Not so much Darth Vader more...Daddy Vader

[icon_uk]

Last year I posted some images from Jeffrey Brown's instant classic Darth Vader and Son

Though it was enjoyed, there was some comment that what it needed was some acknowledgement of Lei as his daughter...

Well, those fine folks over at Newsarama have an interview with the author as his latest work comes out




Rather than looking at the younger years as they did with Luke, Leia's a little bit older in this... as Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith realises that the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of having a daughter.

Not that it's always easy for her either...




But some boundaries need to be set....



And Luke isn't finding it all plain sailing either...



I don't want to have to wait until April 23 for this, I want it NOW DAMMIT!!

 

Comments

[auggie18]

BAM, straight to my ovaries! (Or brovaries, I guess. Due to maleness.) I practically melted with cuteness while reading Vader and Son.

I loved the first one and though I'm glad we're getting to see some teen stuff, I hope there's still some kid activities in there.

[shadowpsykie]

brovaries hehehehehe

[his_spiffynesss]

Over on DA, there's an artist whose done a similar series of images about the Skywalker family.


SW - Homework by *Renny08 on deviantART

[captainbellman]

Yes...those are less "Awww", and more "AwwwWWWAAAHHH MY HEARTSTRINGS".

[icon_uk]

I'd forgotten about those! :)

I like this one

[leia_solo]

Aw yay I'm so glad he did one for Leia! I need to pick up both of them.

[captainbellman]

YaKNOW, Jeffrey Brown's got a movie out..."Save The Date". Written, Directed and (Would-You-Believe-It), Illustrated by himself, and starring the absolutely fantastic Alison Brie of Community, in a role totally unlike Annie from Community. Also her U.N. Professor from that one episode is married to her, for some reason.

[captainbellman]

I always wanted to write a story called "Star Wars: Father and Son", wherein Luke considers Vader's offer and accepts, and Leia has to roll up her sleeves and become the Jedi saviour against her own father and brother.

Also, Chewie becomes the leader of the Rebels by default, and defeats Jabba the Hutt simply by shooting his way in there and stealing Han back. Because Chewie doesn't play games.

[q99]

That'd be great :) Call Dark horse and see if they can swing a SW Infinities comic for you.

[cainofdreaming]

Infinities did it the other way around. Kinda. With Leia becoming a dark jedi under Vader and Palpatine. Not much Vader and daughter stuff, though, since he only found out about the fact right before the heroic sacrifice time like in the movies.

[icon_uk]

As well as the infinities cainofdreaming mentioned (Which is Infinities: A New Hope), Infinities: The Empire Strikes back hashas Luke dying on Hoth (Han wasn't able to get him back to the base after the Wampa encounter) but passing on the message to "Go to the Dagobah System", which Han thinks is intended for him. Trying to honour his friends dying wishes he goes there (Like the movie, with Leia and Chewie) to find that Yoda is prepared to train young Skywalker, and when Han admits he's not a Skywalker, Yoda goes "Not YOU.... HER!" and the story proceeds from there.

[q99]

Woo, remembered Leia!

[md84]

Portraying Leia as a daddy's girl is oddly fitting since several EU works point out that Leia's personality is pretty similar to Anakin's.

[icon_uk]

Moody? Whiny? Argumentative? Don't see it myself to be honest.

IIRC She was a noted diplomat and administrator (she helped RUN the Rebel Alliance), two things Anakin definitely was NOT.

[md84]

Less "Anakin as a whiny youth" and more "Anakin as the ruthless Dark Lord of the Sith". She's got Vader's strength of will. There's a reason the Noghri called her "Lady Vader".

[mrstatham]

I still don't see it. Anakin's really a pretty weak-minded idiot as the films present him to even fall to Palpatine's suggestions - and before anyone says anything, I'm not saying there was something wrong with the concept of how Anakin fell so much as how said concept was executed - and resorted to mindless brutality, paranoia and stupidity as the third film drew to a close. Leia's more like her mother, who was willing to cross the entire galaxy, challenge the Supreme Chancellor, call for a vote of no confidence in him, and then travel back home and reestablish proper diplomatic relations with the other race controlling a large majority of her planet, before taking a hands-on role in forcibly evicting the invasive force from her planet. Leia, as much as it pains me to compliment anything about the prequels, is more like Padme than Anakin.

[icon_uk]

Agreed. Leia is like Padme, and in more than just the sense of eccentric hair-styling choices.

Luke has a lot more in common with Anakin (both frustrated by the limits to their lives set by others, for whatever reason). Luke just came out of it healthier than Anakin, probably because he wasn't raised as a Jedi.

