Sometimes I really miss how in the OT, Vader was basically the last Force User in the galaxy. No Inquisitors. No individual Jedi running around causing chaos or secreting others away. Just Vader and a hidden handful who kept to themselves and were for all intents and purposes dead and gone. Just Vader for the rest of the galaxy. Vader and a tradition so distant it seemed like it would die with him, untouchable for most and practically a thing of legend (treated by others with disrespect or disregard).
Obi-Wan and Yoda lived in isolation, and Palpatine kept his abilities hidden, so all you had left was Vader, and even then people questioned whether the Force had any significant/worthwhile power (I will never forget the way a switch was flipped in my head when someone told Vader about the uselessness of his "sad devotion to that ancient religion." The second religion got mentioned—especially in a derogatory context—my opinion of Star Wars was flipped on its head). To the galaxy, Force Users were a dead race and Vader was a relic. The galaxy had moved past what the Force could provide; it was a religion which had lost its prominence to technology and empire, its last devotee prominent and yet, despite his abilities and the things he did with it that should have been valued, were amazing and awful in so many ways, still ridiculed for his devotion.
Watching A New Hope, it felt like people were entertaining some old whim when Vader (and later Luke) used the Force. Given how in ANH Vader was essentially second to Tarkin and could be so easily dismissed by him—he listened to Tarkin when Tarkin told him to stop using the Force! Even though Vader could've very easily killed him on the spot, just as he choked the man who made the sad devotion comment!—it made everything seem so...sad. There is certainly strength in using the Force—Vader choked a guy without touching him—but no one cares. They ignore the mysticism of a man choking someone without touch and instead tell him to stop. Honestly it makes me think of someone pulling out some item they're proud of to show another, only for someone to tell them to put that silly thing away. Despite the obvious physical power of the Force, it lacks mental or societal power. It should be intimidating, and it is to some extent, but it's not nearly as intimidating as it should rightfully be. It is not given the respect that it deserves. And when there's only one guy left who can use it, and we the audience see that his inferiors dismiss it as pathetic and his superiors dismiss it as excessive, unnecessary, and even inconvenient...Well, like I said above, it just reads to me as really sad.
Now, I am not saying that having 100 Jedi survive Order 66 completely ruins the tragedy of genocide. 100 out of 10,000 is only 1%, and we don't even have 100 that made it a decade AFAIK (disclaimer: I've watched the first 6 movies and parts of a few shows, played a few games, and have read 2 books, so I am by no means an expert). I'm not saying it isn't lonely to be the only Jedi on a planet, not knowing if there are any others out there. I'm also not saying I think it's horrible to have survivors; I'm on my second playthrough of Jedi: Fallen Order right now after nearly 100%ing it the first time and actually 100%ing Jedi: Survivor, and I love everything with Cal, Cere, and co! Seeing all these Jedi turned into Inquisitors via torture and Jedi who willingly join the Empire is sad in its own way. But it evokes a very different feeling. It is a very different galaxy. Corruption is very different from loneliness. Survival but at a cost is different than extinction.
There's a video out there of a bird singing a mating song for a mate that will never come, because that bird is the last individual of its species, so there's no one who can reciprocate, and no one who can hear and truly understand. I don't know if I've ever actually listened to it beyond the first few notes. It's immensely upsetting to me. That bird is functionally extinct. It's probably dead by now. Even with other birds around, there are no others of its species, and it will live out the rest of its life bereft of mates, of family, of true understanding. Thinking about it now makes me cry.
That is what Vader feels like in the OT to me. What Luke feels like by the end. The last creature of its kind. Even if others know what the Force is, they can't feel it in the same way; they can't truly understand what it means to exist within it, to control it, to live with a connection to something more. Even if humans know that the bird's song is a mating call, they can't feel it in the same way; to experience the attraction of the call, to sing back the response it would earn, to connect with that bird and complete a ritual inimitable by human hands.
It is a loneliness that consumes. It is staring at a headstone even when its future resident is at your side. It is pre-mourning; grief for inevitability that would not have been inevitability were someone(s) else to have better choices. It is the ultimate loneliness. It's knowing that this is it. That what you do does not matter, not in a way that counts.
If Luke does not learn to use the Force, it dies then and there. The culture of it, anyway. Even when he does manage to interact with it, it's too late: Obi-Wan didn't have nearly enough time to pass everything on before his death, and even with him persisting after death to some extent, a single man can't possibly be the font of all knowledge. Things have been lost and will continue to be lost. Teaching Luke is like putting a single bandaid on a gaping wound; at best it might slow the blood loss, but it's not going to save anyone in the end. It's not enough. It's an extension of the imevitable. Death and loss and absolution.
For culture to survive—and I mean really survive—you need multiple practitioners. Once you go outside those first 6 movies you get those, and suddenly there's a lot more hope. Now, Star Wars has very much always been a story about hope! I know the subtitle was added later, but that's the new name of the original movie, for crying out loud: A New Hope. But for me it's a hope for change, rather than a hope for persistence. A hope for survival by whatever means it can be achieved. A hope for something new, not the sustenance or revival of the old. And while that is certainly good, and we should take what we can get in horrible situations...I'm a sucker for history. For the past. Forging a new, better future is beautiful and I think we should aim for it, but I will always ache at the loss of history. Something gone that can never come back.
That is the essence of the original Star Wars to me. Something lost that can never come back. Ultimate loneliness. Progress that must be made because the opposite is not merely stagnation but absence due to the excision of something that has left a gaping hole that can never be filled with the same material, if others even care to fill it at all.
It is the image of Luke and the twin suns. Luke and thr sunset. Luke, alone save the stars.
I miss that loneliness. I miss when it was just them. I miss when it was just Vader. The Inquisitors are beings that cause terror, and I think they take away from Vader being so intimidating because he is the only guy who can do all that. He is something impossible. A creature truly born of nightmares, because there is nowhere in reality save with him that you could ever encounter such a thing, because every single other person who could do that is dead, or as good as dead (again, Yoda and Obi-Wan completely isolate themselves, so for all intents and purposes/fir the rest of the galaxy, they're worth as much as they would be as corpses lost to sand and mud).
So...all that rambling is to say, yeah. I miss when it was just them. The terror of a mass of enemies is powerful, just as the hope of a few survivors is inspirational, but they hit me in a different way than the original loneliness. Sometimes I think of the OT and PT together but alone, a galaxy in which many have been reduced to (essentially) one. One Jedi, one Sith. Once they die, that's it. The lone bird singing a mating call for a mate that will never come. The tragedy of that ears away at me. It's over before it's over. They're the last of their kind and that aches.
