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selenakEn route from Berlin to Munich, I read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, probably the most talked about fantasy novel of the year due to much advance praise by a lot of people, including Neil Gaiman. I found myself in a curious condition as a reader: Utterly charmed and strangely indifferent at the same time. Or rather, I was indifferent to the two title characters. Not because they're badly drawn, mind you.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell accomplishes the best case of literary ventriloquism since A.S. Byatt's Possession (which included poems and letters which really felt like being the product of two very different nineteenth century poets, but were both written by Byatt herself). It's a nineteenth century novel not because it is set in the Britain Napoleonic era, which is true for a lot of novels, but because if Wilkie Collins had somehow succeeded in getting Thackeray and Dickens really drunk with absinthe and then elicited the promise of writing a novel in which magic is real from them together, the result might read like this.
There are the Dickensian excentric characters, but also the Thackeray ironic distance from the narration and the characters. (Also, Dickens never would have been as tongue in cheek about Wellington.) There is the overall narrative discretion about emotion, so very Victorian (unless you're the Brontes, and very unlike the period the novel is actually set in, at which point the Romantics were busy emoting all over the place). There is the great sense of place; this truly is an English novel, with provincial England and London captured both so well that you can seen and smell them. (The few chapters set in Venice, appropriately enough, don't convey atmosphere and place nearly as well; ditto for Spain and Waterloo. Which isn't unlike the renditions in actual 19th century English novels, as opposed to English poetry - Byron, who has a cameo appearance in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, gave some wonderful descriptions of Venice, and Spain, and the fields of Waterloo.)
Just as importantly, since this isn't "just" a historical novel, the fantasy part is completely believable. I haven't seen a writer use fairies as eerily and powerful since Gaiman's take on Shakespeare & A Midsummer Night's Dream in Sandman. Which brings me to my problem with the two main characters. They never bored me. I appreciated them on a distant level. But the two characters I really felt for were the two main victims of Mr. Norrell's fateful decision to use fairy help for the spell that makes his career n London, Stephen Black and Lady Pole. Lady Pole, resurrected from the dead and condemmed to spent half of her life in fairlyland as a price, has only a few appearances, but they are powerful. It gave me the feeling of a Wilkie Collins character having invaded all that Thackarian ironic narrative distance (Mr. C. not being into narrative distance but very much into eeriness and interesting women).
Stephen Black, the butler who has the misfortune of a fairy taking a liking to him, gets enough narrative space to make me debate whether I shouldn't list him as the third lead character, and his plight affected me far more than anything happening to Strange & Norrell. As his fate is crucial to the big finale, I'm not sure how much this was intentional. Still, I found myself frustrated more than once on the way whenever we'd get back to the social comedy of Strange vs Norrell.
German TV has started to show Scrubs, and I watched the first episode since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sabine101 spoke of it in such glowing terms, and I still live in hope she'll be rejoining the lj world once the battle against the forces of darkness American elections are over. Said first episode was funny, but as the last hospital show a friend made me watch was a British one (starring Martin Shaw), and hence had actors who did not look like they were all out of a modelling agency, I was distracted more than once by the "where are the normal-looking people?" question.
I also finished watching my Original Trilogy Star Wars DVDs, more or less. Not wanting to bore everyone with a recap of my SW opinions yet again, I'll just point to this old one. Now, some additional thoughts and observations caused by watching Empire of Dreams and the OT with the audio commentaries on:
1.) One of the more endearing things about George Lucas and Steven Spielberg is that they're both such film geeks. And prepared to praise others. In his commentary for A New Hope, Lucas confesses to having pinched the idea of following the two most insignificant characters (i.e. the droids) for the first 20 minutes or so, after the initial scenes have introduced two main characterse, Leia and Vader, from Akiro Kurasawa because he loved The Hidden Fortress so much. As a recent article in the British magazine Empire points out, Lucas wasn't just verbal in his Kurosawa admiration when the old man was still alive, either - he financed A.K.'s last films. As Spielberg, big David Lean fan that he was, financed the restoration, new edition and re-release of Lawrence of Arabia. (If you have LoA on DVD, the Spielberg featurette, in which he goes all fanboy over the movie, is both touching and fun.) Lucas also has much praise of Irving Kershner in the Empire Strikes Back commentary, fully crediting him with adding emotional depth and pointing to seemingly small stuff like Chewbacca's reaction when Leia allows the doors to be closed for the night on Hoth as Kershner's way of heightening the emotional reality of characters, and wistfully remarks in the Return of the Jedi character (during the end of the Jabba the Hutt showdown) that Steven Spielberg is "one of the best directors in the world" for what Lucas calls hyperreality sequences, action sequences where the audience needs to understand several things going on simultanously without getting confused, and says he was never quite satisfied with his own efforts in that area.
