Empire Strikes Back

[Madner Kami]

The trapping of dividing the Force into light and dark is the simple fact, that it implies an existance of a middle between the two. If I recall right, you're an advocate of "The Force in Balance is the Light Side", implying that the Light is naturally achieved. This is, however, contradicted by the mere existance of the "Dark Side" and the simple fact, that the emotional balance needed to achieve the Light necessitates an effort on the end of the "user", implying that there's a natural state in between.

The original trilogy allows for the existance of both views, even though they are mutually exclusive. The movies reach for a "Balance in Light" explanation, but sow more than enough evidence that neither Light nor Dark are balanced. Later attempts to rectify that, only emphasize the base problem, as "Balance in Light" is contradicted by reality and literally everyone's experience with real life and thus permeates the story via the writers being human beings.

[GandALF]

No what I mean is the light side brings balance. You can't get rid of the dark side, you can't stop feeling fear, but when a Jedi is put under pressure and fear naturally arises they have to call on their light side to balance it out and maintain self-control. It's equanimity not indifference.

Fear(dark) + bravery (light) = courage (balance)

It's similar to stoicism:

[Jonathan101]

Chucks comments about Lando bugged me.

He's fallen into the same trap that so many others did- he thinks Lando sacrificed his friend to save his city only to realise he had done wrong at the eleventh hour.

Even as a kid, I never saw it that way- when Lando says "I had no choice", he means "I HAD NO CHOICE!".

His options were not "betray his friend" or "resist an evil authoritarian regime".

It was "betray his friend" or "resist an evil authoritarian regime...and fail miserably, get thrown in jail or executed on the spot, and be helpless to stop them taking Han and the others off anyway". And do bare in mind he didn't exactly have much time to think his options through either- when a 7-foot space cyborg-wizard and a squadron of Stormtroopers show up out of nowhere, a Super Star Destroyer in orbit, and tells you that you can co-operate or lose your whole city and he wants an answer immediately...you don't really have time to work out an exit plan. Especially when Vaders entire M.O. is "scare the sh8t out of people so much that they give me what I want", and he's really, really good at it.

Giving Vader the middle finger from the get go would have done nothing; agreeing to work with him and trying to salvage some sort of way out of it was the only smart thing to do- by temporarily working with Vader, he ultimately found himself in a position to save Leia, Chewie and the rest as well as alert the denizens of Cloud City (whose wellbeing he is responsible for) to the coming of the Empire. Had he not done this, Vader could just have had an imperial officer disguise himself as a cloud city official and nab them that way, or used some other means.

Standing up to Vader on principle / reflex would not have been the right thing to do- it would have been stupid and achieved nothing. Yes, he keeps complain about the "deal" he made with Vader, but it is blatantly obvious that Vader is the one who forced him to take the deal in the first place; it was a courtesy that he was offered it at all, because if Vader had opted to take his city from the get-go he could have done so; the only reason he didn't was that temporarily working with Lando was a bit more convenient, but that doesn't mean he needed Landos help for his plan to succeed at all.

Lando is a con-man with his back against the wall- he was waiting for an opportunity and playing to his strengths in a bad situation, hoping to find SOME way out of it, which he ultimately did.

[MyUserName]

Chucks comments about Lando bugged me.

He's fallen into the same trap that so many others did- he thinks Lando sacrificed his friend to save his city only to realise he had done wrong at the eleventh hour.

Even as a kid, I never saw it that way- when Lando says "I had no choice", he means "I HAD NO CHOICE!".

His options were not "betray his friend" or "resist an evil authoritarian regime".

It was "betray his friend" or "resist an evil authoritarian regime...and fail miserably, get thrown in jail or executed on the spot, and be helpless to stop them taking Han and the others off anyway". And do bare in mind he didn't exactly have much time to think his options through either- when a 7-foot space cyborg-wizard and a squadron of Stormtroopers show up out of nowhere, a Super Star Destroyer in orbit, and tells you that you can co-operate or lose your whole city and he wants an answer immediately...you don't really have time to work out an exit plan. Especially when Vaders entire M.O. is "scare the sh8t out of people so much that they give me what I want", and he's really, really good at it.

