Most entertaining film Joseph-Gordon Levitt has been in all year so far.

Abuse of Playback, the technologically-derived drug made from distilled human memories, is sweeping the world – and Special Agent Fox Mulder learned too late that Playback was put forth on this planet by the Purity, seeking to condition humanity to their rule so as to better combat the Deadite incursion threatening the aliens’ homeworld. Now Mulder is missing, and it falls to his partner, Dana Scully, to re-activate secret protocol LXG-71, the “League of Extraordinary Gentlepersons” (protocol renamed 1993 for “sensitivity reasons”).

Scully swiftly collects Hong Kong Detective-Inspector “Tequila” Yuen, hyperviolent Wiccan practitioner Nancy Downs, the biological experiment/walking weapon known only as “Edward,” and a young high-functioning sociopath named Zack Morris who has the strange ability to stop the flow of time itself. Perhaps it is this last who attracts the attention of an enigmatic man who answers only to “Rufus,” and who asks Scully to “set history right” and see that two young musicians – that, so far as she can tell, never existed – be born anew, so that peace may flourish on Earth. But the Purity have never shown any signs of temporal travel capability… so who, then, altered history?

If you’re interested in checking out other work Davinder and I have done together, you can start with Al’Rashad or, alternately, our “Introduction” strip for Brainiac Five.

For those interested in obtaining a print of this fine piece of artwork, go here.

And of course, all due props to Sims and Shackles.

Obviously, Ayn Rand has been in the news a lot lately. Not because she’s done anything particularly newsworthy herself, of course, but because the new Republican pick for VP has frequently and publicly expressed his admiration of her before being told that loudly talking about how awesome a self-professed atheist is just doesn’t fly in a party that panders almost exclusively to fundamentalist Christians these days. So he made a public repudiation of his love of Ayn Rand’s thirty-year old corpse, while still of course admiring all of the bits of his philosophy that let him be a selfish prick. (Um, this is as good a time as any to mention that yes, this is going to be a post with Views. You may wish to skip it if you love Republicans, Objectivism, or being a selfish prick.)

And whenever Ayn Rand’s name comes up, I always think of Philip K. Dick. Not because the two of them were buddies or anything. I don’t even think they knew each other. Mainly because I read a very interesting book called ‘Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick On Film’, which covers a lot of his life and writing in the process of explaining why his films are so attractive to screenwriters. The section that talked about ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’, the novel that eventually became the film ‘Blade Runner’, explained that its genesis came from Dick’s thoughts on World War II and the Holocaust. He genuinely believed that no real human being could do that kind of thing…that while the Nazis might have looked human and sounded human, some fundamental human quality was missing from them that allowed them to perpetuate the atrocities they did. He envisioned a test that would separate the real humans from the fake humans, a psychological evaluation that would separate out those who possessed empathy for others from those who didn’t. This eventually went on to become the Voight-Kampff test, which could sniff out androids mimicking humanity through their inability to care about others.

Which is an interesting idea for a novel, of course, but I never really felt like Dick took it far enough. In the first place, I think his original notion–that people who lack empathy and do terrible things to other people are somehow “not human”–is really more of a convenient dodge than anything else. As much as I might wish it otherwise, Ayn Rand is part of the same species as I am, and is my kith and kin, even though she would fail the Voight-Kampff test. (“You see a turtle by the side of the road, lying on its back.” “The turtle is a leech and a parasite. If it can’t turn itself over, I’m doing the world no favors by allowing it to continue surviving. It will only consume food that should go to better, fitter animals like me.”) She’s a woman who notoriously idolized a sociopathic serial killer, and whose philosophy can best be summed up as “Altruism doesn’t exist. Anyone practicing it is a sucker, and anyone benefiting from it is a leech.” (Which didn’t stop her from collecting Medicare, of course.) Paul Ryan has bought fully into the idea that selfishness is a virtue and kindness a vice, and he’s far from the only one. To pretend that these people are somehow inhuman is to avoid confronting the painful and ugly truth about humanity: Decency is a skill we learn, not a quality we inherit.

