• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Amputation in Star Wars

E

evilsprout

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 27, 2001
Messages
1,217
Having just watched the Star Wars trilogy back to back for the first time ever, I noticed something odd, which was Mr Lucas seems obsessed with the removal of limbs and hands.

C3PO's limbs are removed after the ambush by the Sand People (SW), Obi Wan severs the arm of the hostile alien in the bar (SW); Luke severs the arm of the ice monster on Hoth (ESB); Luke's own hand gets cut off (ESB); C3PO's limbs get severed again by a Stormtrooper (ESB); and finally Vader's fake hand gets chopped off, revealing a previous amputation (ROTJ).

Plus there's Anakin's hand chopping off bit in Attack of the Clones, I'd go back to the prequels and look for more limb-hacking but it'd involve watching those tedious pieces of shite for a second time.

So yeah... what bizarre Freudian significance do you all put to this curious motif?
 
Much has been made of the amputation thing. Lucas allegedly refuses to discuss his reasons for it, and just smiles knowingly to himself.
 
No I think Its just armless fun.




















I'll get me coat. The one with only one sleeve,
 
Just found this page. Loads of stuff on hidden allegories in SW, and also references to other films:
-Amputation of arm in cantina = amputation of arm in Yojimbo (Kurosawa) for example.
 
There is also a more or less unreadable study here which suggests that
amputation is something of a fetish with cyberpiffle analysts:

" . . .cyborg envy appears as a phantom pain, localized in no organ of perception yet created. It is the overloaded self crying out for final amputation within cyberspace. etc. etc. "

http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/fa.html

I guess the limbless knight in Monty Python was way ahead of his time. :rolleyes:
 
I always kind of saw it as just a way of showing violence without showing blood; there really isn't any blood in the Star Wars movies (I know the lightsaber is supposed to immediately cauterize the wounds and all of that, but there should be a LITTLE blood; the entrails from the tauntaun in ESB don't count, either, because the blood is really more of a weird, milky substance).
 
Originally posted by James Whitehead
" . . .cyborg envy appears as a phantom pain...etc. etc. "
Click to expand...

"Cyborg envy." Thanks for reminding me that there are vast tracts of strangeness out there, the existence of which I am not coffeed up enough even to suspect.
 
punychicken said:
Perhaps Lucas is employing a visual motif as signifying moments of disempowerment?
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I thought, though I wonder if there's anything deeper. Or nothing deep at all. Maybe Lucas just thinks it looks cool.

Who chops Anakin's hand off I've forgotten? Was it Count Duckula... erm I mean Dooku?
 
Yeah, just before Yoda whups his pasty white ass.
[EDIT]Dooku's that is. Not Anakin's. Looking forward to that in the next film, though.
 
Isn't the favoured method of dispatch in Episode III supposedly decapitation? Stunt coordinator Nick Gillard, when asked if Episode III will contain decapitations (a la Jango Fett in Episode II), said "Heads will roll in Ep3." Rumoured to be in line for a very short haircut: Dooku, Mace, and others.
 
Vader's fake hand gets chopped off, revealing a previous amputation (ROTJ).
Click to expand...

That happened in Splinter of the Mind's Eye too. I only read it 'cos when it came out in 78 it said on the cover it was going to be the next movie. IMO at least it had a decent writer, if a slightly Indiana Jones-ish plot.
 
I'd noticed this trend, but never tried to make sense of it.
 
Decapitation, hmmm, plenty enough of that going on in the real world just now. :(
 
And now he's amputating the movies themselves. What a tool!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top