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Entry tags:
- ch: anakin skywalker,
- ch: bail organa,
- ch: beru whitesun lars,
- ch: cliegg lars,
- ch: han solo,
- ch: jabba,
- ch: leia organa,
- ch: luke skywalker,
- ch: obi-wan kenobi,
- ch: padmé amidala,
- ch: palpatine,
- ch: r2-d2,
- character: kitster banai,
- character: owen lars,
- character: shmi skywalker,
- character: wedge antilles,
- fandom: star wars,
- genre: meta,
- picspam,
- ship: anakin/padmé,
- ship: han/leia,
- ship: luke/han/leia,
- ship: luke/leia
another SW picspam
I meant to do the Austen one, really, but most of those who'd be interested have seen most of them already anyway, and ... I'll try and do a double Austen-Tolkien one Friday or Saturday, maybe. In the meanwhile, I've been wandering around tumblr and found a bunch of awesome Star Wars things (too many for this post!), mostly from one shiny tumblr -- though, to be honest, I don't perfectly remember everything I've posted before. Here's to hoping for very little overlap!
I have a ridiculous adoration for pictures with Significant Multi-Leveling, usually for the purpose of comparison (I love comparisons!) or a sort of narrative. So I picked up a ton of those.
I may not like the prequels, but they do make for a lot of kickass fanac that I love. And this is one of them -- while I think the first level is perhaps not the best example of Anakin looking angry (I mean, he's clearly angry in the scene it comes from, but the picture by itself is kind of ... not so much), overall it packs a nice punch.
I feel reasonably certain that the top half is what Obi-Wan is seeing in the bottom half.
Luke mirroring Padmé. His emotional state is completely different (dreamy and dissatisfied where she's concerned), but the imagery still works.
Hey, he gets to mirror BOTH parents! I think the emotions match up a bit better here, but it's still more a visual mirror than anything else.
I like that these are obviously the same place, but the prequel garage looks so much less grungy. It makes sense!
That said, the parallel imagery seems a bit meaningless at this point; the scenes have pretty much nothing to do with each other, beyond taking place in the same garage. Luke is feeling hopeless, trapped in a life of constant mundanity; Anakin just lost his mother and committed his first murder -- a mass murder of men, women, and children -- and is cycling between grief, hatred, remorse, resentment, and ambition.
Because these moments weren't tragic enough separately. ;_;
(Admission: I am fairly ambivalent about Owen, because while I tend to side-eye the quash-their-heritage-out-of-them approach to child-rearing, I feel he's essentially a very good man doing the best he can in a situation I don't think he particularly wanted to be in, so I side-eye evil!Owen and doormat!Beru too. However, I am not at all ambivalent about Bail Organa. BAMF, y'all. I don't know what happened to Breha, if anything, but Bail raised Leia under Vader's very nose while helping orchestrate a rebellion against the Emperor and to all appearances he did a hell of a job at both. And personally, I read his assurance that Leia will be loved with him and Breha as ... satisfyingly pointed.)
Whenever I see this, part of me can't help but think "well, when two people love each other very much...UM, ANAKIN? YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS ALREADY."
The other half thinks he's just bullshitting long enough to get a plan together, since he obviously knows this already. Palpatine apparently doesn't, because the Dark Side has killed most of his functioning brain cells.
Leia has a really odd expression in the third. Otherwise, perfection. Most dysfunctional family in space except not because they actually get happily ever after. And Anakin's just off the edges of that last one, so they all do -- well, except Padmé.
Sucks being a PT character, I guess.
(Dear fictional characters: if you only show up in the prequel, you might want to consider making your will. And different life choices.)
Okay, I didn't see this parallel, and it's REALLY blatant. Down to Anakin sitting in the chair Luke occupies later on. Hmm.
And now I just feel stupid.
Among the many many parallels between Anakin-Padmé and Luke-Leia: facing bottomless abysses!