And the most complex part of all is that it’s not a skill we ever truly master…and Dick is the prime example. His story that started with the envisioning of a test for empathy is, at its heart, about how it’s morally acceptable to kill people who lack empathy because they’re not really people. They’re things, and you can do whatever you want to things without feeling bad. (Sure, they’re androids, not people. And the Klingons weren’t the Soviets.) Fundamentally, Dick is engaging in one of the most classic ways of avoiding one’s conscience and shutting down empathy, by “otherizing” the people you hate instead of understanding them, while claiming that his purge is a pro-empathy action. He deludes himself into thinking that a man can “retire” androids who look like people, talk like people, act like people all day every day for years…and it won’t cost him any of his soul.

‘Blade Runner’, the film made out of Dick’s novel, at least understands how false that is. Deckard in the film is a burnt-out wreck of a man because his empathy withered and died years ago, not because he’s secretly an android himself. The Voight-Kampff test separates out human beings with empathy from the androids…the androids that live a life of slavery from beginning to all-too-sudden end, exiled into space to do the jobs that humans won’t do. And when they try to escape? We kill them…excuse me. We “retire” them. Because if we call it “retiring” them, we don’t have to think about what we’re doing. We don’t have to understand their fear and pain and anger. In short, we don’t have to empathize with them because we passed the empathy test.

‘Blade Runner’ avoids that paradox for too much of its running length, which is why I would like to see someone else take a crack at it. It’s a drama about slavery where nobody ever suggests that slavery is a bad thing, which is a bit too bloodless for a movie with such an angry contradiction right at its very core. The only time we see even a hint of it is when Roy Batty rescues Deckard at the end, an act that gives the lie to the entire notion that androids are incapable of empathy and forces Deckard to confront the truth: He’s a mass murderer, and he never even thought about it. And given that he gets maybe two lines of dialogue after that, I’d call the film at least a little bit flawed. A sequel that really got into the idea, one that confronted the notions that androids could learn how to be human beings…and that human beings can all too easily forget…could be even better than its predecessor.

Why is it that every Len Wiseman film is made on the assumption that an interesting backstory can make up for a total lack of non-trite dialogue, skilled pacing, original plot, intelligible editing, and coherent cinematography?

Michael Busuttil: You’re in charge of doing for DC what Kevin Feige did for Marvel. Go.

Avoid Superman and Batman; DC’s problem is that nobody else comes close to Superman and Batman and they need to push their smaller properties. (Green Lantern was a failure in execution, not a failure in concept.) Start with the Flash, who does not yet have a bad movie and does not need a reboot. Then do Aquaman (and hopefully at this point we do not have to explain why Aquaman is actually totally badass). Then Wonder Woman in the Thor slot. Then you reboot Green Lantern properly, and probably have it be John Stewart instead of Hal. In each of these movies, the connecting thread is J’onn J’onzz, who appears in each movie as a different person because he is a shapeshifter, which also lets you have J’onn be played by whoever in the Justice League movie you’re aiming towards.

Probably you can squeeze Flash #2 in there somewhere so Wally is properly ready to be the Flash, and only then do you do your Justice League movie. Probably with Starro as the villain, because Starro is a League-caliber threat and because it’s a nice nod to the comics and also I think a giant fucking space starfish would work wonderfully onscreen. But you can also probably fit Lex Luthor in there somewhere, because come on, it’s Lex Luthor and he is the best villain ever.

The key difference here from the Avengers template is that, unlike in Avengers, your biggest comic properties in DC are very much core to the team. You can do the Avengers without Spider-Man or Wolverine (and many argue that you should). But doing Justice League without Superman or Batman will not quite work.