2) It's a pity that Carrie Fisher says relatively little on all three commentaries, as she's one funny woman. Irving Kershner, otoh, shouldn't do audio commentaries at all since he sticks to narrating what's on screen in a bed time story manner. ("She wants him. But she's not going to give in. But..." Han kisses Leia. "There! Wasn't that something?") Since he's quite enthusiastic doing this, it's somewhat charming but also completely uninformative. The one interesting and new thing he says is an anecdote he tells during the end credits.)
3) The Vader/Kenobi duel from A New Hope looks somewhat wooden now with the prequels in mind, but as Lucas points out, given that Kenobi is old and Vader is half machine, they have a good excuse within the story.*g* Speaking of the prequels, though there is still one film missing, I found myself appreciating again the additional emotional texture. When seeing the Lars homestead, for example, I can't help but associate Anakin carrying Shmi's body after his first step towards Vader-ization, the massacre of the Tuskens. Luke's final lightsaber being green ties him with Qui-Gon, the first Jedi Anakin ever met; both of them in their way free him. Leia putting a blanket on Luke and comforting him in ANH brings in mind Padme doing this for Anakin in TPM. And so on.
4) All of this being said doesn't mean I ever have the impression of a master plan having gone on. (As with, say, Babylon 5.) And Star Wars, any part thereof, still isn't my favourite Sci-Fi movie. (Blade Runner gets my vote, for the record.) To say something unoriginal, it's not as much Sci-Fi as it is fantasy, a fairy tale in space, and Lucas having a good grasp on fairy tale archetypes plus the ability to follow up some ideas that came to him on the way. Something about which he's pretty open about in the audio commentaries. For example, he says that in the original script for ANH, Obi-Wan Kenobi did not die. Then he noticed that after deactivating the tractor beam, Kenobi didn't have anything to do anymore, plus there was no logical reason why he shouldn't take part in the final fight if he was alive, which would ruin the concept of Luke having to do this on his own (plus some help from Han). Then, Lucas said, and only then it occured to him that the mentor dying fit the archetype, and hastened Luke's road to adulthood, so Obi-Wan got the ax. Which made Luke's necessary Jedi training into something of a problem in Empire, which was the reason they came up with Yoda, and again, once the idea of Yoda was already there, the second idea of uniting this to the fairy tale motif of the magical creature which at first seems insignificant and little and gets scorned, but gets treated with compassion from the hero which after the big reveal of its true nature means the hero gets some of its magic came as well. Oh, and according to Lucas in RotJ, one of my favourite scenes, Luke burning Vader's body on a funeral pyre, wasn't even in the script but was a last minute addition "to give Luke more closure on his relationship with his father". In the story the overall saga eventually developed into, with the emphasis shifting from Luke to Anakin/Vader, this is also a very necessary scene.
5) In regards to the changes from the original versions: I honestly don't care one way or the other about the Greedo thing. You know, I wasn't even aware the guy was called Greedo before the uproar started when the Special Editions hit the cinemas. Han shoots first, Greedo shoots first, they both shoot at the same time (which is what it looks like on the DVDs) - whatever. The Han and Jabba scene is fun but I agree withsnarkel, digital Jabba just looks too young here when compared to RotJ Jabba. (Not a problem in TPM when he is actually much younger. Strangely enough, the ILM folk were great at aging Watto from TPM to AotC, so it's not like they can't do this digitally.) More Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor is always a good thing, though with the amount of make-up he has in the OT, it's hardly noticable someone else played Palps in the original ESB. Oh, and while we're talking Palpatine - a walking illustration how absolute power makes one lose subtlety and gain in hubris. He's a far more interesting villain in the prequels. Back to the Special Edition and DVD changes - the celebrations on Cloud City, Coruscant, Naboo and Tatoine bring us back, as Ben Burtt observes on the commentary, to the main places we visited throughout all six films, and I loved the additional sense of close this adds.
And now for the big one in terms of fannish reaction (well, after the endless Greedo debate): the replacement of Sebastian Shaw as Anakin by Hayden Christensen as Anakin in the final scene. Not surprisingly, I don't object. (fernwithy has drawn up a witty list of Top Ten Reasons Why.) But let me elaborate a bit because I think this touches on something that divided fandom before the prequels ever appeared on the horizon. I.e. the way Vader/Anakin's story ended. The general argument goes like this: He spends nth as second Big Bad of the galaxy, then does one good deed and ends up joining Obi-Wan and Yoda in the glowy afterlife for Jedi? Subarguments are: Not enough set-up for Vader actually being conflicted instead of being just plain bad, and/or: Lucas shouldn't have introduced the family stuff at all, should have stuck to Ben's first version of the story and let Luke finish the tale by killing Vader.
