason to think that the galaxy as a whole has forgiven and celebrates Darth Vader? We just see things from Luke’s perspective, not the perspective of man-in-the-street.
In addition, mixing in The Force, with its light side and dark side, makes things ethically trickier. The way it’s presented, (a) it’s easy to fall to the dark side, (b) once you do you don’t really have volition any more and in some sense cease to be yourself (note the distinction that Obi-Wan repeatedly makes between Darth Vader and Annakin Skywalker), and (c) it’s very very VERY hard to return from the dark side to the light side.
Oh, and by the way, the person-who-helped-the-nazis-then-had-a-change-of-heart being referenced upthread is not Hess, it’s Oskar Schindler.
Might help Kylo Ren realize the error of his ways some day. I guess we’ll see.
I started typing it with him in mind, but soon realized I could keep it vague enough to also encompass Tom Cruise recent playing Claus von Stauffenberg as, y’know, a German military officer who eventually decided to risk his life trying to kill Hitler. Once again, that’s of course a story a Jewish producer wanted to put on the big screen; even knowing he failed, that’s still an effort we want to celebrate.
(Still, bonus points to Schindler’s List for the scene where he convinces Germans to do what’s right: “I know you have received orders from our commandant, which he has received from his superiors, to dispose of the population of this camp. Now would be the time to do it. Here they are; they’re all here. This is your opportunity. Or, you could leave, and return to your families as men instead of murderers.”)
OK, this just popped into my head: just how helpful is it for an evil government to have a practitioner (or two) of the dark side anyway? Now, the fact that both the Empire and the First Order were headed by an EMDS* implies it gives one a leg up on being the top dog, but as far as the broader organization is concerned, does it make that much difference? These governments still have to make death stars and have a huge fleet of fighters, so it doesn’t look like an EMDS and his apprentice really do that much good.
He certainly risked his life in the flight, and Hitler issued an order that he be shot on sight if he were ever caught by German forces.
If Schindler or von Stauffenberg were ever guilty of atrocities, I’m not aware of it. Darth Vader was clearly more like the head of the SS then like some Wehrmacht officer or private industrialist. And if you headed up the SS for some length of time, there is no hero’s moment in a movie for you. Not even in some alternate reality where the head of the SS attempts an assassination of Hitler.
Or maybe there would be, since most people obviously accept R0TJ. But I would not accept that.
I gotta admit, I now kinda want to see a dubbed version of ROTJ where Vader sees the error of his ways and sacrifices himself to save his son and take the Emperor down with him, telling Luke with sad eyes that he was right – and Luke replies, whatever, loser; still hate you; hope mom cheated on you with Obi-Wan; gonna piss on you now.
