Luke's Force Choke.

What I get from it is that ever since the cave on Dagobah, Luke began to head toward the dark side. That's why he saw his own face under the Vader mask which was foreshadowing the duel in Empire when he gets his hand cut off and starts to become like Vader in that aspect of losing his own humanity "more machine than man" as Kenobi put it. Yoda said that what was in the tree was only what Luke took with him, and Luke took his weapons with him.

To use the force choke, he didn't have to go to the dark side, but he would have use the dark side. But he was going down that path, shown by using the force choke, dressing in black, putting the black glove over his mechanical hand which later of course in the final duel he cuts off Vader's hand and then looks at his own black-gloved mechanical hand and realizes he's taking Vader's place. That's why Palpatine tells him to take his lightsaber and cut him down then his "journey toward the dark side" would be complete. And that's the point in which he would've went to the dark side and had to come back.

It's like the notion that everyone has two wolves in them, a black one and a white one, and the one you feed the most is the one you are. Luke was a white wolf that started to feed the black one, but never went so far as to become the black wolf. He just maybe had a black paw at the time. That's what I get out of it, at any rate.

 

I agree with @metadude. To add an extra bit though, I think the choke (like the mind trick) also served as a practical means of showing that Luke had advanced considerably with his Force use since ESB. These are techniques we’d only seen Master level Force users wield prior. Though there’s certainly some dark implications being made. I mean, in that opening silhouette, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for Vader at first glance. I doubt that was accidental.

 

Yeah, going by his interactions with Obi-Wan and Yoda, it was the first he’d seen either since the events of ESB. So the mind trick and choking were things he’d probably sorted out on his own like the Force pull he managed back in the wampa cave. The kid was pretty motivated I guess.

I don’t know. Yoda said a Jedi uses the Force for defense. The gamorrean guards were a threat that he easily neutralized without (presumably) actually causing injury. They lost their breath for a bit is all. The ability, I don’t think, is inherently dark. It’s how it’s used. Shutting somebody up in a meeting or performing executions - are certainly a touch more on the ‘aggressive’ side. But it’s something that’s closely associated with Vader, so there was definitely a nod being made there.

 

My view is that there isn't a distinction between Light Side abilities and Dark Side abilities. There are only Force abilities.

The distinction is not in the abilities, it's in the heart of whoever is using the ability.

 

I haven't read it just real recently but the novelization of RotJ had Luke kind of straddling the line between light and dark on Tatooine. Something the film may be kind of hinting at it (with things like the Force Choke and Luke's kind of strange attitude) but I don't think really came across too much. I never really thought of it as a "Dark Side Only" thing until the KotOR games although maybe I'm forgetting something in a novelization or EU novel that said so before that.

 

I see the light side and the dark side as being hazy and politically based. One man's peace is another's enslavement. It is all point of view based. However the Jedi held a belief in equality of all species. The modern Sith held that they were dominant and that all shall yield to them. Those are and can be factually based. Everything else that falls under the banner of Jedi or Sith...Light or Dark, would be completely based on the point of view of both sides. Anakin saw the Jedi as evil because they held back their power instead of embracing the full potential of the force to end the war and save lives, as an example.

 

This is my thinking as well, even these "Dark Side" abilities could be used for something other than evil. Maybe you Force Choke somebody instead of slicing their body parts off like a "good" Jedi. Or maybe you use Force Lightning to start a campfire and cook some S'Mores. The Force ability that I find the most disconcerting and could be easily perverted is the Jedi Mind Trick. Just depends on how and why you use them. Might earn you a Light Side Point or a Dark Side Point.

 

I remember a scene in one of the Marvel Star Wars comics where someone asked Darth Vader if he was going to use a Jedi mind trick. Vader's answer was to ignite his lightsaber and say something like "The Sith preferr a more direct approach."

I got the impression that Darth Vader could have used any Light side ability he wanted, but he preferred brute force and intimidation to subtle mind trickery.