As for the last one, if what Obi-Wan told Luke in ANH had been the truth, I never would have wanted to see the prequels and probably wouldn't have bothered rewatching the OT more than once. It was the Vader-as-Anakin idea that kept me hooked. That and the fact RotJ ended as it did. Now, outside of the movie plus faiy tale format - if SW, say, had been a TV show, and if Anakin had survived instead of dying - I'd agree that one saved son does not redemption make. A lifetime in prison would have been absolutely and completely justified. But those tales of the twin sons of the Sun God who are cruelly tried by their father before acceptance and harmony ensue, those tales of the Beast, the Frog, the Wolf saved by a beloved or a child after years of enchantment and given back their humanity usually have this happen via one big gesture at the end of the story.
Of course, SW isn't pure fairy tale. And there is some setup for the fact this won't be a hero vs villain showdown in the end, and I don't mean in the prequels. I'd say it starts the moment Luke jumps in The Empire Strikes Back, and Vader is so stunned that he doesn't the logical thing by stoping him telekinetically. Later we get the final glimpse of him after the Millennium Falcon has vanished, not killing Piett as Piett and the first time audience expect him to. It's the first hint that the confrontation with Luke might have had results within Vader that Vader had not expected it to have. RotJ has both the Emperor and Luke at different times telling Vader he's conflicted about Luke (George Lucas and subtlety about crucial plot points not being on a first name basis usually), and Vader tells Luke "it is too late for me" when they're alone togther, the very phrase indicating he's no longer considering his Sith status as something preferable to his Jedi past despite his efforts to "convert" his son.
(BTW, in the audiocommentary Lucas calls this scene the turning point. Luke has stopped running, and is confronting his father but as opposed to ESB not with the intention to fight. Instead, he challenges him to "a very different kind of 'I dare you'".)
Now, the phrase "this is your destiny" gets bandied about quite a lot on the OT. And if Yoda and Palpatine have nothing else in common, they do share the conviction that once you access the Dark Side, you can't go back. Luke is the only person who believes something different. In the end, he proves this is not just theory because he does give into the Dark Side which allows him to defeat his father physically, down to repeating the slicing of the right hand. (Again, subtle Lucas is not.) But he's able to pull himself back from this, precisely because he sees the end result in front of him. Luke pulling back, refusing to kill Vader and being prepared to die for this at Palpatine's hand is what galvanizes Vader into saving Luke and killing Palpatine. I don't think he had any expectations of surviving this, let alone leftover galaxy ruling hopes. (Lightning bolts being not conductive to one's health.) Does saving one life and giving up one's own in orderer to do so make up for twenty years of being the No.2 in a murderous regime? No, but it does allow him to die on a note of grace. Grace and mercy being something which, as Giles observes in BTVS, you don't "deserve"; it is given to you.
The reappearance of Anakin at the end, together with Yoda and Obi-Wan, is such an element of grace, as well as a symbol of reconciliation (Luke's three father figures) and farewell of the past (Luke sees them one last time, then returns to the present and future in the form of Han and Leia). There are elements in all the SW movies which I, were I able to, would change. (In RotJ, for example, it wouldn't be the Ewoks, it would be Leia, not Han, commanding the ground troops on Endor. She's the experienced rebel leader, and there is absolutely no reason why "General Solo" should suddenly be in command, safe for Harrison Ford complaining Han didn't really have anything to do in this film.) But this isn't one of them. As for the identity of the actor playing Anakin in that last glimpse, seefernwithys list for reasons to go with Hayden C. rather than with Sebastian S. Me, too.
Lastly, all the SW rewatching has rewakened my fanfic thirst, so I was glad to seefernwithy wrote a new vignette about Anakin and Obi-Wan. And andrastewhite's recent B5 genderswapping reminded me of my old genderswap SW speculation. Some day, I just might tackle this...
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell accomplishes the best case of literary ventriloquism since A.S. Byatt's Possession (which included poems and letters which really felt like being the product of two very different nineteenth century poets, but were both written by Byatt herself). It's a nineteenth century novel not because it is set in the Britain Napoleonic era, which is true for a lot of novels, but because if Wilkie Collins had somehow succeeded in getting Thackeray and Dickens really drunk with absinthe and then elicited the promise of writing a novel in which magic is real from them together, the result might read like this.
