The post title makes it sound like this is a regular series. I didn’t intend that, but maybe it’ll happen? There’s something comforting with tucking into a video at the end of the work week, if you’re an office drone like me. Videos are insanely ubiquitous nowadays, so at first blush it feels useless to spotlight one of the billions (trillions?) of them out there; people can find a video they want to watch more easily than ever. But curated content, though it’s not quite a buzzphrase anymore, has always been a “thing” humans do with mass media.
Despite the steep decline in story quality with Disney Star Wars, there are still decent stories in secondary media, like video games. This duel is noteworthy because a Jedi Master, Cere Junda, went head-to-head with Darth Vader and almost got the better of him. Luke was only able to barely fight Vader because Vader held back, especially in their face-off in The Empire Strikes Back. Not only did Vader understandably not want to kill his own son, he wanted to make him an ally.
There’s also a possibility Vader hoped the same for Cere: to turn her to the dark side, since he had sensed the temptation with her to do so.
For some context, the game takes place a decade after Order 66, when most of the Jedi order had been assassinated. Cere placed information about a network of Jedi safehouses in the droid she talks to in the beginning, BD-1, and fighting Vader was her attempt to block him from capturing and destroying that information. To the surviving Jedi and pro-Republic sympathizers, that kind of intel was priceless and more than enough motivation for Cere to risk her life fighting Vader to merely slow him down enough for BD-1 to escape. The man at the end is her padawan, Cal Kestis.
Since I make a living as a non-creative writer, I’ll swerve a bit out of my lane like I always do and offer a rewrite of a line of dialogue. At 2:29:
Darth Vader: You’ve grown stronger.
Cere Junda: No. I’ve only let go of my fear.
DV: We shall see.
This was good, because Vader is acknowledging that up until that point, he hadn’t sensed any fear in her, but she may feel it soon. He’s going to ramp things up, implied with the cinematic break in the battle—when those happen in a game, it can mean the boss you’re fighting may change his form or how he’s fighting.
But if you wanted Vader to get more wordy, you could try this.
Darth Vader: You’ve grown stronger.
Cere Junda: No. I’ve only let go of my fear.
DV: Fear may be the only thing that saves you now.
Here, he implies that with all her power and training, she’d have to rely on her primal instincts to live. She can survive by surrender or escape.
2 Comments
I seem to recall the story arc for Cal Kestis led through more than one game series on YouTube. I felt it was worth my time, just barely. The Star Wars movies were good at first, and then went sour, so I just barely pay attention these days.
Looking that up, you’re probably thinking of Jedi: Fallen Order, which came out in 2019. It’s a very highly rated game. The SW universe is set up for some really good story opportunities that have shone through in the past, I think in part because of the squishy nature of the Force and various philosophies and factions around it. Cal it seems had good character development…he had survivor’s guilt because his former master sacrificed himself for Cal to live. Strong motivation there.