Were Luke and Leia twins all along?
On my new Star Wars-inspired series of posts, I've come up with a new interesting question: do you think Lucas always intended Luke and Leia to be twin siblings?
All the while I thought no, that Lucas had made stuff up as he went along but, just being the egomaniacal guy he is, later had sworn up and down how he's had the story written up along. (Granted, some years ago, way before the new prequel trilogy came out, I had seen some drafts of "Star Wars," and I do remember he mentioned "padawaan" and "Mace Windu," perhaps not as they were eventually used in the prequels, but he definitely had some ideas written down that he used in the prequels).
Anyway, I was watching just the end of "Empire Strikes Back," and I definitely did see some elements that led me to believe that perhaps Lucas was, at least in this instance, not being a pompous blowhard. For instance, when Luke jumps after his battle with Darth Vader and is hanging from that antenna below Bespin, he calls out to Leia and she "hears" him sort of telepathically, very "twin-like." Plus, in the very last scene, the way Luke puts his arm around Leia is very tender and brother-like, not romantic in the least.
Whether he really had this all planned out all the way from "A New Hope," however, that I don't know. Having a sister myself, there are just too many romantic overtones and kisses between them to make Lucas a very sick fuck if he really did intend Luke and Leia to be brother and sister in the end. My one word to you, Mr. Lucas, from "brother" to "artiste," is: "Ewww."
So, what's your take on this? How much did Lucas know, and when did he know it? Let me hear it! :-)
All the while I thought no, that Lucas had made stuff up as he went along but, just being the egomaniacal guy he is, later had sworn up and down how he's had the story written up along. (Granted, some years ago, way before the new prequel trilogy came out, I had seen some drafts of "Star Wars," and I do remember he mentioned "padawaan" and "Mace Windu," perhaps not as they were eventually used in the prequels, but he definitely had some ideas written down that he used in the prequels).
Anyway, I was watching just the end of "Empire Strikes Back," and I definitely did see some elements that led me to believe that perhaps Lucas was, at least in this instance, not being a pompous blowhard. For instance, when Luke jumps after his battle with Darth Vader and is hanging from that antenna below Bespin, he calls out to Leia and she "hears" him sort of telepathically, very "twin-like." Plus, in the very last scene, the way Luke puts his arm around Leia is very tender and brother-like, not romantic in the least.
Whether he really had this all planned out all the way from "A New Hope," however, that I don't know. Having a sister myself, there are just too many romantic overtones and kisses between them to make Lucas a very sick fuck if he really did intend Luke and Leia to be brother and sister in the end. My one word to you, Mr. Lucas, from "brother" to "artiste," is: "Ewww."
So, what's your take on this? How much did Lucas know, and when did he know it? Let me hear it! :-)
posted by El Rata | 9:02 AM
3 Comments:
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Very interesting question my friend, and one that we may never know the answer to, since we cannot take Mr.Lucas for his word, being the pathological liar he is.
First of all, I think whatever kisses and hugs Luke and Leia gave each other are irrelevant to the discussion. If you had been separated from your very hot twin sister, and you met her 18 years later without any idea of who she was, given the opportunity you would hug her, kiss her and fuck her. Period. End of discussion. This is a fact, so you could succesfully argue that Lucas just had the characters behaving as they would on the real world. You could even argue he did it to throw us off and surprise us. I don't think that makes him a sick psycho.
Did he know in Star Wars? If he did, he gave us absolutely no hints about it there. He definitely knew about it in Empire Strikes Back, not only because of the Bespin scene you described, but the conversation between Yoda and ObiWan when Luke leaves prematurely to Bespin.
ObiWan -"That boy is our last hope."
Yoda- "No. There is another."
It is pretty clear to me he's talking about Leia. That combined with the telepathic link between them makes pretty clear that he knew in Empire.
However, did he know all along? I do not know. Lucas has proven to be full of shit before, so I cannot take his word for it. I think he did know about Vader, and if he did, it is reasonable to assume he knew about about Leia too, but I think it is more probable that he came up with it when he was writing Empire Strikes Back.
If anybody has some piece of information that can shed some light into the subject, please share it with us.
César, you make some good points, but I think you're giving Lucas' writing skills WAY too much credit! I'm not ready to believe he was SO cunning as to make the characters he was eventually going to declare brother and sister seem to be in a love triangle just to "throw us off." I think at the beginning he really didn't know, so there was no harm in having the silly Han-Luke-Leia love triangle.
While it's true that "in real life" twins growing up separately could conceivably meet and fall in love (in true Greek tragedy fashion), I think it's highly unlikely that Lucas chose to do so consciously simply because "it could happen in real life" or to "throw us off the scent." Remember, this movie is a work of fiction: why would he knowingly introduce eventually incestuous acts into his PG movie, when it's just as easy to avoid them altogether?
Regarding when he knew about Vader being Luke's father, that might be harder to ascertain, but I would venture a guess that he didn't know at the beginning, given Obi-Wan's famous "Darth Vader killed your father" speech. When he explained it away in "Return of the Jedi," his explanation always seemed to be pretty overwrought to me, and it seemed like Lucas was trying to get out of the corner he had painted himself into in "A New Hope."
On the other hand, "vader" is the Dutch word for "father"... I don't think Lucas' grasp of Dutch is all that, but it's still an interesting point (and a very fortuitous coincidence, if it is that)!
Again, any other viewpoints are welcome. :-)
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