Is it just me, or do both Anakin and Han look really ambivalent in these scenes?
Luke, Leia, and Han in A New Hope.
Han/Leia extravaganza!
Leia in each of the movies. I'm just going to assume she never leaves home without her battle lipstick.
Leia in all the movies, looking over at something.
Luke, ditto.
Leia in the whole trilogy, being badass.
Leia across her lifetime.
And Luke across his.
And then Luke and Leia across the trilogy.
I'd be lying if I said this wasn't one of my favourite relationships in the entire series. By which I mean "tied for first."
Han and Leia across the trilogy, because I love them too.
And all of them across the trilogy!
Is it just me, or do Luke and Leia wear a lot of matching clothes? (And now I'm imagining them getting together every morning to consult about their clothes. They're Padmé Amidala's children, after all -- they could probably spend hours discussing why wearing buns over one's ears and eye-smartingly yellow coats are awesome ideas.)
...if not quite in the way he expects. (Leia, apparently, is chopped liver.)
For some reason, this isn't the page illustration for Estrogen Brigade Bait.
Whoa, they look really intense. The Luke and Leia shots, in fact, look like they're from the Vader-is-our-father scene, not this one. Anyway, I still like it -- I think it illustrates that moment beautifully.
Also, personal headcanon: Luke and Leia get their stick-straight hair from one or both parents, who spend hours curling it. Or, if it's Padmé, contorting it into ridiculously elaborate styles.
Luke and Leia, facing their father. Totally polar opposites!
(Leia is saying only you could be so bold. Yeah, not like Anakin passed that one down, or anything.)
Matching your wardrobe to your moral leanings? Also genetic.
You can tell Luke is the one who isn't going to turn evil because he wears white, and looks out with his eyebrows lifted up, not down. Anakin wears black and has a Kubrick Stare, so he's doomed. Also, he's about to take off his cybernetic hand with that lightsaber.
I don't think it's quite fair to say they have nothing in common, as I hear a lot. They're colour-coordinated! They have adorable beaming smiles! Let's see ... They cuddle traumatized blond boys. They take over their own rescues. They get elected to public office at ridiculously young ages. They're blaster-toting badass leaders in two movies and inexplicably diminished in the third...
Oh and hey, these ones are from the actual paralleling scenes -- the celebrations at the end of the first movies. I think it'd have been ever cooler if they'd chosen Leia trying for her serious face or Padmé smiling, though.
Girls with guns!
Stupidest complaint I have ever heard about Hayden Christensen's Anakin: "he's nothing like Luke!" Yeah, whatever.
I have my objections to HC, but his face is not one of them.
A parallel I would never have thought to make: Kitster and ... Wedge? Well, I guess they are the youthful friends who manage not to get killed just by being around them. It's a rare talent!
Shmi getsstuffed in the refrigerator killed just in time to say goodbye.
I sort of like this scene, mostly just for Anakin's thinly-concealed horror switching to *SQUEE* in about a quarter-second. Intermediate emotional states are for wimps! (But really, I do think that smile is sort of adorable. Though not as much as Padmé wearing Leia's hair-buns omg the hair is genetic. This will never stop being wonderful to me. Or hilarious. Or wonderfully hilarious!)
buuuuuuuuuuuns
Despair Event Horizon, incoming!
...bad day.
Flawless scene is flawless.
Too short to be my favourite scene, but it is the most powerfully iconic for me. And science!
It doesn't have quite the same goosebump-raising epicness without the music -- not that the score isn't always amazing (ALWAYS), but Binary Sunset makes this scene in a way that few other tracks do, even in SW. All thirty-five seconds of it.
The most unnecessarily fanwanked scene ever -- Han announcing the Falcon's accomplishment of the Kessel Run in parsecs. The script itself says that Han's boast is stupid. So do Obi-Wan's and Luke's faces. (While Obi-Wan's reaction might be expected, Luke's is always funny -- it's not exactly like cynical contempt is his general approach to life.)
