Re: Star Wars: Episode VII (2015) Discussion Thread
I suggest you read some more, start with J.W. Rinzler's Making of Empire Strikes Back. It was discussed between Kirshner and Fisher, why would they discuss it then? Its all in there including Kirshner's discussion with Ford about the famous I Love You scene and his fight with Lando.
A fair source to put your faith in however, given that it was published in 2010, 30 years after ESB, it unfortunately isn't the most credible source of information that has been notoriously inconsistent over the years. When you have conflicting reports of any historical event typically it's the report stated closest to the time of the event that is the most likely to be true.
Case in point, George's claims all throughout the late 90's to the first decade of the 21st century that SW was always about the "rise, fall, and redemption on Anakin Skywalker," even though the first trilogy was clearly about Luke and Mark Hamill himself stated in a 1983 interview with Maria Shriver that George told him he had plans for Luke to return in the Prequel Trilogy in 2011 or so. Fast forward to today and suddenly Lucas has "story treatments" related to a sequel trilogy that coincidentally seem to line up with what was first reported way back when.
You get me something a little less recent and I'll be inclined to give it more weight.
Obi-Wan's connection with the force tells him someones died not who or where, Leia's got no Jedi training and never even had any inkling that she would be a force user. Yet Luke can communicate with her and not Obi-Wan who he has a much stronger and stable relationship with after his time on Dagobah, also is the fact that he's asked someone he thought only capable of needing rescuing, why?
Ben told him on Dagobah that he wouldn't be able to interfere. We don't know exactly why on film because it isn't stated. The Annotated Screenplays indicate that a deceased Jedi only has a limited number of "interactions" they can have with the living before they become one with the Force. That would give sense to Ben's comments on Dagobah but again since it wasn't spelled out on screen we'll have to just interpret it how we want.
Leia responding to Luke is not inconsistent with what we see happening in the saga prior to that moment however. They had already established that Force users can project their powers over great distances to non-Force sensitive individuals when Vader choked Ozzel from a separate starship.
And everything else between Luke and Leia to that moment point to them being part of a love triangle. "She's beautiful," their two ANH kisses, massive smooch on ESB and so on. When a director has a notion about two characters' relationship prior to their own knowledge he doesn't typically sent them up as potential romantic counterparts unless he's doing it for laughs which of course never manifested.
As to your Yoda quote, don't you think both Yoda and Obi-Wan are scared of losing both Luke and Leia to the Emperor?
In ESB? No, I don't. Yoda said as much. If you honor what Leia fights for then she is an acceptable sacrifice. Harsh but that's where he stood. Now if one hope goes to rescue the "other" hope and fails, then they're screwed. No need to close a conversation on the topic with an optimistic, "no there's still someone else."
"There is another" is purely a tool by Lucas/Kasdan/Kirshner to distract the audience for the big reveal in RotJ, no more no less.
Nope, that's not what the line was there for:
"My feeling about Luke being the last hope was really done in an effort to make sure that he was in some jeopardy, that he might not succeed. I was trying to set up subliminally in the audience's mind that something is going on here, that he could fail. And if he does fail, 'there is another hope.' So the audience is saying don't go, finish your training." --George Lucas, Star Wars the Annotated Screenplays, pg. 200, 1997.