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When Luke manages to get into Jabba's palace, the Gamorrean pig guards cross their axes, as if to say "where are you going", and Luke proceeds to CHOKE them to death!

I mean, they were only doing their job - they may have just let him in if he mind tricked them. All they were doing was going "Wtf are you doing?". Had they gone to swing their axes, then fine, but they didn't, they just stood there.

That's a bit harsh for a Jedi isn't it?

Are Gamorrean pig guards born evil, and therefore deserve to die or something?

I think the Jedi's must be Jewish - they obviously dislike pig.

Were they choked to death, literally? I wasn't actually sure Luke had killed them off...got me

He didn't kill them, he just choke them for a bit so that he could get through.

Yer that scene for me was always baffling, i mean is he using Darth Vader's supra evil choke power there? bizzare. The pigman goes ominously still as well...

not a single forcepower is evil, it is the entention you have behind it that makes it evil.

it's like said in the movie The Man With The Golden Gun:
"Bullets do not kill, it is the finger that pulls the trigger"

Vader had the intention in ANH to kill the poor guy that insulted the Force, he released him because his superior (Tarkin) demanded him to get released.
Luke on the otherhand just pushed them away (with possible choking) so that they would let him pass, he had no intention to "choke them to death" they are still clearly alive when he passes.

and to mindtrick someone I take they have to have a certain amount of intelligence too, something those pigs lack

And to devleop what yerssot accurately says...

Why would you thinm Grip is innately evil anyway? It's just telekinesis applied at the throat. Do you think Push is evil? That's telekinesis too!

The powers cannot be intrinsically evil- as yerss says, it's just what you do with them. Frankly, killing someone with the Force is no morally different to sticking a sabre though their stomach. Of course, a Jedi has to watch his emotional state with such things...

So what good purpose can force lightning have?

/\ well, yod a uses force lightning in ep2 to counter dooku

No he does not.
Watch Episode 2 again and u will see taht he deflects Dooku's lightning. he does not create/shoot lightning.

Yeah that was well tight, those overgrown piglets did nothing wrong, and that Pink Snake/birdman thing what comes upto Luke after HE SCARY!!

Pink/snake birdman?
Are u talking about the Twi'leek (spelling) Fortuna?

force lightning to heat up that juicy bantha for cooking

He had to do something "scary" to make himself more intimidating. He probably knew they wouldn't take his being a jedi seriously. He had to make some sort of show of force (no pun intended) in order to let them know he was not to be trifled with. It wasn't to be bad, it was to appear possibly bad. Just a bit of posturing, he knows he's going in to deal with gangsters and thugs, some of the worst in the galaxy, and all they respect is power. So he showed off a bit to put a little fear and intimidation in them.

He choked them? I was always under the impression that he put them to sleep, didnt they slump against the wall and start snoozing?

they walked into the wall and grabbed their throat ... but it's rather unclear if it was a push or a choke imo

All the shooting script offers is this:

" Luke raises his hand and points at the puzzled guards, who
immediately lower their spears and fall back. The young Jedi
lowers his hand and moves on down the hallway."

Again... what good purpose can a Lightsabre have? These are weapons. Weapons are not inherently evil.

But still, a Lightsaber is a weapon of protection, not attack. It is made so that they can protect themselves and others from blaster bolts. But i still can't see any good use for force lightning.

No, that it deflects blaster bolts is simply a quirk of it. It is a weapon. It is designed to KILL, and they frequently use it as such. Now, they can use that in self-defence only if they wish... but the SAME applies to Force Lightning.

A lightsaber is used for defense, it kills quickly.
Frying somebody to death isnt quick.

Plus, if a jedo only attacks for defense, why does he choke them? They werent attacking him, they just stopped him, do i try to strangle the passport people?

Sometimes I really want to.

Luke didn't show as much compassion as he showed his authority.

He made it clear by acting: "I AM going through here."

He could have tried to have a conversation. Or at least a little mind trick. The point is that there was no rush at the moment. He didn't have a need to act quickly.

Can we say that Luke lacked patience in the beginning of ROTJ?

Obi Wan showed a great amount of compassion while he was in cantina with Luke. Instead of mind tricking or force choking the thug who harassed Luke, he offered to buy him a drink. Only after it became obvious that violence would be unavoidable did he grab his weapon.

That was the way to go...

So would a jedi who slays hundreds of people yet be mentally damaged so as to think that he is doing the right thing a 'evil' force user? Or would he be 'tainted' as it is.