Giving Vader the middle finger from the get go would have done nothing; agreeing to work with him and trying to salvage some sort of way out of it was the only smart thing to do- by temporarily working with Vader, he ultimately found himself in a position to save Leia, Chewie and the rest as well as alert the denizens of Cloud City (whose wellbeing he is responsible for) to the coming of the Empire. Had he not done this, Vader could just have had an imperial officer disguise himself as a cloud city official and nab them that way, or used some other means.

Standing up to Vader on principle / reflex would not have been the right thing to do- it would have been stupid and achieved nothing. Yes, he keeps complain about the "deal" he made with Vader, but it is blatantly obvious that Vader is the one who forced him to take the deal in the first place; it was a courtesy that he was offered it at all, because if Vader had opted to take his city from the get-go he could have done so; the only reason he didn't was that temporarily working with Lando was a bit more convenient, but that doesn't mean he needed Landos help for his plan to succeed at all.

Lando is a con-man with his back against the wall- he was waiting for an opportunity and playing to his strengths in a bad situation, hoping to find SOME way out of it, which he ultimately did.

I see what your saying, and I think Chuck see's it as well, but the bottom line with Lando is regardless of the gun (lightsaber/Turbolaser) held to his head, and the heads of the people in his city, he still opted to collaborate and make the best out of a bad situation. Sure, it doesn't make him evil, or weak, but it did compromise his friends.

Lando knew when Vader gave him the "Perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly" line that he was screwed coming or going, and setup the trap to salvage the situation and get as many people out as he could. Personally, I would have liked to see a scene of the exodus from Cloud city and ships being shot down by Tie Fighters, to reinforce how brutal Vader and the Empire could be. It would also have reinforced Lando's choice to go rebel.

[Jonathan101]

I see what your saying, and I think Chuck see's it as well, but the bottom line with Lando is regardless of the gun (lightsaber/Turbolaser) held to his head, and the heads of the people in his city, he still opted to collaborate and make the best out of a bad situation. Sure, it doesn't make him evil, or weak, but it did compromise his friends.

Lando knew when Vader gave him the "Perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly" line that he was screwed coming or going, and setup the trap to salvage the situation and get as many people out as he could. Personally, I would have liked to see a scene of the exodus from Cloud city and ships being shot down by Tie Fighters, to reinforce how brutal Vader and the Empire could be. It would also have reinforced Lando's choice to go rebel.

Except that it DIDN'T compromise his friends. His friends were ALREADY compromised. Regardless of his co-operation or not, Vader WAS going to get his hands on them; it was just a question of how unpleasant their stay would be and how to get them out o it. Lando's "collaboration" (for lack of a better word) was what saved their lives.

I would argue that even before Vader asked if he thought he was being treated unfairly, Lando already knew he was screwed either way. All of his poking and prodding of Vader up to that point and beyond was less about trusting Vader to keep his word and more about trying to get as much out of him as possible without getting killed in the process- the fear in his eyes when Vader says that line is that he realised he was cutting it too close. Lando knows that Vader is feigning co-operation as much as Lando himself is, but as long as Vader does so he can still get SOMETHING out of him; the only question for Lando was how long would it take for Vader to drop the act.

Heck, even Billy Dee Williams HIMSELF got annoyed with people who didn't see that Lando literally had no other reasonable options other than to play along.

[AllanO]

The trapping of dividing the Force into light and dark is the simple fact, that it implies an existance of a middle between the two. If I recall right, you're an advocate of "The Force in Balance is the Light Side", implying that the Light is naturally achieved. This is, however, contradicted by the mere existance of the "Dark Side" and the simple fact, that the emotional balance needed to achieve the Light necessitates an effort on the end of the "user", implying that there's a natural state in between.

This is confusing parsing of the idea of balance. There is a sense in which balance is the default state when walking a tightrope (you are equally likely to be swaying left or right, so balance is the mean between those equally likely extreme), but it is actually a very difficult state to reach and narrowly constrained state. It may be the default state but it is not the most common or likely state you will be in. The quick and easy path when walking a tightrope is falling off the rope (you get to the ground real quick that way, so dramatic results). My experience of emotional balance in life is that it is indeed like walking a tightrope and difficult to maintain...

