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Darth Father ...was lucas planning the twist while writing ANH?

#1 User is offline   Lefty Icon

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Post icon  Posted 06 October 2006 - 12:56 PM

Ok, yesterday I stumbled on the information that "Vater" means "Father" in German!

This raises the mind-blowing possibility that Lucas had planned the "I am your father" plot twist back when he wrote "A New Hope", even though he had no idea he'd be allowed to make more Star Wars movies...which leads to the even-more-mindblowing conclusion that he went to great length to keep Darth Vader's parentage of Luke secret until ESB was released....but named him something that translated to "Darth Father".

My world is realing. For example, I previously didn't know whether Elanno Sleezebaggo (from some prequil or something) was going to be a goodguy or not...but looking at it through this new "linguisitic hint" lens, I think he might be either a Sleeze or a Bag or perhaps the ancient chinese game of "Go"! sick.gif wub.gif yell.gif
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#2 User is offline   flying dutchman Icon

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Posted 06 October 2006 - 04:28 PM

Vader=father in the dutch language
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#3 User is offline   Vesuvius Icon

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Posted 07 October 2006 - 01:40 PM

Just look at most of the names that Lucas gives to his characters, they all have some sort of duality meaning to them. Most of which are of the Asian languages.

Padme' I believe is Sanskrit.... (I could be wrong)
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#4 User is offline   miladyblue Icon

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Posted 07 October 2006 - 02:43 PM

Yukai Ondori, it is actually Sinhalese. I am a gemstone geek, and one of the rarest forms of corundum, is padparadscha - which is from two words, padma radschen which translates into "Lotus Blossom". Unfortunately, I don't know which one is lotus and which one is blossom.
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#5 User is offline   mireaux7 Icon

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Posted 07 October 2006 - 02:47 PM

Lucas has borrowed countless Japanese themes,..why not call Vader..Darth Otousan...since otousan means father in Japanese
QUOTE (njamilla @ Feb 23 2008, 08:16 AM)
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#6 User is offline   Vesuvius Icon

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Posted 07 October 2006 - 11:02 PM

Ah okay, Milady cool. Thanks. Calling Vader, Otosan, hmmm, .... unsure.gif Too many Japanese people would get it right away probabaly and I'm sure a number of German speaking people got it right off the bat. Not the fact that Vader is Luke's father but he's someone's dad.
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#7 User is offline   Paladin Icon

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Posted 08 October 2006 - 05:05 PM

I heard about this a long time ago (several years, I believe). At first I thought it could have had a lot to do with being a twist, but then I heard somewhere that 'Darth' means 'death' in some language (could be Dutch... not sure). Given that, Darth Vader could mean Death Father. Regardless, it is a subtle and interesting thing, don't you agree?
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#8 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 10 October 2006 - 03:56 PM

Lucas hadn't planned to make Darth Vader Luke's father when he wrote STAR WARS. In early drafts of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Ben guides Luke in conversing with his father, who is in another part of the galaxy and who will return to help the rebellion when he is able. What exactly he is doing or what put him there, I don't know.

Anyway, I'd say that the fact that Lucas allowed Luke and Leia to make out in the second film and then made them siblings in the next should convince anyone - it convinced me as a teenager - that old Georgie made the series up as he went along.

Not that there's anytyhing wrong with that.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#9 User is offline   ion eon Icon

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Posted 10 October 2006 - 04:19 PM

Georgie... He really didnt know what he was doing. He really just got lucky.
OH NO!!!
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#10 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 27 December 2006 - 07:49 AM

I think I have to agree with Civilian Number Two that the Luke/Leia makeout scene makes it hard to believe that Lucas had planned all along for Vader to be Luke's father.

But, that's not exactly an indictment of the film; scripts tend to be a continual process; it's not really a bad thing that this particular plot twist wasn't planned from the beginning, that's just part of the movie making process.

Along the same lines as the Vader-Father connection though, an interesting question was raised earlier about this revelation in ESB (I think Storm brought this up, but I don't remember now). Why does Luke believe Vader at the end of ESB when he says that he's his father? Given the fact that Vader had just tried to kill him and had basically made it known that he would do whatever it would take to turn Luke to the dark side, why would Luke just believe such a statement? True, Luke does use the Force to search his feelings, and I suppose you could argue that he divines that Vader is telling the truth. But, I don't know, seems like Luke would have been a lot more catious about believing this, especially since he was in an incredibly emotional state at the time.

Perhaps a better question would be: how did people react upon seeing this scene for the first time? Did moviegoers think that Vader was lying? Or did they assume that he was telling the truth as well? Anybody know?

And, just to add, I don't think this is really a flaw in the movies, I just think that it's a bit of a strange reaction on the part of Luke's character and on the part of the audience since there's no real reason to trust anything that Vader would say at that ponit.