Star Wars goes to pains to make it black and white in the use of the force

perhaps there's a special "insane" group for them

If they do "evil" things in "cold blood" then yes, that is the Dark Side, regardless of their state of mind.

First of all, there is nothing that guarantees that a sabre brings a quick death. Secondly, that is still irrelevant to the morality behind the use of a weapon- like I say, a weapon kills, that is what it is for. Justbecause something kills you cannot rule it as evil. Killing is part of the Jedi's job, be he using a gun, a sabre, or the Force. If Lightning can ONLY torture someone before killing hem, then sure, that's harsh, and he wouldn't do it, but not because it is evil, simply because its use is restricted- like stabbing someone to death with a toothpick.

Luke was just being efficient in ROTJ I think. Those guards were not going to let him past so he used a non-lethal method of bypassing them; simple as that.

OK, well I guess he's doing a "force-sleeper-hold" then.

The scene did give the wrong impression, as I've asked many people about this scene, and they all agreed that it looked as though he killed them in cold blood.

It does create the wrong impression - the pigs struggle and seem in pain, but cannot scream - an idication that they are being choked. Then they slump backwards. They seem pretty dead.

They should have shown a CLEAR cut of the guards snoring, or something if he was just putting them to sleep.

And Force Lightning used against a living person is a dark side trait.

I was always under the impression that Dark Side users could create lightning, but Jedi couldn't, it's too aggressive and raw. Instead I always thought that Jedi ABSORBED energy, which gives them such affinity for life and so on. Sith expel raw energy, life ebs away from them. Jedi absorb calm energy, life tops them up.

luke chokes them so they fall away. he doesn't kill 'em or break their windpipe or anything.

IF Luke can choke someone temporarily, I assume he could possibly zap them with lightning if he so chose. If a squad of battle droids were slauthering people and Luke used force lightning to destory them, that wouldn't be evil. It depends on how much control you have over the force, light or darkside.

Or ...
maybe that Luke, like his father Anakin, is very sensitive when his friends/familly are in danger (maybe because of the impressive total of Midichlorians his body has ) morever he doesn't have a master jedi next to him all the time to remind him to stay on the Jedi's path...Indeed for me he goes a bit "sithhy" with those gammoreans.

I think that Luke has his dark side demons, and that episodes IV, V, VI were his moment s of glory, wherever Episodes VII, VIII and IX will show his fall !

And the new Master Sith, he will become !
..or not...I don't really know but if he becomes evil, this scene in "The Return of the Jedi" will clearly be a nice move !

All this stuff (force choke, force push, dark and light powers) didn't even exist at the time of ROTJ. That came later with the games.

vader does not use force choke in the OT?

and force push? I did see force pull :P

as for dark and light abilities, both are necessary disarming or killing a dangerous opponent

It was never called that... nor was it clear there was a difference between light and dark powers. The games did that.

i agree that a force-choke is not inherently evil. i also accept that it's possible that luke was just doing a force-sleeper hold.

what i can't accept is the notion of an off-camera unadressed resolution of luke's inner conflicts at some point between ESB & RotJ. when we last saw him in ESB, he is clearly battling the idea of reaching out to his father, while expressing anger at kenobi for not having told him the truth from a more universal point of view.

luke was deliberately depicted as morally ambivalent at the beginning of ROTJ as a continuation of his dilemma at the end of ESB. the deleted scene would have made it certain that this dark foreboding was very much deliberate.

tl;dr - the force choke is not a specifically dark use of power, but the depiction of it's use by luke clearly presented a dark and foreboding tone.

_ayT0EZwbks

Oh, I am not contesting Luke's inner conflicts. One of the strong points of Luke's story arc.

All I am saying is that none of these force powers had a label light or dark on it until the games started dividing them.

it's not just the games that lead to the assumption, though. until that rotj scene, the choke was only performed by vader...and 3 times at that, 4 if you consider that one-arm choke-slam in the beginning of ep 4.

this doesnt prove anything, but the fact remains that until that scene, vader had a monopoly on choke-holds (with exception to chewbacca choking lando....but after all he's only a wookie).

it's the same as with force lightning. nowhere is it established that the technique is specifically dark-sided, but the fact that only the sith have used it leads to the assumption.

Well, still a weak argument. We hardly saw any other Jedi fight, other than with a light sabre. We saw Vader choking using the Force, in ROTJ we see Luke doing the same. It might as well indicate Luke is maturing in his Force abilities.

