The Force Choke - A Journey
From Antilles to Padme

This may seem to take a while, but it builds to a point.

Our first experience with choking in Star Wars is physical. In 1977, watching an untitled A New Hope for the first time, we know nothing about the Force. The characters are new to us. Darth Vader appears, clearly a bad hombre accompanied by strange breathing, a dramatic pause in the music, and a commanding presence. The next time we see him, he's holding some poor chap a couple feet from the ground by his neck to interrogate him. When he doesn't get the answers he wants (and it's clear that he didn't expect those answers), we hear the sickening wet crack of the man's neck before he's brutally cast into the wall. This Darth Vader person means business.

Then, we follow the droids to Tatooine. We see dragon skeletons, sandcrawlers, Jawas, and a moisture farm. What an amazing universe this is! Finally, the title music introduces a young man named Luke, and we begin to follow his journey. The Landspeeder, sandpeople (never referred to as Tusken Raiders), banthas... the innovation never ends.

We see an old man, and our little world seen through the eyes of Luke is broadened by his presence. We learn about Luke's father (from a certain point of view) and Darth Vader, who was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.

"The Force?"
"Yes. The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field that surrounds us. It penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together."

The scene ends with, "You must do what you feel is right, of course," and we wipe over to our first view of the Death Star. During a complicated scene that talks about a senate and regional governors, we see Darth Vader again for the first time since the beginning of the movie. An admiral has raised his ire, and Vader says, "I find your lack of faith disturbing," while raising his hand with his fingers posed to pinch. A curious thing happens. As if by magic, the admiral begins to choke. He coughs, he reaches for his throat, he sputters, and when Vader finally releases him, he collapses onto the table.

This, then, is our first experience with the Force being used to manipulate remote objects. We're learning quickly that these Jedi were more than warriors, more than swordsmen... they were wizards, too, for lack of a better term. (And we thought Owen was just being cheeky.)

Having seen Vader's first throttling, it's easy to make the connection that this guy is merciless and can use the Force to choke people from a distance. It's easy to make that assumption.


We continue through the saga: Ben using the mind trick and his lightsaber in action for the first time. Vader sensing Obi-Wan's presence. Ben distracting the Stormtroopers. Ben sacrificing himself to Vader's blade only to vanish. The ultimate expression of the Force in A New Hope is hearing Ben's voice thirty seconds after his "death." The Force is powerful, indeed. It evolved from parlor tricks to a religion in less than two hours.

The Empire Strikes Back: Our Hogwarts for the Force. If A New Hope was the primer, than Empire is the full course. Yoda is our instructor for the good side while Vader teaches us the Dark Arts. Force chokes abound!

Return of the Jedi is more of the same, seemingly adding nothing to the Force dogma until the Emperor surprises us with lightening. With lightening? That's new!

We wait sixteen years, and the Force percolates in all of us. We understand it fully, don't we?

The prequels come and introduce the aspects of midichlorians, the Living Force, prolonging life, more about the eternal life, and the prophesy of the Chosen One. It's a lot to digest, and endless debates wage all over the Internet. After sixteen years, many fans don't want their idea about the Force tampered with!

I'm more accepting. The idea of midichlorians is introduced in Phantom so that when Palpatine refers to them in Sith, we know what he's talking about. The school of the Living Force was Qui-Gon's road to the Force afterlife (true immortality), and it was the yin to Palpatine's yang of abusing the Force to cheat death (false immortality).

The saga nearly complete, we follow Padme to Mustafar as she confronts Anakin. Obi-Wan appears, and Anakin performs his first (in the films) Force choke on Padme. She dies at the end of the film not from physical reasons, the medical droid tells us, but because she "lost the will to live." Many audiences gag. Many fans rally and rage in forums. "What about her kids? What about a real reason? What about my Star Wars agenda instead of George's?"

What if, instead, we were wrong? What if we relied on our deep-seeded notions of the Force instead of evolving with the nature of the Force?

When Vader chokes Captain Antilles, it's a physical murder: a robotic hand crushing a windpipe and spine. Knowing all that we know about the Force now, when we watch Vader Force choke Admiral Motti, is it physical? Is he using the Force as an extension of his hand to physically crush the man's throat? I think not. I think it's something more, and it's all about the Dark Side.

The Light Side is about calmness, selflessness, generosity, learning, and defense. It's ultimate existence is in the Jedi afterlife, becoming one with the Force.

The Dark Side is about anger, fear, greed, power, and destruction. Its ultimate existence is Palpatine's haggard appearance, a man who has stolen from the Force to prolong his life. Where Qui-Gon gives himself to the will of the Living Force, that energy field created by all living things, a practitioner of the Dark Side siphons it. A direct manifestation of this? The Force Choke.

When Vader chokes Motti, kills Ozzel and Needa, and chokes Padme, he is drawing from their living Force like a vampire. The reaction of someone being choked this way is to gasp for breath, loosen their collar, and appear to be physically choking. When the new Darth Vader chokes Padme, he unwittingly steals enough of her Life Force as to be fatal. This is undetectable by the medical droids, of course.

So the line, "She seems to have lost the will to live" is true... from a certain point of view. Vader literally sucked the life out of her. And Palpatine's line, "It seems that in your anger you killer her" is also true. Anakin was consumed with greed and power, jealousy and rage. Tragically, the one thing he wanted more than anything was to be with Padme, and in his anger he reached out and took her spirit.

ADDENDUM:
Anakin wasn't thinking when he attacked Padme, and he certainly wasn't thinking of his unborn child (blissfully unaware she carried twins). So, I'll further speculate that had Padme not been pregnant, she would have died on the landing platform just like Ozzel and Needa. The largest weakness of the Dark Side, it has become clear, is underestimating the Light Side. The Emperor did it in Jedi. Luke's insight served him well: "Your overconfidence is your weakness." And Palpatine had it wrong: "Your faith in your friends is yours!" What he could never understand is that Luke's faith in his friendships, his love, was what made him strong.

Anyone who has read the Harry Potter series can see a strong parallel.

So it was with Padme. Her love for the good in Anakin, her love for her unborn children, and most importantly the strength of the Force in the twins kept her alive long enough for them to be born. Once delivered, the damage young Vader had done was too much, and she died.