*** Official STAR WARS Saga (episodes I to VI) Discussion Thread: Part 4 - Page 7

Matt, i'm surprised that now, as an 'official' reviewer, you can't see what Vaders goals are in ep 4.

he is a solider in his masters army- what is the goal of any soldier?
or are you saying that soldiers don't have goals?
i thought it was to execute the orders of his commander in chief?


actually, more specifically he is in charge of getting back the stolen plans, and as an adjunct to that- when he comes in posession of the princess its implicit that they now have the goal of finding the rebel base.

also, i still don't buy that he was looking for Luke in ESB and keeping it from the Emperor- i realize that is the spin Lucas has given it with the 'modified' Vader/Emperor exchange- but Lucas forgot to drop all the other references that point to Vader doing nothing more than carrying out the Emperors order
-preparing the carbon freezing unit for Skywalkers "journey to the Emperor"- to me that's a honking great big clue that Vader is going to 'deliver him to the emperor' and if you doubt that- what does he do in the very next film when Luke surrenders...yup, thats right- he takes him directly to the emperor- just like he was told.
- "all too easy" yup. he thought luke was in the CF unit, and his job was just about done.
not converting his son, of course, but getting him imobilized for his presentation before his master.

Even without the added dialogue, Palps is onto Vader (the opening crawl reveals that he's obsessed in finding Luke), and has no choice but to say to him they'll turn him together and make arrangements to that effect, in order to placate him. At the end of the duel he reveals his true agenda to Luke, ("You can destroy the Emperor.")

Richard,
i don't care what Vader says to any character.
it is what he does that tells you what his intentions and motivations are.

if you were talking a 'jumper' off from a ledge, would you tell them how you can't wait to get them in the nuthouse?
Vader is talking a jumper off of a ledge- a jumper who has value to his master.
and the wedge he uses to do this is, very sinsisterly, by divulging their relationship and sweetening the deal by offering him power (it doesn't work).
then later when Luke is fleeing with his friends, Vader tries once more, in vain, this time appealing to sentimentality "Son..." because the last time, appealing to base desires didn't work and actually drove him away.

i'm surprised you guys still hold on fast to this notion that Vader wants to rule the galaxy with his son.
this is just not supported anywhere in these films.
how can i possibly make that assertion?
because if the character did want to do this, ROTJ would have been about Vader seeking Luke out, trying to win him over to his way of thinking, and then the two of them taking on the emperor.
THAT is along the lines of what would have to happen to support anyone taking Vaders dialogue to Luke In ESB at face value.
1) Vader no longer looks for luke
2) Vader is still firmly in the employ of the emepror and still carrying out his commands (unlike ESB, it seems where he had his own business he could afford to concern himself with)
3) he blocks lukes killing stroke- effectively neutralizing anymore debate on this subject.

Except for, you know, the time he actually said that.

These are from the ROTJ novelization, but this stuff always came through for me in the movie as well ...

"For that was Vader's final dream. When he'd learned all he could of the dark power from this evil genius, to take that power from him, seize it and keep its cold light at his own core -- kill the Emperor and devour his darkness, and rule the universe. Rule with his son at his side"

(pg.56)

For soon, the old Emperor would die -- and though the galaxy would bend from the horror of that loss, Vader would remain to rule, with young Skywalker at his side. As it was always meant to be."

(pg.57)

This also matches up with what we see in ROTS -- clearly Anakin's original plan was to kill the Emperor right from the start and have his wife rule with him. In Vader's mind, ruling with his son is the next thing best thing. In both trilogies Vader clearly states his intention to kill the Emperor and rule with a family member.

It is perhaps his twisted delusion ... its love for family that drives him to the Dark Side (starting with his mother), and then when he thinks he has "conquered" this weakness, he revels in it and offers power as a way of getting his family members to see things his way.

Which of course leads to disgust from both Padme and Luke.

so Kevin, you always take what the villian (or put it this way- the hunter to his prey) in the film says at face value?

Paul, you brought up that point about blocking Luke's strike in another thread (or it could have been earlier in this one), and I agree that it is a strange move if we're to believe Vader wants Luke to kill the Emperor.

In ROTS, we see that Anakin/Vader makes a similar offer to overthrow Palpatine with Padme, which to me, shows how he already (like a good Sith should) has plans of taking down his master.

I would say that by the time of ROTJ, these plans have been very much on hold for 20 years. Maybe, although he offers Luke the chance to join him and the dark side, the fact that he really doesn't act on this is an indicator of his conflict. Maybe he really doesn't want to put his son through the same thing he went through by the time ROTJ rolls around. Maybe by blocking that saber strike, he's not protecting Palpatine, but Luke, as if he lands that blow, he will turn to the dark side.

Of course, this probably isn't right because just a few minutes later, he's threatening Luke and wanting him (or Leia) to turn, so I don't really know where to go with it.

Seriously though- why should Vader continue looking for Luke after Empire in that capacity? Luke flat out turned him down and by jumping from the spire in Bespin signaled that he would rather die than join with Vader. Where in Luke's response did he give *any* hint to Vader that he might be willing to reconsider?

