This is Stuff You Like, you can call me Ursa, and it’s been a wild ride, gentles,
but here we are, right at the end of the Original Trilogy,
and so, because it’s the end of a series, kinda, we’re going to talk about faith,
and kindness, and Luke.
We’re on fire this week!
Not unlike Darth Vader, in fact.
I'm sorry, too soon?
OK, Return of the Jedi: the plot, it goeth thusly:
We begin with the Empire constructing a new Death Star,
oh dear, followed by an extremely complicated rescue
mission to save frozen-in-carbonite Han from Jabba the Hutt.
It ends up involving capture, impractical outfits, a sarlacc pit and Leia taking a leaf
out of her biological father’s book and straight-up choking her enemies to death.
With that sorted, Yoda is dying, and that sucks.
But hey, Luke, there’s another Skywalker, and it’s your twin sister, and it’s LEIA.
Plus, the Emperor himself is going to be visiting the new Death Star to try and draw the Rebels
into attacking.
The plan is this: the Rebels are going to bring down the energy
shield around the Death Star and then blow it to one or more of the Corellian Hells.
Stormtrooper and Ewok-related shenanigans occur down on the jungle moon thing, and then
Luke gives himself up to Vader to try and turn him back to the light,
but Vader takes Luke before the Emperor while the rest of them are crying
‘It’s a trap!’ or trying to blow things up or getting rescued
by Ewoks or whatever.
BUT DON’T WORRY because they get the shield down and do some fancy flying and yeah, Death
Star’s going to get blown up, it’ll be fine,
but that’s not the only dramatic thingy that’s going down here.
There’s also Luke, who scorns the Dark Side and would have died, but Vader saves him,
and Vader dies and Luke gets off the Death Star and boom, done, party time.
Yaaaay!
Phew.
To start us off: what is Luke’s defining character trait?
And ten points off if you say it’s ‘being whiny’ because honey, maybe our first impression
of the character who is undergoing a Hero’s Journey should not be the lasting one...
Maybe?
Maybe.
Luke’s defining character traits, to me, are faith and compassion.
Faith that everything is going to work out all right, and compassion on really terrible
people.
And indeed not-so-terrible people.
And just everyone really.
That faith that everything will turn out all right regardless is crucial to his fight with
the Emperor and his turning of Vader.
Because his fight with the Emperor and his turning of Vader mean NOTHING AT ALL to the
grand plan of the Rebellion.
If he had failed, if he had died, he trusts that Han and Leia and Lando and Chewie and
the rest of the Rebels would have blown up the Death Star regardless,
the Emperor and Vader would have died regardless, and the only thing that would have changed
would have been that Luke didn’t make it out.
He has faith that they can do stuff without him, Jedi powers or no.
Thus the ending for Luke in Return of the Jedi is a very personal moment because he,
our main protagonist, is struggling with the greatest threat in his life so far:
how do you overcome the Emperor, who is steeped in the Dark Side?
Can you save your friends?
What if saving them is going to do more harm than good in the long run?
What if turning to the Dark Side means you can save them, but then you lose yourself?
It’s a little bit Gandalf, really, and put a pin in that thought, we’ll come back in
just a second.
Now in what I consider an actually excellent use of parallel, in the prequels, there is
nothing that Anakin will not do to save someone that he cares about.
NOTHING, no matter how bad an idea it is.
And there is a selflessness in that, yes, obviously, but also arrogance.
Because BECAUSE I AM THE CHOSEN ONE, AND I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN FIX THINGS.
That is a great job you did there, Jedi Council.
Yep.
You know maybe you could have mentioned earlier that the prophecy misread might have been,
and then you might have gotten in less trouble?
I mean, Little Anakin isn’t a total douchecanoe, what happened to him?
Hm?
ANYWAY, Luke, by contrast, trusts that people can take care of themselves.
Yes, he knows the power of the Force, and yes, he is the last Jedi.
But if he dies on the Death Star, then...eh.
But if he turned to the Dark Side, WHO WOULD THERE BE TO STOP HIM?
Leia, who is untrained, and doesn't know that she has powers, and doesn't have a master
like Yoda to teach her, because you know he's dead now, so...
No, that would be very very bad.
Like I said, it's kind of a Gandalf-ish situation: he has a lot of power, team it up with ULTIMATE
DARK POWER and everyone is screwed, frankly.
Don’t tempt me.
