I’ve often wondered about what it would have been like to live in a pre-Empire Strikes Back world. To have seen the menace of Darth Vader and not known that he was Luke’s father. To have gone to the theatre and been thrown down a bottomless shaft myself when the secret was revealed.
As it is though, I’ve known about that father-son connection since I knew about Star Wars. When I was six I had my tonsils removed and my mom’s friend rented me a VCR and some videos to watch during my recovery. The only one I remember was Empire. I didn’t quite get who everyone was and what was going on but it was pretty hard to miss the fact that the big dude in black was the good guy’s dad, and the good guy didn’t seem too happy about it.
Now looking at little orphan boy Luke you can see how he’d idolized his dead father. He knew that his dad had been a great pilot and was trying to follow in his footsteps in the face of incomplete information. I suppose it’s something that us sons who’ve never known their dads think about sometimes. And we probably end up more like our dads than we would if they were around.
I mean, if my dad were somewhere other than the cemetery I’d be trying to distance myself from him in my effort to be an individual. The people saying I look just like him would be way more frustrating. I don’t have someone to look at as an example of what I’ll turn out like twenty some-odd years down the line. Hell, I’m older than my dad ever got to be. It’s often a lot easier to idealize someone who’s long gone and you don’t have any reality to fit your ideas to.
Finding out your idealized dad isn’t the whole picture is something that’s sort of shocking.
And when I say idealize I’m also including making some sort of monster out of him. That’s what Obi-Wan is doing in Return of the Jedi when he tries to get Luke to kill Vader. As always, people are more complex than ideal versions, good or bad. What Luke eventually ended up doing though was facing who his father was, painful as it may have been, and found the good in him along with the bad.
Sometimes I wish I had the chance to do that kind of thing but I don’t. I do have an awesome Mom who more than makes up for not having someone to kick and gouge in the mud and the blood and the beer.
