Return of the Jedi

Special Edition Laserdisc Chapter 39, Luke Loses Control; Chapter 41, Luke Battles Vader

<While Lando attacks and Han tries to shut down a force shield on Endor, we keep cutting back to the Emperor, Luke and Vader. The Emperor is using their view of the rebels’ helplessness to tempt Luke into giving in to his anger. In the last of these brief scenes, the Emperor says:>

E: Your fleet is lost, and your friends on the Endor moon will not survive. There is no escape, my young apprentice. The alliance will die. <Luke looks to Vader helplessly> As will your friends. <Luke glances at the lightsaber> Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete.

<Luke uses the Force to retrieve his weapon. He swings his lightsaber toward the Emperor, and Vader counters his attack with his own lightsaber. The Emperor laughs, while Luke and Vader duel. Luke attacks successfully and kicks Vader, who retreats by doing a back flip down some stairs. He lands on his backside.>

E: <Laughs> Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.

<Luke sheaths his lightsaber.>

V: Obi-Wan has taught you well.

L: I will not fight you, Father.

<Vader advances up the stairs toward Luke>

V: You are unwise to lower your defenses. <He suddenly attacks with his lightsaber and Luke swiftly unsheaths his lightsaber and parries. They fight intensely, and then Luke does a flying back flip and lands on a catwalk.>

L: Your thoughts betray you, Father. I feel the good in you, and the conflict.

V: There is no conflict.

L: You couldn’t bring yourself to kill me before, and I don’t believe you’ll destroy me now.

V: You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny. <Vader throws his lightsaber at Luke, cutting the catwalk’s supports. Luke falls below. The Emperor grins in delight. Vader walks off to find Luke.>

<We see more of the battle on Endor and Lando attacking the Death Star. Vader continues looking for Luke.>

Chapter 43, Luke’s Fury

V: You cannot hide forever, Luke.

L: I will not fight you.

V: Give yourself to the dark side. It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes! Your thoughts betray you! Your feelings for them are strong! Especially for...<slow realization>...SISter! Soooo.... You have a twin SISter! Your feelings have now betrayed her too. Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete! If you will not turn to the Dark Side, then perhaps she will.

L: <Luke shouts something...hard to say what. Sounds like "chaaarrgge.">

<Luke charges at Vader in full Mark Hamill grimace mode. He forces Vader to retreat; Vader falls against a rail; and Luke chops off Vader’s hand -- which is revealed to be a prosthetic, just like Luke’s. Vader seems suspiciously weak in this scene.>

<The Emperor descends the stairs>

E: Your hate has made you powerful. (Luke seems introspective.) Now,

fulfull your destiny. Take your father's place at my side."

L: <Luke examines his own prosthetic hand. Flexes it. Looks at the wires

hanging from Vader's stump. Then he shuts down his lightsaber> Never. I'll never turn to the dark side. You've failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.

E: So be it <Spitting this word>....Jedi.

<Short interval in which Han destroys the shield and Lando starts to attack the Death Star. Then back to Luke and company.>

E: If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed. <He raises his hands, and beams of energy strike Luke, who falls to the floor in agony. Using the one hand he has left, Vader pulls himself to his feet.>

E: Young fool. Only now, at the end, do you understand. <More sparks fly, and Luke is in serious trouble now.>

E: Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side. <Vader is moving across the room toward the emperor. He's behind the emperor, closing fast.>

E: You have paid the price for your lack of vision. <Vader is standing beside the emperor, watching Luke writhe in pain. Can that shiny black mask convey emotion? Seems so. The face drops a little. What's going on in Vader’s mind?>

L: <To Vader, pleadingly> Father, please. <The emperor lays on the juice, and Luke struggles harder. We see a closeup of Vader’s mask.>

E: <Stopping his torture of Luke for a moment> Now young Skywalker, you will die.