But regardless of how you tempt him, even if it initially looks dodgy,
don’t do it Luke, it’s all going to be ok, he won't do it,
because Luke Skywalker wins by losing, woo religious symbolism.
Frankly, Luke wins by being a stubborn idealistic twerp.
LOVE WILL SAVE THE DAY, FATHER.
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.
I can’t go on alone, but I must face Vader, as I am the only one who can bring him back.
So I will win the day by having faith in my friends to do their jobs, and by having compassion
and by refusing to back down from my principles even if it’ll probably kill me.
Which it very nearly does.
There were Expanded Universe books where Luke embraces the Dark Side or pretends to embrace
the Dark Side or partially embraces the Dark Side in order to save his friends,
but that...never really sat right with me.
The Luke of the films has faith that things will work out even if he doesn’t manage
to live through it, and so he just lets his conscience is his guide.
He talks to droids like they're people, they don’t have to call him sir, he’s wide
eyed and idealistic and kind.
And in fact, Luke is exactly the kind of idiot who will run headlong into danger for someone
who hates his guts, and will do it with a smile because hey, t’s
just...the right thing to do.
This is why I love the Timothy Zahn Heir to the Empire trilogy, even if I don’t always
quite get on with the writing style.
Because Luke ‘hey, hey Mara, know you want to kill me but I made you this friendship
bracelet’ Skywalker is exactly the kind of Jedi Master I would expect Luke to grow
into.
Those stories develop very naturally from Luke’s movie quest, which is to become a
Jedi like his father before him, or rather, to become the Jedi his father could have been.
It’s not to avenge his aunt and uncle.
It’s not a revenge arc.
He doesn’t go with Obi-Wan initially because his aunt and uncle need him.
His refusal of the call is not cowardice, it’s love, especially given how desperately
he WANTS to leave.
Yoda gets to run all over Luke’s tiny patch of non-swamp, even though Luke could easily
have Force-choked him or suspended him in the air or whatever.
Or at least at that point we believed he could have.
I love Leia, she is my favourite character, but for all that Yoda calls him out for being
impatient, he is far and away the most patient of the main three.
Not that that necessarily says very much.
This is especially true in Return of the Jedi, where he’s learned that RUNNING INTO THE
SITUATION BLINDLY SHOOTING probably only works if you’re Han Solo,
and even then, will probably end with you frozen in carbonite.
And Luke forgives people.
He extends grace to his father, who cut off his hand and had his friends tortured and
is generally a very not-nice person.
He extends forgiveness to Obi-Wan and to Yoda, who both flat-out lied to him.
"So what I told you was true...from a certain point of view."
DON'T GIVE ME THAT.
He wears his heart on his sleeve, and that makes him trivially easy for Vader to read.
Unlike his sister, whose resistance to all forms of mind probe is canon in the first
twenty minutes of A New Hope.
Turn to the Dark Side, Luke, then you can save the people you love.
But he doesn’t take that chance.
He has faith in his friends to kill him.
Um.
He has faith that his friends will succeed in their plan to blow up the Death Star and
thus...kill him, and so his real choice is: 1.
revenge or 2.
doing the right thing, even when doing the right thing will ultimately just get him killed
faster.
And I love that.
Leia is all about making the hard decisions, sending people into combat when it might get
them killed, resisting interrogation and mind probing, choking Hutts to death.
Not that Luke isn’t willing to kill people, not that Luke doesn't kill people in the course
of the films, but I really love how his most powerful act is a non-violent one.
Yes, there’s a war going on and that means death and dying and killing, but when it comes
down to it, and the whole of the power of the Dark Side is before him,
power with which he could kill the Emperor and make the Empire over in his own image!
When everyone on the Death Star is about to die anyway, so how much difference would it
make?
His personal choice is the non-violent option.
And that is a great message I think.
Four for you Luke Skywalker, you go Luke Skywalker.
How will all of this play out in The Force Awakens?
I don’t know, but...I have hope.
That most delicate and fragile of things.
And if my hopes are dashed?
Well, I still have imagination.
And the Expanded Universe.
And canon or not, I will always have Mara Jade.
Thanks for watching this quasi-review of Return of the Jedi.
If you haven't seen my other Star Wars-related reviews there is in fact a playlist of them,
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Plus, if you want to share your thoughts on Luke or compassion or Return of the Jedi or
anything else for that matter, you can tweet me @JillBearup
or you can go to my Tumblr, which is sursumursa.tumblr.com And I THINK that's all of the things.
See you next time!