At that point Vader has no choice but to go back to the Emperor like a dog with its tail between its legs. He's not strong enough to dethrone the Emperor by himself- that's why he needed Luke's help.

As to Number 3)- his blocking that stroke can be interpreted any number of ways:

1) Luke actually kills the Emperor. Consumed with the dark side then Vader's probably next on the killing list and Vader is no match for Luke with the full power of the darkside.

2) He kills the Emperor but doesn't succumb to the dark side. Vader's still number two on the hit list and Vader again might not be a match for Luke at this point.

3) Subconcious instinct- he doesn't want Luke to fall to the dark side.

That was in response to your italicized "anywhere" above You were just begging for it.

Again a quote from the novelization of ROTJ during the Vader-Luke-Emperor duel:

"Vader was impressed with Luke's speed. Pleased, even. It was a pity, almost, he couldn't let the boy kill the Emperor yet. Luke wasn't ready for that, emotionally. There was still a chance Luke would return to his friends if he destroyed the Emperor. He needed more extensive tutelage first - training by both Vader and Palpatine - before he'd be ready to assume his place at Vader's right hand, ruling the galaxy."

(pg.154)

A Sith only thinks about himself. Vader was not loyal to the Emperor because he was a goody-two-shoes student, but because he still needed the crazy old bastard and probably would not be able to beat him by himself anyway.

That is the true nature of the Dark Side.

Pete,
ROTJ would have been a much more interesting film if we had gotten a hint of any of those passages within the film itself.

the first one is very illustrative, however i never get a sense that that is the same character that is towing the line all thruout the film version of Jedi.
its a shame he has no solioquy, or never mutters any menacing rejoinder under his breath as he leaves the emperors presence.

also, if the emeperor was going to be dying soon, it would have been interesting to see just what his value system was- what use can he have for power at the end of his existence like this- where is it going to go when he's gone? where does he think he will go?
does he consider Vader his heir?

these, to me, are all interesting things to explore.
i would have loved to see the film do it (we are talking what would amount to probably less than 5 minutes of dialouge exchanges- that could still be filmed).
but if you have to go to the novelization or to EU material to fill in basic questions of motivation, then i think the film is failing in this fundemental regard.

i recently watched Jedi again, and while i will finally concede that Palpatine taking such a weak approach to lukes seduction is valid in the context of "his dad fell easy, this one probably will as well"- thats about the only aspect of the film i can get past.
motivations and intentions are still unclear, contradictory, or just poorly rendered (sometimes a hat trick).
and character relationships are weak across the board.

touche
where's the rapier smiley?

Actually I think the Emperor's approach to seducing Luke works better than his seduction of Anakin.

You really feel more tension, especailly when the Emperor plays his trump card -- not only will the Alliance lose, but the Emperor set up the whole thing. It's going to be a slaughter. And oh yeah, see that Death Star ... yeah it's functional, baby. OUCH!

The life just drains out of Luke's face when he hears that.

I like how both Palpatine and Vader directly push Luke's buttons, whereas with Anakin its more of the "I had a bad dream" generic kind of plot device.

It still works in ROTS, but I think ROTJ is much richer in that regard. The Emperor is bit more calculating and cold in ROTJ ... in ROTS he's sometimes a little too over the top.

i rather like the way anakin turned in the movie, his loss of his mom and his dread of losing his wife made him in the end willing to make a pact with the devil to try to save her life, and then, he thinks he killed her (which in a way he did).
my take on vader's intentions are that vader wanted the emperor's job from the beginning and as he told luke later it rotj, obi wan tried to dissuade him from the path down the darkside but it was basically too late and neither his son nor obi wan was going too change his mind. of course with luke on the verge of dying, vader finally comes full circle

Not really, the general populace (at least the Senate) seems to applaud Palpatine's diktat that the Jedi are now enemies of the Republic, so none of them remain heroes. And it would've been easy to say that Darth Vader, newly recruited apprentice of the Emperor (of indeterminate origins -- to this day is there any canon statement as to where Darth Maul came from, or for that matter what species he is?) killed Anakin Skywalker as part of the Jedi purge a.k.a. Order 66.

In ESB, it's revealed in the crawl that Vader is obsessed with finding Luke. This is confirmed later on. ("The Rebels are there, and I'm sure Skywalker is with them."). If Vader really was working in cahoots with Palpy, that makes their conversation later on TOTALLY meaningless and redundant. Clearly, Sideous just only recently made the disovery of the son of Skywalker according to the scene. Vader had a secret agenda of finding Luke and turning him so he can help destroy the Emperor and rule the galaxy. Vader is forced to change his plans when Sids gets wise to his ideas.

Who's the more foolish...the fool, or the fool who follows him?

Same thing with evil. GL allowed us to walk a mile in Anakin's shoes, not Palpatine's.

Just an FYI,
Chuck

Is that some kind of cheap slam? In any event, I said he was an enforcer. IE, someone who (as you put it) "executes the orders of his commander in chief."

