PT Why Was Palpatine So Happy to Hear Anakin Wants to Kill Him?

If he was fighting like he did in the OT, with his anger focused and clear, he would have taken Palpatine with ease.

 

Exactly... which is why in that scene Palpatine was in no real danger... Anakin lacked the ability to focus his hate at this stage.

 

Anakin wanted to kill him, but he didn't because of what he was saying was striking a chord within him. Palpatine wasn't worried not because of a lack of focus, but because he knew the boy too well. Now, if they were fighting like on Mustafar with Anakin behaving the exact same way, that would be a different matter. Likewise, if Anakin let go of his anger and fought like Yoda did, then Palpatine would be up **** creek without a paddle.

 

I disagree respectfully... if that were the case then Vader should've torched Kenobi on Mustafaar. However his anger was not focused which made him sloppy and coupled with his overconfidence put him on the losing end. Otherwise, if you hold to your argument, then Kenobi would've been strong enough alone to defeat Palpatine.

 

Anakin's victory over Dooku, one of the finest lightsaber duellists the Jedi Order ever had, was due to unleashing his anger:

Dooku allowed himself to relax; he felt that spirit of playfulness coming over him again as he and Skywalker spun 'round each other in their lethal dance. Whatever fun was to be had, he should enjoy while he could.
Then Sidious, for some reason, decided to intervene.
"Don't fear what you're feeling, Anakin, use it!" he barked in Palpatine's voice. "Call upon your fury. Focus it, and he cannot stand against you. Rage is your weapon. Strike now! Strike! Kill him!"
Dooku thought blankly, Kill me?
He and Skywalker paused for one single, final instant, blades locked together, staring at each other past a sizzling cross of scarlet against blue, and in that instant Dooku found himself wondering in bewildered astonishment if Sidious had suddenly lost his mind. Didn't he understand the advice he'd just given?
Whose side was he on, anyway?
And through the cross of their blades he saw in Skywalker's eyes the promise of hell, and he felt a sickening presentiment that he already knew the answer to that question.
Treachery is the way of the Sith.

This is the death of Count Dooku:
A starburst of clarity blossoms within Anakin Skywalker's mind, when he says to himself Oh. I get it, now and discovers that the fear within his heart can be a weapon, too.
It is that simple, and that complex.
And it is final.
Dooku is dead already. The rest is mere detail.
The play is still on; the comedy of lightsabers flashes and snaps and hisses. Dooku and Skywalker, a one-time-only command performance, for an audience of one. Jedi and Sith and Sith and Jedi, spinning, whirling, crashing together, slashing and chopping, parrying, binding, slipping and whipping and ripping the air around them with snarls of power.
And all for nothing, because a nuclear flame has consumed Anakin Skywalker's Jedi restraint, and fear becomes fury without effort, and fury is a blade that makes his lightsaber into a toy.
The play goes on, but the suspense is over. It has become mere pantomime, as intricate and as meaningless as the space-time curves that guide galactic clusters through a measureless cosmos.
Dooku's decades of combat experience are irrelevant. His mastery of swordplay is useless. His vast wealth, his political influence, impeccable breeding, immaculate manners, exquisite taste—the pursuits and points of pride to which he has devoted so much of his time and attention over the long, long years of his life—are now chains hung upon his spirit, bending his neck before the ax.
Even his knowledge of the Force has become a joke.
It is this knowledge that shows him his death, makes him handle it, turn it this way and that in his mind, examine it in detail like a black gemstone so cold it burns. Dooku's elegant farce has degenerated into bathetic melodrama, and not one shed tear will mark the passing of its hero.
But for Anakin, in the fight there is only terror, and rage.
Only he stands between death and the two men he loves best in all the world, and he can no longer afford to hold anything back. That imaginary dead-star dragon tries its best to freeze away his strength, to whisper him that Dooku has beaten him before, that Dooku has all the power of the darkness, to remind him how Dooku took his hand, how Dooku could strike down even Obi-Wan himself seemingly without effort and now Anakin is all alone and he will never be a match for any Lord of the Sith—
But Palpatine's words rage is your weapon have given Anakin permission to unseal the shielding around his furnace heart, and all his fears and all his doubts shrivel in its flame.
When Count Dooku flies at him, blade flashing, Watto's fist cracks out from Anakin's childhood to knock the Sith Lord tumbling back.
When with all the power that the dark side can draw from throughout the universe, Dooku hurls a jagged fragment of the durasteel table, Shmi Skywalker's gentle murmur I knew you would come for me, Anakin smashes it aside.
His head has been filled with the smoke from his smothered heart for far too long; it has been the thunder that darkens his mind. On Aargonar, on Jabiim, in the Tusken camp on Tatooine, that smoke had clouded his mind, had blinded him and left him flailing in the dark, a mindless machine of slaughter; but here now, within this ship, this microscopic cell of life in the infinite sterile desert of space, his firewalls have opened so that the terror and the rage are out there, in the fight instead of in his head, and Anakin's mind is clear as a crystal bell.
In that pristine clarity, there is only one thing he must do.
Decide.
So he does.

He decides to win.
He decides that Dooku should lose the same hand he took. Decision is reality, here: his blade moves simultaneously with his will and blue fire vaporizes black Corellian nanosilk and disintegrates flesh and shears bone, and away falls a Sith Lord's lightsaber hand, trailing smoke that tastes of charred meat and burned hair. The hand falls with a bar of scarlet blaze still extending from its spastic death grip, and Anakin's heart sings for the fall of that red blade.
He reaches out and the Force catches it for him.
And then Anakin takes Dooku's other hand as well.
Dooku crumples to his knees, face blank, mouth slack, and his weapon whirs through the air to the victor's hand, and Anakin finds his vision of the future happening before his eyes: two blades at Count Dooku's throat.
But here, now, the truth belies the dream. Both lightsabers are in his hands, and the one in his hand of flesh flares with the synthetic bloodshine of a Sith blade.