I joke about the retrocest because Splinter made it forever hilarious to me, but really? I only ship them in the most gennish way possible and never wanted them to be together romantically: just together. I love the gentle rapport we see in moments like this one, I love that something so quiet and companionable can be so intensely important , that it exists pretty much independently of all other relationships and everything that happens to them and is just this unalterable touchstone in their lives. Or to be concise (lol)--
This scene: never "ew," always "aww."
(I also enjoy this scene because it completely overthrows the Flanderized version of the twins we often get with serene mystic!Luke and one-dimensional Action Girl!Leia -- here, Luke is restless and angry, while Leia's zen approaches Jedi Master levels.)
That said, sometimes the OT3 just ships itself.
Luke, Han, and Leia, sharing emotional states since 1980. To sum up, Leia is furious with Han, Luke is annoyed with Han, and Han is irritated with Leia and probably Luke too. (Not shown: the twins making out just to tell him they can.)
Han = Rhett Butler in space?
On second thought, that makes a lot of sense. Does that make Tatooine the Confederacy?
... oh god, that makes sense too.
Even though Luke is my favourite character, I have trouble envisioning him -- partly because I'm not a particularly visual person (stop laughing) and partly because Mark Hamill looks like a different person every time he turns around. This one, though, is closest to the Luke-in-my head. Something about the hair.
Han/Leia + ESB + rare fluffy moment + Leia's gorgeous hair and gown (and everything) - squick + Cloud City = <3 <3 <3
Yup, it's the first time Han/Leia in ESB isn't vaguely skeevy to me and just YAAAAY OTP. And it's so ... so ...
*squee*
This may very well be one of my favourite scenesin SW on film. Even knowing 'the reveal' when I first saw ESB (because it was like 2002), this scene completely blew me away. His expression just says it all.
Gah, Luke. Somebody hug this boy?
The early part of that scene, when Luke first catches sight of "Vader."
And then the very brief duel.
(Protip: unlike Guild Wars, your enemy is a far greater challenge than your doppelganger. Something to keep in mind if you happen to fall into the GFFA.)
Speaking of evocative. And iconic!
The quote just by itself. Because some words are worth a thousand pictures.
Call me a purist, but I still this is one of the best, if not the best, lightsaber duels to appear in the entire series. It's not as flashy as the prequel ones or the heroic rematch in ROTJ, but one of the things I enjoy about it -- I mean, aside of the awesome lighting and setting and everything (gah, just look at it!) -- is that it's clear to us from the visuals alone that Luke is competent but wildly outclassed and this whole thing could be over in about two seconds if Vader chose to end it but it's still engrossing to watch. We see their actual skill levels, we see the emotional undercurrents, we see all these things that are going on with the characters, AND it still manages to look really really cool.
...is that Lando in the background? What is he doing?
ad;jf;adkfj;akjdf;kajdf;kjad;fkj
This scene.
Twin telepathy!
Some part of my soul that isn't perpetually pissed off about the ROTJ retcons is actually happy that they're brother and sister and the shippiness is retroactively platonic telepathic twin demigod soulmates on the astral plane or something, because that means she and Han can be together as lovers and Luke and Han can be together as best friends and Luke and Leia can still have that sweet kind of rapport and romance doesn't split them all apart. This weird tangled tightrope of interrelationships can actually work and everybody gets to be happy!
(Also, if they'd actually dealt with the ramifications of the love triangle instead of going LA LA LA NEVER HAPPENED, Luke and Leia sharing brainspace might be a teensy bit uncomfortable. And no, Harrison Ford, killing Han is not the answer either.)
Yes, these are in chronological order; the first takes place before she declares her love to Han, the second after. Leia doesn't seem to see any reason why these relationships should be mutually exclusive. She'll kiss whoever she wants to kiss, for whatever reason she wants to kiss them, and in whatever circumstances she deems appropriate.
