Star Wars Ruminations: Religion & Morals

Is the Force a religion? The short answer is, yes. It is even referred to as such by several people in Episode IV, and often (though never in further installments). It seems to be derived from Zen Buddhism, as in this description by Obi-Wan Kenobi (the first time that the Force is mentioned in the trilogy): "The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together."

In other words, the Force is life itself, and the ability to commune deeply with the life around you. It is a way to manipulate and control the energy field in a seemingly supernatural way. Implied is the idea that, even though a Jedi commands it, anyone who wishes to study this power can learn to control it (or achieve Zen enlightenment). Beautiful, simple, direct.

But this religion is also a dead one, or at least commonly thought to be dead. When Darth Vader speaks at the council gathering on the Death Star, one official mentions his "sad devotion to that ancient religion," but the Force is clearly very potent. Vader chokes people to death with the wave of his hand. But an inconsistency is drawn between Obi-Wan’s use of mind control at Mos Eisley spaceport on Tattooine, and Darth Vader’s interrogation of Princess Leia.

One of the most famous scenes in Episode IV is Obi-Wan convincing a storm trooper "these aren’t the ‘droids you’re looking for" with a wave of his hand. Mind control is very possible with the Force. But Vader uses a robot with some kind of truth serum (he calls it a mind probe) to interrogate Leia. Why? Surely he possesses the same powers of mind control. With a wave of his hand, Vader can get her to reveal the location of the stolen data tapes, dispatch storm troopers to pick them up, hand them over to the Emperor and be in his undies before SportsCenter comes on. Presumably, the Emperor himself has these powers – why go through a costly civil war and the lengthy process of taking the Republic, when he could simply wave his hand and extract oaths of fealty? It doesn’t make sense.

Neither does building an entire space station to destroy entire planets. Can’t this be accomplished through the Force?

Or, as Randall pointed out on an episode of Clerks: The Animated Series, when a lightsaber extends, how does it know when to stop?

I will not be giving anything away to reveal that Leia is Vader’s daughter, though neither of them knows it yet. If this is true, and the Skywalker family is so strong in the force, why can’t either of them sense the truth? Leia, it is mentioned, is strong enough to resist the mind probe, but why can’t they recognize each other? She spends the bulk of the picture in his company. Vader only needs a moment with Luke to realize that the farm boy is his long-lost son.

The Force also allows people to see into the future, if they can. Obi-Wan Kenobi, for example, leaves Luke in the Death Star to turn off the tractor beam and enable escape, and tells him, "Your destiny lies along a different path than mine." Vader and Obi-Wan are able to feel the presence of one another on the Death Star, and they each know that it will lead to a conflict. Vader actively seeks it out, in fact, telling Tarkin not to send men to find Kenobi; "I must face him alone." But when they fight, Obi-Wan warns Vader "You cannot win… If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

Why couldn’t Vader imagine it? They’re both an equal level of Jedi (and, if anything, Vader seems more powerful). Vader does strike Obi-Wan down, and the old man dematerializes, which seems to come as a surprise to Vader. Luke will not only hear Obi-Wan’s voice at times, but will see him in a ghostly form and converse with him, as though, through death, Obi-Wan has evolved into another kind of creature, or become one with the Force. This is only marginally explained through Yoda.

Yoda is a great creation of character, cryptic liar though he is (see below). He warns us to beware of the Dark Side of the Force. In Episodes V and VI, he says, "Anger, fear, aggression; the Dark Side of the Force are they… once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

Yoda also fleshes out the concept of the Force more eloquently than Obi-Wan did: "…My ally is the Force; and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you, here, between you, me, the tree, the rock. Everywhere. Yes, even between the land and the ship."

Luke’s X-Wing fighter has fallen into the mud, and Yoda misses a real teaching opportunity here. He has been quick to tell Luke that the Dark Side comes to easily, but then Yoda picks the ship out of the mud for him, rather than making Luke do it. What he should do is pick the ship up to show Luke the possibility, hold it in the air for a moment, and then drop it again. When Luke can take the ship out himself, then we’ll see that some of that Jedi training is getting through.

When Luke hies over to Bespin to save his friends from Vader, the real test comes, and he passes this one. He failed three times on Dagobah: the first time is when he meets Yoda, and casually judges him by his appearance; the second is in the cave, when Luke takes in "only what you bring with you" – his worst fear, that he will become like Vader; and the third is his failure to believe that he has the power to pull his ship out of the mud. I like all of this; failing a test is just as important as passing one, it shows you what part of your learning you need to do better at, and where your faults can be improved. It makes Luke ring true as a character; he’s flawed, but he’s trying to do better.

