To me, he was saying “I don’t need this anymore.” He’s grown past it.
"You’re weapons, you will not need them."
Otherwise he just threw it to look cool. And that’s silly.It’s not the biggest deal, and certainly a minor thing in the list of fixes Jedi needs.
Also, this is a fairly simple thing to fix, so if I’m alone on this I can do it for myself I suppose.Interesting take on his motives though to me they seem pretty illogical and disconnected from what actually happens on screen. It does kinda make sense now with your view on him collecting his saber before leaving but I still wholey disagree with it.
Here is the scene: https://youtu.be/PqaiKmm8gsY
Emp: walking down the stairs “cackle Goood…cackle. Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfil your destiny and take your father’s place at my side”
Luke: sees the potential truth in the Emp’s words, having used his anger to defeat Vader and now can see a symbolic replacement of Vader already in Vader’s now missing mechanical right hand while Luke clenches his own in realisation he was already starting down that path. He had been warned numerous times about the dark side, never thinking he may actually be susceptible to its sinister lure and this snaps him out of the moment, realising he is being manipulated and forcibly reasserts his inner calm, remembering who he is - a Jedi. He says “Never.” as he turns around, turning his lightsaber off and defiantly throwing it away as he stands tall and walks without fear towards the Emp. “I’ll never turn to the dark side.” he says, preferring to die a Jedi than live on as a Sith pawn as all he holds dear is destroyed. “You failed your highness, I am a Jedi, like my father before me”. He waits, to see what fate now holds for him, as a Jedi…
Emp: “So be it…Jedi” SCRRCCHHHH! 😛
Probably didn’t need to play out that entire scene but no where in there do I see or feel anything about growing past the need for his lightsaber and I can’t make any sense of that in context to the scene. It’s not like he thinks upon defeating Vader that he’s ascended to a higher level and could fight the Emp without his saber like Yoda does in the PT. To me, his action is in direct relation to what he says at the time - “Never”
True if he picked it up again while the Emp was still alive then on both accounts it was a worthless guesture, but him retrieving it afterwards does not take away at all from the scene I described above.
.Val
It always seemed to me that it never occurred to Luke that the emperor had the kind of power he has (lightning). That the emperor was a manipulator, and not necessarily a offensive force user. Thus he posed no direct threat to him unless Luke gave into the dark side. That’s what obi wan and yoda always warned him about. You would think they’d tell him, “hey, by the way, the emperor can shoot lightning from his hands and kill you.” I think it was intentional that they never mentioned the emperor’s power to Luke because they didn’t want him to become a tool of the emperor, by going into the confrontation with the mindset of beating the emperor by physical force alone. It seems that the use of aggression is a step toward the dark side. I believe they thought the only chance Luke had to beat the emperor was by will of mind alone. I know that doesn’t really give a good example of how he would then beat the emperor, but it seems that losing Luke to the dark side would be a worse fate than death.
I get what you mean though at the same time, it’s possible neither Ben nor Yoda knew either as to the extent of the Emperor’s force powers. That probably sounds odd until you think in terms of the OT story without the kind of retconned knowledge that the PT now gives you, even subconsciously. Until the PT (and after your first watch through), no one knew about the Emperor’s powers until he uses them at the end of the last movie and this could be the same for the characters, with Vader having done all of his dirty work up until that point. Even if Ben and Yoda don’t know about the Emp’s force lightning though, I’m sure they’re still well aware of generally how powerful he is and this lends itself to some of your good points about Luke needing not just to win in a physical test, but a mental and strength of will test as well.
The thought did surface for myself when writing my earlier post, that having defeated Vader Luke is now free to challenge the Emperor so you wouldn’t have thought it a logical choice to instead through away his lightsaber in defiance. The fact he does do this though speaks subliminally that he knows he is no match for the Emperor and simply accepts his fate. It could be he had already felt how strong the Emperor was, as it’s already well established by then that force users can detect how strong another person is in the force.
Overall I think the main intention was simply for Luke to find himself again after defeating Vader when he realises their main goal is to turn him. He then decides he’s not going to kill or continue to fight his father and he’s not going to turn to the dark side. So defiantly he basically says the Emp has failed and to either kill him now or let him go as he’s not going to play their game full stop. It’s definitely an interesting scene to debate.
.Val