The Anakin/Vader secret (spoilers) - Page 2

It's worth noting that the Force appears to allow some measure of telepathy/empathy: Vader doesn't realize that he even has a daughter until he feels Luke worrying about it on the Death Star.

So...

Knowing that Bail Organa is one of the few people they can trust (i.e., why they're giving him Leia in the first place), and that he's remaining a Senator, it's entirely possible that Obi-Wan and Yoda don't tell him deliberately, because if the worry that Vader will discover Leia is his daughter is in the back of his mind whenever he sees him, Vader could realize it too.

If Bail figures that Vader is just some powerful dark-sider in armor, there's no reason for him to be specifically concerned, even privately.

Also, I know the EU doesn't mean beans with you guys , but for what it's worth LFL has written somewhere that in the OT era Vader is setup as a loyal Jedi hero who helped the Empire against the traitorous Jedi, but he's presented only as Darth Vader; the name Skywalker never comes up publicly.

You really think they would admit their greatest failure to the man who's looking to them for aid? Just because you assume it SHOULD happen?

Eh, I'm not getting into this. When the movie comes out, then I'll debate, but I'm not going to get involved in a discussion about an 80-page comic book adaptation that was put together before the final cut of the film was even done.

That's the best explanation I've heard. Presumably, a Senator would have to have some contact with the Emperor and possibly Vader. Do they tell Bail that it's Anakin's child at all, or does he just know that it's Padme's?

In fact, if Obi-Wan and Yoda have the idea that one of the twins could someday take down the Empire, this might contribute somewhat to their going into hiding, rather than actively participating in the rebellion where they might get captured and inadvertantly give away that secret as Vader and Palpatine grow stronger. This seems a stronger reason to me than the issue of their personal safety.

Why would te rebels give a damn if some force-sensitive kids are out there? The Jedi failed miserably to stop the emperor's rise to power and died like little bitches. If I were a rebel, I'd hold no reverence towards the Jedi.

As far as Vader is concerned, perhaps Palpatine lied and told everyon that Skywalker was assassinated by the Jedi. It's propaganda 101: The Jedi were so vile that they killed a war hero and one of their own.

Besides, Yoda and Obi-Wan would have told Bail that Anakin turned bad, but I doubt they'd add a "by the way, he likes to be known as Vader now".

Who else are they going to give her to? They can't raise her themselves, they just decided they need to hide out and meditate for the next 20 years because they have to relearn what it means to be a Jedi, and that training either one of these kids in the way they were trained would be disastrous.

So who else are they supposed to give her to? Bail is there. Bail wants a kid, and says he will raise and love the child. The only other option at that point is to leave the kid on Polis Massa with the blue alien things, and that doesn't really seem to be all that good an option.

Because they can't raise anyone. They just failed the galaxy by sticking to the old Jedi code. they need time to relearn at the feet of Ghost Qui-Gon. About 20 years worth of time. They're not about to automatically take two kids and band together to raise them in the old ways that produced Darth Vader.

It's safer to keep them apart anyway. If anyone at all were to try and track one down, that person would automatically have the other one right where they want them as well.

To double your chances of the emperor not finding one of them. Even if Vader found out that his offspring survived, he has no idea that he has twins. If he gets one, the other will remain safe. It's pretty much self-evident. I mean, do you keep your backup in the same place as the original?

Because one kid having his balls broken by Owen is enough. Besides, that would make the Luke-Han-Leia triangle even creepier.

Here's another question. If Luke's existence is a secret, why keep the name Skywalker? Wouldn't Lukes Lars have been a better disguise.

Now that is a valid criticism of the films. maybe there's an argument that the stuff you leave out can add resonance to the stuff you include, but Lucas just seemt to be leaving connective tissue out. maybe there's an argument that Star Wars is a space opera and should be painted with broad strokes, but then Lucas gets horribly bogged down with certain details such as senate hearings, and the intricacies of Naboo royalty. Mostly i think fans have to do an awful lot of legwork to make this stuff make sense, which is fine for fans who are willing to do it, but kinda crappy for everyon else.

I would suggest leaving arguing the details to the fans who still give a shit. it'll get you nowhere, but it give us something to do.

The Skywalker name and the "hiding" of Luke:

With the Star Wars Universe being fleshed out so much in the past number of years, it has become an extraordinarily VAST galaxy full of countless worlds. It no longer seems so ridiculous to me for Obi-Wan to take the young Luke, whom his father does not even know is alive, to a world on the outskirts of the new Empire's reach. Tattooine is run essentially by Mafia-like outlaws. I doubt there is any kind of population registration. Since Vader believes he killed his pregnant wife, there is no reason for him to believe he has surviving offspring, and therefore has no need to search out the name Skywalker at all. And Tattooine is so out of the way, whispers of the name Skywalker would never even reach close to the heart of the Empire in such a vast galaxy that Lucas has created. With Leia being taken in by a Senator, it makes more sense for her name to be changed since she will grow up within the shadow of the Imperial Senate.