So this is how we fix that. Somewhere off to one side a bit, there’s a Superman movie. Don’t explicitly acknowledge it as “new DC movieverse canon.” Have Superman fight baddies in space, he’s good at space. And then in Justice League just when the baddies are going to win about halfway through, that is when Superman makes his big entrance. As for Batman, there is no Batman movie, because in the new DC movieverse, Batman Is A Myth until the Justice League movie when he shows up and people are all “wait, you’re real?” This was a cool idea when DC first used it, so let’s steal it. And it lets your big movie coming out of Justice League be the next iteration of Batman, which will give it a respectful distance from the Nolan trilogy.

That’s how I’d do it. The only issue is that this Justice League only has one woman on it, which has always been a problem with the team. Maybe you can replace Aquaman with Zatanna, who is the only DC female character who I think can justify a movie other than Wonder Woman right now. (Hawkgirl won’t quite work, sorry.)

Earlier this week, I posted my thoughts for where to go with another Batman movie, now that Christopher Nolan seems to have wrapped up his “Dark Knight” trilogy. Little did I know that Newsarama and io9 were both planning to rip me off, albeit with more actual speculation about where to go next and fewer brainwashed killer orphans. But that’s okay. I can play that game too. And after the cut, I’ll talk about what I seriously think the next Batman movie should be like. (Hint: brainwashed killer orphans…from space!
continue reading "Let’s Try This Again: The Next Batman Movie"

Let’s face it, we all know that ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is likely to be the end of the Christopher Nolan Batman continuity. He did two good movies and one truly excellent one (I’ll leave it to you to decide which one you think was the excellent one, but hint: It had the Joker in it) and is now moving on to what sounds like a truly fascinating Howard Hughes bio-pic. The reboot will probably hit theaters in about 2016, just in time to tie in with the Justice League movie…or it would, if that didn’t get delayed to 2025 while Warner Brothers tries to hammer out a few details in the script to make it not so much like the mega-hit “Squadron Supreme” movie Marvel did a few years earlier. (Oh, I’m sorry. Is my faith in DC’s movie division showing?)

But if we did get a fourth movie, where would it go from the end of the third? A spoiler tag, for those of you uninterested in speculating just yet…

continue reading "The Two Post ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Directions"

We here at mightygodking dot com have, in recent days, seen a lot of nerds complaining about The Dark Knight Rises, which is the latest movie starring Batman and therefore something which will be controversial among nerds. In an attempt to placate those more outraged nerds out there, we offer up the following list of answers to your pressing issues with the new movie about Batman.

Why did they fake the physicist’s death in the plane at the beginning of the movie? What was the point of that?

The physicist was the only person in the world who knew how to turn (theoretical) fusion reactors into bombs, and the feds knew that Bane and his mercenaries were looking for said physicist. Accordingly, they fake his death so the reason they were looking for him specifically became a non-issue for the feds, who have enough on their plates as it is.

It’s stupid that Robin figured out that Batman was Batman by looking at him. He’s never even seen Batman as Batman before!

Well, look at it this way. Blake (not “Robin” – come on, a one-line off-joke to get the cheap recognition laugh does not a Robin make) suffered the same sort of tragedy as Bruce did, and when he saw Bruce, he saw that Bruce was doing the same thing. Then when Batman shows up, Blake thinks “well, you’d need a lot of money to do Batman stuff, like having YOUR OWN SUPER-TANK and stuff, and who do I know who has both a lot of money and the same burning desire to Stop Crime that I do?” And there you go.

As others have noted often enough: it is not terribly hard to figure out Batman’s identity if you are not willfully blind. I mean, fuck, Egghead managed to do it (almost) during the 60s TV series. And he was Egghead.

In any case, if during Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s speech about how he was traumatized for life by the deaths of his parents and how it changes you, your first reaction was “well how did he figure out Batman’s secret identity,” I would kindly suggest maybe you were concentrating on the wrong bit of the movie.

Why did they send ALL THE POLICE underground?

This is a fair comment and the movie’s biggest plot hole. Sure, they didn’t send ALL the police, but they sent the overwhelming majority, which is stupid.

So, yes, this is a plot hole. It does not make the movie bad. (The plot of Casablanca revolved around travel papers signed by De Gaulle – which would have been useless in Nazi-controlled Casablanca.)

