It’s pivotal that Luke doesn’t have patience. He doesn’t want to finish his training. He’s being succumbed by his emotional feelings for his friends rather than the pratical feelings of “I’ve got to get this job done before I can actually save them. I can’t save them, really.” But he sort of takes the easy route, the arrogant route, the emotional but least practical route, which is to say, “I’m just going to go off and do this without thinking too much.” And the result is that he fails and doesn’t do well for Han Solo or himself.
It’s the motif that needs to be in the picture, but it’s one of those things that just in terms of storytelling was very risky because basically he screws up, and everything turns bad. And it’s because of that decision that Luke made on [Dagobah] to say “I know I’m not ready, but I’m going to go anyway.”
One of the themes of the movie is high technology and romance. The romantic human. One of the human qualities is that romantic quality, that quality of honor and justice, and everything that we equate as human in the way we focus and conduct our lives.
In this particular case, I was looking for a symbol of sort of a more humane, honorable way of being a warrior as opposed to the mechanical, heartless, machine-like approach to killing in battle and war.
One of the main influences here was the samurai ethic and King Arthur and the King Arthur ethic, where you have a very strong set of ethical rules that you live by.
The lightsaber became the symbol of that humane way of conducting your life, even in the worst possible way, which is to protect yourself by killing someone. I wanted something that was romantic, like a sword, but I wanted it to be high-tech and sci-fi to fit into this world. It was out of that that I came up with the idea of a sword that was created out of, you know, a laser that could cut through anything, but can be turned on and off like a flashlight.
Many happy returns to the perpetually startled-looking Star Wars creator.
May The 14th 1944 Be The Day Genial Genius George Walton Lucas Jr. Was Born Without Whom My "May The" Calendar Would Not Have Been Possible pic.twitter.com/XP1xsjmkDt
Happy birthday to the great George Lucas, the Maker himself! Thank you for creating a galaxy far, far away: a place that inspired me as a child and a universe I've been so lucky to work in as an adult.
I highly recommend that people check out @lucasmuseum too.
Hi! OH MAN THIS IS KIND OF A LONG SUBJECT BUT ONE I LOVE.
For the immediate question you’re asking, I go pretty much with what George Lucas says in the making of ROTJ book:
Ben lied, but he didn’t really lie. That might seem like splitting hairs or getting into semantics, but I think getting into that discussion that misses the point of what I feel George is saying here, that despite technically lying, Obi-Wan was telling Luke an emotional truth, he was telling him what he was ready to hear. That, in an earlier version of the script, George specifically wrote that Luke wasn’t ready to be told.
I mean, it’s a pretty big thing! Not only is it a difficult story to wrap one’s head around with only half of the context, but it’s a huge burden to shoulder, the weight of having this connection to someone like Vader and trying to balance that with how he’s going to try to use Luke, how the Emperor will try to use it against Luke as well.
The lack of being ready for that is still woven throughout ESB and ROTJ–when Luke goes to Bespin, he finds out the truth and is so devastated by it, he falls off the balcony rather than stay with Vader, in a move that was basically suicidal. Mark Hamill has talked more than once about how that’s what was going on with Luke:
That’s how little Luke was prepared to hear that. To the point that, going to Bespin went so badly for him, that Lando and Leia and Chewbacca missed their chance to go after Boba Fett (who had Han in carbonite on his ship) because they had to go back for Luke to rescue him.
So what else happens when Luke finds out, beyond that moment of potential suicide? Well, we’re seeing it play out currently in the Star Wars ongoing by Soule, where in the immediate aftermath of Bespin/the parentage reveal, Luke has been shown to be dejected and his connection to the Force is so wonky that even Lando calls him out on it, saying that Luke and the Force aren’t on speaking terms right now.
This is a page that’s deliberately evoking our memories of that iconic moment of Vader finding out the truth about the pilot who blew up the Death Star: Luke Skywalker.
Vader’s rage is so great, as he realizes what this means, that he cracks the glass of the ship around him. Now, Luke is finding out and he does the same thing!
His connection to the Force–and connections to the Force are based on emotion and mental stability, it’s all about how you approach it, whether you’re selfish or selfless, whether you’re calm and compassionate or angry and afraid, that’s literally How The Force Works–is in a really bad place showing that he was not ready for this and, even if we know he’ll find peace with it eventually, it wasn’t the right time or the right way to find out.