When it truly counts, he passes the next by failing to turn to Vader’s will. Darth Vader fills the confrontation on Bespin with tantalizing clues about the Force that are never really answered – "Release your anger; only your hatred can destroy me." We are never told exactly what will happen to him if he does. Will he become Vader? Would Vader want this to happen at the cost of his own life?

Luke passes the test by not turning to evil, even when he loses his own hand. Vader tempts Luke with his desire to help people: "You do not realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. Together we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy."

At what cost, one wonders? Presumably, Luke would become Vader’s right-hand man, just as evil and destructive as Vader. He is smart to tempt Luke with reason, even though Vader could only bring order to the galaxy by crushing it.

It is when Vader reveals his true identity, Luke’s father, that Luke stops resisting the dark lord. Vader tempts Luke again, this time with his missing paternal bond, and that old stand-by, power: "You can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together we will rule the galaxy as father and son."

Luke chooses to die rather than live as the son of Vader; he is saved, of course, to recover, but perhaps he has as many questions as I do. What is this destiny everyone keeps referring to? How can Vader betray the Emperor? Is this why Yoda tried to stop Luke, and why did Obi-Wan lie about his father? Why, indeed.

After making such a big deal about Luke rushing off with incomplete training, when Luke returns in Episode VI Yoda tells him that he has nothing more to learn. He has to face Vader; "Only then, a Jedi will you be." Was this yet another lie? A trick to make Luke stay and not face Vader so early? Yoda’s cryptic parting message is typical; only now, long after Luke needed answers, does he get them: "Do not underestimate the power of the Emperor, or suffer your father’s fate you will. Luke, when gone am I, the last of the Jedi you will be. The Force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned. There is another Skywalker."

Yoda dissolves, as Obi-Wan did two episodes ago, which makes one wonder if he truly died or not. He says he will become "one with the Force," which is another interesting clue that is never explained. The other Skywalker, of course, is Leia Organa, though even Darth Vader couldn’t sense it. Obi-Wan steps out of the shadows once again to confirm it himself, and explains his lies (and why Lucas can only resolve a complex love triangle with this kind of device). Leia is Luke’s twin, you see, and now she is in danger, too.

When Luke returns to the Rebel Alliance and volunteers to join Han Solo on a mission to Endor, he senses Vader’s presence. Vader senses him, too (but not his daughter), and goes to Endor to wait. Here, their confrontation becomes interesting. Vader cannot disobey the Emperor (suddenly, I might add – he did want to betray him earlier), but he wants to accept Luke as his son. Luke has lost his first lightsaber, and constructed a second. Why was Anakin’s lightsaber left behind in the first place? So Vader could get a new, red-bladed, "evil" style of sword?

Questions of all kinds about the nature of the Force remain, even after the conclusion (hey, folks, I don’t have answers, so I’m doing the best I can.)

Those who accuse George Lucas of drawing a black and white picture where all people are only good or evil don’t mention the conflicted nature of Darth Vader. He is, we discover, the father of Luke Skywalker, formerly named Anakin Skywalker. His title, Darth (which is, we discover in Episode I, a title), seems to be short for "Dark Lord of the Sith", but also a simple skewing of the word "dark". In fact, Lucas once went as far to mention that "Darth Vader" was simply meant to recall "Dark Father" (though no one I have seen has pointed out that the German dunkel means "dark" and Vater means "father" – Dunkelvater would be a literal translation; this is the one point where a linguistic scheme seems to have been thought of).

Interestingly, Darth Vader is totally subservient. He is not in command of the Empire, the Emperor is. Though he is the Emperor’s servant, and therefore carries a tremendous balance of power, we see Grand Moff Tarkin order him around in Episode IV.

Vader is also prone to mistakes. He is unable to recognize Princess Leia as his daughter on two separate occasions in two separate movies. Lucas seems to be using the biblical idea that evil can never see its own mistakes, nor can it adequately defend against good, because it is so wrapped up in itself that it can not imagine what it would be like to be good. Like Sauron, Vader is so wrapped up in evil that he can’t see what is going on in front of him.

In Episode V, Darth Vader becomes even more driven. He is now only looking for Luke Skywalker, and if he happens to catch the Rebel Alliance along the way, that’s great. He’s killing his own men right and left in order to find Luke, but how far is unrealistic?

