excuse me while I geek out a bit:

Over the weekend, Jace, John, Anya, and myself watched "The Empire Strikes Back" after getting some pizza at "The Tomato." I originally hadn't wanted to watch any of the old movies until they came out on DVD this September. But watching the old SW movies is something that my friends and I have always talked about doing, but have never done so. So we decided to go ahead and watch, "The Empire Strikes Back."

I think that "Attack of the Clones" and "The Empire Strikes Back" are by far the best movies of the SW saga. But if I had to guess, I think that Ep. III is going to trump them all. But that's neither here nor there.

While watching the Yoda and Luke interaction on Dagobah in "The Empire Strikes Back," I noticed a few things that I hadn't noticed before. Most of the stuff that we noticed was due mainly to the new prequel movies.

One of the main themes of the new movies revolves around how Jedi deal with "fear." In the new movies, the Jedi are told to not really acknowledge their fear and to basically bury their fear deep down. In Ep. I, everyone remembers Yoda's "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering" speech. In Ep. II, Anakin talks about having dreams of something bad happening to his mother, at which point Obi Wan tells him that dreams pass in time and to not let his fears get the better in him.

But in the Original movies, Yoda seems to have learned his lesson with Luke. He's not telling him to bury his feelings deep down. When Luke proudly states that he isn't afraid, Yoda tells him point blank that "he will be afraid."

It's as if Yoda and the Jedi realized their mistake of not letting the Jedi acknowledge their own emotions. Yoda and Obi Wan realized that by a Jedi suppressing their emotions, they are making themselves more susceptible to an eventual fall to the dark side.

We all remember the many times in the Original movies where Vader is trying to get Luke to give into his feelings of anger and fear. The dark side operates on someone giving themself over completely to their emotions. And that's why the Jedi were almost wiped out. Instead of acknowledging this, they chose to not tell their Jedi about fear. And they told themselves to just bury their feelings deep down.

In light of the new movies, the Jedi seem to have learned their lesson. Obi Wan and Yoda train Luke accordingly. They pretty much just come out and tell him all the screwed up stuff that is getting ready to happen. They tell him that he will be afraid. They let Luke go into the Dabobah cave and face his fears. In light of the new movies, the Dagobah scene has REALLY taken on a new light with me.

We also had a debate as to why Yoda didn't tell Luke as he was leaving Dagobah about Vader being Luke's father.

I tend to think that it ties directly into what I was talking about above. Yoda hit it right on the head when he talked of Luke being "reckless." Luke was going to go to Bespin regardless of what Yoda or Ben said. No matter how much they told him, he was determined to leave. That's why the only advice he could have been told was to "mind what he has learned" and to "remember his failure at the cave." The only advice that Yoda could have given Luke was to be mindful of all that he has learned. If he gives into his emotions, he'd follow the same path as his father.

Whether or not Luke knows about Vader being his father is almost inconsequential. What matters the most is that Luke rushed to face Darth Vader before his training was finished. If Luke had been a fully trained Jedi, someone who was able to control any situation no matter what's thrown at him, then he would have been able to handle the burden of being told that Darth Vader is your father.

any thoughts?

matt out