Another quote in hindsight

[cmdr_zoom]

Luke: Leia. Leia is my sister.
Ben: Your insight serves you well. Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor.

Yeah, that advice worked out so well for the boy's father, didn't it?

I don't blame Obi-Wan, really. Even as an old man, even as a dead one, he's still thoroughly indoctrinated in the old Jedi Order's way... which was "repress everything. Feelings bad." Heck, I wonder if part of his shame over failing Anakin is the belief that he didn't do a good enough job of teaching him that.

"Down in your stomach, Ani. Tight little ball."

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

"Leia. Leia is my sister?! Aw, jeeeeeeeeez, excuse me a second. Got to get that thing in the sickbay on Hoth out of my head now."

[macmoyer.livejournal.com]

That's the whole point of the Saga. The pre-Purge Jedi are wrong to cut themselves off from love. Obi-Wan and Yoda are wrong when they tell Luke not to care about his friends.

The pre-Purge Jedi know Anakin will "bring balance to the Force," but they don't understand that they're the ones imbalancing it with their suppression of emotion. When Obi-Wan and Yoda send Luke to "confront Vader," they don't know how it's going to end. They don't know he's going to redeem his father through love, because they don't understand love. They just know that the Force says he has to confront him.

[meagenimage.livejournal.com]

Also, the Emperor did kind of undercut himself there.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I hated that scene as an early teen; but as I got older, I gradually realized that George was laying it on thick for the younger ones in the audience. While there is subtlety to be found in the movies, that's never been what they're really about.

[meagenimage.livejournal.com]

And now you see that Good will always win because Evil just *has* to stop to gloat. :)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

"If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar.

So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."

-- Terry Pratchett, "Men at Arms"