ok.

Just bought the dvds today and havent watched the films in a long time...so my memories a bit sketchy.

I put on ESB and flicked through some scenes, the new dialog between vader/palp confused me. When Palp tells Vader that Luke is "the offspring of Anakin Skywalker" - Vader replies "How can this be?". Doesn't vader already know this cos earlier on he says "thats it - the rebels are there... I'm sure Skywalker is with them". Would't Vader know then that he's talking about his own son?

I mean how many Skywalkers can there be ? Comments?

Sith Lords don't tell the truth, especially to each other.

Sure don't. That's what makes them so bad ass.

I wish I were a Sith Lord. I'd be awesome.

Is it just me or has this been asked by nubs in like, four different threads?

Be nice, everyone is new at one point or another. Patience is a Jedi's strongest virtue, is it not?

Yes it has, McD... and I spent a good half hour typing out a fairly lengthy response to it back in August, only to find out recently that it must have been deleted (can't find it anywhere).

Let's see if I can do a shorter version here:

What we can assume: between ANH and ESB, both Vader and Palps learn about Luke (i.e., his full name, and that he was raised/mentored by Obi-Wan). We can assume this since Vader is looking for him from the beginning of the film. Also, it explains why, when Palps uses Luke's name in his message to Vader in the original dialogue, Vader doesn't go, "Luke? Luke who?" The message, therefore, is to inform Vader that Luke is now to be considered a threat, and NOT TO INFORM HIM OF LUKE'S EXISTENCE.

This being the case, the new dialogue changes nothing. We simply assume that they still learned of Luke between ANH and ESB, and that Ben helped/trained him. Also, upon learning his last name, this undoubtedly raised a red flag with both Vader and Palps, but it's possible this alone was not conclusive evidence of Luke's paternity (the name Skywalker, for all we know, may be as common as Antilles in the Star Wars universe - something not at all unlikely seeing as how Anakin came from a slave family).

SO... Vader and Palps learn Luke destroyed the Death Star, and that he MAY be Vader's son... but the Emperor perhaps "meditates" on the matter for the time being. MEANWHILE, between ANH and ESB, Vader seems to come to the conclusion himself (without Palps' knowing) that Luke is indeed his son (he DID sense the force was strong with him during the trench run, and we know from ROTJ that Vader has a stronger connection to Luke that Palps). Knowing this, then, and while simultaneously keeping it from Palps, Vader desparately tries to find Luke first, likely in order to overthrow Palps and rule the galaxy with his kid (as Vader himself states at the end of ESB).

All that being said, this explains why Vader says, "How is that possible" in the new dialogue -- he's still acting as though he can't believe this Luke kid is his son (thus hiding his secret agenda from Palps). This also explains why it is okay for Vader, in his very next line, to refer to Obi-Wan helping Luke... again, both he and Palps likely learned all this earlier. The new dialogue, therefore, doesn't really contradict anything, and in fact, it emphasizes Vader's duplicity.

Okay, this logic is fine with me. I have no problem with it. However, the new dialogue jumps out from the film as needing an explanation like this (Vader's reaction feels out of place which is why so many people are asking) whilst the original lines didn't leading me to wonder what Lucas felt was missing from the original lines.

Obviously one new element is the reference to 'Anakin'. Along with adding HC to the end of RotJ, this is clearly Lucas just trying to reference the prequels, for better or worse. That's fine, but making a point of Vader lying to the Emperor seems to only confuse issues further - issues that have only been brought about since the invention of the 'only two' rule.

Just for reference, here is the original dialogue from Drew's -



As it is, it is ambiguous enough. Vader is neither confirming nor denying that he already knew of Luke's existence and was searching for him. This, in my mind, was a far safer gamble as, earlier in the film, we see him mention Luke in front of many Imperial Officers - not all that clever if Vader were to lie outright to his Master about it. In fact, it would be downright idiotic. Seeing how switched on Palpatine is, it is exceptionally unlikely that he didn't know what Vader was up to.

But then, now that I'm this far into the post I'm realising that, once again, these are only issues because of the retrofitting of the films to work with the 'only two' rule. This conversation and also many others in RotJ all worked fine and the end of RotJ was clear as day until someone (not sure if it was Lucas or if it was an EU thing) invented the 'only two' thing. That the Emperor needed both himself and Vader to turn Luke (beginning of RotJ) made perfect sense. Now it requires big long explanations as to who is fooling who and requires a lot of reverse engineering to watch the movies without going 'wtf?'. It brings up the questions we often see like 'why Vader bloked Luke's lightsaber swing towards the Emperor in RotJ?' and the question that started this thread.

I'm beginning to realise that, like midi-chlorians, I may have more piece of mind if I deny the 'two' rule completely. After all, if Sith Lords are so crafty and untrustworthy, how could they be expected to stick to such a ridiculous old restriction? Hmmm, yeah, this is really one of those things where I think Lucas should be changing the prequels to fit the classics and not the other way around. I'm loving my clean, crisp, dvd transfers and think the movies looks better than ever but I'm really finding myself on the side of the people who think the more Lucas 'fixes' the more he breaks.

Dogg.

Edit: Just one more thing on the subjects of Sith Lords not telling the truth (brought up in the second post) - well, maybe not to each other, but Vader told the truth to Luke, Dooku told the truth to Obi-Wan and the Emperor was fairly straight with Luke too. Compared with Obi-Wan's constant lies in the OT, the Sith Lords seem pretty trustworthy to me.

Well I'm just adding my thoughts here, but I can see the validity in GL tweaking the OT to join with the PT. Despite what many people think, GL said he had a story outline for the backstory, not scripts. So yes, he was making the PT up on the fly because, while he had ideas for what was going to be in it, he didn;t have the specifics yet. The OT was made in a way where we were supposed to just be dropped into the middle of a bigger story, without the benefit of teh whole backstory. So since he didn't really need the specific details of how things happend for he OT to work, he only came up with enough of the backstory to be able to manage how everyone go where they are. When he decided to do the PT, he had to sit down and say, "Ok, now I have to make this story make sense." In the end it was far easier to tweak the vague references in the OT to match whatever new things he would do, therefore freeing him to write the new stories the way he thought would make them as good as they could be. And since there are only two scenes in the three movies that directly reference the PT, I dont think it's really that big of a deal. They are still two seperate stories that are only connected by a thread of plot. It's hard to write a story that big in reverse. Does that excuse the weaknesses in the PT, not at all, but it does allow for the individual series to function seperately, as well as working as a larger whole. You don't have to see the PT to enjoy the OT, and vice versa. But if you do choose to watch them both, you get a strong through line that connects the two together. That's my thought anyway. I know it looks like I'm just going around arguing with you, Dogg, but I honestly find your responses highly intelligent and fun to debate.

Nah, I don't think so. I think the only people that require an explanation are those that have seen the original so many times that the lines are etched in their heads.

Not trying to start another OT vs. SE war here. I just haven't seen any real argument that this dialogue would be confusing to someone who doesn't know that it's new.