The portrayal of the danger of falling to the dark side in the original trilogy does seemed to me like the push and pull of different emotional forces pushing one (Luke or Vader etc.) off the straight and narrow path, not two different poles one where one is either on the road to one or the other (after all Yoda and Obi-wan warn Luke as much about rushing off to save his friends not just acting out of fear and anger). The advise of Yoda and Obi-Wan (and the Jedi order in general in the prequels) does seem to tend towards the complete suppression (or at least sublimation) of emotion (forget that Vader is your father, accept that your friends get tortured etc.) to make emotional balancing easier (a lot easier to walk a tightrope when there is no wind after all), but it seems this underestimates that balance can be achieved by balancing things like love with hate (Vader's love of his son against the hate that the Emperor has cultivated) that allows Luke to win the day by redeeming Vader in a way that Yoda and Obi-Wan (and the Emperor) could not foresee. I think the redemption of Vader suggests that it is emotional balance not the absence of emotion that is contrary to the dark side, but that was just my interpretation...

The light side still fits into that. The dark side is dangerous but not inherently evil, it's just base emotion and material desire. The Jedi use their rational, compassionate light side to balance out their irrational, base dark side. That's why fear is always the first step to falling because it's the basest emotion and impairs the self-control the light brings.

What I find generates a bit of friction about this idea is that the light side is apparently concerned with balance including balance between the light and the dark side of the force, so it goes beyond itself in a way that seems to violate a strict distinction of the two sides. I tend to think talk of the Light and Dark side suggests the idea that some emotions are light (love, compassion etc.) and others are dark (fear, anger, hatred etc.) sort of like the two Kirks in "The Enemy Within" but as you suggest there are different divisions under which one may construct the distinction between the two.

[KekistanisUnite]

It should be stated that the altered scene with Vader and Sidious is explained away in the new canon. In Marvel's Darth Vader, Vader encountered Luke shortly after the destruction of the first Death Star and proceeds to easily beat his ass and take his lightsaber away only to realize that that was his lightsaber he'd lost after Mustafar confused as to why Obi-Wan would give it to this boy. Afterwards he hires Boba Fett to get the boy's name and gets back eventually saying it was Skywalker. That's when Vader realizes he'd been lied to all those years about the circumstances of Padme's apparent death and she'd given birth to his son. After finding that out, he contacts the Emperor and declines to mention that fact and instead plans to capture and turn the boy so as to overthrow Darth Sidious. I happen to be a Star Wars canon junkie so I know these things.

[KekistanisUnite]

Most special edition changes don't pester me like many others are except some of the more extreme ones like the altered Jabba Palace scene in Return of the Jedi. The best changes are the more subtle ones like color correcting blaster bolts or lightsaber blades.

[MyUserName]

I see what your saying, and I think Chuck see's it as well, but the bottom line with Lando is regardless of the gun (lightsaber/Turbolaser) held to his head, and the heads of the people in his city, he still opted to collaborate and make the best out of a bad situation. Sure, it doesn't make him evil, or weak, but it did compromise his friends.

Lando knew when Vader gave him the "Perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly" line that he was screwed coming or going, and setup the trap to salvage the situation and get as many people out as he could. Personally, I would have liked to see a scene of the exodus from Cloud city and ships being shot down by Tie Fighters, to reinforce how brutal Vader and the Empire could be. It would also have reinforced Lando's choice to go rebel.

Except that it DIDN'T compromise his friends. His friends were ALREADY compromised. Regardless of his co-operation or not, Vader WAS going to get his hands on them; it was just a question of how unpleasant their stay would be and how to get them out o it. Lando's "collaboration" (for lack of a better word) was what saved their lives.

