Could Luke have stood down the Emperor back in ANH?

I've seen a few arguments over the years that suggest that Luke was kind of "finding his own path" and that the way he did things "worked out for the best" regardless of what Yoda and Obi-Wan told him otherwise.

For me though, there are two key scenes that I have to keep coming back to - Luke leaving Dagobah, and Luke returning to Dagobah:

YODA: "Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered."
"Stopped they must be. On this all depends. Only a fully trained Jedi Knight with the Force as his ally will conquer Vader and his Emperor. If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil."
---
LUKE: "Unfortunate that I know the truth?"
YODA: "No. Unfortunate that you rushed to face him... that incomplete was your training. Not ready for the burden were you."

Okay, with hindsight, you could say Luke didn't become an agent of evil, and in the long run maybe the knowledge that Vader is his father is what actually what led Luke down a certain path and brought about Vader's redemption and the Empire's end, in a very convoluted and coincidental way...

But I think we still have to take Yoda's warnings at face value and accept them as the truth. Just because we have to. Otherwise the story doesn't work - there has to be that peril, there has to be that real threat that Luke could turn to the dark side, and that he really should have stayed on Dagobah and completed his training and that he really was not ready to face Vader or the Emperor.

The end of The Empire Strikes Back is a downbeat. Han is frozen, the rebels have been routed - Luke has messed up big time.

So for that reason, I'd say - if he was out of his depth then, he certainly would have been prior to that. When he first faced Vader, it ended badly for him. If he had faced him any sooner, or confronted Palpatine, he'd have been screwed one way or another, IMHO...

Well, firstly, who's to say he didn't, and only felt it was worth confronting Vader about it after he considered Luke to be "a great disturbance"....

I've always had a theory around this.
And it comes down to the different philosophies of the Jedi and the Sith.

"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."
vs
"Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen."

There are plenty of other quotes from throughout the saga along the same lines, but you get my drift.
It is easy to say everything is going as you have foreseen when you are the one actively making your own vision become reality.
The Jedi just see the possibilities, they don't try to inflict their own wishes on the course of events in the same way.

And so, ignoring all of the EU surrounding this (whether it is considered canon or not) and sidestepping the revision of the TESB Emperor scene for recent versions of the movie - I am talking in terms of this scene as it was written and filmed in the early 80s - my take has always been this:

Palpatine is in control. He wants certain things to happen, and he makes those things happen through the control he has. He shapes the future through enacting his will.
At the start if the movie, Vader is acting on a hunch. He doesn't know the Skywalker who destroyed the Death Star is his son, but it has ignited something within him, and he is suddenly open to the possibility that Luke could be his son. As the crawl reveals, Vader is obsessed with finding him.
That is not how Palpatine rolls.
But he can read Vader like a book. So while Luke is undoubtedly the "new enemy", the "great disturbance in the Force" could be more to do with what Palpatine senses within Vader and the possibilities Luke brings to the table. He's upsetting the status quo so far as Palpatine is concerned and he needs to confront Vader and nip it in the bud. Vader's thoughts betray him, but Palpatine is never going to give up the illusion that he knows everything and everything is happening just as he planned.

Another line of dialogue has always fascinated me:

VADER: "I have felt him, my Master."
PALPATINE: "Strange, that I have not."

Things are slipping away from Palpatine, he's losing his grip ever so slightly here. Like I said, he is not open to possibilities, only the future he wants to create.
Vader is now thinking things that Palpatine can't really tune in to - he is open to things Palpatine does not want and does not want Vader to want. Vader has a connection with Luke the Emperor can never have, because - as we eventually find out - Luke was right about Vader and there was still good in him and it has been stirring since the end of TESB and his encounter with his son.
Palpatine has no power to "sense" Luke, he just has Vader, who he can control, so he needs Vader. Anger, aggression, conflict - Palpatine can pick up on all these things and plays his cards accordingly. But compassion, potential, possibility - he is not open to these things, they do not fit in with his vision. He's not as all seeing as he lets on, because he only sees his own version of the future.
His power comes through making sure everyone he controls stays firmly within the parameters of that vision.

So I think the whole dynamic in that scene in TESB is about what's going on with Vader and Palpatine trying to reassert his control. Luke is causing a great disturbance in the Force, but I'd say Vader is, in a way, the Emperor's insight to that disturbance...

 

Luke used the Force during the Battle of Hoth in order to help him destroy the first Death Star. That is when Vader first sensed his ability with the Force. He later discovered that Luke was his son via a spy within the Rebel Alliance ranks. And Palpatine did not really sense Luke's presence. He probably had visions of Luke as a potential threat.

 

I don't think Luke would have been able to resist back in ANH because he didn't even understand the Force to begin with. Even with all his training and knowledge in ROTJ Luke didn't hold back in trying to outright kill Sheev not caring if he was unarmed or not so imagine what crazy adventure seeking Force ignorant Luke from ANH might have done? Without and knowledge of the Force or of what was truly going on, with just Vader revealing himself to be Luke's father he could have easily twisted Luke's way of seeing things and he might have deceived him into joining the Empire.

 

HELL NO,THIS ISN'T EVEN A QUESTION.

 

Yeah, this guy.

Luke had Force potential in A New Hope, but he had barely any ability to tap into it. The Emperor was one of the most, if not the most, powerful individuals in the galaxy. Luke wouldn't stand a chance.

 

Easiest answer to this everday of any calendar -


NO.

 

At first I thought, "no." I thought of the scene in the MF Luke's fighting the remote, losing.
Then I thought of:
Aunt Beru: Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him.
Uncle Owen: That's what I'm afraid of.
Still "no."

 

Helkk no! OB1 would have stepped in.

 

Of course not. Luke was just barely able to do the same in "Return of the Jedi".

 

Probably not. Especially if they had approached him prior to meeting Ben (who had first informed him of the Dark Side and Vader killing his father, from a certain point of view), and approached him without killing his aunt and uncle. He probably would have been easy to corrupt and followed them gladly. Bored kid living on a backwater planet finds out his dad is alive, a former Jedi now running the galaxy. But the further you get in the movie the more he probably would have resisted. After all Ben told him, the death of his family, planned execution of the princess and the death of Biggs, he went from having no love (but presumably no hate) for the Empire to having an ever-growing grudge. And the longer he believes the lie about Vader the more difficult it was to hear that he was the guy's son and the more likely he was to resist him. So it's kind of hard to guess if he even would have resisted them. Had he tried, I'm not sure how good he would have done. I think Yoda's training and continued lectures about the Dark Side are what gave Luke a good deal of his will to resist. It wasn't until TESB that they started to let him in on the full gravity of what it meant for him to be the last Jedi and warning him about what his turning would mean to the future. I don't know, that's my 2 cents, it's an interesting question but it's anybody's guess how it would have turned out. I don't see that naive kid from Ep. IV being able to give up much resistance or avoid getting duped by the evil genius of the Emperor and Vader. They probably could have tricked him into their van with the promise of candy and getting to see a space battle up close.

 

well if rey stood down kylo...

 

I doubt he could have resisted, didn't really want to be part of that life.

 

Oh yes . . . the Mary Sue moment.

 

Each of the main characters of each trilogy do something that defies any logic. It's like David victory over Goliath. He won because God wanted this victory to happen. Star Wars films (especially the ones from the main saga) are very much like fairy tales. Good guys need to win, even if it requires a nine year old boy to expertly fly in a military starfighter which he saw for the first time in his life.

 

I think Luke always had the force, but he never used it. One must use the force to propel a disturbance.