How did that guy cure Batman’s back by punching him in the spin?

Eastern medicine or something.

Why does the prison in the middle of nowhere have cable TV?

Because Bane wants Batman to suffer, and Fox News will make you suffer like you would not believe, especially when you don’t get to watch Jon Stewart make fun of them. Bane is a bastard like that. I’m sure Sean Hannity’s nightly monologues about how the Gotham crisis “proves that we need to lower taxes” made Batman suffer like fuck.

How did Batman get from the prison back to Gotham? Why didn’t they show that?

This is a “why didn’t they show Batman doing his taxes, he must have to do taxes” argument. It is a long movie already, and (say) sneaking onto a boat is criminally easy for Batman. Because he is Batman. And there is no reason to show it, so they skipped it. This isn’t a plot hole. This is basic film editing.

How did Batman get onto the island which is supposed to be all locked down?

You realize that Batman’s entire deal is sneaking around and not being seen, right?

Why did those police officers just run at the hoods with machine guns instead of using modern tactics?

Because the point of their charge is not to demonstrate how to take a position using flanking maneuvers, but to demonstrate that Men Can Stand Against Evil, even if it means their own deaths. Really, aren’t nerds sick of the “tactics” argument by now? Must we treat every movie like it’s a fucking real-time strategy game? Is it not enough to see men charging at one another in an awesome manner?

Again: this is a movie about a man who flies around in a giant bat-thing which in real life would never get off the ground, and this is where you cannot suspend disbelief?

What about the fallout from the bomb?

They expressly said it was a neutron bomb at one point, and a neutron bomb wouldn’t create fallout (and the radiation would get mostly absorbed by the water anyway). It wouldn’t create a mushroom cloud either, to be fair, but mushroom clouds are awesome-looking, so the cheat is forgivable.

I don’t like grim and serious Batman. I like fun, energetic Batman.

Then go watch the Adam West series or Batman: The Brave and the Bold or read some old Batman comics from the 60s and 70s. Really, you have no end of options for fun, energetic (and campy) Batman. We are talking literally hundreds of hours of it you can watch, so I’m not sure why you’re complaining about this particular movie when, going in, you probably should have been able to figure out that maaaaaaaybeeeeee the third film in a Batman trilogy which has been extremely serious and grim in tone thus far would differ from the first two.

Numerous incremental improvements over the Tobey Maguire edition of the franchise (better actors, Spider-Man gets to say some actual wisecracks, somewhat more intelligent plot) don’t quite keep one from noticing the fact that you are watching, first and foremost, product.

The thing about biographical movies is that for the actors playing people who were actual Real People In History, and particularly for recent Real People, there is a fine line you have to walk between “this is who that person sounded like” and “this is who that person actually was.” People become famous for their verbal tics and how they generally hold themselves, but that’s not who they were, not when you get right down to it. Any person is infinitely more complex than their public persona, and a good actor works to capture the person’s interior life (as best they are able) and use that to bring out the public side of things.

Or they just say “fuck it” and go one way or the other.

Anthony Hopkins’ performance in Nixon is a good example of the second choice. It’s an amazing performance, all the moreso because Hopkins looks and sounds nothing like Richard Nixon. (This is all the more notable because Dan Hedaya shows up briefly in the film, and Hedaya’s similarity to Nixon is so pronounced it eventually led to him being cast as Nixon in the underrated comedy Dick.) Hopkins doesn’t bother trying to imitate Nixon because there wouldn’t be any point. Even his Welsh accent keeps cropping up in Nixon’s famous lines.