I'll grant that, but it is silly to hide him out on the farm where Vader's mother is buried. Dark Side or no, he might want to visit the site every once in a while.

C'mon, man. You can't be serious. Think about that for a while. The image of Vader kneeling in front of a grave gets me giggling, I don't know about you.

This is my biggest problem with the prequels, that the "surprise" factor for Eps III-VI has been removed in service of filling in backstory. And this isn't just a, "I never imagined this happening, or that happening" kind of thing, but a, "how does this make sense from a dramatic storytelling perspective" kind of way.

Why couldn't story surprises be retained in Episodes III-VI? Why does the audience need to know that there are twins, that she is named Leia, and goes to live on Alderaan? Isn't the payoff of her identity in JEDI more fun for the audience? How boring is it for an audience watching the films in I to VI order to have to wait for several films for the characters to catch up with information they already know?

But let's step back a second. Here's an alternate story scenario for your amusement. OB1 has TWO appentices, let's call them Anakin and Padawan-B. With that simple inclusion, you could formulate a story that allows for Anakin to die under mysterious circumstances, leaving people to assume that Padawan-B becomes Darth Vader. You can assume that OB1's speech in STAR WARS is a stretch of the truth, but doesn't contradict anything the audience has seen or knows. Then, when Vader reveals himself to be Anakin in EMPIRE, the shock of that relveal is retained, and even enhanced since our villian is revealed to be our hero from Episodes I and II (that does mean he's have to have been played in a manner which made you like him, but that's another point).

It's a very fundamental difference from they type of storytelling choices Lucas has made. Of course, people who want to see everything and have everything explained for them in detail would no doubt be left dazed and convulsing, but what can you do.

That's my theory anyway. Pick apart at will.

I agree that that is the ultimate problem. All the logical story elements can be explained away, as I've tried to do here, but the real victim is the mystery and the surprise factor of the original trilogy, especially the reveal in Empire. The so-called "twists" in the story instead become tragic irony, in that we know what is happening to the characters, but they do not. It becomes Oedipal tragedy instead of shocking turns in the story, which then undermines the "Saturday Morning Serials" tone that Lucas was going for in the first place.

This is a pretty good discussion of continuity errors. I enjoy and have one of my own.

Tne one that bothers me is the lack of belief in the force in the OT. Apparently, the empire does something to make using the force unlawful so that the emperor and vader are the only ones left who do. This isn't just a jedi used it therefore the force is bad kind of thing. The officers on the death star called it an "ancient religion" and didn't even believed it was effectivea at all when most of them must have been alive during the purge period and assisted in it in order to be promoted to the general staff of the empire. Yet these guys don't just dismiss it, they are incredulous at the fact that one of their own believes in its power. I'd like this explained somehow in ROTS cause it doesn't make sense that they'd just not know about the potential of the force like that. You can say that these guys are probably conservatives and not too open minded about things like this, but their behavior is irrational.

Once again, the Jedi failed to anticipaqte -let alone prevent- the Clone Wars. They were oblivious to the fact that Palpatine was plotting against them. They all died. Not to mention that Palpatine painted them as a secret group that conspired to kill him and overthrow the legitimate government.

Why should a person hold much faith in their abilities in the post Clone Wars universe? Because they could make things float and have pretty laser swords?

It makes sense, after learning the way they perished, for people to dismiss them as a fraternity of kooky space monks that ultimately failed miserably. The sad practicioners of an ancient religion and nothing more.

Of course not, but I like to have fun with these threads. What's better that laughing at this stuff?

Not for us. We got to enjoy the OT twists, old time effects and all. I even listened to the original Ewok celebration on my iPod the other day at the gym and staring smirking.

Okay, I'm hearing alot of people complain why did they give Leia to Bail and why did they keep the skywalker name. BLAH BLAH.

Hey. Easy answer. They didn't GIVE Leia to Bail. If the damn ship they were on was getting its ass handed to it and being boarded by clone troopers...and Leia and Bail get seperated from Obi wan and Luke...then what choice do they have. As a last ditch effort, Bail claims Leia as his own so she's not killed. Obi-wan escapes, and gives Luke to his aunt and uncle before he runs off to hide as well. The aunt and uncle probably don't know jack about how important it is to keep him hidden....and they give him the name skywalker either in honor of his parents or because they're so ashamed of anakin they're like fuck that, kid can't have my last name (Owen didn't seem very fond of anakin in ANH). Plus, they wouldn't have to make up bullshit stories of how he was born and shit..that kids luuurve to ask the parental units.

