A Thousand Stars: Episode V, Part 42

[matril]

After a brief interlude with our other heroes, showing Leia and company's narrow escape thanks to Artoo, we come to the final segment of Luke and Vader's duel on a lonely perilous walkway. Having enacted a physical browbeating, the dark lord adds a verbal assault. You are beaten. Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi-Wan did.

Luke stubbornly resists, but it doesn't last long. It's hard to put up a fight when you've lost your hand along with your weapon.

All of Vader's ploys and traps and tactics have led up to this point. To make Luke utterly broken and helpless. Bereft of power. And then to offer him, as he sees it, the only true power. The power that has sustained him ever since his own fall into despair and darkness. Join me. Look at his terrifying visage, shot from a low angle to make him all the more imposing. Look at Luke, crawling determinedly as far away as possible. Then Vader delivers the most brutal blow of all. I am your father.

Luke moves rapidly through denial and anguish, then fury. If there wasn't truth in it, he wouldn't feel it so fiercely and painfully. And if it's true, then...what is left for him? Come with me, Vader insists with outstretched fist. It is the only way.

But at some point in this harrowing moment, Luke's thoughts begin to shift. You can see it in his face. The despair recedes, the fear replaced by an unexpected resolve.

He lets go.

Even after seeing this scene well over a hundred times, I can't say for sure what Luke is expecting. Does he plan on guiding his fall toward a comparatively safe place that can slow his acceleration? Does he know that such a place even exists? Or is he literally letting go of all control, come what may, even death? I've got to say, this doesn't have the look of someone with deliberate control. But it also doesn't look like a suicidal pose. It's just...letting go. Not fighting back, yet not joining evil either. A third choice that Vader never considered. This is foreshadowing, by the way. Luke's path to victory is plainly marked from this point onward. And victory doesn't look like what we think it might.

Next time, a bit of psychic bonding...

Comments

[krpalmer]

Your mentioning uncertainty about just how to interpret this scene reminds me of certain thoughts I've had myself that stories which leave room for interpretation of whatever sort are ones with staying power. (Of course, I do have to contrast this with being as willing as anyone else to scoff at certain invocations of "mystery box"...)

I have to admit to remembering how "Special Edition indignation" included vehemence against a possibly despairing scream being added in the 1997 theatrical re-release, but that change just happened to have been removed again in the 2004 DVD. However, I also remember the old Marvel Comics adaptation had Luke screaming "NEVER!" as he falls (and maybe that's an excuse to mention how the adaptation didn't look to have been using production photos as reference during that scene and the Dagobah scenes... "the better to keep the secret?"

So far as personal interpretations go, I have wondered about an earlier stage of the duel amounting to Vader trying to test and measure Luke's power to see if he's indeed worth making the "join me" offer to, or whether he'll just be overwhelmed to the point of being frozen in carbonite and transported straight to the Emperor. (The question at that point becomes what'll happen when both Sith Lords have a chance to make pitches, though...) I've imagined Luke casting his lightsabre away in Return of the Jedi has some element of "guided by the Force," and I can now wonder about falling into the void here, even if I can imagine being told "you can't just invoke 'the Force' as an answer for everything!" The book Star Wars: The Magic of Myth, which runs through the "Campbellian Hero's Journey" as applied to the 1977-1983 trilogy while serving as a companion volume to a museum exhibition, does talk about "the act of giving one's life as necessary to preserve one's honor is the ultimate sacrifice required of heroes from those of the Homeric epics to the samurai of Japan," and every so often I do contemplate a few comments that bring up this moment against accusations about Padme "giving up" in the finale of Revenge of the Sith...

[matril]

There is definitely a distinction between the thoughtful, subtle ambiguity of a character's motives and inner world versus the hack writing of a 'mystery box' built on flimsy promises of plot twists. I much prefer the opportunity for individual interpretations and explorations that make the story fresh every time, rather than a gimmicky reveal that loses its power after just one viewing.