If you HAVE NOT SEEN STAR WARS (The Force Awakens Groggily and Looks at the
Alarm Clock, Closing Its Eyes and Shaking Its Head), then you should skip this post.
I LOVED The Force Awakens. I cannot wait for the next one.
This post is (mostly) NOT about
what happens in The Force Awakens.
This is about what I hoped (and
feared) would happen in The Force Awakens.
Earlier this year I accidentally
spoilered myself when I ran into a site that ran some of the synopsis for the
first script of the movie.
I am way too lazy to look up the
quote, but it ran along the line of “Luke Sywalker disappeared after the events
of Return of the Jedi and hasn’t been seen since, and the Jedi are pretty much
out of the picture”.
Knowing that Force-sensitive
individuals are always going to be around and that we keep finding narrative
ways to explain how individual Jedi survived the Purge in Episode III Revenge
of the Sith, I wasn’t too worried about not seeing any on-screen Jedi action.
With the Lucasfilm announcement
that all post-Return of the Jedi fiction was no longer canon, I had just one hope
and fear in my head about Luke’s journey, and what it would mean for the new
film.
Let’s take an objective look at Luke:
- Impetuous, impatient, too-old Luke having tantrums on Dagobah, repeatedly failing because the training was too hard.
- YODA (training Luke): Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.
- LUKE: Vader... Is the dark side stronger?
- YODA: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
- LUKE: But how am I to know the good side from the bad?
- YODA: You will know... when you are calm, at peace, passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, NEVER for attack.
- Luke’s failure at the cave, and finding his own face in a Sith Lord’s helmet.
- Impatient Luke failing to raise his X-Wing from the Dagobah swamp because it does not come easily enough.
- Luke’s vision of his friends in pain at Bespin.
- LUKE: But I can help them! I feel the Force!
- BEN: But you cannot control it. This is a dangerous time for you, when you will be tempted by the dark side of the Force.
- YODA: Only a fully trained Jedi Knight with the Force as his ally will conquer Vader and his Emperor. If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil.
- BEN: Luke, don't give in to hate - that leads to the dark side.
- Reckless Luke rushing to Bespin to save his friends anyway (after about a week of training instead of “finishing what he begins”), then getting whupped by Vader and flying debris, losing his hand and getting mollywopped by the whole paternity issue.
- THEN, on the Second Death Star:
- All of Luke’s success in battle against the two Sith lords (each trying to turn Luke and ally against the other) came from anger and aggression.
- Luke struck at Palpatine in anger and hate, intending to kill him after the Death Star started picking off Capital ships. https://youtu.be/YZ_j3s5xj8I
- Luke’s anger fueled his later success against Vader in their lightsaber duel.
IF YOU’RE STILL WITH ME after all
this, then you can see that (despite periods of attempted calm) Luke already turned to the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi.
- A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, NEVER for attack.
- If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.
- If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY:
The heartbreaking story of the
Skywalker boys should have come to fruition in The Force Awakens. The Force Awakens should have featured Luke
as the Sith Lord he began to turn himself into in the first trilogy.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN that Luke HAD
to be the villain of the story. In fact, there was plenty of opportunity for
real, character-driven drama with Luke playing a heroic role. The Sith way is driven by self-sacrifice – Kylo
Ren did NOT WANT to kill his father; he HAD to sacrifice the father he loved
and experience all the pain it brought in order to bring himself the power and
irrevocability of the Sith. We have two
more movies left to show us why Ben / Ren left the Light and why he felt he
needed the power of the Dark Side.
·
GIANT
OPTIONAL SIDEBAR NOTES:
o
The VERY BEST “Making and Training and Becoming
a Sith” manual out there are the following Star Wars books (now non-canon):
§
Traitor, the 2002 novel by Matthew Stover. It is the thirteenth novel in the New Jedi
Order series, and it shows how an ex-Jedi uses some really solid Sith Logic to
turn Han and Leia’s son Jacen (a kind, loving young man who has rejected the
use of all violence to solve problems) to an understanding that there IS NO
Light and Dark Side of the Force – there is only the Force and how we choose to
use it.
§
The nine books in the Legacy of the Force series show this kind and thoughtful young man
sacrificing bits of his soul piece by piece for the greater good and becoming Darth
Caedus: (all the links have brief synopses, but I also highly recommend the
books themselves. Some truly fantastic
writing!)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayal_(Star_Wars_novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlines_(Star_Wars_novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_(Star_Wars_novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_(novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Star_Wars_novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fury_(Star_Wars_novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_(Star_Wars_novel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invincible_(Star_Wars_novel)
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS
could have still been a rollicking first-movie adventure with much the same
story arc.
BUT . . . there was room in the
Star Wars universe for a Post-Anakin exploration of what it means to be Sith
and still work with (and against) the Resistance and the new Jedi to bring . .
.
. . . Order to the galaxy.
Granted, this is the road not taken by Lucasfilm / Disney
/ JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan. (unnecessary
link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536)
BUT, what a brave and scary and
complex and exciting story this could have been – a story of . . . what?
Redemption? Sacrifice? Tragedy?
Whatever this story would have
been, it would have been thrilling and potentially heartbreaking and above all
else . . . compelling.
