Manga ESB, #2 of 4: "Wars not make one great."

[cmdr_zoom]

Going to be gone for most of the day, so I'm making this post early.




Our heroes have managed to hold off the Imperial attack long enough to escape from their base on Hoth, but here their paths diverge: Luke informs Artoo that they aren't going to regroup with the others, but are going to the Dagobah system.

Meanwhile:


You can say that again, Han.



"You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake. Well, this could be it, sweetheart."
"I take it back."

In a dazzling display of piloting skill, Han does manage to evade both the asteroids and the pursuing fighters, and find refuge in a cave on one of the larger asteroids. The cave is "not entirely stable", however, and sometimes has tremors:



Meanwhile...
Luke has made a controlled crash landing on the swamp planet of Dagobah, and is taking stock of his surroundings and surviving equipment.




(What I find fascinating about how Toshiki Kudo chose to render this scene is the implication that Luke was mind-tricked right here. Reminds me of a fan joke from A New Hope, in which Ben's explanation that "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded" is blandly parroted by Luke, just like the stormtroopers.)

Luke explains to the strange green gnome that they're looking for a great warrior.




Funny little guy, isn't he?

Let's get back to Han and Leia, sharing a quiet moment in the midst of trying to put the Falcon back together:





They kiss. And then Threepio barges in on them, the big gold dummy. (He may be fluent in over six million forms of communication, but he has no sense of timing.)

As an aside, I always thought that Leia's last line here was a faint "Very nice..." Translation issue, maybe?

Back on Dagobah, Luke is losing patience with his quirky host... who says as much, and is answered by a familiar voice from thin air:



Yoda, ladies and gentlemen. This was quite a reveal once, second only to the big one still coming up.

While the others make a few unpleasant discoveries about the "cave" they're in, a skeptical Yoda begins Luke's training with a brisk run through the swamp while clinging to his back and lecturing him about the Force. Luke comes to a cave of his own, a hollow under an ancient tree, which makes him feel strangely cold, like death.




And here the manga frankly fails, IMO, to convey the creepiness of this scene in the movie. Luke ventures into the underworld and discovers his arch-enemy, his boogeyman... Darth Vader. Fighting a duel with him in nightmare slow-motion and finally striking him down, only to discover his own face under the death mask. He is his own worst enemy, and he has failed this test.



16 pages + cover from an 80+ page volume.

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

I always thought the lines in the movie went:

"I happen to like nice men."
"I'm nice men."
"Very nice..."

Leia starting to say "No you're not..." was from the ESB novelization.

[cmdr_zoom]

Ah, so I'm not alone (motto!).
That figures, that it'd be a novel vs. film difference.
Thanks.

[swingbound.livejournal.com]

Well, the movie has her saying "No you're not..." as well, but it's subdued enough that it could be heard as "Very nice..." if you're not listening very carefully.

[cmdr_zoom]

Huh. Well, guess I've been wrong all these years.

[ulf_boehnke]

That scribbled mad smile when he is about to fly into the asteroid belt looks damn funny.

[icon_uk]

Hmmm, whilst I love the Luke and Yoda scenes (And as noted elsewhere, Yoda is a VERY impressive Muppet, but it's Luke's reactions to him which make him seem alive) the problem is how long Yoda trains Luke for... Days... tops, unless the flight to Bespin took weeks.

The entirety of the Jedi teaching which Yoda imparts to Luke seems to be "Do, or do not, there is no try". Now either this is a magnificent piece of wisdom so rich with meaning and depth that it was enough to show Luke (already at least ten years older than anyone who has been trained a Jedi) everything he needed to know, in which case it does not speak well of Jedi training on Coruscant that it took so long to teach it to eager young minds (Or else a rather... pragmatic view of collecting school fees) or else it's marvellous bit of baloney which Luke would have found out for himself sooner or later.

[lonewolf23k]

Well, do keep in mind that Luke left Dagobah to save his friends long before Yoda said he'd be ready.

