brash_stryker:

Not debating that it's a lift that Luke and Vader came up in, but clearly the enormous shaft the emperor falls into isn't just to accomodate a 2 man lift...

The fact that there's a lift is incidental, and doesn't make it exclusively a lift shaft. If it was, it would only need to be wide enough to accomodate the lift itsef. Hence, reactor.

Anyway, in the words of Tarkin, this bickering is pointless.

Then shut up about it. You're the one carrying it on, trying to convince yourself that it's not a lift shaft when clearly it is. The big central tube running down the middle is the damn lift shaft. Your logic is ridiculous and if anyone cares to post pictures from the scene it will be patently clear that Vader drops the Emperor down the hole at the side of the lift. Ergo, it's a lift shaft.

And the glow at the bottom is not the reactor core. Unless you're suggesting this lift runs 450km down to the core and the Emperor falls all that way in about six seconds.