Thing I love: she is in no way presented as irresponsible, disloyal, or "slutty" for conducting her relationships this way. Personal autonomy, she has it.
When I first saw ESB, I was a floundering teenage proto-feminist drowning in internalized misogyny and men here men there everywhere men men men. And this heroine from a 20+-year-old movie beloved by dudebro fanboys was more empowering than all the feisty, monster-slaying, fanservice-y token Action Girls I'd run across. So yeah, I criticize the things that annoy me, but in the end? I will forgive George Lucas anything because he put Leia Organa on my screen.
Luke and Leia on the Redemption. No foreshadowing here!
An excellent question! And I kind of like that there's no easy answer -- while obviously Obi-Wan couldn't tell him in his first infodump, he had a lot of chances later, especially when Luke was heading out to Cloud City and Obi-Wan and Yoda were desperately warning him about everything that could go wrong. And in ROTJ, Obi-Wan has no real defense for himself beyond "well, it's not technically a lie..." and "I suck." Yet the explanation is pretty clearly implied: they wanted Luke to kill his father, the truth might (and does) makes him reluctant to do it, and on top of all that, Obi-Wan feels deeply complicit in Anakin's fall anyway. It doesn't feel inexplicable; it feels wrong.
(Wow, that was a tangent. Mostly to distract myself from the way one word just about manages to achieve tearjerker status. This scene is depressing enough, but Luke's quiet, befuddled "Father..." dials it right up to tragic. OMG THIS FAMILY THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH SAD EMOTICONS ON THE INTERNET FOR THIS TINY MADE-UP FAMILY IN SPACE.)
Hey, you said it.
I love how, despite his flattery, Luke is about as impressed by Jabba as he was by measuring speed in parsecs. (Post-PT, I wonder if he knows where his father and grandmother came from. Owen and Beru must have known, so he very well might. If so, it makes that sequence read just a bit differently.)
People talk a lot about how the surprise siblings makes Luke and Leia's interactions in ANH and (especially) ESB disconcerting, but for me, it's at its most disturbing here. Luke shows up, Leia embraces him as is generally her habit, and you can see that this is the first time it's really hit him that they have the same parents and hung out in the same uterus for nine months. Leia is his sister. And his discomfort is so palpable that Leia herself notices it and asks what's wrong. Hey, they've been hugging for ages! And he's like, "...let's talk about this later."
Awkward.
I love how Lando and Han are having this smug manly bonding I bequeath you my vehicle hurt it and I will take it out of your hide hey I had it first lol whatever moment and Leia is so clearly unimpressed by it without saying a word. (Whenever anyone talks about side-eyeing, I immediately assume they're making this face.)
Luke, Han, and Leia on Endor. BEWARE THE HIVE MIND.
So, I have issues with Han/Leia. I have talked about them, at length! But I continue to ship them, and this pretty aptly illustrates why.
(For those that don't know, the top half is Han secretly preparing his blaster while Greedo blusters about killing him; the bottom half is Leia secretly preparing her blaster while a group of stormtroopers are capturing them. End result: one dead bounty hunter, a bunch of dead stormtroopers.)
Happy-making callback!
ahahahaha, his expressions when Leia tells him Luke's her brother will never not be hilarious to me. Even as she's kissing him, you can just see him going from "wow, really?" to "wait, then that means--" to "...awesome."
Or, you know, this.
This movie is the fuzzy cheerful one. You know, with cannibalistic teddy bears, electric torture, and oh yeah the main character of the entire series DYING.
Another one, in case it wasn't depressing enough. I rather like his expression here -- it's clear that this moment is neither joyous nor crushing for him, but very much a bittersweet thing.
Really, Luke and Leia's interactions in ROTJ only come in two types: the kind where you sort of snicker/reach for the brain bleach, and the kind where your pupils turn into little hearts. Guess which one this is?
(Hint: you can keep the bleach.)