I think it's more in the nature of the Sith to use the Force in a particular way to suit their selfish goals. And I guess Jedi use the Force for knowledge and defence, never for attack...

I don't think they are powers unknown to the Jedi. OB1 certainly wasn't too surprised about Dooku's lightning.

you don't know that obiwan wasn't surprised by dooku's force lightning. that's your interpretation. either way, on two occasions, OT and PT, palpatine names it a darkside ability to throw lightning. sure he's also a proven big fat liar, but it's still an on screen testimonial, so the argument is valid.

Well for one, OB1 didn't look surprised at all. And secondly, he countered the lightning attack fairly simply.

And so where does Palpy call lightning a Sith ability? I'd like to see that line.

Originally posted by queeq
Well for one, OB1 didn't look surprised at all. And secondly, he countered the lightning attack fairly simply.

And so where does Palpy call lightning a Sith ability? I'd like to see that line.

he clearly suggests it before zapping yoda in ep3 and then luke in ep6. "now you will witness the full power of the darkside" *zap*, "your feeble skills are no match for the power of the dark side" *zap*.

but no queeq, he didnt say "now i will use force lightning, which you know nothing of since it's exclusively a darkside ability.", so i guess thats that.

in case i was unclear, i'm not asserting that force lightning is an exclusively darkside power.

maybe it's possible for a jedi to learn force lightning in a calm and collected way without letting hate flow through him. is so, it was probably done and deemed useless since it can only be used to torture and eventually kill.

No again, I think Sith just use the Force for completely different purposes. If stuff like lightning and choking is just for destroying people, I am quite sure the Jedi wouldn't use it. Just like pacifists will not use guns... doesn't mean a pacifist can't FIRE a gun. They just don't use it.

I think that is the case with these powers. Luke uses choke, but then he's hardly a fully trained Jedi... maybe he doesn't have that clear distinction yet. And what Palpy may also mean with that lightning is that he is much stronger than half-trained-Luke... He subdued Anakin, and now he destroys the Jedi's last hope. That's the full power of the Dark Side he suggests, that the Dark Side overcomes all... But he was a little wrong there.

choke did not kill in my view. both with vader and luke.

as for the jew reference, was not really needed.

Originally posted by overlold
choke did not kill in my view.

since we're all quibbling over technicalities, i couldnt help but notice that there has been no actual proof on screen that force lightning can kill.

True, but we never saw it come to completion. So it's an educated guess that it certainly could.

Originally posted by overlold
choke did not kill in my view. both with vader and luke.

as for the jew reference, was not really needed.

Jew reference??? What are you talking about?

It's always been obvious to me that Luke did NOT kill those guards but just got them out of his way long enough to get by. He choked them, yes, but he didn't kill them.

oy vey! what am i being accused of saying, now?

Exactly... very strange.

Luke only applied the choking for a few seconds, and you can't choke to death in a few seconds, so if he's choking them he wasn't trying to kill them.

But, who knows? Maybe he inadvertently crushed a windpipe, or maybe he was also constricting a vein in the neck so they would pass out faster and he ruptured the vein, or caused a stroke or something. It's very possible one of them was seriously injured or killed.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Usually in the movies the hero bonks someone over the head (or gets bonked), and it is presumed they merely passed out to awaken later perfectly fine. But brain injuries are serious business, there could be hematomas, post-concussion syndrome, and a number of long-term health consequences that could mess up their lives for years.

I think I just saw yerssot.

Your eyes can deceive you.

The "choking" is a power of an inherently dark and evil nature is something that came after-the-fact, in the post-movie over-analysis.


He suffocated a talking pigman. F*ck that pigman.

I believe the entire opening sequence of Jedi is to show how the main characters have matured. We see Princess Leia act like a ruthless bounty hunter, then we see Lando disguise himself as an evil guard, then Luke enters wearing all black and throwing force chokes around. He nearly force grabbed a laser gun to straight up shoot Jabba! Only the pit trap stopped him! Sweet Princess Leia lays around in a sexy bikini waiting for her chance to choke Jabba to death!

The characters have adapted. They aren't the innocent goody-goods of Episode 4 anymore. They've been betrayed, beaten, and defeated at every turn. Luke using the force to get a couple of Pig Guards out of his way to save his friend is nothing.

Alright to clear this up here...



He didn't kill them, he choked them yes, but really just to immobilize them.

Ah, good one.