Snowflake Day 6: a favourite scene or moment

[tielan]

In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

Favourite moments in canon? The problem is - as always - picking just one.

I could mention the moment in Captain America: The Winter Soldier when Maria Hill pulls her helmet from her head and gives a headtoss that would be worthy of a L'Oreal commercial if only her hair wasn't in a ponytail. I could speak of the scene in Pacific Rim where Mako Mori hands her clipboard off to Stacker Pentecost and saunters down to the Kwoon floor to prove that Raleigh Becket isn't really trying. I could talk about Teyla Emmagan watching as her tormentor begs for mercy before she coolly kicks him off a rooftop to fall to his (presumed) death. I could even smile and refer to Captain Sam Carter offering to arm-wrestle her newly-assigned commanding officer.

I'm going further back than all that, past Buffy stabbing Angel to close the portal to hell, past an Age of Apocalypse Jubilee staring out at her mentor Colossus as he leaves her to the mercies of the Morlocks tearing her apart, past Ehlana speechifying to the Patriarchs of the Elenic church that if they could only choose the entire Hierocracy to lead them then the gates of Hell could not stand against them...

All the way back to, well, it was probably around 1986.

It's kind of two moments, in fact.

The first is: "My father has it. I have it... And my sister has it. That's you, Leia."

The second is: "I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

The first is about family and about responsibility: Luke is about to face the enemy, who is his family. But before he does, he names his successor and prepares her for what she might have to face - and as it turns out, she's his family, too, and in a dimension beyond mere blood: found family. I haven't watched RotJ in years, but I can remember Luke's pensive expression, Leia's realisation, the lighting and shadows of the cinematography as she accepts the truth, as they argue about him going to face Vader, and as he lays the responsibility on her of stopping Vader should he fail.

The lead-up to the second is the moment that Luke learns all the risks of the Force, all the reasons for not using it, when he faces the possibility that if he wants to stay a Jedi he might lose his life. He looks down at a defeated Vader, looks at Vader's now-missing hand, looks at his own burned cybernetic hand; and the thought passes through his head, Like father, like son. And Luke makes his decision, going as far as to toss his lightsaber away (the symbol of his newly-achieved status!) even as he faces his own death.

I wasn't even ten the first time I watched those scenes. But they've stuck with me for decades, even as other media has come, and some moments have stayed and others have gone.

(And even back then young!me wondered what kind of a story we would have received if Luke had fallen to the Dark Side there at Endor, and another movie was required for Leia to bring him back over. But that's another conversation entirely!)

Comments

[tielan]

I feel like the problem is more that we didn't get a Maria throughline. The writers/producers/directors saw her as a "fill in" character, not a "counterpoint" one. And they lost a really good opportunity for both conflict and nuance with that shortsightedness.

[siberian_skys]

It's just too bad that they wasted such a great character for the most part.

[kore]

That's really it, isn't it. And she was such a great compare/contrast with Fury! Same thing happened with Pepper Potts. (But Coulson got killed off AND THEN got a show. And they sidelined Melinda May -- Ming-Na Wen!! -- in the same damn way on AoS.)

[tielan]

Frankly, men tend to be terrible at writing women. Mostly because they tend see them as "extras to hang on the plot" rather than "integrated key players". Of course, some female writers do this too. But it's a lot more common in guys.

[kore]

Yeah, and it's REALLY demoralizing and depressing that now that we really are getting more diverse writers and stories, they're either getting ignored or critically pasted. But hey, we had Guardians 3 and Deadpool 3 is upcoming so whoooo!

//SO bitter about the reaction to the Marvels, and the Echo news stories now being about "the second worst rating in the MCU on RT"