Hugs all around!
I have a ridiculous adoration for pictures with Significant Multi-Leveling, usually for the purpose of comparison (I love comparisons!) or a sort of narrative. So I picked up a ton of those.
I may not like the prequels, but they do make for a lot of kickass fanac that I love. And this is one of them -- while I think the first level is perhaps not the best example of Anakin looking angry (I mean, he's clearly angry in the scene it comes from, but the picture by itself is kind of ... not so much), overall it packs a nice punch.
I feel reasonably certain that the top half is what Obi-Wan is seeing in the bottom half.
Luke mirroring Padmé. His emotional state is completely different (dreamy and dissatisfied where she's concerned), but the imagery still works.
Hey, he gets to mirror BOTH parents! I think the emotions match up a bit better here, but it's still more a visual mirror than anything else.
I like that these are obviously the same place, but the prequel garage looks so much less grungy. It makes sense!
That said, the parallel imagery seems a bit meaningless at this point; the scenes have pretty much nothing to do with each other, beyond taking place in the same garage. Luke is feeling hopeless, trapped in a life of constant mundanity; Anakin just lost his mother and committed his first murder -- a mass murder of men, women, and children -- and is cycling between grief, hatred, remorse, resentment, and ambition.
Because these moments weren't tragic enough separately. ;_;
(Admission: I am fairly ambivalent about Owen, because while I tend to side-eye the quash-their-heritage-out-of-them approach to child-rearing, I feel he's essentially a very good man doing the best he can in a situation I don't think he particularly wanted to be in, so I side-eye evil!Owen and doormat!Beru too. However, I am not at all ambivalent about Bail Organa. BAMF, y'all. I don't know what happened to Breha, if anything, but Bail raised Leia under Vader's very nose while helping orchestrate a rebellion against the Emperor and to all appearances he did a hell of a job at both. And personally, I read his assurance that Leia will be loved with him and Breha as ... satisfyingly pointed.)
Whenever I see this, part of me can't help but think "well, when two people love each other very much...UM, ANAKIN? YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS ALREADY."
The other half thinks he's just bullshitting long enough to get a plan together, since he obviously knows this already. Palpatine apparently doesn't, because the Dark Side has killed most of his functioning brain cells.
Leia has a really odd expression in the third. Otherwise, perfection. Most dysfunctional family in space except not because they actually get happily ever after. And Anakin's just off the edges of that last one, so they all do -- well, except Padmé.
Sucks being a PT character, I guess.
(Dear fictional characters: if you only show up in the prequel, you might want to consider making your will. And different life choices.)
Okay, I didn't see this parallel, and it's REALLY blatant. Down to Anakin sitting in the chair Luke occupies later on. Hmm.
And now I just feel stupid.
Among the many many parallels between Anakin-Padmé and Luke-Leia: facing bottomless abysses!
Is it just me, or do both Anakin and Han look really ambivalent in these scenes?
Luke, Leia, and Han in A New Hope.
Han/Leia extravaganza!
Leia in each of the movies. I'm just going to assume she never leaves home without her battle lipstick.
Leia in all the movies, looking over at something.
Luke, ditto.
Leia in the whole trilogy, being badass.
Leia across her lifetime.
And Luke across his.
And then Luke and Leia across the trilogy.
I'd be lying if I said this wasn't one of my favourite relationships in the entire series. By which I mean "tied for first."
Han and Leia across the trilogy, because I love them too.
And all of them across the trilogy!
Is it just me, or do Luke and Leia wear a lot of matching clothes? (And now I'm imagining them getting together every morning to consult about their clothes. They're Padmé Amidala's children, after all -- they could probably spend hours discussing why wearing buns over one's ears and eye-smartingly yellow coats are awesome ideas.)
...if not quite in the way he expects. (Leia, apparently, is chopped liver.)
For some reason, this isn't the page illustration for Estrogen Brigade Bait.