This doesn’t mean that Luke isn’t valid for feeling upset about not being told the truth, that’s what the entire conversation with Obi-Wan in ROTJ is about, but Luke also needs to recognize that truths can be subjective, that there are different kinds of truths–technical truths and emotional truths, that sometimes you’re not ready to hear the full truth yet, because it would be too much.
Even before all of this begins, in From a Certain Point of View, Obi-Wan has a conversation with Qui-Gon’s ghost about this, how he says Luke will have to know the truth someday, showing that he never intended to hide it forever.
Qui-Gon responds with that Luke may have immediately been lost, that the whole story would have just confused the hell out of him and led him into a spiral.
Even in Return of the Jedi, when Luke goes to talk to Yoda about the truth being kept from him, they have the following conversation:
LUKE: Master Yoda… is Darth Vader my father? YODA: Rest I need. Yes. Rest. LUKE: Yoda, I must know. YODA: Your father he is. Told you, did he? LUKE: Yes. YODA: Unexpected this is. And unfortunate. LUKE: Unfortunate that I know the truth? YODA: No. Unfortunate that you rushed to face him… that incomplete was your training… that not ready for the burden were you. LUKE: I’m sorry.
It’s not unfortunate that he knows, but that he wasn’t ready for it. They always planned–or at least Obi-Wan did, but it’s a reasonable assumption that Yoda agreed as well, it’s not like they didn’t think that Vader wouldn’t tell Luke the first time they met, either, so of course they’d tell Luke eventually, when he was ready for it.
As well as, no, their intention to use Luke to kill Vader was not their goal, George Lucas talked about that in the making of ROTJ book, too, talking about the set up for the scenes when they were storyboarding:
“The mission isn’t for Luke to go out and kill his father and get rid of him. The issue is, if he confronts his father again, he may, in defending himself, have to kill him, because his father will try to kill him. This is the state of affairs that Yoda should refer to.”
They were right that Luke wasn’t ready to know the truth, that he was at a dangerous point in his training where he was especially vulnerable to the dark side, and that’s why they kept the truth from him. But that they always intended to tell him when he was prepared to hear it and understand the bigger truths, rather than just hearing, “Oh, yeah, your dad is alive, but–” and then not listening to another word because Luke wasn’t yet that solidified within himself.
As far as I’m aware, he’s never said anything like that, no. The most he really criticizes the Jedi for is that some of them are kind of arrogant, like he put the scene in AOTC in to show that and Yoda also says it in AOTC (and Yoda tends to be one of the most reliable narrators re: the narrative intentions, every time George talks about Yoda, it’s always in the vein of him being one of the wisest voices), but even then he also has Obi-Wan being willing to go ask Dex and listening to him, so, like, it’s not exactly a damning criticism.
Other than that, George’s explanations for how the Force works echo what the Jedi teach in canon. Literally word for word at times, like how anger leads to hate, hate leads to fear, fear leads to suffering, he’s directly said that’s how the Force works and we see it in Yoda’s explanation. He’s said things like, “All my movies are about how the only prison you can really be trapped in is your own mind.” and then Yoda says pretty much that exact thing in The Gathering. The Jedi’s teaching methods reflect what George has said is his view of the best teaching methods. And so on.
When George talks about attachment or Jedi philosophy, he doesn’t specifically address the idea of whether the Jedi are meant to be viewed as the bad guys (I’m not sure if that view was that popular during the time he was really doing a ton of interviews? so he might have even had the idea on his radar), but it is baked into the foundation of how they’re meant to be seen as right.
Like, when he talks about the trajectory of Anakin’s arc, he has never, as far as I’m aware, said that the Jedi were responsible for Anakin’s choices. Instead, he says things like, “Anakin got attached and couldn’t let go, so he made a deal with the devil.” He says things like, “Anakin forced his friends to turn against him.”
Or he says casual things like, “Blue and green lightsabers for the good guys, red lightsabers for the bad guys.” which is a tossaway comment, but shows that fundamentally, yes, the Jedi are the good guys.
If he wanted us to think of them as The Actual Bad Guys, he would not have been subtle about it. There would have been dramatic, ominous music swelling in the background, their Temple would have been shown as cold and sterile like the Imperial ships were cold and sterile. We would have gotten Sheev Palpatine-style music and visuals, if that was the point of the Jedi.
