Star Wars Episode VII:
The Force Awakens is only a few days away, and after re-watching the
original trilogy in preparation, I’ve put together my Top Ten moments, like
everyone else seems to be doing this week! Part One is here. What follows is my
top 5:
5. Rescuing Han Solo
from Jabba’s Palace (Episode VI: Return
of the Jedi)
Fresh off a life-altering confrontation with Vader on Cloud
City, Luke is a Jedi Knight, and the most mature we’ve seen him to that point.
He hatches a plan to spring Han Solo from both his carbonite prison and from the
clutches of Jabba the Hutt.
After pretty much allowing himself to be captured (after
Leia, posing as a bounty hunter, frees Han from the carbonite), Luke turns the
tables on Jabba and his entourage in the Tatooine desert at the Great Pit of
Carkoon, home of the sarlacc, where the good guys were all about to be digested
for many agonising years. With some assistance from Lando and R2-D2, Luke sets
about destroying Jabba’s entourage, pioneering a flashy green lightsaber, and
it’s in this melee that Bobba Fett actually slides into the sarlacc’s clutches.
Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
What is important, to me, is how Luke is clearly in control
here. He’s the guy running the show, and is a serious threat to anyone who
crosses his path.
Of course, this scene is also memorable for Princess Leia in
that bikini. That wasn't exactly unpleasant viewing.
4. Luke meets Yoda (Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back)
After escaping the mess at Hoth – a definite loss for the
Alliance, and a costly one – Luke travels to the swampy-jungle planet of
Dagobah following the instructions of an Obi-Wan Kenobi apparition, and finds
the diminutive and slightly crazy Jedi master. There was definitely something
unhinged about Yoda in those early scenes – too long spent in exile, maybe?
Regardless, Yoda begins to train Luke, giving him his first
serious instruction in the ways of the Force and Jedi Knights, and tries to
prepare him for the confrontation with Darth Vader on Cloud City – even though
Yoda plainly believes that Luke shouldn’t go to the aid of his friends. In
Luke’s journey from Tatooine farm boy to fully-fledged Jedi Knight, the
training sessions with Yoda on the thoroughly inhospitable Dagobah are key.
3. The Battle of
Yavin (Episode IV: A New Hope)
The end result of Princess Leia’s efforts to capture the
Death Star Plans. An Alliance squadron of X-wing and Y-wing fighters lift off
from the rebel base on the fourth moon of Yavin in an attempt to destroy the
Death Star, which means to destroy the moon and the base, thus ending the rebel
threat.
Whilst the X-wing squadron, of which Luke is a part, are to
keep Death Star gunners and TIE fighters busy, the Y-wings are given the task
of navigating the long trench to fire a proton torpedo into the narrow exhaust
port at the end. A detonation there would set off a chain reaction of
explosions, eventually ripping the battle station apart.
Of course, it’s left to Luke, Wedge Antilles and Biggs
Darklighter to make a final run down the trench, with Darth Vader in his
modified TIE fighter in hot pursuit – “the Force is strong in this one” – and
after Wedge pulls out due to mechanical issues, Biggs is killed, leaving Luke
at the mercy of Vader…until the Millennium
Falcon returns, as we’d always hoped he would. Han Solo disables Vader’s
craft and kills his two wingmen, giving Luke a clean and free shot at the
exhaust port, to destroy the Death Star just in the nick of time. And he does
it without his targeting computer, using the Force, as the voice of
Obviously, the destruction of the Death Star is huge, with
so many high-ranking Imperial types aboard, and it sets the scene for what
comes in the next two episodes, with the Alliance still on the run and the
Empire introducing even more technology – Super Star Destroyers and AT-AT
walkers, for example – to try and win.
2. Vader and Luke’s
duel on Cloud City (Episode V: The Empire
Strikes Back)
I was a late arrival to Star Wars, but I can only imagine
what a massive jaw-dropper the entire Cloud City duel would have been for
people watching Episode V when it was first released in 1980, when there was no
social media to spoil major plot twists, and when no one knew what George Lucas
had planned other than the tight-lipped cast and crew.
Hearing Darth Vader announce that he was Luke Skywalker’s
father, moments after slicing his son’s arm off at the wrist – not good
parenting! – must have been a true “what the” moment. I obviously had heard
inklings before watching Episode V when it was rereleased in 1997, but it was
still an impressive scene. The transformation of Luke Skywalker from somewhat-naïve
farm-boy to the last of the old Jedi (and the first of the new) begins at that
moment on Cloud City, and a conflict spanning so many star systems takes on a particularly
personal twist.
1. The Battle of
Endor (Episode VI: Return of the Jedi)
The final sequence of the final instalment in the original
trilogy has everything a Star Wars fan could ask for: another showdown between
Luke and Vader (this time with Emperor Palpatine playing a role), a covert
mission to the forest moon of Endor to destroy the Death Star’s shield
generator, a Rebel fleet tricked and trapped by the all-seeing Emperor, the
Ewoks and, last but certainly not least, what I consider to be the definitive
battle scene in any of the six – soon to be seven – franchise films.
Okay, so maybe we could have done without the Ewoks, but
everything else was impeccable. From Palpatine trying to convince Luke to kill
Vader and take Vader’s place as right-hand-man, to Wedge and Lando and Admiral
Ackbar deciding to take the fight to the overwhelmingly large Imperial fleet in
order to give the commando unit on Endor, led by Han and Leia, more time to
blow the shield generator, to the hair-raising run through the superstructure
of the Death Star after the generator is blown, led by the Millennium Falcon and Wedge’s X-wing.
I love that Wedge, perhaps
the most decorated pilot in the Alliance (and the only one to have flown in all
three major Original Trilogy battles) has such a major part here. And the A-wing
pilot who ploughed into the Super Star Destroyer midway through the battle?
Awesome. What a scene, as the stricken vessel then knifes into the Death Star itself.
Who didn’t want to clap and cheer when the Falcon barely
shoots clear of the imploding Death Star, tracked by a gout of flame. I felt as
relieved as Nien Nunb and Lando did! And there’s the moment where Vader finds
the good in himself and ultimately fulfils his destiny as the Chosen One,
destroying the Sith – over the railing and down the Death Star shaft went
Palpatine – and sacrificing his life to do so. The moment between father and
son after that, as Vader lies dying, is priceless.
So, too, is the celebration on Endor, with all the
characters reuniting for one big firework-assisted party, and the montage of
various planets and systems where people are celebrating, and on Coruscant,
where Palpatine’s statue is dragged down. Then we see Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin
Skywalker as apparitions of the Force, and that is as fitting an end to a saga
as there is.
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