Whoa, they look really intense. The Luke and Leia shots, in fact, look like they're from the Vader-is-our-father scene, not this one. Anyway, I still like it -- I think it illustrates that moment beautifully.
Also, personal headcanon: Luke and Leia get their stick-straight hair from one or both parents, who spend hours curling it. Or, if it's Padmé, contorting it into ridiculously elaborate styles.
Luke and Leia, facing their father. Totally polar opposites!
(Leia is saying only you could be so bold. Yeah, not like Anakin passed that one down, or anything.)
Matching your wardrobe to your moral leanings? Also genetic.
You can tell Luke is the one who isn't going to turn evil because he wears white, and looks out with his eyebrows lifted up, not down. Anakin wears black and has a Kubrick Stare, so he's doomed. Also, he's about to take off his cybernetic hand with that lightsaber.
I don't think it's quite fair to say they have nothing in common, as I hear a lot. They're colour-coordinated! They have adorable beaming smiles! Let's see ... They cuddle traumatized blond boys. They take over their own rescues. They get elected to public office at ridiculously young ages. They're blaster-toting badass leaders in two movies and inexplicably diminished in the third...
Oh and hey, these ones are from the actual paralleling scenes -- the celebrations at the end of the first movies. I think it'd have been ever cooler if they'd chosen Leia trying for her serious face or Padmé smiling, though.
Girls with guns!
Stupidest complaint I have ever heard about Hayden Christensen's Anakin: "he's nothing like Luke!" Yeah, whatever.
A parallel I would never have thought to make: Kitster and ... Wedge? Well, I guess they are the youthful friends who manage not to get killed just by being around them. It's a rare talent!
Shmi gets
I sort of like this scene, mostly just for Anakin's thinly-concealed horror switching to *SQUEE* in about a quarter-second. Intermediate emotional states are for wimps! (But really, I do think that smile is sort of adorable. Though not as much as Padmé wearing Leia's hair-buns omg the hair is genetic. This will never stop being wonderful to me. Or hilarious. Or wonderfully hilarious!)
buuuuuuuuuuuns
Despair Event Horizon, incoming!
...bad day.
Flawless scene is flawless.
Too short to be my favourite scene, but it is the most powerfully iconic for me. And science!
It doesn't have quite the same goosebump-raising epicness without the music -- not that the score isn't always amazing (ALWAYS), but Binary Sunset makes this scene in a way that few other tracks do, even in SW. All thirty-five seconds of it.
The most unnecessarily fanwanked scene ever -- Han announcing the Falcon's accomplishment of the Kessel Run in parsecs. The script itself says that Han's boast is stupid. So do Obi-Wan's and Luke's faces. (While Obi-Wan's reaction might be expected, Luke's is always funny -- it's not exactly like cynical contempt is his general approach to life.)
I joke about the retrocest because Splinter made it forever hilarious to me, but really? I only ship them in the most gennish way possible and never wanted them to be together romantically: just together. I love the gentle rapport we see in moments like this one, I love that something so quiet and companionable can be so intensely important , that it exists pretty much independently of all other relationships and everything that happens to them and is just this unalterable touchstone in their lives. Or to be concise (lol)--
This scene: never "ew," always "aww."
(I also enjoy this scene because it completely overthrows the Flanderized version of the twins we often get with serene mystic!Luke and one-dimensional Action Girl!Leia -- here, Luke is restless and angry, while Leia's zen approaches Jedi Master levels.)
That said, sometimes the OT3 just ships itself.
Luke, Han, and Leia, sharing emotional states since 1980. To sum up, Leia is furious with Han, Luke is annoyed with Han, and Han is irritated with Leia and probably Luke too. (Not shown: the twins making out just to tell him they can.)
Han = Rhett Butler in space?
On second thought, that makes a lot of sense. Does that make Tatooine the Confederacy?
... oh god, that makes sense too.
