Faith, Beer, and Other Things That Interest Geoff

"You learn that Darth Vader isn't this monster," Lucas says. "He's a pathetic individual who made a pact with the Devil and lost. And he's trapped. He's a sad, pathetic character, not an evil big monster. I mean, he's a monster in that he's turned to the Dark Side and he's serving a bad master and he's into power and he's lost a lot of his humanity. In that way, he's a monster, but beneath that, as Luke says in Return of the Jedi, early on, 'I know there's still good in you. There's good in you, I can sense it.' Only through the love of his children and the compassion of his children, who believe in him, even though he's a monster, does he redeem himself."

Joseph Campbell perceived the weakness of Darth Vader after he saw Return of the Jedi in a special screening Lucas hosted for him at Skywalker Ranch. As Campbell told Bill Moyers in the 1988 interview book The Power of Myth, "When the mask of Darth Vader is removed, you see an unformed man, one who has not developed as a human individual. What you see is a strange and pitiful sort of undifferentiated face…. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat."