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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133514
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 10:48am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Vader ended up a happy ghost with Ben and Yoda. That’s after participating in the slaughter of millions.
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Nathan Greno
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Joined: 20 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 9154
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 10:58am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Vader ended up a happy ghost with Ben and Yoda. That’s after participating in the slaughter of millions.


Ok. That part was stupid. 


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DW Zomberg
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 12 June 2012
Posts: 444
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 11:31am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Luke sure didn't think Vader needed to be killed. He did everything possible to save the creep.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133514
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 11:52am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Vader almost forces us to invoke the ultimate internet boogey-man: could Hitler have been "redeemed"?
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Brian Hague
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Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Star Wars was conceived as a simple, action-adventure film geared towards twelve year olds. In those simple terms, Lucas apparently felt there should be some hope for the bad guys. In an actual real world context, that's a painfully naive conceit, but everything about Star Wars is just a bit fanciful and idealized, even its concept of evil.

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Brian Hague
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Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Society in general has a strange fascination with evil and those who commit it. America is in love with True Crime accounts and our personal fantasies of what we're going to be capable of the day some stupid so-so crosses the threshold of our family's home and steps into our gunsights.

Star Wars reflects this and embraces it in a somewhat sideways, wonky fashion. The blatant hybristophilia is literalized in the Prequels when Padme sees the little boy Ani she remembers from way back when with new eyes after his merciless slaughter of an entire village of Sandpeople, including women and children. His genocidal rage against the people who killed his mother fuels her interest in him, enables her to re-contextualize him as a potent adult, and leads directly to their romance. 

Star Wars is not the franchise to turn to for moral guidance.

Getting back on track with the Elsewhen concept, I look forward to a potentially more unforgiving approach to be taken with Magneto, as we saw hinted at in The Hidden Years. While Marvel was originally as much for 12-year-olds as anyone else, it did not confine its moral explorations and arguments to small, basic terms. It would be nice to see someone directly take on the issue of how correct it was to grant Magneto the level of forgiveness Claremont was willing to impart.


Edited by Brian Hague on 07 April 2019 at 12:29pm
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Steve Green
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Joined: 22 July 2018
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 17
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Brian Hague: Star Wars was conceived as a simple, action-adventure film geared towards twelve year olds.

I disagree. The prequels certainly were, because Lucasfilms was focused on merchandise sales by that point and pre-teens were the best demographic. However, the original trilogy was clearly aimed at teenagers, just as American Graffiti had been.
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Brian Hague
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Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Lucas himself has stated the intended age-range for the film. He said it again in 2017 in an interview with Warwick Davis at the Star Wars Celebration. When asked at the time what he expected the gross for Star Wars to be, he said $12 million because that is consistently what Disney films made when they were re-released at that time. 

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DW Zomberg
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 12 June 2012
Posts: 444
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Or, Brian, we could just take what Lucas told us was true in the very first film and not feel the need to overexplain and justify a bunch of nonsense that guts and tears it apart.




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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133514
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Correction. Google gives the population of Alderaan as 2 billion.
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Greg Kirkman
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Joined: 12 May 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 15775
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

That’s not how I view the ending of that film, at all! Vader realized the error of his ways and did the right thing in the end. If he was truly redeemed, he wouldn’t have had to be killed at the end of the movie. He died a better person — but he still had to die/pay for his past actions.
++++++++++

That was what Lucas was going for, as stated in interviews on the subject. Vader couldn't undo the horrors he'd committed, but he managed to do ONE good thing before he died. The Jedi Heaven thing tends to bug a lot of people, though. If that hadn't been included, the message might have seemed a little less "Get Out of Jail Free".


I suppose it boils down to one's personal stance on the nature of forgiveness and redemption. Lucas' point was that even the worst of us can somehow be saved, but I get why more cynical-minded and/or atheist viewers bristle at that idea. Redemption is a concept which appears in any number of religions, and Lucas' STAR WARS films certainly tap into elements of those religions, such as Zen Buddhism.




...and here I thought I'd be seeing posts asking when ELSEWHEN is coming out! Which thread is this?!?!
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Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
Posted: 07 April 2019 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Hey, I tried getting it back on track... :-)

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