Star Wars age 9 Comic Book

Age 12/13? | 1980/81?  Luke finds himself hanging like a stalactite from the ceiling of the Wampa’s cave

A New Jedi Ability

This scene might seem like nothing very special now, because we’ve seen Jedi performing all manner of increasingly amazing feats—especially in the latest movie, The Last Jedi—but back in 1980 what Luke does here was astounding. We’d seen a few Jedi mind-tricks, and Luke striking the training remote blindfolded, and Ben vanishing when Vader struck him down, but never actual telekinesis. Levitating an object solely by the power of the mind.

CAPTION

It was stunning scene. The aforementioned increasingly amazing feats make me wonder where Star Wars can possibly go next. What Snoke and Luke did in The Last Jedi took Jedi powers to a whole new level, maybe as far as you can go without becoming an all-powerful God. Its no surprise that they have to keep coming up with new powers. I mean, I got pretty bored with the Jedi many years ago. I’d see the Prequels and the animated shows and there was this repetitive stuff like deflecting laser bolts with light-sabers, and force-pushing over and over. It felt—to me—like they were just going through the motions.

Soon the shaggy white horror would be warming the young warrior in the darkness of its belly
—Novelisation, Donald F. Glut (young readers’ edition)

The one scene that I liked in The Prequels was the quiet one between Palpatine and Annakin at the theatre—largely due to Ian McDiarmuid’s great, relaxed performance. In it, he alluded to a former dark-sider who actually conquered death. We never saw that feat performed, but we were told about it and our imagination did the rest. Much like Ben briefly mentioning something called The Clone Wars to Luke, and conjuring images in our imaginations of a bygone age of Jedi Knights.

I suppose one has to be careful when working on a Saga which has to go on and on engaging audiences for ever, not to use up all the toys and not to disappoint audiences who have formed certain ideas and images in their imaginations. If you show it all, and up the ante so hugely, you can end up with nowhere else exciting to go.

Biblically Epic

It’s funny, I’m reminded of something I read during one of the extremely rare occasions when I read any of the bible, years and years ago (call it research and curiosity). In the New Testament, there’s a scene where Jesus tells some disciples that: I could raise that mountain over there with a wave of my hand… But he doesn’t. For some reason that image of the mountain raising up—even though he doesn’t ever do it—and that I created in my own mind is one of the most fascinating and powerful things that I can remember from the Bible. There’s actually another bit where we’re told that Jesus made an olive tree wither and die before their eyes. That was pretty exciting and powerful (and kind of horrid), but it’s nothing compared to an entire mountain lifting into the air.

If you lift a mountain, how do you follow that?

“And for my next trick, I will raise an X-Wing!”

“Borrring! Do the mountain again. A bigger one!”

I’d love to read your comments below. Where can the Jedi go next with their powers? Go on, tell us all about it.