There are the Dickensian excentric characters, but also the Thackeray ironic distance from the narration and the characters. (Also, Dickens never would have been as tongue in cheek about Wellington.) There is the overall narrative discretion about emotion, so very Victorian (unless you're the Brontes, and very unlike the period the novel is actually set in, at which point the Romantics were busy emoting all over the place). There is the great sense of place; this truly is an English novel, with provincial England and London captured both so well that you can seen and smell them. (The few chapters set in Venice, appropriately enough, don't convey atmosphere and place nearly as well; ditto for Spain and Waterloo. Which isn't unlike the renditions in actual 19th century English novels, as opposed to English poetry - Byron, who has a cameo appearance in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, gave some wonderful descriptions of Venice, and Spain, and the fields of Waterloo.)
Just as importantly, since this isn't "just" a historical novel, the fantasy part is completely believable. I haven't seen a writer use fairies as eerily and powerful since Gaiman's take on Shakespeare & A Midsummer Night's Dream in Sandman. Which brings me to my problem with the two main characters. They never bored me. I appreciated them on a distant level. But the two characters I really felt for were the two main victims of Mr. Norrell's fateful decision to use fairy help for the spell that makes his career n London, Stephen Black and Lady Pole. Lady Pole, resurrected from the dead and condemmed to spent half of her life in fairlyland as a price, has only a few appearances, but they are powerful. It gave me the feeling of a Wilkie Collins character having invaded all that Thackarian ironic narrative distance (Mr. C. not being into narrative distance but very much into eeriness and interesting women).
Stephen Black, the butler who has the misfortune of a fairy taking a liking to him, gets enough narrative space to make me debate whether I shouldn't list him as the third lead character, and his plight affected me far more than anything happening to Strange & Norrell. As his fate is crucial to the big finale, I'm not sure how much this was intentional. Still, I found myself frustrated more than once on the way whenever we'd get back to the social comedy of Strange vs Norrell.
German TV has started to show Scrubs, and I watched the first episode since
sabine101 spoke of it in such glowing terms, and I still live in hope she'll be rejoining the lj world once the I also finished watching my Original Trilogy Star Wars DVDs, more or less. Not wanting to bore everyone with a recap of my SW opinions yet again, I'll just point to this old one. Now, some additional thoughts and observations caused by watching Empire of Dreams and the OT with the audio commentaries on:
1.) One of the more endearing things about George Lucas and Steven Spielberg is that they're both such film geeks. And prepared to praise others. In his commentary for A New Hope, Lucas confesses to having pinched the idea of following the two most insignificant characters (i.e. the droids) for the first 20 minutes or so, after the initial scenes have introduced two main characterse, Leia and Vader, from Akiro Kurasawa because he loved The Hidden Fortress so much. As a recent article in the British magazine Empire points out, Lucas wasn't just verbal in his Kurosawa admiration when the old man was still alive, either - he financed A.K.'s last films. As Spielberg, big David Lean fan that he was, financed the restoration, new edition and re-release of Lawrence of Arabia. (If you have LoA on DVD, the Spielberg featurette, in which he goes all fanboy over the movie, is both touching and fun.) Lucas also has much praise of Irving Kershner in the Empire Strikes Back commentary, fully crediting him with adding emotional depth and pointing to seemingly small stuff like Chewbacca's reaction when Leia allows the doors to be closed for the night on Hoth as Kershner's way of heightening the emotional reality of characters, and wistfully remarks in the Return of the Jedi character (during the end of the Jabba the Hutt showdown) that Steven Spielberg is "one of the best directors in the world" for what Lucas calls hyperreality sequences, action sequences where the audience needs to understand several things going on simultanously without getting confused, and says he was never quite satisfied with his own efforts in that area.
2) It's a pity that Carrie Fisher says relatively little on all three commentaries, as she's one funny woman. Irving Kershner, otoh, shouldn't do audio commentaries at all since he sticks to narrating what's on screen in a bed time story manner. ("She wants him. But she's not going to give in. But..." Han kisses Leia. "There! Wasn't that something?") Since he's quite enthusiastic doing this, it's somewhat charming but also completely uninformative. The one interesting and new thing he says is an anecdote he tells during the end credits.)
3) The Vader/Kenobi duel from A New Hope looks somewhat wooden now with the prequels in mind, but as Lucas points out, given that Kenobi is old and Vader is half machine, they have a good excuse within the story.*g* Speaking of the prequels, though there is still one film missing, I found myself appreciating again the additional emotional texture. When seeing the Lars homestead, for example, I can't help but associate Anakin carrying Shmi's body after his first step towards Vader-ization, the massacre of the Tuskens. Luke's final lightsaber being green ties him with Qui-Gon, the first Jedi Anakin ever met; both of them in their way free him. Leia putting a blanket on Luke and comforting him in ANH brings in mind Padme doing this for Anakin in TPM. And so on.