You mean that guy Vader choked the shit out of?

He looked like he'd be around anakin's age if not slightly younger in ROTS. If i remember him right. He probably thought they were a bunch of kooky space monks when he was that age. I mean c'mon, there's some pretty ignorant 20-30 yr olds out there.

Almost as funny as Vader waiting in line at some government office to file an official name change form.

I think this is one thing that couldn't possibly work in the context of a prequel trilogy. The interesting story here is Anakin's fall from grace. No matter what, Anakin has to end up bad at the end of the third film, or the story is meaningless. In doing so, I'm not sure there's a good way to preserve his identity for part IV. Maybe if the name "Darth Vader" were never used in the prequels, and we were led to believe that Anakin actually dies at the end of ROTS and that Darth Vader is simply some new guy we first meet in IV... but that removes a lot of the iconic possibilities of the prequels, IMO. It would still be a generational saga, I suppose, but it wouldn't have the through-line of a single main character.

No matter what, Lucas had to blow some of the secrets (he could have kept the one about Leia, though, had the twins been born after the events of the film).

But Lucas' single biggest mistake in terms of the broad plot points is that he doesn't give Anakin any room to fall. He's just a kid in the first one, and he's already a brash, unlikeable, undisciplined jerk by the time we meet him as an adult. I saw a bit of the Clone Wars yesterday, and THAT's the context we needed to see Anakin in. He's heroic, far more of a friend to Obi-Wan than we saw in AOTC, and basically liked by the council. Why is that not in the movies??? Why is this relegated to short films that are primarily concerned with action set pieces?

The best thing Lucas could have done would be to jettison TPM, which is like a prequel to the real prequels, introduce Anakin as a promising, likeable, young adult and take the time over three movies to show exactly how he falls as the Republic crumbles. But that ain't what we got. We aren't getting the character development we might want, Lucas is not going to maintain the mysteries of the OT, and the movies certainly aren't as much fun. The only thing that we could hope for is for him to tie up loose ends and not leave us asking more questions - sounds like he just might be dropping the ball there, too.

Why not? She doesn´t need to know anything about them. The fewer who know, the better. There´s no indication in the films that anyone besides Bail know the whole truth, he might have told his immidiate staff, but that would have been it.

Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi. The Jedi are declared enemies of the Empire, they get wiped out. As far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, Anakin was wiped out as well. If anyone asks too much about Vader, they´re either "removed" or given some phony backstory similar to what Obi-Wan said in ANH, he was a Jedi who sided with the Empire and helped it destroy the order.

I agree, IF the contension when viewing from I to VI is that this is Anakin's story, which basically negates any suspense as to whether he'll survive through all 6 chapters (notice I said "through" and not "to the end"). Now I'm not saying that we don't see him turn at all. That's necessary for sure. But if at the end of the movie you're unsure as to what has happened, or if what people said was true. You leave enough grey area for the audience to not know. Then, in STAR WARS, we have OB1's version of things, then in EMPIRE we get Vader's version of things. At this point not only do you still retain the surprise of the reveal, you don't even know (as the audience) if Vader's telling the truth; which was a very important aspect of the EMPIRE reveal that people forget about now. I'm sure half the people thought he was lying. Certainly no one was sure until Yoda confirmed it in Jedi.

I think it could work, but only if you take for granted that all six films aren't about Anakin. Characters come and go. We miss some that dissapear, and are enthralled by new ones.

The myopic focus on Anakin and his status as "the chosen one" was a bit of a mistake, I think. He should have eventually evolved into a/the main character by Ep III, one who we missed (though as you say there were signs something wasn't right with him) when he apparently bites it.

I agree with Devin, though. Given all the time he's had, he should have been able to connect the dots more susinctly.

Truth is I haven't watched Eps I or II in a couple of years. But I will give them a spin in the next couple of months and check out ROTS in the theatres.

These movies are fantasies. Like all fantasies, they fall apart under close scrutiny.

End.

I doubt that Bail knew the Skywalker/Vader connection. There's was no reason to tell him.

In Ben and Yoda's view - to tell him would have put Luke and Leia into jeopardy if Bail was ever interrogated/tortured by the Empire and that nugget ever came out...

But, I'm in the camp that believes that the Emperor knew of Luke on Tatoonie all those years - and let him be - just to groom him as the replacement to Vader.

I always had the feeling that Owen hated Obi Won for killing his step brother. Or jelouse that the prodical son got to do what he wants while I suck water from the air

It seems like top level imperals see jedi as hippies. Look at what all there holyness got them While we have a greater power noone can destroy