However, about twenty minutes into Nixon, something remarkable happens: you just forget about Hopkins being not-Nixon and instead completely buy into him as Nixon. It happens because Anthony Hopkins is a fucking great actor and concentrates on the driving forces that animated Nixon – he gets at the core of Nixon’s incredible sense of resentment that drove him, but also Nixon’s sense of superiority at the same time. But Hopkins’ Nixon is resolutely human rather than simply a one-dimensional monster. Hopkins’ Nixon doesn’t just seek dominance but approval: the scene where Nixon tries to engage with the protestors at the Lincoln Memorial is framed by Stone as simply tragic, a microcosm of the larger tragedy that was Nixon’s wasted potential (one of the smartest Presidents ever, but see what use that intelligence went to); his sense of superiority is driven at least in part by his strong sense of loyalty (he is resolutely faithful to his wife). Hopkins’ Nixon is flawed, but sympathetic, and to make Nixon a sympathetic figure rather than a devil is the stronger artistic choice.

Of course, Hopkins is backed up by a fucking murderer’s row of acting talent: Joan Allen, James Woods, Powers Boothe, Paul Sorvino, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins, David Hyde Pierce, and J.T. Walsh as, respectively, Pat Nixon, Bob Haldeman, Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, E. Howard Hunt, J. Edgar Hoover, John Dean and John Erlichman. But wait: there is more: David Paymer, Kevin Dunn, Mary Steenburgen, Saul Rubinek, Madeline Kahn, Edward Herrman – even John C. McGinley makes an appearance at the top of the film in a fake “school career” educational film. (Don’t ask me to explain why Stone decided that had to be in there. It’s metaphorical somehow, though, you can be sure of that. Still, Oliver Stone is inscrutable.) Interestingly, most of these actors go more to the “impersonation” school than Hopkins does (Sorvino’s Kissinger is particularly dead-on), but that choice actually grounds Hopkins’ method – by surrounding him with actors doing more faithful interpretations of the people they’re portraying, his un-Nixon Nixon gradually becomes “real” because he’s constantly interacting with more genuine-ish articles.

But ultimately Nixon is about a man’s relationship with power – it is not for nothing that Stone (who is not a subtle person, really) begins by quoting the Bible (“what hath a man gained, if he hath lost his soul?”) and then spends twenty minutes exploring Nixon’s horrible, horrible childhood and his horrible parents who didn’t love him and how this forged Nixon into a man who resented those who were loved (Kennedy more than anybody) and envied that love and was never sure if he had it – not even from his wife – and so sought power above all. It’s a far more entertaining trip to the dark side than George Lucas ever envisioned (and yes, of course Lucas wrote Star Wars with Nixon metaphors firmly in mind) and far more complex and realized. When Stone directed W., he made George W. Bush out to be a pawn in other people’s games; Stone’s Nixon, on the other hand, knows exactly what he’s playing and why.

Who doesn’t love ‘Mars Attacks’?

OK, a lot of people, actually. The film barely rates above 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the people who hate it seem to hate it with a passion even stronger than the people who liked it. Something about the film doesn’t just distance people from it, it outright infuriates them. The movie was a box office disappointment that barely made back its production budget, and even though it won some awards, it’s a film that never seems to be trying to win over its critics. In fact, I’d argue (actually, I’m about to argue) that this was part of the internal logic of the film. Burton isn’t just satirizing the tropes of a Hollywood blockbuster in the way that Zucker and Abrams might; he’s satirizing the entire idea of the tentpole summer movie. And whether you love it or hate it, you have to admit, he did his job perfectly.

For those of you who haven’t seen ‘Mars Attacks’, it’s a pretty straightforward plot; aliens from Mars arrive on Earth, and while the early portion of the film is taken up with speculation about the motives of our first extraterrestrial visitors, they make their intentions clear pretty fast: They’re assholes. They come to loot, pillage, murder and destroy, seemingly for no reason other than the sheer manic joy of it (“seemingly” because they speak only in repeated, seal-like barks that they translate themselves with…questionable reliability. “DO.NOT.RUN! WE.ARE.YOUR.FRIENDS!” the translation machine barks out, as the Martians holding it gun down anyone foolish enough to stop.) Various characters flee, fight, or hide from the Martians, until just by chance, the plucky hero of the film discovers their secret weakness. Once it’s used on them, the alien menace is easily defeated. (For the benefit of those who haven’t seen the film, I won’t spoil the Martians’ secret weakness. It’s a great gag, though.)

