Closure and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

[I've updated this, but I wrote the bulk of it almost three years ago. I'm already resorting to digging up old stuff to keep the blog going...]

I bought the Star Wars Trilogy boxed set when it was finally offered a few months ago. Since then I've watched all five movies multiple times in preparation for Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

I have to say, Phantom Menace doesn't seem so shitty when taken as a companion to Attack of the Clones, but it can't stand on its own. But the original trilogy does seem a bit creepy now because of the events of Episode II.

The quintet is Anakin's story, now, not Luke's. Also, because of the events of Episodes I and II, things that happened or were said in the other movies don't make sense. I don't see how they're going to resolve most of these questions, and frankly, George Lucas hasn't shown me that he's able to bring closure to everything, or even desires to. We're going to see the movie anyway, right?

But still the questions remain.

In Episode IV: A New Hope, Owen and Beru aren't surprised to see Threepio and Artoo, though those droids belonged to Anakin's mom and Padme, respectively. You could say that's like recognizing a generic TV as your old one, but these droids have distinctive personalities. Especially Threepio.

In ANH, Luke knows who Obi Wan is, but he knows him by the name “Ben.” Is the last name Kenobi so common that Obi Wan wouldn't change his whole name to hide his identity?

When Luke tells Owen that Artoo claims to belong to "someone named Obi Wan Kenobi,” Owen warns him to stay away from "that old wizard." Is it common knowledge that Ben has powers of some kind? If not, why doesn't Luke ask him what he means by "wizard"?

Luke doesn't seem terribly afraid of the Tusken Raiders when he goes out looking for Artoo, but in Episode II the moisture farmers view them with the same fear that white settlers in the Old West had of Indians. Luke could not have known that Tuskens murdered his grandmother.

By the way, did Luke know his father and grandmother were slaves? Did slavery still exist on Tatooine when Luke was growing up? You know, it wouldn't surprise me if Anakin found a way to abolish slavery on Tatooine, even after he turned to the Dark Side.

Later In Episode IV when Luke is talking to Obi Wan he doesn't ask, "What's a Jedi?" when Obi Wan tells him his father was one, but Ben has to explain to him what the Force is. Could knowledge of the Force -- even a general definition of it -- have been stamped out in one generation, but knowledge of the Jedi was not erased? They go hand in hand.

Ben tells Luke that he tried to give him his father's lightsaber, but Owen prevented him. Is that a lie? Owen couldn't have stopped him. Ben also tells Luke that his father joined him to fight in the Clone Wars -- which he describes as "a damned fool idealistic crusade" -- instead of staying to run the moisture farm. Another lie? It seems so.

How was fighting battle droids idealistic? Actually, he probably meant that preserving the Republic was idealistic.

In Episode I we found out that Anakin was the only human to have ever won a pod race. Wouldn't people have talked about that for years? Did Luke know about that? Maybe people didn't give a shit about pod races anymore by the time Luke came along. Maybe they were abolished.

Anakin butchers a Tusken Raider village in Episode II. Was that kept secret from the rest of the moisture farmer community? How? Wouldn't the raids have abruptly stopped? Or wouldn't the Tuskens have retaliated?

Many times in Episodes IV and V Luke is described as being "angry" by Ben and Yoda. Huh? He never seems angry to me. He seems mostly scared and lonely when he's showing any emotion at all. Maybe a little frustrated. He's nothing like Anakin. In Clones, you can see that Anakin is arrogant (in the bar scene when he’s chasing the bounty hunter he basically tells the patrons to fuck off and mind their business).

Anakin disrespects Obi Wan both to his face (tells Obi Wan in front of Padme that finding the assassins is what he, Anakin, should be doing) and behind his back (“he's holding me back, he's jealous of me,” etc.). Luke has a mild argument with Han early on in ANH with regards to his piloting skills, but that type of behavior never resurfaces.

One thing father and son do have in common is that they have a strange lack of curiosity about their own parentage. Does Anakin really believe he has no father? Are you fucking kidding me? What child raised by a single parent doesn't wonder about the absent parent? What was Luke told about his mom, if anything? I've always hated how the fact that Leia was raised by a stepmom never came up until a brief Luke and Leia scene near the end of ROTJ. It was clearly an afterthought. What bullshit.

I think Anakin's father is really Palpatine, by the way. But I don't think he had a relationship with Shmi.

In ROTJ, Ben tells Luke that he hid Anakin's kids to protect them from the Emperor. Hey, everyone has said this, but I'll say it again -- How stupid a hiding place is Tatooine? And why openly use the name "Skywalker" for the boy? How the hell are they going to explain that one?

"Luke Lars" is a shitty name, though. LOL.

In TESB, Yoda admits to have been monitoring Luke for years from light-years away, yet in Clones, he can't sense Darth Sidius literally standing in front of him. So how good is he?

The biggest question I have is, what is the Emperor's motivation?