4) All of this being said doesn't mean I ever have the impression of a master plan having gone on. (As with, say, Babylon 5.) And Star Wars, any part thereof, still isn't my favourite Sci-Fi movie. (Blade Runner gets my vote, for the record.) To say something unoriginal, it's not as much Sci-Fi as it is fantasy, a fairy tale in space, and Lucas having a good grasp on fairy tale archetypes plus the ability to follow up some ideas that came to him on the way. Something about which he's pretty open about in the audio commentaries. For example, he says that in the original script for ANH, Obi-Wan Kenobi did not die. Then he noticed that after deactivating the tractor beam, Kenobi didn't have anything to do anymore, plus there was no logical reason why he shouldn't take part in the final fight if he was alive, which would ruin the concept of Luke having to do this on his own (plus some help from Han). Then, Lucas said, and only then it occured to him that the mentor dying fit the archetype, and hastened Luke's road to adulthood, so Obi-Wan got the ax. Which made Luke's necessary Jedi training into something of a problem in Empire, which was the reason they came up with Yoda, and again, once the idea of Yoda was already there, the second idea of uniting this to the fairy tale motif of the magical creature which at first seems insignificant and little and gets scorned, but gets treated with compassion from the hero which after the big reveal of its true nature means the hero gets some of its magic came as well. Oh, and according to Lucas in RotJ, one of my favourite scenes, Luke burning Vader's body on a funeral pyre, wasn't even in the script but was a last minute addition "to give Luke more closure on his relationship with his father". In the story the overall saga eventually developed into, with the emphasis shifting from Luke to Anakin/Vader, this is also a very necessary scene.
5) In regards to the changes from the original versions: I honestly don't care one way or the other about the Greedo thing. You know, I wasn't even aware the guy was called Greedo before the uproar started when the Special Editions hit the cinemas. Han shoots first, Greedo shoots first, they both shoot at the same time (which is what it looks like on the DVDs) - whatever. The Han and Jabba scene is fun but I agree with
snarkel, digital Jabba just looks too young here when compared to RotJ Jabba. (Not a problem in TPM when he is actually much younger. Strangely enough, the ILM folk were great at aging Watto from TPM to AotC, so it's not like they can't do this digitally.) More Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor is always a good thing, though with the amount of make-up he has in the OT, it's hardly noticable someone else played Palps in the original ESB. Oh, and while we're talking Palpatine - a walking illustration how absolute power makes one lose subtlety and gain in hubris. He's a far more interesting villain in the prequels. Back to the Special Edition and DVD changes - the celebrations on Cloud City, Coruscant, Naboo and Tatoine bring us back, as Ben Burtt observes on the commentary, to the main places we visited throughout all six films, and I loved the additional sense of close this adds. And now for the big one in terms of fannish reaction (well, after the endless Greedo debate): the replacement of Sebastian Shaw as Anakin by Hayden Christensen as Anakin in the final scene. Not surprisingly, I don't object. (
fernwithy has drawn up a witty list of Top Ten Reasons Why.) But let me elaborate a bit because I think this touches on something that divided fandom before the prequels ever appeared on the horizon. I.e. the way Vader/Anakin's story ended. The general argument goes like this: He spends nth as second Big Bad of the galaxy, then does one good deed and ends up joining Obi-Wan and Yoda in the glowy afterlife for Jedi? Subarguments are: Not enough set-up for Vader actually being conflicted instead of being just plain bad, and/or: Lucas shouldn't have introduced the family stuff at all, should have stuck to Ben's first version of the story and let Luke finish the tale by killing Vader. As for the last one, if what Obi-Wan told Luke in ANH had been the truth, I never would have wanted to see the prequels and probably wouldn't have bothered rewatching the OT more than once. It was the Vader-as-Anakin idea that kept me hooked. That and the fact RotJ ended as it did. Now, outside of the movie plus faiy tale format - if SW, say, had been a TV show, and if Anakin had survived instead of dying - I'd agree that one saved son does not redemption make. A lifetime in prison would have been absolutely and completely justified. But those tales of the twin sons of the Sun God who are cruelly tried by their father before acceptance and harmony ensue, those tales of the Beast, the Frog, the Wolf saved by a beloved or a child after years of enchantment and given back their humanity usually have this happen via one big gesture at the end of the story.