Personally, I would say that pushing a small fleet of large Star Destroyers into an asteroid field to chase a tiny ship with some of Luke’s friends onboard qualifies. Why would Vader be so reckless in his planning? Why doesn’t he just trust that the Force will place Skywalker in his hands soon enough, as the Emperor tells him? Vader is letting personal vendetta cloud his judgment, which is a mistake he earlier didn’t seem inclined to make (although this is the same man who was taken by surprise in Episode IV’s dogfight, when a ship the Empire was tracking all along overtakes Vader’s Force sensitivity and knocks him away from the action).

The Emperor displays great foolishness when he tells Vader that Luke is powerful enough to destroy them both, and then allows Vader to attempt to turn him to the Dark Side. It is obvious that Vader is not as powerful as the Emperor, but if Luke were more powerful, why would the Emperor allow that kind of competition to exist? (Of course, the Emperor’s community with the Force doesn’t even allow him to see that there are two Jedi that escaped his death squads.) This is only marginally answered (cryptically, of course) in Episode VI.

Interestingly, Vader honors one deal with someone else in the course of the films (and this guy doesn’t even honor the Emperor, as we will see). The deal with Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who will be given Han Solo’s body to take to Jabba the Hutt. The fact that Vader would even use bounty hunters seems to go against his position as a sort of Imperial defender of the faith. Why choose this deal to honor? Why not use Boba Fett to bring Jabba’s crime organization under his control? Once again, why is the Empire allowing a criminal ring it obviously knows about to exist, without either crushing it or absorbing it to gain illegal funds (which no Empire is above, though I wonder again what the money is for). Once again, political thinking seems to be beyond George Lucas’s abilities.

"Oft evil will shall evil mar," says Theoden in The Lord of the Rings, and Lucas seems to be setting up something along those lines. When Darth Vader admits to Luke that they are father and son, he also tempts Luke with the fact that he is powerful enough to kill the Emperor. Is the Emperor, too, so wrapped up in his own evil that he cannot feel the lust for power and the coming betrayal in Vader’s heart? Does he stupidly assume that all of his men are blindingly loyal? Of course he does, because no one in the galaxy seems to have a free will of his or her own. Who wouldn’t love being evil? Why bother to check loyalties in the hearts of ordinary people, who often act on whims?

But Darth Vader has suddenly become a wild card. He loses his prize and will have to face the Emperor; surprisingly, he allows the failure of his men to stand, not killing Admiral Piett as the admiral expects (and rightly so; this evil cyborg that Lucas wants us to feel sorry for in the end has stupidly murdered several of his underlings in this episode).

In the end, of course, none of this is the fault of Darth Vader. Not really. Even though he is portrayed as the source of all evil in the galaxy, he’s really a puppet, and the Emperor is pulling the strings.

Anything that happens in Episode VI that is interesting revolves around this. The Emperor finally appears, at a new Death Star, to guide Vader’s confrontation with Luke. He knows that Luke will seek Vader out, "and when he does you must bring him before me… Only together can we turn him to the Dark Side of the Force."

The hole in the Emperor’s planning becomes clear to the audience when Darth Vader asks to go to Endor because he has sensed Luke’s presence there. "My son is with them," he says, referring to Luke as his son to another person for the first time. "I have sensed him."

"Strange that I have not," the Emperor admits (showing his flaws to an underling, which is never a good thing to do). "I wonder if your feelings on this matter are clear." This is another stray line of dialogue that opens up questions. Is Vader somehow able to hide Luke from the Emperor? This would go a long way towards answering his own inability to sense Leia as his daughter the several times they are together.

When Luke turns himself in to Vader on Endor, the confrontation is tense and laced with paternal overtones. Luke has accepted that Vader is his father, but hopes he can save him. Luke has, in a way, started down the road to the Dark Side. Like his father, he dresses all in black, and he already has one cybernetic attachment. His desire to help people has finally manifested itself towards one of the chief evils of the galaxy, which is also his father. Luke may feel it calling him; he is the Scion of the Dark Side.

When Luke tells Vader that he can feel conflict inside the dark one, Vader says, "It is too late for me." He makes several statements implying that he is more of a slave to the Dark Side than a willing disciple (even if he is a Sith Lord). The stage is now set for the final act.

But some things in this trilogy smell rotten. Why is there so much lying going on? Luke is lied to right off the bat when he is told that his father died. He’s lied to again when he asks his Uncle Owen about Obi-Wan Kenobi, and his uncle calls him "just a crazy old man." Obviously, Owen knows better.

Obi-Wan is, of course, the biggest liar of them all. He talks in a manner that implies that he has been keeping an eye on Luke for some time. Obi-Wan is vitally important to the saga, but he lies right off the bat to Luke when he looks at Artoo Detoo and says, "I don’t seem to remember ever owning a ‘droid." So we see someone who casually lies.

