well, why wouldn’t we? it was all we had to go on until another movie came out!
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Hmmm… Because Vader wasn’t trustworthy?
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You can find reaction videos on YouTube wherein kids see that “I am your father” moment. It’s genuinely cool to see if they haven’t had it spoiled. I had my kids watch the movies somewhat younger than I had originally planned, just so the reveal wouldn’t be spoiled for them in a schoolyard. (A preschool classmate in a Vader costume yelling “I am your father!” to passersby was all the motivation I needed to curtail the wait and show my kids the movies at ages 6 and almost-5.) And sure enough, that reveal floored them.
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Huh. At age 6, my eldest niece just wanted to know why The Force Awakens used the Angry Birds theme song.
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I love trailers. My moviegoing experience is noticeably diminished if I don’t get seated in time to see the previews. Like Jamie Lee Curtis said in Coming Soon, “these previews were often better than the movies themselves, and with good reason: even the worst films should have enough good footage to create two or three exciting minutes.”
An amusingly out-of-the-ordinary trailer is the six-and-a-half-minute-long one for Psycho. Hitchcock himself takes us on a guided tour of the Bates Motel and mansion set, acting as if the murders really happened a short time ago and the Bates property is up for sale. In the trailer, he spoils pretty much every moment and violent act in the movie, and yet somehow doesn’t spoil it at all, but rather leaves the viewer dying to see how this sordid tale plays out. It’s a masterful tease of the movie.
I avoid spoilers not so much to avoid pre-knowledge of specific twists and surprises, but more to preserve the filmmaker’s intent of how they want to tell the story to me. Few filmmakers get the privilege of controlling their movie’s marketing efforts the way Hitchcock did with that Psycho trailer, so I like to give them the courtesy of allowing them to unfold the story into my mind they way they best intend. I can always rewatch an enjoyable movie as many times as I want after that first viewing, and knowing how the story shakes out may not diminish my enjoyment then. But I only get that First Viewing Experience once, so I try to keep it unspoiled.
But I don’t really try to avoid trailers, since I like them. So it’s a bummer if too much plot is revealed in a trailer, usually.
By the way, here’s Coming Soon, a love letter to old Universal horror movie trailers by John Landis and Mick Garris. It’s a fun hour if you like that kind of stuff.
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yes, of course he wasn’t trustworthy, but that didn’t matter – when you really thought about it, like Luke, you just KNEW it was the truth.
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Not so much that, as how Luke reacted to it.
Ben…
Ben… Why didn’t you tell me?
You could tell that Luke had accepted it as true, which allowed the audience to believe it as well.
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oh yes, true – that definitely helps sell it. if Luke could feel it was true, then we had to.
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This raises an i teresting question. How did Darth Vader know Luke was his son? Did the Emperor tell him? If this is a plot point I’ve forgotten it.
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Darth Vader: What is thy bidding, my master?
Emperor: There is a great disturbance in the Force.
Darth Vader: I have felt it.
Emperor: We have a new enemy, the young Rebel who destroyed the Death Star. I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker.
Darth Vader: How is that possible?
Emperor: Search your feelings, Lord Vader. You will know it to be true. He could destroy us.
Darth Vader: He’s just a boy. Obi-Wan can no longer help him.
Emperor: The Force is strong with him. The son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi.
Darth Vader: If he could be turned, he will become a powerful ally.
Emperor: Yes. He would be a great asset. Can it be done?
Darth Vader: He will join us or die, my master.
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Yeah. I knew it was something like that.
But how did he know?
There was a disturbance in the force. Also, the Sith pairs are always all about the plan A and the plan B.
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…I’m pretty sure that Luke got famous pretty quickly from that shot. A kid, the right age to have been born when Padme was dying, strong in the Force, who keeps company with Anakin’s former master (Obi-Wan), with the last name Skywalker, and who (if they did a basic background check) was raised on Anakin’s home planet of Tattooine by Anakin’s stepbrother?
Nope, no relation to Anakin Skywalker at all.
Edit to add: Oh, and wielding Anakin’s lightsaber.
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Yeah, I’d say wielding Anakin’s saber had to pretty much seal the deal for Vader. His former master wouldn’t give that blade to just anyone.
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All in all, having to be told so something like that makes Darth seem quite weak with the Force.
I remeber when I saw The Empire Strikes Back, I would have been 8, I was not too shocked by Darth telling Luke he was his father, but I was very shocked to find out there was an Emperor. Up to that point I had assumed Darth in charge. “So what is Darth?” I wondered. “A messenger-boy?” “An enforcer?”
Honestly, I still think the Emperor should not have been created. I geuss it gave Darth someone to discuss matters with.
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Come on, he even gets the page image for it.
He’s The Dragon.
Edit to add:
Or maybe The Heavy is a better fit (page image for that one, too).
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Episode IV should’ve provided the answer of Vader’s position in the Empire. They talked about the Emperor before blowing up Alderaan, and Vader was tempered by Tarkin. Even to my not-quite-8 yro mind, that made Vader a high ranking officer, like a senior general, not the actual person in charge. More shocking to me was Han getting frozen in the carbonite. Violent and sadistic. The big reveal felt more like “well, of course” than “no way, can’t be.” Luke considered the light saber to be a thing of legend when Obi-Wan gave it to him. He also knew the Jedi were no more. Made sense once those two pieces were repeatedly thrown in your face in the first half of Empire.
Tl;dr - I’ve regularly spoiled movies for myself while watching them for the first time. 
️
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I think this version is canonical:
It’s not too bad, I’d say.
As for the name, Vader means father in Dutch if you happen to be thinking about that language. But then it’s close to other things too, for instance a root meaning to go, like in space invader. And that people should have naturally concluded he was some character’s father, instead of say the Unholy Father of some evil priesthood the way he acts, seems like a bold claim to me.
Lucas has claimed his name is actually from “dark water”, and although it seems he has said otherwise, I think there’s a very good chance he was not going to be a father at first. He’s not in the original Starkiller scripts, and he’s not even really in the first movie, where Luke’s father is announced long dead. I would believe Obi-wan’s lying was invented later to make for a great twist.
P.S. If you watch the prequels, it turns out Obi-wan was making everything up. I trained under Yoda, never had a droid, your dad wanted you to have this lightsaber. Turns out he was just a crazy old man after all! That is too bad, but that’s what the prequels get you. 
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He did. Just as all the other younglings did!
Never owned a droid. C-3P0 belonged to Anakin; R2-D2 belonged to Padme.
Okay, yeah, that was BS.
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