Of course, SW isn't pure fairy tale. And there is some setup for the fact this won't be a hero vs villain showdown in the end, and I don't mean in the prequels. I'd say it starts the moment Luke jumps in The Empire Strikes Back, and Vader is so stunned that he doesn't the logical thing by stoping him telekinetically. Later we get the final glimpse of him after the Millennium Falcon has vanished, not killing Piett as Piett and the first time audience expect him to. It's the first hint that the confrontation with Luke might have had results within Vader that Vader had not expected it to have. RotJ has both the Emperor and Luke at different times telling Vader he's conflicted about Luke (George Lucas and subtlety about crucial plot points not being on a first name basis usually), and Vader tells Luke "it is too late for me" when they're alone togther, the very phrase indicating he's no longer considering his Sith status as something preferable to his Jedi past despite his efforts to "convert" his son.
(BTW, in the audiocommentary Lucas calls this scene the turning point. Luke has stopped running, and is confronting his father but as opposed to ESB not with the intention to fight. Instead, he challenges him to "a very different kind of 'I dare you'".)
Now, the phrase "this is your destiny" gets bandied about quite a lot on the OT. And if Yoda and Palpatine have nothing else in common, they do share the conviction that once you access the Dark Side, you can't go back. Luke is the only person who believes something different. In the end, he proves this is not just theory because he does give into the Dark Side which allows him to defeat his father physically, down to repeating the slicing of the right hand. (Again, subtle Lucas is not.) But he's able to pull himself back from this, precisely because he sees the end result in front of him. Luke pulling back, refusing to kill Vader and being prepared to die for this at Palpatine's hand is what galvanizes Vader into saving Luke and killing Palpatine. I don't think he had any expectations of surviving this, let alone leftover galaxy ruling hopes. (Lightning bolts being not conductive to one's health.) Does saving one life and giving up one's own in orderer to do so make up for twenty years of being the No.2 in a murderous regime? No, but it does allow him to die on a note of grace. Grace and mercy being something which, as Giles observes in BTVS, you don't "deserve"; it is given to you.
The reappearance of Anakin at the end, together with Yoda and Obi-Wan, is such an element of grace, as well as a symbol of reconciliation (Luke's three father figures) and farewell of the past (Luke sees them one last time, then returns to the present and future in the form of Han and Leia). There are elements in all the SW movies which I, were I able to, would change. (In RotJ, for example, it wouldn't be the Ewoks, it would be Leia, not Han, commanding the ground troops on Endor. She's the experienced rebel leader, and there is absolutely no reason why "General Solo" should suddenly be in command, safe for Harrison Ford complaining Han didn't really have anything to do in this film.) But this isn't one of them. As for the identity of the actor playing Anakin in that last glimpse, see
fernwithys list for reasons to go with Hayden C. rather than with Sebastian S. Me, too. Lastly, all the SW rewatching has rewakened my fanfic thirst, so I was glad to see
fernwithy wrote a new vignette about Anakin and Obi-Wan. And andrastewhite's recent B5 genderswapping reminded me of my old genderswap SW speculation. Some day, I just might tackle this...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 08:33 am (UTC)One thing that's always interested me is the difference in Vader's behavior between ANH and ESB. And I wonder how much of that is due to Luke. Without Luke, Vader would have no hope of overthrowing the Emperor on his own and so is mellow and accepting of his status in ANH. Then, Vader finds out about his son (or realizes that his son is a huge player in the rebellion), he sees that he could be Emperor and so Vader becomes much more aggressive in his search for his son. It's not even that he kills the Imperial men for the sake of killing: but that every screw-up the Imperials make costs Vader time and he needs to find his son before the Emperor realizes that Anakin Skywalker has a son.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 08:59 am (UTC)But this way, we can suffer together.*g*
One thing that's always interested me is the difference in Vader's behavior between ANH and ESB. And I wonder how much of that is due to Luke. Without Luke, Vader would have no hope of overthrowing the Emperor on his own and so is mellow and accepting of his status in ANH.
Quite, and I guess RotS will have at least one scene where we see why Anakin/Vader on his own isn't able to defeat Palpatine. Luke's arrival on the scene changes the odds. (One reason why I find
It's not even that he kills the Imperial men for the sake of killing: but that every screw-up the Imperials make costs Vader time and he needs to find his son before the Emperor realizes that Anakin Skywalker has a son.
The slightly changed dialogue from the Vader/Emperor scene makes it even clearer that Vader is deliberately lying about Luke (and the reason for his search). At this point, it doesn't have to be about sparks of fatherly feeling at all - the Emperor can only react in one of two ways to Luke's existence, either by killing him or by trying to get him as a Vader replacement, neither of which is good for Vader.