<Luke gasps. Vader keeps looking from the emperor to Luke. The Emperor hits Luke with a tremendous bolt of energy. The camera closes in on Vader's mask. Whatever is he thinking? The voltage flows from the emperor's hands to the struggling Luke. Vader looks back and forth. Then he grabs the emperor and tosses him into a nearby MOAH (tm) where he explodes in a blue fireball -- just the color of the trio of ghosts in the final scene, come to think of it.  Additional notes:  But grabbing the Emperor has had a fatal effect on Vader.  The Emperor's blue energy has enveloped Vader's body, at one point flashing so brightly that we see a glimpse of Vader's skull through his mask.>  

<And if you thought losing a prosthetic hand was bad for Vader, this little action really seems to do him in. He falls into Lukes arms and boy is he gasping now.>

<Cut to more Death Star action. Then back to the BS.>

<Luke is struggling to drag Vader up a ramp. He has the same expression on his face that he wore when he was supposedly under the influence of the dark side. Significant, or just a reflection of the fact that the actor Mark Hamill really has only a few expressions to draw from?>

V: <Vader collapses on the ramp. He seems really weak now.> Luke, help me

take this mask off.

L: But you'll die.

V: Nothing can stop that now. Just for once, <Gumby sigwheeze> let me look on you with my own eyes.

<Luke nods, lifts the outer shell of the mask, and pulls away the inner shell. Suddenly a pasty-faced toadly creature is blinking at Luke, who returns Vader’s gaze with kindness.

V: Now, go my son. Leave me.

L: No. You're coming with me. I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you.

V: You already have, Luke. You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister, you were right. [Though it sounds a little like, "You fer right," or even, "you've arrived."]

L: Father, I won't leave you.

<And then on the soundtrack we hear the Darth Vader theme as though it were being played on one of those heart monitors in a hospital that beep slowly and then more slowly, until a steady tone indicates death. Very clever. And that's the end of Vader. Sorta.>

<Back to the forest of Endor, where Leia and Han see the Death Star explode like fireworks in the sky. Leia senses that Luke wasn't in the big explosion in the sky, and takes this opportunity to inform Han that Luke is her brother. They kiss.>

<We view a scene of Luke viewing Vader's body on a funeral pyre. Luke looks a little haggard. A LOT haggard. (Dark side effect?) The flames rise, and something that looks a lot like Darth Vader goes up in flame.

<The GFFA celebrates. Lotsa fireworks. Ewoks dance in those Myst treehouses. Lando hugs Han. Chewie hugs Lando. Leia hugs Luke. Luke hugs Han. And who's the guy in the flight suit? Biggs?>

<Luke steps off by himself and sees the three ghosts -- Ben, Yoda and Anakin. Interestingly, in the background over Luke’s shoulder we see Han turn and look in the same direction Luke's looking, and the expression on Han’s face is...what exactly? A blank stare? Surprise? Is this glance just a coincidence, or does he see the ghosts too? Probably not, because Leia walks up behind Luke and completely ignores the ghosts.

<Then we get a full shot of the ghosts looking at the folks celebrating. Then we get a shot of all the major characters looking at something. The ghosts? Dancing Ewoks? Whatever, that's all we get before the credits roll.>

Does Lucas suggest that suicide by cop gets you eternal life as a blue ghost?

1) Vader says, "Give yourself to the dark side. It is the only way you can save your friends." Because we have been led to believe that much in the life of Luke Skywalker is a mirror of events in his father’s life, it seems to me that Vader could be speaking from experience here -- that this is a reference to an earlier event. So who did he save? And where are they? Ben and Yoda, maybe? The droids?

2) Luke says, "Your thoughts betray you." Later, Vader repeats the line back at Luke.

3) Did Luke call on the Dark Side for strength? Hard to say, but it looks like he did. Mark Hamill was doing his best to look ferocious. What sort of an expression is an heroic Jedi supposed to have on his face when he's dueling with a guy who apparently wants to kill him? He was certainly intent on causing harm to Darth Vader.

