OK, so my intro kind if suggests what I'm wanting to blog about. I was watching TV tonight (Last Comic Standing, I think ... by the way, Stooge you would be awesome on that show!), and I glanced down to the shelf under our coffee table and saw two DVD cases sitting beside each other. Lo and behold it's two movies I recently watched in no particular order ... Attack of the Clones and The Empire Strikes Back. And my mind gets to thinking that it's cool that a PT and OT movie found their way to lie beside each other on the shelf for whatever reason. And more interesting that it's movie number two of each trilogy ... I mean what are the odds?

Anyhoo, as I pick up the copies to look at the covers, my Star Wars mind wanders and begins to look at similarities. I have the widescreen 2004 set edition of TESB and the widescreen 2002 single edition of AOTC, if it matters. But what I do notice is that Anakin, or Darth Vader, is figured predominantly on both covers. And with a lightsabre in hand (albeit one is blue, and the other is red) and he is positioned differently on each case. He's holding his sabre in his left hand on the AOTC case, and in his right on TESB case. Then my mind starts to think that this represents both of his sides as Jedi and Sith ... he abandoned his Jedi training and lifestyle to become a Sith therefore he must switch his dominant lightsabre hand. And he's also looking menacing on both covers. Obviously as Vader he must be menacing ... it's his persona to be a tyrant and iron fist as a Sith Lord. But in the AOTC case he looks angry and ready to battle, and looks much like the Anakin who emerged from the Tusken tent where his mother had been held ... bitter and jaded. That figure fits nicely into the Vader character on the ESB cover.

And I glance at some of the other characters on the covers as well ... Yoda in both looks like a complete opposite of himself. In the AOTC cover he is fighting and had a ball of Force energy in his palm ready to deflect, whereas in TESB cover he looks like a calm, wise and patient Master with his arms together in peace. And that is the story of his character ... he was an uptight and nervous Jedi Master in AOTC who was expecting the worst and got it and in TESB he was a wiser teacher who understood the mistakes of the past and was working to correct the worst that had happened.

Then my mind wanders a character that doesn't appear. In AOTC it makes sense, of course that he isn't there, but in TESB Luke is not on the cover. My first instinct is that it is because the title is The EMPIRE Strikes Back ... Luke is not in the Empire, therefore should not be included as such. But neither is Yoda and he is on it, neither is Lando (though he did make a deal with them), and neither is Boba Fett (though he was contracted by them) and they are on the cover.

But picture covers aside, I start to think about the similarities of father and son in each movie. Anakin began to grow as a Jedi in AOTC and started to question his place among the Jedi and how that fit into his love for Padme. In TESB Luke also began to grow as a Jedi and also questioned his place within it as he took off from his training on Dagobah for the love of his friends. Both knew they wanted to become Jedi but put the love and devotion for others who they cared about first, before their training. Anakin defied the Jedi Order by falling in love and marrying Padme at the end. Luke defied Yoda and Ben by racing away from his training to "rescue" his friends out of love for them. In both cases it cost them dearly. Anakin would succumb to the Darkside temptations by trying to save his mother and when he could not, ruthlessly cut down a group of Tuskens. And Luke would succumb to the folly that he believed he could also save his friends from peril ... which cost him his hand and left his friends in darkness.

Both Anakin's and Luke's journey in the second movie of each trilogy are very similar. Both were getting a clear sense of the path they were beginning to take, even though each would make his mistakes. The difference in the end is that Anakin did not learn from his mistakes until the very last minutes of his life when he saved Luke. And Luke learned from his fight with Vader in TESB that he could not make that same mistake. As he looked at his artificial hand in ROTJ he knew he could not follow his father's path, and took his place as the hero on the cover of The Return of the Jedi case.