What still baffles me is why Yoda says that Vader revealing the truth to Luke was "unexpected". "Unfortunate" I can understand from Yoda's pov, but how is this unexpected, given that a) it's a powerful psychological weapon, and b) Anakin's feelings for his family have always been strong?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 10:06 am (UTC)I always interpreted it as that the "official" Jedi stance (among the two who are still left alive, that is) on Anakin/Vader is what Obi-Wan tells Luke: that Darth Vader killed Anakin. Obi-Wan and Yoda truly believe, IMO, that there is nothing of the Anakin they knew left in that walking, black-caped machine, and so he wouldn't act as Anakin would act. Whether they do this because they truly believe it or because the idea that this is indeed Anakin, not just the Shell Formerly Known as Anakin, is too disturbing to contemplate, is not clear, but both are valid theories.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 12:57 pm (UTC)All true, but the thing is, even if you take this stance and believe there is absolutely nothing of Anakin left in Vader, and that Vader is nothing but unlimited evil, then the fact still remains that the big "father" revelation is too powerful a weapon to assume Vader (or the Emperor) wouldn't use it. Purely from a pragmatic Sith pov, it's a win/win situation: either Luke doesn't believe him, in which case he's not worse off in a duel than he'd be otherwise, or Luke does believe him, in which case Luke's trust in Obi-Wan and the Jedi teaching is undermined, and he's more likely to turn.
So again, from a pragmatic pov as well as a compassionate one, one would expect that Yoda had intended to tell Luke once Luke had finished his training, if only so Luke wouldn't find out in a manner that could get him turned or killed. My own personal fanwank is that he did intend to tell him and the "unexpected" refers to the whole situation which came to be because Luke ran off before the training ended...
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Date: 2004-09-24 01:44 pm (UTC)I have to rewatch the films. I'm going to start tonight, actually. But at this point in the story, didn't Obi-Wan and Yoda not realize that Darth Vader knew who Luke was? In the first film, I recall, he never learns of his identity and they do not face each other. So perhaps they thought the secret was still safe from Vader.
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Date: 2004-09-24 01:58 pm (UTC)Which brings up the ever burning question of why Obi-Wan thought that going under the label of "Ben" Kenobi was a good alias, or why Luke wasn't called "Lars" or something else for protection.*g*
Okay, more seriously now: Luke being decorated and getting some rebel fame for the destruction of the first Death Star at the end of ANH definitely blew what anonymity he had. "Empire" takes place a indefinite time later, maybe some months, maybe the two or three years it took to make the film. Granted, Yoda was out of the loop on Dagobah as far as the intergalactic newsservice was concerned, but he did obviously communicate with post-mortem Kenobi. Who was keeping an eye on Luke, so to speak. Meaning: at the very least our two old Jedi knew:
a) Luke Skywalker as the pilot who blew up the Death Star was known to the Empire by name.
b) Vader was looking for Luke Skywalker. ("Obsessively", according to the scrawl.)
It doesn't take a genius to conclude
c) Vader knows that Luke Skywalker must be the son of Anakin Skywalker.
(Side note: My own theory about Luke being raised on Tatooine is that Obi-Wan thought Vader would never go back there after Shmi's death. Especially not anywhere near the Lars Homestead. However, that clashes with Obi-Wan needing to believe there was nothing of Anakin left, which I also think.)
(Side note two:
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Date: 2004-09-24 02:08 pm (UTC)Heh, the "Why didn't they change Luke's last name?" question is one of the few little things I have to ignore when I watch, or it bugs me! I understand on the one hand that they may want to keep it, out of love for the man Anakin once was. But they hide Luke, and then keep the last name Skywalker?!? Maybe it's a common name in that galaxy. ;-)
(Side note: My own theory about Luke being raised on Tatooine is that Obi-Wan thought Vader would never go back there after Shmi's death. Especially not anywhere near the Lars Homestead. However, that clashes with Obi-Wan needing to believe there was nothing of Anakin left, which I also think.)
If if he believes there's nothing of Anakin left--which I also also think!--he may see no reason why Darth Vader would *want* to go back to such a nothing planet as Tattooine. Whether it's out of trauma for his mother's death or just the fact that it's a backwards, unimportant planet that does little to further any Empire-expansion goals, both theories fulfill the same purpose of keeping Vader away. Also, of course, he never knew that he had children, or at least that's what we're lead to believe for now, unless "Revenge of the Sith" contradicts that. Were we to learn that Anakin did know all this time, but was keeping this knowledge secret from the Emperor, that would (a) be a great twist and (b) provide even better foreshadowing for his turn at the end of Jedi. Of course, if that's true we're back to the "If he knows his kids are alive, why doesn't he check Tattooine?" My answer would be that he doesn't want the Emperor to know about them. Either way, though, as long as Obi-Wan didn't know that Anakin knew about his kids (if he knew!), his plan of hiding the children would still work and reasons for choosing Tattoine for Luke would still be valid. Whew, that's a lot of speculation, isn't it? I really *need* the next movie to come out, right now, in the worst way!