[mrstatham]

This, I mean, Luke makes mistakes, but he was never put at the center of things, at the center of a prophecy as some mystical 'chosen one', which probably takes some manner of weight off his shoulders anyway - Not that I ever found the notion of a 'chosen one bringing balance' to be something the Jedi would actively root for; In TPM, the Jedi haven't encountered a Sith threat for years, right? They've effectively won, as far as they know. Why would they want someone to bring balance to the Force?

But.. Yeah. As much as Yoda argues against Luke's age, he clearly pans out better than Anakin did, but it's important to note that his major losses - his Uncle and Aunt, Ben - they all take place before he's even a Jedi in training. Whiny and as stupid as AOTC's Anakin is, he has a vague point about not being able to save his mother. That said, I still think Luke is generally a better person overall; He's pushed into tapping into that darkness by Vader, but holds off and refuses the Emperor. Anakin, on the other hand, just goes nuts with paranoia and chokes his own wife and tries to murder his best friend, completely irrationally.

[icon_uk]

Luke had to be the better person for narrative purposes, we knew he had to triumph, Anakin had to fall from grace for the same narrative purpose, it's just unfortunate that as depicted in the movies, there was little about Anakin to like and the performance didn't help...

The Clone Wars series has done an infinitely better job of creating a 3 dimensional Anakin who is a sympathetic character and a charismatic Jedi. We can see the seeds of his downfall hinted at and prepared for (Like meeting Tarkin, and liking him, and even agreeing with him that in principle the Jedi should not be on the front lines as they are, Jedi are peacekeepers, not warrriors)

[mrstatham]

The funniest thing about the 'peacekeepers, not soldiers' argument is that Mace Windu trots out the same argument in one of the prequels, only to seemingly be quite happy to turn up during the big battle of Episode II with quippy lines like 'this party's over' and doing stuff like chopping Jango's head off.

[bj_l]

You could argue that's the point, by the time of the prequels, the Jedi know what they think they should be and they see whats happening on the surface of the galaxy at a glance, but that's about it. They certainly don't know what the hell they are or how they should be going about it.

[mrstatham]

Yeah, I generally get the idea that the Jedi of the Pre-Empire period are perhaps just a little bit too set in their ways and comfortable in the way things are, which is probably why it is so easy for Palpatine to just set himself up under their very noses, but it is just the irony of one character declaring that they're peace keepers, not soldiers, only to promptly wade into battles where they someone's head off. I think that is part of the reason I prefer the OT, personally - if I'm being entirely honest, I know for a fact that the Prequel movies are probably dealing with slightly more complex themes and ideas than the more adventure-based Original Trilogy, but it's just the execution.

I always find it ironic that Empire is the strongest film of the six and it has the very least input from Lucas, somehow. I just.. Well, someone put it to me that the Prequels are Lucas trying to make what *he* thinks Star Wars films are, and he's managing to be completely ignorant of why he made the first movies to begin with. ROTS manages to recapture some of that feel, but it's not there in enough abundance for me to really enjoy it enough.

[md84]

Well, I am basing this more on the EU stuff than I am on the films.

[bj_l]

I know that it probably sounds like a cop out, and it kind of is (and I say this as someone who thinks ROTS was the best Star Wars film since 1980), but the novelisation removes, like, 90% of the problems of the movie and replaces it with characterisation, developments, plot, things that make sense and all sorts of crazy things like that.

I would actually rather sit on the couch and read the novelisation with the movie or soundtrack playing the background than sit there and watch the movie intently.

[mrstatham]

Again, like I said in the other reply, my big, big, big issue with the Prequels is execution. I don't think Lucas' directing style is particularly exciting, at least from what I've seen of the behind the scenes stuff where he basically just sits there on a big greenscreen stage and gets it over with quickly as possible. I don't think they had a particularly brilliant cast, or those that were good were often used poorly, especially in the case of Portman and Jackson, but that's just IMO. And I don't think the CGI is aging terribly well, either. So.. Yeah. I'm happy to accept that the novel could be better, but primarily, I'm a guy who enjoys Star Wars for the films, and I haven't been able to properly enjoy a single Star Wars movie that has been released since after I was born in '86.

Honestly, I shouldn't be bursting out laughing at Yoda versus Dooku like I remember myself doing at the cinema in 2002; I should be absolutely enthralled like I am every time I watch ESB's Luke vs Vader fight. The only bits of the prequels I can really, honestly claim to enjoy is Neeson as Qui Gon, and McDiarmid just blatantly cutting loose and having fun as the largest ham ever in Sith.

[bj_l]

Oh, I understand that. I just love espousing the virtues of Stovers Star Wars novels. He's only done three of them; they're good. The ROTS novel, a Mace Windu novel, and a NJO novel.