I take it that the OT never broaches the topic inferred in ROTS of Palpatine possibly fathering Anakin using Plagius's knowledge he gained as an apprentice, which would undermine the next generation story of that father-son bond that was explored and culminated in ROTJ with Anakin and Luke.

Also, did Ben know that Vader was Anakin by the start of ANH when he is tracked down by Luke? Obviously the story he told Luke of Vader killing his father was BS given what happened in ROTS, but wanted only the good things Anakin did to be imparted upon Luke. Does he amend the story because he knows Anakin turned into Vader, or did he think Anakin perished all those years, and only upon encountering Vader in ANH that he put 2 and 2 together?

Patrick, I think Obi-Wan must have known that Vader was Anakin from the start. Why would he tell Luke that Vader "betrayed and murdered your father" if he didn't know, at the time, that Vader and Anakin were one and the same? Unless he somehow thought that "Darth Vader" had perished in their duel all those years ago, highly unlikely given Vader's prominence in the Empire.

Interestingly, I think what we see in ROTS also ties in with something I hadn't heard before that came up, sort of as an aside, in the Empire of Dreams doc on the OT bonus disc. When they're talking about filming the Luke/Vader showdown in Empire and about how they didn't even use the "I am your father" dialogue until post-production--and that David Prowse didn't even know that was the relationship until then--Mark Hamill mentions that the dialogue on set was "Obi-Wan murdered your father" (or something close to that). And now we know that--from a certain point of view--it was true!

Or perhaps it was to Ben's advantage to convince Luke that Vader had murdered his father Anakin (the hero of the republic, as legend was told up to that point in history), to paint Vader as the big bad that would need to be dealt with, now that Luke was taking an interest in the Jedi way.

And then, later, Ben finds out in his presence that Vader and Anakin are one and the same.

Hmm, ok. I guess that's possible, but I'm confused on what the legendary status of Anakin was, between the events of the PT and the OT. Who was he a hero to, the rebels?

In ROTS, Obi-Wan and Yoda hear Sideous call Anakin by his Sith name from the survaillence footage ("The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader.").


No, Obi-Wan knows Anakin and Vader are one in the same, WAY before ANH.

I agree with what others have posted about Vader definitely wanting Luke to join HIM and kill the Emperor. It is not only evidenced by ROTS asking Padme to join him but in AOTC when Dooku wants Obi-Wan to join him to destroy the Emperor. Obviously Sith apprentices want to always take over (Darth Maul seemed pretty happy where he was though), as Palpatine even killed his own master. The reason in ROTJ why Vader no longer pursues is because I think he's just given up. He has no will anymore but to please the Emperor.

That's what I've always thought. It's only reinforced by Vader's "NOOOOO!" in ROTS, with the Emperor smiling in the background. Anakin has lost everything and has no reason to change the status quo.

Even in the original trilogy with the Special Edition changes, it was pretty clear in ESB that Vader was seeking Luke without the emperor's knowledge. Otherwise why have a scene with the emperor coming on when he says "We have a new enemy..." etc.

Referring to if Ben knows Anakin and Vader are the same:

In the Jedi Security Room, Yoda and Obi-Wan clearly hear Sidious call Anakin Darth Vader. The next interesting line is by Yoda; "The boy you trained, gone he is. CONSUMED by Darth Vader.'

In that moment, it felt, to me, that Yoda was referring to Anakin and Vader as two different people. Hence the line: "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."

Now, after the Duel, I firmly believe that Obi-Wan thought Anakin had died on the lava bank on Mustafar. Because once you get to A New Hope and Ben runs into the Black Knight, in a way, he's totally surprised at the look of Anakin. He sensed Anakin once he hit the Death Star but he had no idea of what he looked like.

So, I personally think Ben thought Anakin was dead. It was only until he got to the Death Star that he felt his old apprentice.

Okay, so OB1 and Yoda get the skinny on Anakin getting anointed Sidious's apprentice via the security holograms.

Now, it would appear that Ben lies to get what he wants in ANH (with his recruitment of Luke). The means justify the ends to Ben at that point in his life. This means his account of the past can't be trusted, even in light of "from a certain point of view". Okay, I guess that gives Lucas a backdoor to retcon and retrofit the events shown in ROTS to be molded by when Ben says in ANH. I guess, as a viewer, I wanted to believe Ben's account of what happened, but he's an unreliable narrator of events 20 years ago. C'est la vie.

"Your father wanted me to give this to you...his old lightsaber..." [paraphrasing OB1 in Star Wars]

Is that ever shown or explained in ROTS? Only seen it once and I'm pretty sure it isn't there. Nor is there any conversation between OB1 and Anakin about his future child (being kept secret) so this is another discontinuity (or OB1 is lying which I don't subscribe to).

The truth is probably that, the story being as fluid as it was, back when Star Wars was written OB1 and Anakin probably did have a talk about it (and very early drafts even had Vader and Anakin as different people) so this is probably just one thing that Lucas didn't streamline or forgot about. Too bad as there could have been a touching moment in ROTS where Anakin confides in OB1 that he is the father and tells of his desire to see his child become a Jedi..."I'd even give him my own lightsaber..."

Oh well, a missed opportunity.