[icon_uk]

And yet it was enough for him to learn everything he ultimately needed to know. As well as, perhaps through self deception, proclaim himself a Jedi, (Though to be fair, Yoda does sort of say "Yeah right" when next they meet)

[lonewolf23k]

Well, he learns enough to face Vader and the Emperor in battle, at least. But after that, he does continue his training on his own, by tracking down other surviving Jedi and Jedi Holocrons.

[icon_uk]

And this is why the EU fails to interest me. OTHER surviving Jedi? Where were all those other Force empowered trained Jedi buggers all these years that the Rebellion could have USED THEIR HELP?

[cmdr_zoom]

unless the flight to Bespin took weeks.

Backup (very slow) hyperdrive, or even a system that was close enough to reach by sublight, so... yeah, that's what most people figure.

Luke's training was necessarily compressed - according to some, he was pretty much a Tykebomb, wound up and aimed at Vader - and he didn't even want to stay for all of what he did get before rushing off.

Consider also that he fails every test that we're actually shown. One hopes he did somewhat better off-screen...

[slim-summer.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the training so much but rather the consequences of it. I could understand it if George Lucas had shown Vader taking it easy on Luke in RotJ because he was his son and because of that Luke won but instead they make Luke out to be such a genius that (being very generous) 5 weeks of training >>>>> decades of Vader's (and every other Jedi's training.) There's being a genius and there's being plot shielded like crazy.

Although to be fair when I first saw the movies when I was a child, I didn't think of stuff like this so...it does work for children.

[icon_uk]

Nest I could come up with is that there were only two "lightside" Force user potentials by the time of RotJ; Leia, unaware of it, and Luke, who was theoretically channelling the power which might otherwise have been spread amongst hundreds of Jedi Knights and Masters...

[bj_l]

Well, Luke pretty much went into seclusion after ESB and trained himself for six months to a year solid. He has the huge force potential from his bloodline, as well.

It was stated a few times, in various places, the Vader's advantage in combat were his brain and strength since he had received his suit. If you can move fast enough, you could get him.

[icon_uk]

Yoda (watching the X-Wing leave) ="So screwed we are..."

[sianmink]

without their hyperdrive, the falcon's on very fast sublight. Taking relativistic time compression into account, days on the falcon=a month or two on dagobah.

[icon_uk]

Out of curiosity, and impressed by the creativity, does Star Wars ever make use of relativistic time?

[sianmink]

Not explicitly, as far as I know. Hyperdrive gets around these issues completely, so it just doesn't factor in very often.

[halialkers]

What gets me is Obi-Wan tells him "Go to the Dagobah system."

That's like asking "So how do I get to Paris?" on Mars and being told "Go to Afro-Eurasia."

[icon_uk]

Only one habitable planet in the system, and Ben and Yoda could probably have nudged Luke into landing in approximately the right place.

[sianmink]

It's on the navigation maps. Just ask Artoo to pull up the turn-by-turn directions for Dagobah and you're on your way.

[punishermax]

My favorite piece of Star Wars trivia, and one that shows how much of a fucking jackass Lucas is, is that when he was screened "Empire" for the first time he went on a shit fit about how it was horrible and destroyed his vision and WAH WAH WAH.

Years later he finally gets to release his full artistic vision and we get the fucking Prequels.

[mola_ram]

motto.
It's always fun to ask a die hard Lucas fanboy if he thinks that it was a coincidence that the best star wars movie of them all was the one that WASN'T directed by Lucas... ;)

[punishermax]

What is always so shocking to me is how unbelievably racist Episode I is. I mean, it's amazing how bad it is in the film. I mean everyone knows Jar Jar blows, but what about the Trade Federation leaders begin obvious stereotypes as well as Watto.