 

I try not to see it as Skill Ability Trees.

Like, in an RPG video game like Knights of the Old Republic, that might be how Force Choke is represented- somewhere on the Dark Side Powers tree, and you'd need to be a certain Dark Side level to unlock it.

But in reality, all you're doing is constricting a throat. That's not really that complex of a thing.

Rather, I think that given the potential lethal danger of such a move, it's more likely that this power is simply more often employed by those already on the dark side.

In a more controversial take, I'd say Force lightning might be this way, too. After all... Yoda's ghost does conjure lightning in TLJ.

 

...and also that he wore black. Just like Darth Vader.

 

True, especially considering the fact that black is the last color you'd want to wear on a desert planet... which Luke would know. It wasn't functional so it was probably symbolic.

 

Though the strike itself doesn’t come from him. It seems more like he manipulated the nature around him. Actual ‘lightning’, not merely Force energy that looks like electricity. Lightning, as a part of nature, is neither inherently good or bad (although technically it almost always has a ‘negative’ charge ).

 

That's a fair interpretation.

If we're going for the whole "The Dark side is a corruption of the Light side" approach, I could see Palpatine's Force Lightning as a corruption of the more pure Force Power we see Yoda use.

But either way, I'm still hesitant to think that Force Powers could be locked behind alignment.

 

Yeah, I just see them as totally different things altogether.

Yoda: You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock - everywhere.

If Yoda’s a part of the Force now, and the Force is indeed “everywhere”, then that should extend to the particulate level too (I’d expect). So, its ‘plausible’ Yoda has the ability to influence the air ionization of the moister filled clouds above Ach’to, separating the electrons, creating a polarity shift, leading to a static discharge following the path of an electrical field terminating at that poor defenseless old tree. Annnnnnnnd KAZOWIE!!



Well, made up mystical science anyway

I pretty much agree. Some abilities are just inherently more aggressive than others though. Shooting lightning out your fingers, for example, doesn’t have too many passive applications I don’t think. When Dooku wanted to demonstrate to Yoda how much more powerful he was with the darkside, he went for his super zappy time powers. Implying it was something he’d only grasped after embracing the dark. Yoda though, easily countering it, made it evident that this ‘new’ ability wasn’t unknown to him as a Jedi. But his focus on it was that of ‘defense’ and not ‘offense’ symbolizing the difference in philosophies . . . or something like that . . . maybe

 

I stopped trying to wrap my head around that... it was too close to exploding. /s

 

I have come to believe the ability to channel the Force in any particular manner isn't in-and-of-itself dark or light. It is, rather, a combination of the intention of the wielder coupled with the degree to which the wielder has studied and trained their consciousness such that they are able to comprehend the consequences of their actions.

I suspect the origin of the idea of dark/light Force abilities could have stemmed from the humility of the Jedi and the arrogance of the Sith. The Jedi try to refrain from using the Force in such ways (killing/destroying) that a positive outcome is more difficult predict. The use of consequential powers has consequences. The Sith simply don't care about such things.

 

I've always seen the choking of the guards as evidence that Luke is walking the line between light and dark. His silhouette as he enters Jabba's palace is deliberately supposed to look like Vader to the audience. And then we see it is Luke, dressed in black, confident in his powers but also arrogant, too. He uses the mind trick on Bib Fortuna and then tries to do the same to Jabba and fails. Such overconfidence proves to be his downfall because he completely overlooks the fact that he's standing on a trapdoor.

Think about where Luke is at this point in his life. He is living with the possibility that his teachers have lied to him about the nature of his parentage. If they've lied to him about that, what else have they lied about? Compare how Luke looks in RoTJ to his appearance in ANH. He certainly looks like he's been through the wars. Battle-scarred and world weary. Ultimately, a much more interesting character than the idealistic youth at the start of the trilogy.

 

I think you get more power by channeling dark emotions and feelings. Anger brings focus and allows more powerful abilities like lightening.