anghraine

I was linked to TV Tropes and, between one thing and another (…) ended up on the Star Wars character page. It turns out to be a wretched hive of wtfery.

unlike Luke, he [Anakin] was hot-tempered, brash and sometimes undisciplined.

Unlike Luke? What?

We’re talking about the same Luke who spends most of ANH and a good portion of ESB raging at people? “Much anger in him” Luke? Who at his calmest and most zen flew into a homicidal rage at a vague threat to his sister? Luke who also rushes into trouble pretty much all the time? Luke who Yoda doesn’t want to teach because he’s spent his life looking away, wanting more, rather than paying attention to where he is now and what he’s doing?

You know, I really think that Luke’s entire character is reduced to exactly two moments: “but I was going to go to Tosche Station!” and “I won’t fight you, Father.” The rest? Eh, never happened. So when you say, “hey, you remember that time when Luke Force-choked that guy and–” people are like “WHAAAAAAA?”

But then they go one better, and list Leia as “The Chick.” That is:

She’ll encourage loyalty and teamwork, give them the courage or hope to unlock their true potential, be a Token Good Teammate that keeps her friends from Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.

?????

Luke, incidentally, also gets “What The Hell, Hero?” Not for destroying the Death Star, which would be stupid (he’s a Rebel soldier under orders to attack it and it was a valid military target staffed by enemy soldiers and had slaughtered a planet of peaceful Imperial citizensandwas about to do the same to the place where he and his friends and who knows who else were more or less living) but is at least a reasonably common complaint. No, for redeeming his father. See, Vader is so villainous that Luke should have left him to rampage across the galaxy rather than appealing to his better side, which Luke can psychically sense is still there.

So. It’s wrong to try and get villains to stop doing villainous things; you should instead leave them to keep being eviland try killing them, instead. That way they won’t ever have the chance to stop being evil, a horror which might introduce some tiny degree of moral ambiguity. (Personally, I interpreted Vader’s redemption not as meaning that one heroic moment - however fatal to him - made up for 20+ years of villainy, but simply that he wasn’t a villain any more.)

Well, at least it didn’t go for the “Luke is a wimp for throwing away his lightsaber” level of completely missing the point.

original tags:

#i'm not sure we watched the same movies #stopping villains by talking to them rather than killing them? morally wrong #even if the villain is your father and loves you enough to die for you #killing him is the only appropriate response