 

So you're supporting the "anger only" position that focus has no part to play...

I also suppose that Palpatine had no input into this saber duel... It is mentioned in other places on these boards that the possibility exists that Palpatine had some level of Battle Meditation... <which happens to be a theory on why the Empire forces went into such a tizzy after both the Emperor and Vader die aboard the DSII...> now if that were the case could it not be speculated that Palpatine used some form of this power to aid Anakin in his fight against Dooku? Even if that power was not a refined as it is later on....

 

Focus could have played a part as well:

""Call upon your fury. Focus it, and he cannot stand against you."

The idea that Palpatine was Battle Meditating that duel, without Anakin sensing it, is an interesting one.

 

Aiding Anakin defeats the purpose of staging the fight. He wants to tempt Anakin into using his aggresive feelings, but he also wants to test him against an accomplished dualist. If Anakin loses to Dooku again, he isn't worthy to replace him. It's about survival of the fittest

 

Anakin failed on Mustafar because he let his personal feelings of anger, hatred and resentment of Obi-wan boil over into an uncontrollable rage, and was fueled by the power coursing through him. Not to mention an arrogance in his abilities which Obi-wan called him out on. When it came to fighting correctly, it would be without his emotions and thus he would be more like Yoda. Obi-wan could never beat Palpatine because he was never on his level, no matter who well disciplined he was by ROTS. He only survived as long against Anakin, because of Anakin's mistakes and his knowledge of Anakin's skills. That was the point of the wind up to the Force shove. It was showing us how alike they were in terms of fighting skills that they were both going for the same maneuver, at the same time.

Having anger and hatred is one thing. But it is essential that you control that rage and not let it control you. Remember as Obi-wan said, it will control your actions but it will also obey your commands. The dark side was empowering Anakin and he lacked the discipline that he had years later as Vader, where he was able to control his emotions and use his anger and hate the same way that Palpatine did. That's why he tells Obi-wan that he is no longer the learner that he was on Mustafar. He had matured quite a bit since then.

 

I think we're arguing the same side of the coin.

 

Palpatine just played on Anakins fears about Padme and like Obi One said he allowed his mind to be twisted.


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Because Anakin hating him and wanting to kill him was the first step down the path of the dark side. He was also happy because he didn't think it likely that Anakin would kill him, not with Padme's life at stake.

 

Palpatine wanted a powerful apprentice, I don't think he cared what the source of that power was. Anakin hated Palpatine and Palpatine could sense that such hatred was making Anakin more powerful. He seemed to delight in that. Later, Palpatine tells Vader that Vader had killed Padme in his fit of anger, and then we see Vader release his hate (I would think aimed at himself) to let loose a telekinetic wave of destruction that Palpatine was enjoying.

The fact that Anakin wanted to kill Palpatine was of no consequence so long as Palpatine could convince Anakin that Anakin needed him -- which he did by convincing Anakin that only together would they be able to save Padme. It's really only if Palpatine ever rendered himself expendable to Anakin that he would need to fear.

 

The RoTS novelization tells us that it was directed at Palpatine- but it simply didn't touch him, for various reasons:

You did it.
You killed her.
You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself ...
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith-
Because now your self is all you will ever have.
And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power that you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
In the end, you do not even want to.
In the end, the shadow is all that you have left.
Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself-
And in your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever ...

 

I stand corrected, though this seems like more of Anakin blaming everyone but himself (e.g. "you turned her against me!")

He blames Palpatine and wants to reach out and destroy him when it was Anakin, by his own free will that pledged his loyalty to Palpatine and stepped in and cut off Mace's hand.

And even here, Anakin could continue to try to fight Palpatine, but instead he gives in because Palpatine accepts him for what he's done, while Anakin feared Jedi retribution. Vader is safe from that as long as he remains loyal to Palpatine.

 

He doesn't really fear Jedi retribution so much, as far as I can tell. What he seems to fear most is being alone with his guilt: "The shadow is all you have left".

 

I just find it curious that he doesn't start believing Palpatine's accusations until after the incident with Mace.

Then when Palpatine reveals himself to be a Sith, Anakin tells Mace. When Mace is trying to arrest Palpatine, Anakin seems to support Mace despite Palpatine's accusations that the Jedi are taking over. It's only when Mace decides that Palpatine needs to die and Anakin steps in to protect him because he believes Palpatine is the key to saving Padme's life, only then then does he all of a sudden start echoing Palpatine's lies.

He initially falls to the floor and says "what have I done?!" He then pledges his loyalty to Palpatine and says he'll do whatever he asks, so long as he helps save Padme. Then all of a sudden there's this exchange:

I think by that point Anakin was afraid and thought that there was no going back. He was convinced that he would be killed if the Jedi learned what had happened, Palpatine used this to justify pre-emptively striking the Jedi Temple, and Anakin all of a sudden believes that the Jedi are the bad guys that will kill the senators.

I feel like it was fear of Jedi retaliation that caused him to, within the span of a few minutes, start to justify in his mind that the Jedi are the real bad guys and that Palpatine was right, in order to justify what he was about to do.

 

True - I was thinking more of after he's in the suit.

The EU covers what he does afterward- he's far more concerned about the Order 66 survivors than Palpatine is- and he focused on killing them.