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Date: 2004-09-24 06:36 pm (UTC)If he did know his kids were alive, he might've assumed that Obi-Wan never would've dared to train either one of them, considering what happened to Anakin.
However, in regards to keeping the knowledge from the Emperor ... Vader's dialogue in Empire suggests that he wants to overthrow the Emperor, only needs LUke's help to do it. So why wouldn't Vader, if he knew about the kids, train one of them as soon as they were old enough? Why leave them alone?
As for the "Skywalker" in Luke's name ... well, in the prequel trilogy, wasn't something said about how Tatooine was outside the jurisdiction of the Republic? Or how it was too far away for the Republic to enforce the laws? And the Empire would be too busy enforcing its new order and trying to squash the Rebellion to bother with Tatooine.
And for all we know, Luke was given the name of "Lars." But he also knew the name of his father and after Owen and Beru were killed, Luke shed his old life by taking the name of his father -- after all, Luke had just found out what a hero Anakin was and that Anakin was a Jedi. We actually have no proof that the official documentation contained the name "Luke Skywalker"
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Date: 2004-09-24 06:47 pm (UTC)Because he would have had a great deal of trouble in keeping the children a secret from the Emperor, had they been with him. What could he tell the Emperor? That they weren't his? It wouldn't have been believable enough. But as adults, the Emperor wouldn't necessarily have to know. So, if they remain in hiding, it's to Vader's benefit in the long run.
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Date: 2004-09-24 10:55 am (UTC)**What still baffles me is why Yoda says that Vader revealing the truth to Luke was "unexpected". "Unfortunate" I can understand from Yoda's pov, but how is this unexpected, given that a) it's a powerful psychological weapon, and b) Anakin's feelings for his family have always been strong?** Well, it could be taken two ways. One, Yoda feels that Anakin truly is dead and figured that Vader wouldn't want to acknowledge any connection to Anakin, including the kinship with Luke. Yoda could've seen VAder and Anakin as two different people, while Luke saw them as a blended being. Or Two, Yoda says "unexpected" in that he didn't think Luke would see Vader as his father. After all, Luke asks, "Is Darth Vader my father?" rather than saying "Was Darth VAder once Anakin Skywalker?" Yoda might've honestly believed that Luke's stance in killing Darth Vader wouldn't have changed even if Luke had known the truth. But now it has, and Luke is somewhat vulnerable, because Yoda thinks Vader won't hold back because Luke is his son, while Luke did hold back after knowing Vader was his father -- well, held back until Vader threatened Leia.
After all, Yoda has knowledge and experience to draw on when it comes to the Sith. His own padawan was once a Sith and changed identities somewhat. To him, once you become a Sith, that's it. No going back. Your past life no longer exists. It is honestly like Vader physically killed Anakin.
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Date: 2004-09-24 01:03 pm (UTC)Or Two, Yoda says "unexpected" in that he didn't think Luke would see Vader as his father. After all, Luke asks, "Is Darth Vader my father?" rather than saying "Was Darth VAder once Anakin Skywalker?"
Now that's an intriguing and plausible interpretation which hadn't occured to me before.
After all, Yoda has knowledge and experience to draw on when it comes to the Sith. His own padawan was once a Sith and changed identities somewhat. To him, once you become a Sith, that's it. No going back. Your past life no longer exists.
Good point. We also see this principle working at the end of AotC when Obi-Wan brings up the possibility Dooku might have actually said the truth about the Senate being controlled by a Sith Lord and Yoda dismisses it. (Mind you, Dooku probably told the truth because it would shock and confuse Obi-Wan more than a lie would have, but it still was information Yoda shouldn't have rejected completely because of the source).
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Date: 2004-09-24 06:38 pm (UTC)**Mind you, Dooku probably told the truth because it would shock and confuse Obi-Wan more than a lie would have, but it still was information Yoda shouldn't have rejected completely because of the source** Dooku probably knew no one would believe him. I was squirming in my seat when he said that, wanting to shout, "Listen to him so we can avoid all the horribleness coming soon!" =)
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Date: 2004-09-24 09:18 am (UTC)I wish I read as fast as you! I was looking at this in the bookshop today and it's the size of several bricks. I can't get it until it comes out in paperback but you have definitely intrigued me. Thanks for the interesting review.
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Date: 2004-09-24 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 06:23 pm (UTC)