Absolutely agree about the wasted cast. I keep forgetting that Portman can actually act. Jackson doesn't bother me as much because he's just been playing 'Sammy Motherfucking J' for a decade or more now. My biggest problem with the cast was hands down Anakin. Not because of his acting, I didn't find it all that bad (even the awful love dialogue in ATOC is 'poetic' teen awful it fits, even though it shouldn't because it's meant to be serious), it was the lack of charisma. I always figured even sullen and whiny, he should still be kind of charming. There should have been a spark that I could see was *meant* to be there with Anakin in TPM, but just never was. And i really don't know if that was the actors or Lucas or everyone doing their darndest to make Anakin irritating.

I would totally, 100% fall in line with Palpatine, because of McDiarmid. I imagine it would be like waking up to the smell of fresh ham every morning. Charming, fun, lightning shooting ham.

(Also, I have never laughed at Yoda/Dooku duel, and I was kind of surprised to hear so many people did. It made me feel like I was missing something by actually enjoying it haha)

[icon_uk]

I, sadly, can't take the Yoda/Dooku duel seriously having seen, in 1996, the Kermit/Tim Curry sword fight in "Muppet Treasure Island"

[mrstatham]

For me, it's just how much Yoda bounced around. Like the guy barely moves throughout the entire film, looks like he's hobbling when he does walk, and/or uses his little hoverchair doodad. And in Empire - Which can barely be about twenty years after Sith, surely, he's seriously old and hobbling.

I always just got the feeling that Force-users like Yoda and the Emperor were basically so powerful in their use of the Force that they didn't feel the need for lightsabers, and to see the two of them leaping about and swinging swords like they're Obi-Wan or Anakin's age, it was just bizarre. I mean, I thought the Emperor doing it was great because McDiarmid is just blatantly having fun, but otherwise.. Yeah. It just felt off, to me.

[icon_uk]

Yoda marshall's his strength reserves I suppose, he might have had to rest for a month and a half after the Dooku duel because he's used up all his energy. Plus without other Jedi around, and probably feeling desperately guilty about the whole "missing the Sith Lord and his apprentices who were under our noses" thing I can see him going downhill fast.

And yeah, another thing that making Darth a daddy to Luke and Leia always made slightly odd is that it meant he couldn't be much more than in his mid 40's at most.

[icon_uk]

I loved a little speech Ian McDiarmid gave at the start of Star Wars Celebration Europe when he outlined how he'd decided to take the role. You can see it here

[icon_uk]

Well yes, they called her "Lady Vader" because they revered Darth, and she IS his biological daughter, so it could be viewed as his surname.

Were we ever given any reason for the names that the Sith use, other than some of them are cute if you add "In" before them (InVader, InSidious).. and some Maul and Plagieus, not so much...

[mrstatham]

I always thought it turned out to be fairly ironic in the scheme of things that 'Vader' is dutch for 'father', apparently, even though Lucas apparently didn't have that angle planned out around the time he first named the character.

[md84]

It is significant that they don't address Luke in similar terms, simply acknowledging him as Vader's firstborn son. In the Noghri's opinion, Leia has the same sense of authority and strength of will they believed Vader possessed. YMMV on whether Vader really was all that (the Noghri were really biased).

[icon_uk]

IIRC there was some discussion as to whether Luke or Leia was the older twin, I think I presumed that Leia was the older, based on her manner (which isn't particularly fair given their different upbringings) and the fact that she seemed older in the movie (Though Mark Hamill is actually five yars older than Carrie Fisher, which surprised the hell out of me)

[shadowpsykie]

well in the EU it was stated that aside from being evil, Vader was a great leader that actually "cared" for his troops. the legion under his command thought he was a great leader because he often fought with them. never asking them to do anything he would not do

[icon_uk]

I wish we'd had a chance to see THAT in the movies, though it does sort of fly in the face of his impassiveness, and willingness to kill his underlings for relatively minor infractions.

[shadowpsykie]

i always took that as they were the "politicians" and underlings, not his "soldiers" in the Clone Wars series, Anikin shows that he cares for his troops despite the fact that they are clones. so i figured it was the high ranking (yet still under him) people he didn't care much for

[icon_uk]

Fair enough, though I still would prefer to work for Grand Admiral Thawn. Always loved the scene where an officer blames an underling for losing their target, and when the underling explains the new technique he was attempting to use, Thrawn dresses down the officer and praises the underling and tells him to keep on working on the new technique which he thinks is highly promising.

[shadowpsykie]

THRAWN WAS GREAT, ALWAYS HATED THAT JASON HAD TAHIRI KILL HIM....

[bj_l]

Well the 'diplomacy' is from Anakin, surely. Agressive negotiations are a Skywalker blood trait.

[superfangirl1]

Aww, this is so adorably sweet. :)