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#11 User is offline   Chefelf Icon

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Posted 27 December 2006 - 09:31 AM

Yeah, I agree with civ2 and jc. Lucas would love to have us believe that this was all part of some grand plot he knew since day one (and much of it is) but I think this is just a case of coincidence. Make up enough words and one of them is bound to be a real world.

As civ pointed out much of the original drafts (see the annotated screenplays for more details) point out that much of the plot from ESB and ROTJ was made up after ANH became popular.
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#12 User is offline   Laura Icon

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Posted 27 December 2006 - 04:19 PM

QUOTE (Chefelf @ Dec 27 2006, 09:31 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Yeah, I agree with civ2 and jc. Lucas would love to have us believe that this was all part of some grand plot he knew since day one (and much of it is) but I think this is just a case of coincidence. Make up enough words and one of them is bound to be a real world.

As civ pointed out much of the original drafts (see the annotated screenplays for more details) point out that much of the plot from ESB and ROTJ was made up after ANH became popular.


Knowing what I know now about Lucas, I doubt his ability to restrain himself from hinting anviliciously--if he DID know Vader was Luke's father and he also knew he might not be able to make more movies, I'm not sure he'd be able to refrain from flaunting that information from minute 1.

However, I don't think it matters for our enjoyment of the series whether Lucas knew what he was doing or not. It works as it is.

As far as the dutch origins go, I think that may be apocryphal. I'm given to understand that:

"'Darth' is a variation of dark. And 'Vader' is a variation of father. So it's basically Dark Father. All the names have history, but sometimes I make mistakes -- Luke was originally going to be called Luke Starkiller, but then I realized that wasn't appropriate for the character. It was appropriate for Anakin, but not his son. I said, 'Wait, we can't weigh this down too much -- he's the one that redeems him.'" - George Lucas, Rolling Stone, June 2005

Maybe it's just because I'm used to Skywalker, but Starkiller sounds a LOT LOT LOT stupider.
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#13 User is offline   Vesuvius Icon

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Posted 27 December 2006 - 11:35 PM

I read something on Wikipedia about the word Darth actually consisting of two words: Dark and Sith. Being that the true Sith weren't really evil, but they did have the dark side running through them and they were strong in the dark side of the Force. But now we know according to games and EU, that the true Sith race has died out or been bread out of existance. Sith is no more than just an ideal. Now, for someone to assume the title Darth, that means that they are following in the ideals of the Sith way to use the dark side, and be dark and evil about it.

Sounds more like the title Darth should only be given to the most serious about the ideal principles and using evil means to achieve victory.

Then we see Anakin in EP III.... and he's anything but evil. Putz more like it.
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#14 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 28 December 2006 - 04:54 AM

I did a quick look on Wikipedia, and found a link to an article on Wookiepedia which states that "packaging on Dutch figurines of Darth Vader name him Dark Father." You can view that article at this url if you're curious to read it:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth

So, that's interesting; I would guess for the sake of consistency that Darth Vader would also be changed to Dark Father in the Dutch versions of the film, assuming that this information about the packaging is accurate.

Not sure what that exactly proves though; I don't deny that the name has significance; but there's still a lot of evidence to suggest that the "Vader is Luke's father" plot twist wasn't conceived until after ANH.

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#15 User is offline   Storm Icon

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Posted 28 December 2006 - 09:36 PM

I was watching a parody on YouTube making fun of the scene where Obi Wan is telling Luke about his father. I think it's pretty clear at that stage that Lucas had absolutely no intention of making Vader Luke's father.

I thought hard about the line "Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your Uncle would never allow it" really drives this point home. In ROTS, we are subjected to a scene where Obi Wan picks up Anakin's lightsaber; however, this does absolutely no justice to the line. I tried thinking of different things Lucas could have done to solve this problem, but it is simply impossible.

For example, Anakin could have had the kids (before turning to the dark side) and discussed with Obi-Wan someday wanting his kids to use his lightsaber. However, this can't happen because

1. It's not Anakin's decision to determine whether or not his children are to be trained in the Jedi Arts. The decision lies solely with the Jedi Council.

2. Anakin isn't allowed to marry OR have kids, so there is no way he could have held this discussion with Obi-Wan unless he wanted to be expelled from the Jedi Order.

3. Anakin (and Vader for that matter) never knew that the kids were even born!


As long as Vader is the father of Luke, that line cannot possibly be justified. The only way this could ever be corrected is for Obi-Wan to have stated "Your father 'died' shortly before you were born, but I believe he would have wanted you to be trained in the Jedi Arts".....or something like that.

Nevermind....there is NO solution to the problem.

This post has been edited by Storm: 28 December 2006 - 09:37 PM

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