Until, another brainwave hits me and I can reveal and expound upon another one of my revisions to the prequels, I thought I would start to share a little bit of what I love about Star Wars.

I have often mentioned that the Empire Strikes Back is my favorite movie. The tone, the action, the characters, the revelation. Everything about the film save for the haunting three year wait for the resolution was awesome. However my favorite individual moment occurs in Return of the Jedi.

Luke is standing prisoner on the skiff plank awaiting execution in the sarlaac pit. His best friend can barely see, his sister is chained to a giant slug and he is defenseless. Then he makes a signal and one of Artoo's trapezoidal panel slides away to reveal the top of a cylinder. Luke is the pushed by guard into the pit and instead of falling he uses superhuman strength to summersault himself back onto the skiff and into his outstreched hand he grabs his newly constructed lightsaber hilt and to my complete shock ignites a GREEN blade. Green, not blue as I expected. There are green lightsabers? What's next? Purple?

What moments earlier was a dire situation has suddenly reversed itself and now there is a Jedi Knight in command of the situation. Blasters are useless against a fully trained Jedi. Nevermind that there are endless streams of thugs taking their shots. He just sends their shots right back at them. Leia may help a litte, but this lone warrior has single handedly destroyed a criminal enterprise. Jabba could have just allowed Han to leave with Luke instead he underestimated the Force and it cost him his life.

It is moments like this that left me disappointed with the prequels. Luke Skywalker is heroic and powerful. His father is more whiny that he was. Subsequent books invent ways to deprive him of the Force. But in this fleeting moment we know that we have seen the Return of the Jedi with the Force as his ally.