I think I was about 13 or 14 when ESB came out. Some friends of mine spoiled the surprise before I went to see it but I though they were yanking my chain.
Yes, people were generally pretty surprised, at least initially, but I think the word got around pretty quickly and by the time the movie had been out for a few weeks most people had already been spoiled going in.
Like some others here, I remember post movie discussions breaking down into those who thought Vader was lying and those who believed him. I thought it was an obvious subterfuge on the part of Vader and that my friends were suckers for believing him. I figured in the next movie they’d reveal that Vader was making it up.
I’ll agree. Unless the Force is only strong in the male counterparts Vader sure had no inkling that Leia was his daughter much less had the Force in her.
He could sense Obi-Wan was sneaking around the death star and he could feel the Force in Luke as they flew through the death star trenches.
But even at the very beginning of ANH vader has his finger in Leia’s face and he doesn’t sense a thing? I guess the force wasn’t that strong in her?
I suspect it’s a matter of USING the force. He could feel the force in Obi-Wan, and also in Luke because Obi-Wan had already begin training him. I’m sure it also helped that Obi-Wan left his ghostly presence with Luke, when Vader sensed him in the trenches.
But when someone hasn’t been active in using the force, he - or she - are probably undetectable.
I was ten, and it blew my socks off. I was staggered. I was also baffled. Why did Obi Wan lie? How did Vader sense one offspring but not the other?
To this day, I don’t think those questions have been answered at all believably, which has made me suspect Lucas was making shit up pretty much as he went, and spinning his own urban legend like he had this grand vision from the beginning. Apparently originally Vader’s suit was just a pressure suit for use in a vacuum, if needed, that he kept on to look badass. Luke’s father was killed by Vader by a volcano, as Mark Hamill himself attested (relating the story told to him by Lucas when he inquired into what had happened to his character’s father, the Jedi, who Luke wanted to be like, after all).
By ROTJ, I was already getting a bit cynical. The mushy love story stuff bugged me, the Ewoks didn’t really fit my idea of Star Wars, and with half the cast now related to each other, the story arch was under a level of strain discernable to even an adolescent.
Yeah, I was surprised. A bullshit plot twist like that should surprise anyone, even if they don’t know why, at first.
It’s been a while but didn’t Vader already know Luke’s name was Skywalker when he revealed who he was? I haven’t seen ROTS yet (I’m going tonight) but did Anakin learn the names of his children before they were stashed away? If he knew he had a son named Luke and this this really “Forcey” do-gooder named Luke Skywalker comes along, couldn’t he just put two and two together that way? If he didn’t know the twins’ names but just knew Luke was a Skywalker that would explain why he could figure out Luke was his son but not stumble to Leia.
Yeah, but as pointed out above, Vader could sense other force-strong individuals, and in SW proper, got pretty much nose-to-nose with his daughter. My problem wasn’t so much that he didn’t know who she was, but that he failed to recognize she was special at all, beyond being a source of information. I saw the above arguments about “use” being a giveaway, but isn’t the use of the Force innate? Doesn’t one just get better at it, according to their natural endowment of minicloacans or whatever? Of course we never knew that, but Lucas goes and undermines himself by showing young Anakin has super-human abilities even as an untrained child. Luke and Lea, being ole’ Darth’s offspring, were chips off the old block, weren’t they?
Not only did Lucas leave me confused, he makes things worse when he attempts to tie it together (usually with excrutiationg exposition). Bleh.
Who says that Vader didn’t sense the Force in Leia? I always figured that there were thousands if not millions of Force sensitive people running around the galaxy, but as long as there wasn’t a Jedi order to train them the Emperor and Vader didn’t care. Just because they wiped out the Jedi order doesn’t mean people who were Force sensitive weren’t still being born.
Also, maybe some individuals are unconsciously using the Force throughout the galaxy, but the impression given is that unskilled use of the Force is small potatoes compared to experts like Vader and the Emperor and therefore non-trained people are no threat to the Empire.