The plot isn’t just straightforward, though. It’s downright generic. It’s every alien invasion flick, half the disaster movies out there, and a good chunk of the horror films. On paper, this sounds just like the kind of brainless popcorn flick we’re supposed to go out to the multiplex and see on opening weekend. Even the list of actors doesn’t give away the game; Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Natalie Portman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Glenn Close, Lukas Haas…really, the only overt comic actors in the whole film are Martin Short and Jack Black, and they’ve got bit parts (and this was before Jack Black made it big.) To the untrained eye, this looks and sounds like a major Hollywood movie.

But when you watch it, you become aware of a peculiar alchemy. Nothing about this film is accessible. The concept is based on osbcure trading cards from the 1950s. The White House scenes play like something out of ‘Doctor Strangelove’ instead of ‘Independence Day’. The scenes of destruction are played for black comedy instead of shock and awe. Natalie Portman and Lukas Haas, the obvious romantic pairing, barely even speak to each other; most of the romance in the film comes from Sarah Jessica Parker’s head on a chihuahua’s body confessing her undying love to a bodiless Pierce Brosnan. The President isn’t an action hero; he isn’t even a wise mentor. He gets killed by a novelty joke handshake (in what may be a parody of a previous Burton/Nicholson sequence.) The use of nuclear weapons, played for drama for most of the film, is turned into a stoner gag. Every classic trope that we’ve come to expect is turned into an in-joke so strange and obscure that it becomes obvious, at some point, that we’re not supposed to get it. The film turns “blockbuster” into “cult” and pushes the limits even of that. The message of ‘Mars Attacks’, which hits you somewhere around the halfway point, is Tim Burton saying, “Can you actually believe that someone gave me this much money just to make a motion picture?”

Burton isn’t just satirizing the elements of a summer blockbuster, he’s satirizing the need for one. He has taken what is meant to be the most generic possible genre of film and made something intensely personal, something that only he could love (although he’s obviously willing to let other people go along for the ride if they’re willing to come on his terms.) It’s a savagely brilliant indictment of the lowest common denominator, as expressed through brain-headed guys blowing up the Taj Mahal after they take their pictures in front of it…and when you look at it like that, is it really any surprise that it wasn’t popular?

To all those wondering if Pixar would get its groove back after the abomination that was Cars 2: oh my yes.

One of the things I lament most about the slow transformation of ‘Star Wars’ from a great movie into a multi-billion dollar industry is the way that George Lucas has mythologized the process of creating the films. I’m not upset about it; I understand that most people don’t really want to hear about the slow, messy, frequently accidental way that an idea is transformed into a finished film. They want to imagine a singular vision bringing a staggering work of art forth over years, even decades of painstaking effort; saying things like, “No, I really don’t know what the Clone Wars are. But I’ve got time to figure that out before we start shooting the prequels,” does not go over well. Lucas felt a lot of pressure to tell everyone that he Had It All Figured Out From the Beginning, not just financially but in every sense imaginable.

But it is sad, because it encourages people to think of the Star Wars saga not as a story that takes different paths, but as a monolithic universe to be elaborated on. The idea of “other directions” that the series could have gone is one that gets less exploration, I think, than in any other sci-fi franchise, simply because there’s the assumption that this was the way it was all along. But that’s simply not true; and in honor of yesterday’s Father’s Day, I’m going to poke at some other ways the story could have gone at a key juncture, if different creative decisions had been made somewhere along the line. And speaking of lines, here’s a famous one: “No, Luke…”

