From: dkemper@tiamat.hacks.arizona.edu (David Kemper)
Subject: Re: Just how much of SW did Lucas make up as he
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-a4  
Reply-To: dkemper@tiamat.hacks.arizona.edu
Organization: University of Administrative Incompetence
Distribution:  world
Date: 29 JUL 92 11:48:26    

In article <1992Jul29.171729.18477@leland.Stanford.EDU>, mohr@leland.Stanford.EDU (Paul William Mohr) writes...
>Here I disagree.  I recently watched ANH again, and took careful note of
>Ben's reaction when Luke asks him, "How did my father die?"  To me, his face
>says it all--I wouldn't even call him a very "sneaky" liar since it looks
>to me like he doesn't do it very comfortably.  Of course, I don't *know* if
>this was Lucas' intention, and I don't know if Alec Guinness was directed to
>play the line like he did, but to me it sure looks compatible with what
>goes on in ESB.

Disregard ESB and ROTJ for a minute and pretend that what Ben said was true 
from a more conventional point of view.  Now watch that scene again.  I 
think you'll find that Ben's discomfort fits very well with his words: he's 
talking about the death of Luke's father, at the hands of someone he 
personally had been training.  I'D be pretty uncomfortable in a situation 
like that.

>  I have heard that Lucas stated in "From Star Wars to Jedi;
>the Making of a Saga" that he had always planned on Vader being Luke's father,
>and I am inclined to believe this.  There's just too much "mystery" surrounding
>Luke's dead father, Owen's aversion to talking about him, Obi-Wan's association
>with him and so on.  I just don't believe that he was a navigator or whatever
>on a spice freighter.

Again, all that makes sense within the context of everything revealed in 
ANH only.  I hate to disagree with something Lucas himself said, but in 
light of all the things in ANH that DON'T fit in with the father-son 
relationship, I would tend to think that it was something Lucas had thought 
of at the time of ANH but hadn't decided whether or not he was really going 
to go through with it later on.

Irregardless, it's pretty obvious that Alan Dean Foster DIDN'T know about 
it.  In retrospect, one of the funniest lines in the Star Wars novelization 
is where, right after Luke asks "How did my father die?", it says something 
along the lines of "unlike Uncle Owen, Kenobi was unable to take refuge in 
a comfortable lie."

I know, I know, it was "true from a certain point of view."  Pretty weak.  
I don't have a problem with Vader being Luke's father, but I think Lucas 
should have had the guts to have Kenobi come out and say to Luke, "You're 
right, I lied to you, I was trying to protect you.." or whatever.  Would've 
explained things a LOT more tightly ("your father's lightsaber," etc.)

>>>Strangely I accepted the Luke/Leia relationship more easily. Every writer
>>>puts a version of him/herself into their work. It was always obvious to  
>>>me that Lucas's character in Starwars was Han Solo, he got the best lines
>>>and the most interesting characterisation.

Actually Luke is Lucas' character, which I've heard from several sources.  
Notice the similarity in names...

>>> Once you realised that it became
>>>obvious that he either had to die mega heroically, or he had to get the girl.
>>>For Han to get Leia, Luke would have to be out of the way (they had made too
>>>much of Han and Lukes rivalry in the first film), I had thought Luke would
>>>disappear off at the end of the movies to leave the field clear. Making
>>>Luke and Leia brother and sister solved this problem quite easily.
>>
> 
>The reason you give for accepting the Luke/Leia relationship more easily
>than the Luke/Vader relationship is the same reason I don't like it.  It 
>always just seemed to me to be a convenient plot device to achieve the effect
>that you stated, to get Luke 'out of the way.'  It just doesn't seem to mesh
>with what goes on in ANH and especially ESB (when Leia gives him a big smooch).
>(Of course there *is* Yoda's statement about '..there is another..', but I 
>think this was a last minute thing.  All IMHO, of course.)

When you consider that Leia heard Luke's call at the end of the movie, it 
becomes pretty obvious that she was always intended (where "always" ==
"throughout ESB") to be "another" hope.  Now, there were certainly better 
means of bringing that about than making them siblings...

--Gallandro

  From 1964:
  Reporter: "What do you think of the campaign in Detroit to stamp out the
             Beatles?"
  Paul McCartney: "We've got a campaign of our own to stamp out Detroit."
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