darklordoftech said:
ZkinandBonez said: The second quote is quite an interesting addition to what we've read/heard before in the movies and books (as well as the PT for that matter). It's never occurred to me before that he could have been an assassin on behalf of Palpatine before he eventually became Darth Vader and eventually performed the military "purge" that we're more familiar with. I think ROTS would have been a lot more interesting if they had gone for this story, rather than the fairly instant transformation that we did get. Although this quote mentions Vader and "Annikin" as different people, it could still more or less be attributed to the post 1983, pre-PT canon.
Lucas actually restated the second quote to Kasdan during the writing of ROTJ:
Lucas: "Anakin Skywalker starting hanging out with the Emperor, who at this point nobody knew was that bad, because he was an elected official."
Kasdan: "Was he a Jedi?"
Lucas: "No, he was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a really nice guy. He sucked Luke's father into the dark side."
Kasdan: "The Force was available to anyone who could hook into it?"
Lucas: "Yes, everybody can do it."
Kasdan: "Not just the Jedi?"
Lucas: "It's just the Jedi who take the time to do it."
Marquand: "They use it as a technique."
Lucas: "Like yoga. If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it; but the ones that really want to do it are the ones who are into that kind of thing."
[...]
Lucas: "Well, anyway, Luke's father gets subverted by the Emperor. He gets a little weird at home and his wife begins to figure out that things are going wrong and she confides in Ben, who is his mentor. On his missions through the galaxies, Anakin has been going off doing his Jedi thing and a lot of Jedi have been getting killed — and it's because they turn their back on him and he cuts them down. The president is turning into an Emperor and Luke's mother suspects that something has happened to her husband. She is pregnant. Anakin gets worse and worse, and finally Ben has to fight him and he throws him down into a volcano and Vader is all beat up. Now, when he falls into the pit, his other arm goes and his leg and there is hardly anything left of him by the time the Emperor's troops fish him out of the drink. Then when Ben finds out that Vader has been fished out and is in the hands of the Empire, he is worried about it. He goes back to Vader's wife and explains that Anakin is the bad guy, the one killing all the Jedi. When he goes back his wife, Mrs. Skywalker has had the kids, the twins, so she has these two little babies who are six months old or so. So everybody has to go into hiding. The Skywalker line is very strong with the Force, so Ben says, 'I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe'. And so Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow. Ben can't raise Luke himself, because he's a wanted man. Leia and Luke's mother go to Alderaan and are taken in by the king there, who is a friend of Ben's. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died."
Kasdan: "She does know that?"
Lucas: "Yes, so we can bring that out when Luke is talking to her, she can say that her mother died when 'I was two years old'."
I wonder if Lucas is also implying that Palpatine is self-taught when it comes to using The Force. Maybe that's why Palpatine calls the lightsaber "the weapon of a Jedi."
It's kind of funny how Lucas tells Kasdan that using the force can be learned by anyone, only to shortly after point out how "strong" it is in the Skywalkers.
So I'm guessing that it's more of a second nature to them, while most people have to work really hard on it?
It's hard to tell what Palpatine really is. Every pre-PT text I have read so far has always just referred to his past as a "mystery". I don't really think it matters though. The only thing that that all the texts, and seemingly Lucas (pre-PT anyway) seem to agree on is that he has been evil for a very, very long time. Perhaps he's always been evil.
Then there's his unnatural age. According to Lucas' timeline he was a "young" politician while Mon Mothma was in office, yet ca. 30-40 (EDIT: this particular detail is from the EU) years later he looks ancient. His age also has a very unnatural look to it as well. He looks almost decayed and his eyes have that unnatural yellow colour. The novelization of ROTJ which was approved by Lucas describes him as having "a face lined by holocaust."
(Heck one EU interpretation of this "Mystery" simply stated that he had had many lives, implying both cloning and somehow resurrecting himself with the Force. He even described himself as more energy than man. I always liked Dark Empire's interpretation, it was weird but it's sits a lot more right with me than the whole Plageuis thing ever did.)
His death in ROTJ is also pretty surreal and weird. Not only is there some kind of energy explosion as he falls down the shaft, if you listen closely the energy cloud has this supernatural wail to it. Of course this is in a universe with Force ghosts, but you get the impression that there was more to Palpatine than being a mere Sith as the PT made him.
But random thoughts on Palpatine aside;
at least we now have an official date of Mrs. Skywalker's death at 16 BBY.
Lucas also mentions that Anakin loses his "other arm" in his duel with Obi-Wan, does that mean that he always intended for Anakin to loose his arm in battle like he eventually did in the PT?
(Btw, where did you get this conversation transcript?)
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