1) “…Obi-Wan killed your father.” Fan myth has it that this is what David Prowse actually said to Mark Hamill on the set, little knowing that it would be overdubbed in post-production with James Earl Jones’ famous line. (Fan myth also has it that after seeing ‘Star Wars’ and finding out that none of his dialogue was kept, Prowse had a tendency to wander off-script in the later movies. I’d love to spend an hour listening to David Prowse’s stories about the role.) But imagine how different the third movie would be if it were true. Instead of fighting to redeem Vader, Luke would be fighting against his own self-doubt. Both his mentors lied to him. The man who showed him a wider universe turns out to have deprived him of his first connection to it. (Guinness would have been amazing here; if you think he did a great job of confessing his deception and self-justification in ‘Jedi’, just imagine how he would have been weaseling around to the idea that while he was the one who killed Anakin, it’s Vader who’s really responsible.) Of course, you’d need to come up with the backstory…perhaps Vader had turned Anakin the same way he was trying to turn Luke, and Obi-Wan killed his disciple to save his soul. There’s no question, though, that it would radically transform the third film (and remove the need for the Emperor to be a powerful Jedi, if the emotional climax is Luke rejecting Vader’s temptations and destroying him. Palpatine becomes a much less important figure in this envisioning of the trilogy.)

2) “…Obi-Wan is your father.” After all, the decision to kill off Obi-Wan was made fairly late in the shooting of the original film, when it became obvious that the character didn’t have a whole lot to do after the Death Star escape except for offer Luke a key bit of advice at the final juncture, something he could just as easily do as a blue Force ghost. It’d be very easy to imagine a movie where he escaped along with the others, perhaps using some of that Force telekinesis that everyone displays everywhere else in all the movies, books, comics, breakfast cereal boxes… And then, in the second movie, it’s Ben who trains Luke instead of (or possibly alongside) Yoda. Ben is the one who talks about the irredeemable Sith, Ben is the one who tries to prevent Luke from confronting Vader…and Ben, it turns out, was the one who wanted Luke seething with revenge for the loss of an imagined parent, filled with anger and ready to strike down his opponent. Was Ben willing to throw away his own son to get rid of the Sith? If not–if Luke could kill a man for revenge and come out the other side with his soul unscathed–what does that say about the Jedi beliefs about the Dark Side? It’d be a very different emotional tone for the remainder of the series, because there’s really no way Obi-Wan could come out of this one seeming sympathetic.

3) “…you have no father.” Yes, we all saw how that turned out in the prequels, but I’m not talking about the half-assed “created by the living Force” bullshit that Lucas pulled out in the prequels to no apparent purpose. Keep in mind, at the time ‘Empire’ was being filmed, they really did have no idea what the Clone Wars were to have been about. (There were drafts of the script that had Lando as a surviving clone, with Leia’s distrust borne of the long-standing divide between clones and humans after the Clone Wars.) It would have been a very interesting twist to find out that Luke was made, not born, as a weapon to be turned against the Sith Lords. ‘Return of the Jedi’ would feature a conflicted Luke having to decide if he had a place with his friends (who would all be pretty anti-clone, given the hints that Clone War survivors made up the bulk of the veteran troops) or if he should just give up and embrace his monstrosity, and join the Empire.

4) “…Tarkin was your father.” Sure, it’s way the hell out of left field. But you have to admit, that’s one hell of a third-act conflict. Finding out that your father was a monster, not a martyr…and that oh, by the way, you killed him and you didn’t even know it…that’s a lot of burden to bear. This would make for a much more introspective final movie, with Luke uncertain as to how to proceed after losing his moral compass. In this version, Ben’s decision not to tell Luke becomes an act of mercy as much as anything else; who’d want to know that their dad destroyed an entire planet purely as an object lesson?

5) “…your father is alive.” This would be a pretty major cliffhanger: Luke finds out that his father isn’t dead after all, but instead rots in an Imperial secret prison for the last of the Jedi. (Perhaps for those that the Emperor feels some potential for evil in?) Vader makes it clear; for Anakin to continue to enjoy his health and long life, Luke must join the Empire and turn on his friends. Brokenly, he agrees to do so. And in the next movie, with Luke’s growing Force power turned against the Rebellion, Leia and Han (and Lando and Chewie and R2 and C-3P0 and Wedge and…) have to engineer a breakout from the most secure prison in all of the Empire. And when they do break out Anakin Skywalker, Leia would find out the truth of her own parentage as well…

6) “…Chewbacca is your father.” Nah. Too silly.