The lie that Obi-Wan tells Luke drives the whole trilogy, however, and this is where I get hung up. Kenobi tells Luke that, "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi. He betrayed and murdered your father."

Yoda seems to be keeping an eye on Luke as well. He knew Annakin, of course ("Powerful Jedi he was"), but doubts Luke’s ability to train as a Jedi. "Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing… You are reckless." But if Luke is so damn powerful, why not train him? What is the alternative: send him out into the world to be picked up by Vader and turned into a more powerful hammerer of worlds?

This culminates in Luke’s vision of the future; training on Dagobah, he sees Han and Leia being tortured by Imperial forces. Luke knows, before it happens, that Vader is going to use them to capture him; when this does happen, we see that Han is never even asked any questions, only tortured so that Luke will come to save him. What I will never understand is Yoda trying to talk Luke out of going; Obi-Wan even backs his old master up, as though Luke’s loyalty and concern for his friends and his sense of responsibility make him a bad guy, instead of a hero. I understand that Luke may be vulnerable without the completion of his training, but his sense of responsibility can’t be questioned. He knows that Vader is only trying to get to him – if he can help, he’d better do it. Sacrificing friends seems like a high price to pay, even "if you honor what they fight for," as Yoda says.

But why are Yoda and Obi-Wan lying to Luke about his father? Did they think that the news would be easier for him to hear from Darth Vader? One of Luke’s reactions to this news is, "Ben, why didn’t you tell me?" Well, why didn’t he?

This question lingers until Episode VI, when Yoda is dying. Yoda confirms Luke’s parentage before his death, and Obi-Wan comes clean to Luke, even telling Luke he is right when he guesses the Leia is the "other Skywalker" Yoda mentioned. But I cannot forgive Obi-Wan for this one: "Your father was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."

This is his answer to Luke’s question, "Why didn’t you tell me the truth?", and it is a pathetic one. Obi-Wan and Yoda must have had a concerted reason for lying to Luke, an actual plan. Lucas never comes clean about it, though, so why should the Jedi?

This is all a shuck, a big disappointment, because it seems as though Obi-Wan and Yoda have been acting in their own interests, not Luke’s. The two of them made some mistake a long time ago with Annakin, and he became the most evil thing in the galaxy. So, they stole his kids and hid them, and waited for Luke to grow powerful. They didn’t tell him the significance of his lineage in the hopes that Luke wouldn’t say, as he does to Obi-Wan now, "I can’t kill my own father." See, they could never have gained redemption/revenge if Luke’s moral qualms were given their due. So, they lied to him so that they could brainwash him into killing his own father. Convenient. And chilling.

So now Vader and the Emperor face Luke in an observation room on the Death Star, where the Emperor can watch the final rebel defeat (but can’t sense the victory taking place on the forest moon – like Sauron and Hobbits, the Emperor has overlooked the Ewoks and the Empire is paying the price). Dramatically, these scenes are very interesting, but they don’t make much sense.

The Emperor taunts Luke constantly, almost begging Luke to kill him: "I can feel your anger. I am defenseless; take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete."

How? This is the one scene that can spell defeat or victory, which will make this entire storyline work. It all hinges on Luke’s choice. Fight or not? But there is a lot that is left unexplained and unclear.

What exactly is the Emperor’s ultimate goal? Why does he want Luke to kill him? Is there some way that the Emperor can overtake Luke, gain his youth and his power? This would make some sense out of the Emperor’s taunts.

Will he become one with the Force, as Obi-Wan did? Will that make him some kind of god, making him unstoppable? Where are Obi-Wan and Yoda, anyway? Why can’t they interfere? This is really their fight, after all – they tried desperately to turn Luke into a gun and point him at the Emperor by hiding the truth from him in the first place. Back in Episode IV, Obi-Wan told Vader, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." We have yet to see any proof of this boastful claim.

Luke finally does react, but Vader defends the Emperor. Or is he really saving Luke from becoming evil? The Emperor wants Luke to use his powers aggressively, to become evil. But when he tries to do it, Vader stops him. He continues to fight Luke, forcing him to defend himself, which, according to Yoda, is all a Jedi is really supposed to use it for, anyway. What would happen if Vader did kill Luke? Would the Emperor be deprived of his prize? Would Luke somehow win this battle by dying passively and not fighting?