I would argue that even before Vader asked if he thought he was being treated unfairly, Lando already knew he was screwed either way. All of his poking and prodding of Vader up to that point and beyond was less about trusting Vader to keep his word and more about trying to get as much out of him as possible without getting killed in the process- the fear in his eyes when Vader says that line is that he realised he was cutting it too close. Lando knows that Vader is feigning co-operation as much as Lando himself is, but as long as Vader does so he can still get SOMETHING out of him; the only question for Lando was how long would it take for Vader to drop the act.

Heck, even Billy Dee Williams HIMSELF got annoyed with people who didn't see that Lando literally had no other reasonable options other than to play along.

One thing that the more deeper thinking Star Wars fans will often puzzle about, and it's also something I'm surprised Chuck didn't bring up, is just how much time passes in Empire Strikes Back. How long did Luke have to train to get to that level? How long were Han and Leila in Cloud city? and how long before the trap was sprung?

The reason this is so important is that Luke had obviously come very far in the physical applications of he force. In the novelization Luke comments to himself that thanks to Yoda's drilling him he's never been in better shape. That kind of training and conditioning would ideally take months of work. Yet, are we to believe that Leia would wait months before puzzling over threepios absence? Or that Vader would wait months before inviting them to Dinner?

So rounding it all down with best possible logic, it's a week at the very least (Luke is vaders son after all, it's no stretch to expect him to progress rapidly), no more than a month at most.

This is important because Lando could have pulled Han aside at any time during that period. He could spilled the beans on Vader blackmailing him right there on the landing platform, and worked with Han and Leila to come up with an evacuation plan for Hans team and his own people in Cloud City. But he didn't, and we can understand why, he wanted to save as many people as he could. He weighed the needs of the many against the needs of the few, and it was a choice that was going to dirty him coming or going. But the fact is, he didn't come clean, he chose his city over his friend. We can understand why, but we can also understand why he came across as a bit shady to Han and Leia.

Incidentally, I also wonder if the Solo movie is going to establish what Han did that may have caused Lando to possibly harbour a grudge. The old EU went there in the Han Solo trilogy of Novels, and yeah, Lando definitely had good reason to hold a grudge and consider throwing Han under the Vader bus. That bit of backstory also gives land a bit of grey since it gives another dimension to why he'd sell Han out, but ultimately decide to put his life on the line to save him back in ROTJ.

Additionally, Zahn also created an additional reason why Lando was angry at him for a while back in the Thrawn trilogy. In those books it's revealed that the falcon was a ship Lando had spent a years and thousands of credits customizing himself. When he lost to Han, it wasn't the falcon specifically he lost, but a credit chip good for any ship that Lando had on a used spaceship shop he was running. Lando thought that Han would go for one of the flashier and newer ships on the Lot, which would have appeared to be worth more, but Han had his eye one the falcon for a while, which was also on the lot at the time of the wager, and insisted Lando hand it over, which Lando VERY grudgingly agreed to honour the token.

So yeah, while they were friends, Han had a history of being a bit of a douche in his younger days and thinking he could always get away with it.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Re: the balance of the Force, I concur with the view that it's balance as in walking a tight rope or riding a bike rather than equal weights on a scale or some sort of "grey" middle ground. Things gets becomes a lot more obvious when you look at Yoda's big theme of self-control, which is inextricably tied to balance. The dark side is all about chaos and "giving in" to your passion without inhibition (which is interesting to consider in relation to Vader and his mechanical nature). The fate vs. choice thing relates as well- dark side users want control, while the Jedi are more interested in the natural order and the way things are "supposed" to happen.

Things get murkier when you consider the Force itself, given it's abstractness and more philosophical roots. Another factor that makes things more confusing and complicated is that Luke proves Obi Wan and Yoda wrong, at least in part. They were certainly right about the foolhardiness of charging straight into an ambush, but it was Luke's passion and love for his father that saved the day in the end (while successfully resisting the pull of the dark side).


Re: Lando, the ambiguity is part of the point. Lando is the old Han. No one, including Han himself, knows whether or not they can trust him. Whether he's self-serving or really had no choice, to me it isn't totally clear in TESB. I mean, it's clear he'd rather not sell out Han, but he isn't a committed rebel yet. I doubt that the RotJ version of the character would have made the same choices, so there is a low-key redemption arc there.