4) And Vader, if you watch the fight objectively, seems uncharacteristically weak. Don't believe me? Get out your tapes and laserdiscs and have a look. Maybe it's just poor fight choreography? I dunno. But Vader keeps retreating without really putting up much of a fight, and suddenly he ducks clumsily under Luke's lightsaber, kneels to his right against a railing, and stretches out his arm so that Luke can cut off his hand. Almost like a supplicant ("Here, Luke, chop on the dotted line.") Is it just bad choreography? My imagination? Or is this apparent surrender by Vader something intentional on Lucas's part? Go back and look at Vader suddenly step to his right, kneel, grab the rail, and lean back in a submissive pose. I do believe Vader is doing exactly the same thing Ben Kenobi did when he "died" in the original film -- he’s committing suicide for some Jedi religious Force reason. Of course, Vader’s robes don’t crumple to the floor like Ben’s did.

5) Luke does have a suspiciously wild gleam in his eye when he has his dad lying on the floor with wires dangling where his hand should be. Maybe at that moment he really is consumed by the Dark Side. And Vader, who has lost only a prosthetic device, seems mortally wounded. So why? Can't be the phony hand, and that's the only wound he's received. The power of the Dark Side of the Force in Luke has worn him down? Why? I'd think Vader would draw power from the Dark Side. (Now I'm starting to sound like those who argue as though all this were real.) So what are we seeing? Why is Vader so weak all of a sudden? I suppose it’s possible we're seeing the power of the Dark Side in Luke. But it’s also possible that Vader has already resolved his inner conflict and is acting to save his son at this point. Perhaps the Dark Side becomes like Gollum’s ring: it becomes the life force of the person who possesses it, or the person who is possessed by it. When Vader "let go" of his hate (theDark Side), he became too weak to live, like a heroin addict whose supply is suddenly cut off. It seems pretty obvious to me that no physical wounds inflicted by Luke killed Vader.  7/22/01 -- Additional Note:  Contributors to the alt.fan.starwars newsgroup have pointed out to me that it was the Emperor that killed Darth Vader.  When Vader grabs the Emperor, the blue energy envelops Vader, even revealing an X-ray of Vader's skull just after the Emperor disappears down the MOAH (tm).  Either the energy fatally injured Vader directly, or it short-circuited the breathing mechanism keeping him alive.   There's one of my mysteries solved!

6) What’s the significance Luke’s dramatic observation of Vader’s prosthetic hand? What is there about that mechanical hand that makes Luke decide at that point to turn off his lightsaber and surrender to the Emperor? Is Luke realizing that if he’s not careful he’ll end up exactly like his father? I suppose this is the only indication we get that Luke "lets go" of his hate -- just turning off that lightsaber. Not very dramatic. Oh well.

7) So what was being burned on that funeral pyre, a body or a costume? I say it's a body that didn't evaporate at death. We saw him die. We heard the heart monitor practically stamp the scene with the time of death! And most telling, Vader didn’t disappear when he died! So I think that’s Darth Vader’s body in full dress uniform up there in the flames. And unless in Episode II or III we get a lesson in the rules and regulations for returning as a blue ghost, we’re never going to understand why some have the knack for vanishing at death and some don’t, and why some can achieve everlasting life as a blue ghost, and others can’t.>

8) Apparently Leia had enough Forcepower to sense Luke wasn’t caught in the Death Star explosion, but she doesn’t have enough midichlorians to see the ghosts. Interesting. She doesn't even wonder what Luke's looking at.

9) I will not back down from my argument that the story needs a closing scene in which Vader at least acknowledges his old droids. But upon reflection, and upon reviewing the closing ROTJ scenes on my Laserdisc, I will grudgingly allow that Lucas’ newly-added galaxywide celebration scenes almost provide a fitting conclusion for the six-part saga.