or, Why there’s actually way more going on in all those parallel edits of Anakin and
Ben kneeling before Palpatine and Snoke respectively than just the kneeling and
looking a hot, tormented mess
First off, for those of you not familiar with this particularly juicy bit of canon: as Ben was growing up, no one ever told him that Darth Vader is his grandfather. In fact, no one outside of Luke, Leia, and Han (possibly Chewbacca) knew that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were one and the same. Ben was 23 when it became public knowledge – seven years before TFA.
Storytelling wise, this is a huge deal that I don’t think gets brought up enough. It means that Ben never knew that it was Luke’s love for his father, and in turn, Anakin’s for Luke, that helped defeat the Empire. He must have grown up thinking of Luke as the “great warrior” who defeated both Vader and the Emperor, a similar presumption apparently held by many real-life people for some reason. At least Ben has an excuse – he hasn’t seen ROTJ.
We don’t know the specifics, but presumably Ben had been fed a similar story to the one Luke grew up on his whole life. Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were two entirely different people, and Darth Vader was the one responsible for everything going bad, and he was defeated by Luke. Ben learns the truth eventually, and at some point, Snoke has managed to twist the story to frame it as weakness – Vader and Palpatine, the entire Empire fell because of sentiment. Hell, he may have even been able to twist it into telling Ben that Luke became as powerful as he was because he killed his father, but that’s just me speculating wildly.
First off, for those of you not familiar with this particularly juicy bit of canon: as Ben was growing up, no one ever told him that Darth Vader is his grandfather. In fact, no one outside of Luke, Leia, and Han (possibly Chewbacca) knew that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were one and the same. Ben was 23 when it became public knowledge – seven years before TFA.
Storytelling wise, this is a huge deal that I don’t think gets brought up enough. It means that Ben never knew that it was Luke’s love for his father, and in turn, Anakin’s for Luke, that helped defeat the Empire. He must have grown up thinking of Luke as the “great warrior” who defeated both Vader and the Emperor, a similar presumption apparently held by many real-life people for some reason. At least Ben has an excuse – he hasn’t seen ROTJ.
We don’t know the specifics, but presumably Ben had been fed a similar story to the one Luke grew up on his whole life. Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were two entirely different people, and Darth Vader was the one responsible for everything going bad, and he was defeated by Luke. Ben learns the truth eventually, and at some point, Snoke has managed to twist the story to frame it as weakness – Vader and Palpatine, the entire Empire fell because of sentiment. Hell, he may have even been able to twist it into telling Ben that Luke became as powerful as he was because he killed his father, but that’s just me speculating wildly.
This is Not a Blog 