Even though Luke is my favourite character, I have trouble envisioning him -- partly because I'm not a particularly visual person (stop laughing) and partly because Mark Hamill looks like a different person every time he turns around. This one, though, is closest to the Luke-in-my head. Something about the hair.
Han/Leia + ESB + rare fluffy moment + Leia's gorgeous hair and gown (and everything) - squick + Cloud City = <3 <3 <3
Yup, it's the first time Han/Leia in ESB isn't vaguely skeevy to me and just YAAAAY OTP. And it's so ... so ...
*squee*
This may very well be one of my favourite scenes
Gah, Luke. Somebody hug this boy?
The early part of that scene, when Luke first catches sight of "Vader."
And then the very brief duel.
(Protip: unlike Guild Wars, your enemy is a far greater challenge than your doppelganger. Something to keep in mind if you happen to fall into the GFFA.)
Speaking of evocative. And iconic!
The quote just by itself. Because some words are worth a thousand pictures.
Call me a purist, but I still this is one of the best, if not the best, lightsaber duels to appear in the entire series. It's not as flashy as the prequel ones or the heroic rematch in ROTJ, but one of the things I enjoy about it -- I mean, aside of the awesome lighting and setting and everything (gah, just look at it!) -- is that it's clear to us from the visuals alone that Luke is competent but wildly outclassed and this whole thing could be over in about two seconds if Vader chose to end it but it's still engrossing to watch. We see their actual skill levels, we see the emotional undercurrents, we see all these things that are going on with the characters, AND it still manages to look really really cool.
...is that Lando in the background? What is he doing?
ad;jf;adkfj;akjdf;kajdf;kjad;fkj
This scene.
Twin telepathy!
Some part of my soul that isn't perpetually pissed off about the ROTJ retcons is actually happy that they're brother and sister and the shippiness is retroactively platonic telepathic twin demigod soulmates on the astral plane or something, because that means she and Han can be together as lovers and Luke and Han can be together as best friends and Luke and Leia can still have that sweet kind of rapport and romance doesn't split them all apart. This weird tangled tightrope of interrelationships can actually work and everybody gets to be happy!
(Also, if they'd actually dealt with the ramifications of the love triangle instead of going LA LA LA NEVER HAPPENED, Luke and Leia sharing brainspace might be a teensy bit uncomfortable. And no, Harrison Ford, killing Han is not the answer either.)
Yes, these are in chronological order; the first takes place before she declares her love to Han, the second after. Leia doesn't seem to see any reason why these relationships should be mutually exclusive. She'll kiss whoever she wants to kiss, for whatever reason she wants to kiss them, and in whatever circumstances she deems appropriate.
Thing I love: she is in no way presented as irresponsible, disloyal, or "slutty" for conducting her relationships this way. Personal autonomy, she has it.
When I first saw ESB, I was a floundering teenage proto-feminist drowning in internalized misogyny and men here men there everywhere men men men. And this heroine from a 20+-year-old movie beloved by dudebro fanboys was more empowering than all the feisty, monster-slaying, fanservice-y token Action Girls I'd run across. So yeah, I criticize the things that annoy me, but in the end? I will forgive George Lucas anything because he put Leia Organa on my screen.
Luke and Leia on the Redemption. No foreshadowing here!
An excellent question! And I kind of like that there's no easy answer -- while obviously Obi-Wan couldn't tell him in his first infodump, he had a lot of chances later, especially when Luke was heading out to Cloud City and Obi-Wan and Yoda were desperately warning him about everything that could go wrong. And in ROTJ, Obi-Wan has no real defense for himself beyond "well, it's not technically a lie..." and "I suck." Yet the explanation is pretty clearly implied: they wanted Luke to kill his father, the truth might (and does) makes him reluctant to do it, and on top of all that, Obi-Wan feels deeply complicit in Anakin's fall anyway. It doesn't feel inexplicable; it feels wrong.
