Luke vs. Anakin: nature vs. nurture

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Of course, Luke’s aunt and uncle are slain by Vader’s thugs. And he faces a similar threat of loss — in Luke’s case, his sister — yet resists the temptation to chuck his altar-boy ways and sell his soul to the emperor.

At the end of “Episode VI — Return of the Jedi,” Luke’s good heart is so strong, he draws his father back to the side of right as Anakin renounces decades of depravity and dies with a loving gaze fixed on his son.

“However Luke managed to become selfless, because he wasn’t really trained in the same way a Jedi would be trained, but in the end, when push came to shove, he made a decision to be selfless,” Lucas said. “He did not want the power to control the universe. He didn’t want to be the emperor’s right hand. He didn’t want to destroy his father, and he refused to go along with the program.”

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Put simply, Han Solo once carped at Luke, “Don’t get cocky.”

Luke got the message. Anakin didn’t.

“I think it comes from someone’s obsession and someone’s ambition, letting their ambition get the better of them,” Christensen said. “That’s something that Luke didn’t really have. Although he had this sense of wanting to have something bigger, leave Tatooine and all that.

“But Anakin believed the hype. He thought he was the chosen one. That’s a much different level of wanting something more. Absolute power, that’s not something Luke wanted.”

And it was not something Lucas wanted for Luke. For all the nature-vs.-nurture theorizing, Lucas has the easiest answer on why Luke doesn’t follow dad down the path of evil.

“It makes a good story,” Lucas said, laughing.

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