And George Lucas would have said it repeatedly, if that was meant to be the takeaway. But instead he says stuff like, “The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.
“But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he’s been prepping for this, but that’s the one where he’s sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate.“ –Attack of the Clones commentary
Nowhere in there does he put forth the idea that the Jedi were wrong or bad, when it would have been the perfect place to do it. Instead, it’s consistent with how he talks about Anakin’s fall, that his attachments were what caused him to fall. And that, if he’d been taken in by the Jedi earlier, he would have learned to love without attachment, which is precisely what they’re supposed to do:
“[The Jedi are] not supposed to form attachments. They can love people– in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.” –Making of Revenge of the Sith
And that’s what went wrong with Anakin at the end, George Lucas has said that, too–Padme backs away from him on Mustafar because he’s become a greedy person. And that greed is of the dark side. Attachment (in the sense of being unable to let go of things when it’s time/to let them be as they are) is of the dark side.
So, he doesn’t say it directly that “Yes, the Jedi are the good guys, for fuck’s sake.” but everything in the worldbuilding he talks about supports that they are narratively correct and doing good. I mean, disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer nobody’s perfect, not even the Jedi, nobody should be perfect, that’d make for boring characters, as well as then the slightest thing they did wrong would be equally as bad as someone who murdered a kitten, because that’s how polarization/purity culture works, but also the Jedi reflect all the narrative themes that George talks about his movies being about, so I’m pretty confident that we’re meant to go, yeah, they’re the actual good guys!
so like obviously luke’s blood connection to vader ala I Am Your Father is the most famous star wars moment but tbh i think star wars mostly affirms non-‘blood’ families more then anything else? both luke and leia were adopted by loving families that they honor deeply. leia was adopted by the organas but that doesn’t make her any less of an organa or a princess. anakin and obi wan call & view themselves as family. same with the ghost crew from star wars rebels and the clones viewing each other as brothers. the mandalorian has din adopting the child as one of his own- and he himself was adopted into the mandalorians. honestly even luke and vader’s relationship is ultimately about choosing each other as family despite everyone saying they should disown each other. star wars is about family bonds yes but is also very invested in demonstrating how that concept is so much bigger than just direct nuclear lineage. family takes work, choice, sacrifice, mutual love and respect, and you can find it anywhere with anyone
I always thought Lucas’s background as an adoptive parent tied into this a little.
George Lucas and Baby Yoda: a match made in a galaxy far, far, away! The Mandalorian‘s showrunner and executive producer Jon Favreau gave fans a special look at The Child — fondly known as Baby Yoda — nestled in the arms of none other than the Star Wars creator himself. Baby Yoda was introduced in the…
Hi! Welcome to Star Wars, there’s a lot of it and trying to get acquainted with the lore might seem like a daunting task, but just remember that you’re here to have fun and you should only do/read/watch/play whatever you genuinely find to be fun! ♥
With George Lucas, I don’t think there’s anyone on this Earth that hasn’t done or said some stupid shit at some point and George is no different. It’s absolutely possible to pull up things he’s said or done and rip into him for it, like literally every person who’s ever had a high profile presence in our culture.
And some of those things deserve criticism (like there are many good things about Jar Jar, I don’t think he was meant maliciously, but it’s hard not to see the racial stereotype) and some of them are a lot more complicated (I’ve seen people upset at elements of their culture being used by the Naboo in a fantasy setting like that, but then I’ve seen people that that meant everything to, to see elements of their culture being portrayed so positively and being shown as beautiful), but at the end of the day, I think he’s done more good than harm.
Doing good doesn’t negate any harm that may have been done, but I do think a lot of what’s said about him is taken out of context or not even sourced or quoted. That doesn’t make it automatically wrong, but it makes it harder to wade through these complicated topics, when a lot of the times I’m not sure how accurate the information I’m working with is.
Some people think he’s a pretty terrible person/celebrity. Some people think he’s a pretty great person/celebrity. That’s something each person has to figure out for themselves, because your line in the sand isn’t going to be the same as my line in the sand. (How much easier would it be if it were, though??)
Personally, I think he made the world better than he found it–I mean, that $4 billion dollars he got for selling Star Wars, didn’t he IMMEDIATELY turn around and donate it to education charities? If nothing else, that says to me that he was genuinely trying to make the world better and I’m willing to extend a lot of good faith to someone who literally puts their money where their mouth is.