(Wow, that was a tangent. Mostly to distract myself from the way one word just about manages to achieve tearjerker status. This scene is depressing enough, but Luke's quiet, befuddled "Father..." dials it right up to tragic. OMG THIS FAMILY THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH SAD EMOTICONS ON THE INTERNET FOR THIS TINY MADE-UP FAMILY IN SPACE.)
Hey, you said it.
I love how, despite his flattery, Luke is about as impressed by Jabba as he was by measuring speed in parsecs. (Post-PT, I wonder if he knows where his father and grandmother came from. Owen and Beru must have known, so he very well might. If so, it makes that sequence read just a bit differently.)
People talk a lot about how the surprise siblings makes Luke and Leia's interactions in ANH and (especially) ESB disconcerting, but for me, it's at its most disturbing here. Luke shows up, Leia embraces him as is generally her habit, and you can see that this is the first time it's really hit him that they have the same parents and hung out in the same uterus for nine months. Leia is his sister. And his discomfort is so palpable that Leia herself notices it and asks what's wrong. Hey, they've been hugging for ages! And he's like, "...let's talk about this later."
Awkward.
I love how Lando and Han are having this smug manly bonding I bequeath you my vehicle hurt it and I will take it out of your hide hey I had it first lol whatever moment and Leia is so clearly unimpressed by it without saying a word. (Whenever anyone talks about side-eyeing, I immediately assume they're making this face.)
Luke, Han, and Leia on Endor. BEWARE THE HIVE MIND.
So, I have issues with Han/Leia. I have talked about them, at length! But I continue to ship them, and this pretty aptly illustrates why.
(For those that don't know, the top half is Han secretly preparing his blaster while Greedo blusters about killing him; the bottom half is Leia secretly preparing her blaster while a group of stormtroopers are capturing them. End result: one dead bounty hunter, a bunch of dead stormtroopers.)
Happy-making callback!
ahahahaha, his expressions when Leia tells him Luke's her brother will never not be hilarious to me. Even as she's kissing him, you can just see him going from "wow, really?" to "wait, then that means--" to "...awesome."
Or, you know, this.
This movie is the fuzzy cheerful one. You know, with cannibalistic teddy bears, electric torture, and oh yeah the main character of the entire series DYING.
Another one, in case it wasn't depressing enough. I rather like his expression here -- it's clear that this moment is neither joyous nor crushing for him, but very much a bittersweet thing.
Really, Luke and Leia's interactions in ROTJ only come in two types: the kind where you sort of snicker/reach for the brain bleach, and the kind where your pupils turn into little hearts. Guess which one this is?
(Hint: you can keep the bleach.)
Hugs all around!
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I was about to reply to this and say "YES HE IS but then Leia is nothing like Scarlett"... and then I went, Oh wait, um.... Not that they're exactly like, because for one thing Scarlett is not as clever, but they do share some qualities.
I really kind of like this comparison/theory.
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That particular scene -- the whole scoundrel thing -- is actually taken almost word for word from GWTW, so it was definitely conscious. And they even play it up with the posters -- here's the classic ESB poster and here's GWTW's. It's kind of something interesting to poke at.
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I have the SW annotated screenplays (*cough*NERD*cough*), and now you mention it, yeah, even the description of that scene is totally copied. I remember noticing it years ago. But I'd forgotten.
This comment doesn't actually need a response!
Every time you say, "ad;jf;adkfj;akjdf;kajdf;kjad;fkj" I find myself wondering how you manage to do that without ever hitting the S or the L keys. /impressed
Things I keep wanting to point to and show other people and say, "this!":
- Han/Luke/Leia writing itself
- Leia being allowed to run her relationships however she wants
- Luke's first encounter with Vader/himself in the swamp--easily one of the most powerful scenes I've ever seen
- Best lightsaber duel ever; yes, indeed!
- "Mark Hamill looks like a different person every time he turns around." So true. Especially as Luke, I find.