[mola_ram]

True. That said, I really dont think Lucas gave it a second thought about all the offensive and racial stereotypes, just as he didn't seem to have given things like acting, dialouge, story, characterdevelopment, plot progress/holes a second thought... :P

Not that it makes it better in any way, but I think it's another example of how far Lucas must have stuck had his head up in his own ass during the making of the prequels...

[cmdr_zoom]

I think he did it as part of an attempt to emulate the feel of the (also incredibly racist) movie serials of his youth. SW is really just Flash Gordon et al with better models and/or CGI instead of silver rocket ships on fishing line with sparklers for exhaust.

Consider this example of what might have been.

[icon_uk]

I don't recall Flash Gordon as being particularly racist though.Very Caucasian, I grant you, but not racist.

[cmdr_zoom]

... the arch villain is a Fu Manchu type. Named Ming.

[icon_uk]

"Ming" I'll give you (Though I'd counter it with Barin and Vultan as just meaningless alien names. Allura on the other hand... :) )

And whilst he had a pointy beard and a high collar, he didn't look remotely oriental to me in any incarnation I watched even as a young kid when the originals were shown on TV during school holidays.

We also had non-American (or naturalised American) Hans (or Alexis depending on which source is used) Zarkov, as the brains of Flash's group.

[mola_ram]

That was his intention. In a interview in either Empire or Total Film magazine (I have forgotten which one, but it came out around RotS) he was quoted saying (and this is from memory so bear with me); I don't think many people know how deep roots Star Wars has in the movies from the 30s. It's a very 30's film.
That said, the racial stereotypes of that era had very little actual screentime unless they were main villains, (like Emperor Ming)
Even clumsy sidekicks tended to be largely ignored except when it came to their 10 second comedy routine simply because the 10-30 minutes that a movie serial lasted had to be crammed with as much action, excitement and story drive as possible so that the audience felt that they got some value for their hard earned quarter.
But in the case of Phantom Menace I think it's safe to say that Lucas went way too far over the line.
Jar Jar's presence is a chaotic disruption to every scene that he is in, and Nute Gunray switch between covering in fear or being mindnumbingly dumb the entire movie, so it's really hard to just turn a blind eye to the characters.
That said, I dont think George Lucas himself is a racis. I think that it just didn't occur to him how offensive it would all look in the end.

Love the Youtube link btw. :D

I highly recommend redlettermedia's 6 part review of Phantom Menace and 7 part review of Attack of the clones in case you haven't seen them already.

[joysweeper]

In those days, a reveal was a reveal. They were better at keeping secrets about the film, I guess.

I do like the implication of mind trickery. The "only works on the weak minded" thing sits a little oddly with me.

[janegray]

In those days, a reveal was a reveal. They were better at keeping secrets about the film, I guess.

Oh, so much motto.

You have no idea how much it pisses me off that nowadays, whenever I want to see a movie or play a videogame, trailers and reviews outright tell you half the plot.

[cmdr_zoom]

Well, for one thing they didn't have an Internet to instantly broadcast spoilers and allow fans to share speculation.

But yes, the productions and marketing were often tighter-lipped or outright misleading. With the BIG reveal coming up, they actually had Prowse say a completely different line on-set; JEJ's shocking revelation was added in post.

[icon_uk]

A blabbermouthed friend who had got hold of the "Empire Strikes Back" "Making of" magazine (Which now costs an INSANE amount on e-bay) managed to blow it for me possibly before the movie even came out.

[silverzeo]

So the real why to a women's heart is too hold here is the situation calls for it?

[janegray]

I love how expressive this is :D

[greenmask]

Really, really not enjoying the blushy, scared, knock-kneed Leia.

But the art is so clean!

[aaron_bourque]

(He may be fluent in over six million forms of communication, but he has no sense of timing.)

Better joke: "He may be fluent in over 6 million forms of communication, but I guess the language of love isn't among them."

Manga Yoda is nowhere near as whacked-out as I was expecting. I'm a little disappointed.

And I love Han's expression after he believes they'd be crazy to follow them.