I understand what Lucas is saying on a purely basic level, which is that it is bad to kill, even in self-defense. That you cannot kill someone without becoming them on some level. But the larger ramifications of his philosophy seem too morally ambiguous. How does anger make you evil? How can being angry at the crimes of Hitler make you want to join the S.S.? How can being angry at Osama bin Laden make you want to become an Islamic terrorist, rather than defend the women of Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Taliban? The Taliban pissed me off for years with their policies and restrictions; since they took power, in fact. Am I now going to join the fundamentalists who attacked America because my anger is making me evil?

For that matter, how does fear make you evil? It can cloud judgment, but it can also keep you sharp in a crisis. It can give you some sense of boundary. It forces you to reassess your abilities, and hone yourself. Negative feelings can be used to some good, after all. George Lucas’s central idea loses focus at this point in the trilogy.

Luke, after all, seems to be doing well with his anger here. He’s ridding the galaxy of an evil despot and his lapdog. Luke could easily kill the Emperor and Vader, and spend the rest of his life sorting it out for himself, having securely saved the galaxy from evil. And here is where Lucas loses me completely. Even to save millions upon millions of innocent people, it matters more to Lucas that Luke not use his anger to save them. What should he use, his love? Should Luke hug Vader and use the Force to heal him of his cyborg half? Should he cast the demons out of the Emperor and show him the light? It would seem to be the only way Luke can win this confrontation.

But Lucas cops out on this, too, and has someone else do it for him. In the end, Luke is not a villain or a hero, but a bystander. When Luke becomes angry at Vader’s threat that he will turn the daughter he didn’t know about until right goddamn now, he lashes out at Vader, taking his hand in selfish retribution. Luke is defending the galaxy, and his sister. But he stops short of killing Vader, and throws aside his weapon. And when the Emperor tries to kill him, Vader suddenly turns and saves his son from death, killing the Emperor himself, and paying for it with his life.

This is the only time in the trilogy where free will is truly exercised. Predictable as it is, a part of my spirit leaps when Vader makes the choice. The Emperor tells Luke at their first meeting that "everything that has transpired has been according to my design," which makes the entire matter of rebellion against the Empire meaningless. It all rests on Luke’s shoulders, and the unpredictable factor of Vader’s change of heart. And Vader does have a change of heart.

But Lucas takes it too far once again, asking us to forgive Vader for his crimes. But Vader, slave or no, has carried out the murder of the population of Earth a hundred times over. I can’t feel sorry for Vader, slayer of worlds. There is no blame placed on Vader, no culpability – he is not accountable for what he has done, because the Emperor enslaved him and made him do it. Doesn’t wash. Not with me.

In the end, we see that Anakin is somehow able to appear as himself again, celebrating with Obi-Wan and Yoda, when the three have done nothing worth celebrating. These three unleashed this evil on the galaxy, and these three did nothing to fix the problem once it was there, except through deceit and violence. Which message does George Lucas want us to embrace?

Lucas’s Star Wars universe is a depressing place to live in if you aren’t a demigod. There’s no TV, no books, and no entertainment industry. Heck, there isn’t even a means of disseminating information via a news program or newspaper. Your identity barely matters, and neither does what you want out of life. Like Homer’s spear-carriers in the Iliad, your job is not to speak up and change things; your job is to pick a side in a civil war between two members of the same genetically superior royal family.

However, you will not be responsible for your actions at all. As Darth Vader is really not to blame for all of those deaths, neither is Lando Calrissian to blame for betraying Han to the Empire. There is no culpability, because he was forced (Vader arrived before Han) and he was only acting to save his people. He can stand up for his friend after Vader is gone, but not before. As Han Solo says (sarcastically), "You’re a real hero."

You will also never die, not if you’re a good guy. After all, Han Solo foreshadows his own death when he looks at the Millennium Falcon and says, "I have a funny kind of feeling, like I’m never going to see her again." Dramatically, he has only been saved to do one last deed. But he is a good guy, so he won’t die. Only nameless extras die for their beliefs. Lando Calrissian, after he is redeemed by saving Han from Jabba the Hutt, lives a long life, too, even when there has stopped being a dramatic need for him in the story.

We have seen in countless wars and crises how the individual can make the difference between defeat and victory, between life and death. Whether anger drove them to survive or not, we remember them as heroes. We marvel at the feats the individual can accomplish if he tries. George Lucas does not seem to have any faith in the individual at all; he longs for despotism, either for good or for evil. What will the Alliance do now? The Republic seems to have suffered from hearing too many people’s opinions. The Empire only failed for lack of imagination. Who will rule now that the forces of good have killed enough people to call it a victory? And will Luke serve them as another Vader?