With Luke's issues, large portions of the raid of Jabba's palace. There was a reason that the Emperor expect Luke to fall, in fighting a war, you have to do dark side stuff. You aren't an ally of light and such when you're running around killin' dudes.
Huh? You thought Luke killing mooks at Jabba's Palace was a gray thing? :wat: Maybe I was misinterpreting that whole segment, but I got the impression that Jabba's mooks were supposed to be the generic, faceless minions that no one really cared about when the heroes killed them. The fact that they were working for an extremely shady crime lord didn't help gain much sympathy when they got tossed into the Sarlaac, either. No one's calling out Han for blasting all those Stormtroopers in the face, are they?
And as I recall, Palpatine was trying to make Luke fall through temptations of power and dark emotions: "and together we will rule the galaxy" and "give into your hate!", the latter of which was within the context of Luke battling his father. I don't recall the Emperor ever trying to make Luke fall through jumping off the slippery slope of being brutal in a war--he tried to make Luke jump off the slippery slope of abstaining from dark emotions like hatred.
As for Fett, what makes being around weird aliens and robots evil? The rebellion was full of weird robots and aliens and such. But back to Fett, nothing made him "a bad guy" except for the fact that he worked against the good guys. He was just in it for the money, Empire and Rebellion meant nothing to him; really that's the case for all of the bounty hunters.
Very well, I'll give you that Boba Fett himself is gray in the sense that he's not particularly for good or for evil. Nonetheless, I argue that the existence of Boba Fett does not completely negate the sharp Good and Light vs Evil and Dark distinction that the original trilogy tried to make.
As for Lando, I would say he wasn't really established a hero, rather he kinda had to join the rebellion because the Empire wanted him dead. He had nowhere else to go. He was certainly heroic within the Rebellion, but he wasn't on the side of light so much as it was either that or hoping the Empire never found him.
I agree that Lando certainly wasn't the most heroic character, but his semi-redemption at the end of Episode 5 seems to be confirmed when he returns as not only a general in the Rebel army but also spearheads the assault on the Second Death Star.
Regardless, I still think my point about the Good vs Evil distinction in Star Wars stands. As you point out, Star Wars was a little grayer than I remember, but from what I remember from the movies, Rebels and Luke and Leia and Han = Good, Empire and Palpatine and Vader = Evil.
...or at least, if it weren't for...
And when I was talking about EU stuff, I was particularly talking about EU stuff as it relates to characters like that. They all had their own story and such, and most of them were pretty gray. Some of this was established since the first movies and such via newsletters and the like.
I admit, you got me there. *shrug*. I wasn't aware that they had that much EU stuff before between the movies in the original trilogy.
To my credit, though, Star Wars canonicity is a very weird thing. The fact that so many authors can lend a voice to Star Wars means that the tone can vary quite a bit; as I've said before, EU stuff like KOTOR II come off to me as being a lot grayer than the original trilogy (not counting canon EU stuff directly related to the original trilogy). Imagine if Asatsuki Dou's ultra grimdark Touhou doujin manga were suddenly declared canon by Zun: it'd throw the overall tone of Touhou into utter chaos. That, to a small extent, is how I feel about Star Wars canon.
Nonetheless, I still ask: does my point still stand for the things portrayed
in the original trilogy and only the original trilogy? That is, if someone were to see Episodes 4, 5, and 6, and (somehow) that was the only exposure they've ever had to Star Wars, would they be more likely to agree with me or you?
In relation to High Fantasy, What I am saying is that your view of High Fantasy is that it is simple, and Space Opera is complex.
You've argued that my view of Star Wars is simple, but I'm not sure if you've said that my understanding of the High Fantasy genre is simple. Could you clarify?
And as I've shown, Star Wars is a lot more of the latter than you like to think.
I'm not entirely convinced. You've shown me that some of the characters in Star Wars, namely Lando Carlissian and Boba Fett, leaned more towards gray than black or white, but what about the other High Fantasy elements? Destiny, magic, the sequence of events playing out in a fantastic rather than realistic fashion? Are they not relevant?
Actually, so that we're both on the same page: what is High Fantasy to you? Perhaps our disagreement is stemming from differences in our definitions of High Fantasy.
(With Tolkien actually, no, point is that Sauron isn't fully and perfectly evil. This isn't rewriting, it's a nuance that was briefly touched on and came through more in Tolkien's other writings.)
Interesting...I recall that Sauron was corrupted by Melkor, but I've never heard of Sauron not being totally evil. Was this somewhere in the Silmarillion, Children of Hurin, or other such work?