Well, if Leia and Luke were equally strong in the Force (which is implied), why didn’t he sense that she was oustandingly powerful and try to get her to switch sides? You know, Luke could be a great ally “if he could be turned”. But wait! There can be only two Sith. So I guess he wouldn’t try to convert Leia. Or Luke. But he does, with the Emperor’s permission. Isn’t an evil Jedi a Sith, by definition? So I guess Vader must have been suicidal. Or wanted to topple the Emperor, who can sense Vader’s feelings, except, oddly, the ones pertaining to “ruling the galaxy, father and son.”
I was 29 when TESB came out, so I was a little past the point of gasping atplot twists (Hell, I already knew what Rosebud meant.) The reaction in my group was, “well, that’s an interesting plot twist – sort of inevitable, I guess.”
Like many others, I think that Luke and Leia’s kinship was a much bigger surprise.
But when Yoda said “there is another” we all thought he meant Han Solo.
As pointed out, only because we spent three years talking about “Episode I” do fans now refer to the flicks by numbers. Also, the “EPISODE I” on all the merchandise was a way to explain to non-fans that this was a prequel. A lot of folks weren’t aware that Star Wars was actually Episode IV of a series. By Episode II, all of the merchandise just read “Attack of the Clones,” though they kept the same style of logo for continuity.
I dunno about the Leia as sister, but the Vader as dad thing goes all the way back to the mid-1970s, 220-page Star Wars screenplay that was eventually sliced into the three parts of the original trilogy. That screenplay included all of the events in Episode IV, except the Death Star wasn’t destroyed, the main events in Episode V, except Ben was still alive to train Luke, and much of Episode VI (including the Emperor being dropped into the Death Star reactor by the “saved” Vader), except that the Ewoks were Wookies. If you hunt around hard enough, you can find this draft out there.
Not really. Having been concieved through an act of the Force
even one instigated, almost certainly, by either Darth Plagueis or Darth Sidious
makes Anakin a substantially different being than his naturally-concieved children. Luke and Leia were just Force-sensitives. Those were a dime a dozen. Luke was powerful because he did have an honed ability to use the Force. But he was never anywhere near as powerful as Anakin, and there’s no indication that he was able to, say, see things before they happen prior to his training by Ben and Yoda.
True, but in many parts of the country, the film was still running, and it was basically just that the titles changed slightly. In some places, there was only a month or two between the first and second runs of Star Wars.
Both Vader and Sidious hoped to bring Luke into their tutelage and thus dispose of the other. Vader said as much in Episode V. The Emperor threw the two of them at each other in Episode VI, and would have as his apprentice whoever survived.
We see the same behavior in Episodes II and III. Whether all Sith have always been working to undermine the other or not, or this is just a facet of Palpatine’s time as a Sith, is not clear. But given WHY there can be only two Sith, it seems likely.
Nope. The Sith are a very specific Order, with very specific religious beliefs, practices and powers. There are other Force wielders aside from those following the Sith or Jedi religions, and Jedi who turn to the dark side will not necessarily have Sith powers or abilities, but merely Jedi abilities employed towards evil or selfish ends.
Sidious knew that Vader wanted to become the Master and destroy him. And Vader knew that Sidious would seek to replace him at the first real opportunity as well.
I remember not being at all surprised by Leia being Luke’s sister, but in retrospect, it’s hard to know how much of that was figuring out the hints and how much was spoilage (I was very young at the time, and I’m quite sure I didn’t see RotJ early in its run). I think that I figured out that “there is another” referred to Leia, but it’s possible (in retrospect) that I didn’t even see ESB until after RotJ came out (and was spoiled).
Loopydude, Vader wasn’t suicidal in trying to recruit Luke. Both Vader and the Emperor knew that a three-Sith situation was unstable. Vader hoped to kill the Emperor and have Luke and himself as the two Sith, leaving him as top dog. The Emperor hoped that Luke would kill Vader and become the new apprentice, more powerful but also more easily controlled (for a while at least). Each knew the other wanted to kill him, but each thought he would win (that whole arrogance thing), so both were in favor of recruiting Luke. But there’s no point at all in trying to recruit two at once: Best case scenario, one of the new recruits ends up dying, and all your efforts on that one are wasted.
Hrm. OK. Why all the pretense, then? “He will join us, or die, my master.” Just the usual Sith protocol for insurrection and ascension? “We’ll get him to…join us. Yeeah! That’s the ticket!”