PT Anakin Skywalker MEGAthread - Don't talk to him about sand, it makes him uncomfortable

Yes, that's him. And I found the film beautiful as well, with some nice real-location shots of Halong Bay, Vietnam, one of the world's most scenic areas.

 

HA it's a pun

Maybe it makes him uncomfortable because "sand" people killed his mom and he doesn't like hearing the word because of what happened



( I'm new to all of this so I'm sorry if I'm doing anything wrong)

 

Although his sand diatribe happened before his mother’s death. I noticed at her funeral though he grabs a handful of sand. Maybe to fuel his anger. Like rubbing salt into a wound.

 

If I lived in a desert I'd hate sand too.

 

Anakin should’ve embraced it more. He could’ve said this to Dooku on Geonosis.

“You think the desert is your ally? You merely adopted the desert. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see grass until I was 9, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”

 

Welcome to the forums. You are not doing anything wrong, just for the record this is a megatrhead i.e. an alliance of some old threads about Anakin‘s character. It would be interesting to hear your opinion about the main themes here (is not the sand as you will see )

 

I've posted this elsewhere but it might open some discussion here.


Anakin staring at own hand in recognition of wrong-doing against the Tusken village

Foreshadowing "more machine than man"

Green saber cut in two by Dooku - Anakin's lost potential?

Beginning of being made physically part machine, like Luke will also one day be

The wedding is bittersweet, really




Anakin's first cold-blooded killing of a human, with red and blue (note holding the Jedi saber in his robotic hand, perhaps seemingly detached from it)

The aftermath, post-immolation, arguably his darkest moment




Role-reversal; now Vader is in Dooku's place

Is Luke going down the same path as his father?






Where Anakin looked at his hand when his path started to diverge from the Jedi way...

Luke's moment grounds him to the Jedi path and shows him not to head the same way as his father

 

Nice mirroring @HevyDevy (as always )

 

Thanks @Tonyg .

One of my favourite aspects of AOTC is the symbolism.
AOTC feels very surreal and allegorical to me. The loss of the green saber, although I may be imagining it tbh, seems significant.

ROTS is quite fast paced by comparison, and you can miss the relevance of certain scenes without joining the films up in your mind somewhat.
I think the Ep3 captions also reflect that Anakin wants revenge on Dooku, yet this leads him to soon replace anger at Dooku for hate towards Obi-Wan. The dark drive that is increasing it's hold as he becomes more "Vader".

 

More relevant to the general thread topic...

I like that in a deleted ROTS scene we saw Anakin had started to learn Artoo's language by ear.
Makes it a little more touching that Luke and R2 become such good friends in the OT.

Btw, did anyone notice in TLJ Luke could understand R2 as well? He seems to have learned it post-ROTJ.

 

I noticed that a few articles after TLJ say that Kylo is what anakin should have been and i honestly think thats a load of crap.

One article i am reading now lists these reasons

4. He’s Conflicted
3. He’s Confident and Manipulative
2. He Lets His Rage Control Him
1. He’s Truly Heartless
http://newmediarockstars.com/2015/12/4-reasons-kylo-ren-anakin-seen-prequels/

Reasons why i think people wouldn't have liked anakin to be like Kylo is that Kylo is emotionally flawed and at times seems like a kid just trying to be tough.

No one would have wanted to see Vader having been that at some point. While Kylo can get away with it because he is a new character and there is no expectation.

It also kinda reglets any relationship he had with Obi Wan IMO

 

In short and very simplistically said, Anakin is good hearted person with flaws, turn bad for his fears and bad choices. Kylo has tantrums because... he has it, but he never hesitated to do something bad (until that moment in TLJ with his mother). And he has no friends, I don‘t know why no one noticed that. Anakin on the other side has them. So is really this that Anakin should be?

 

Ben turned to the dark side because he felt abandoned by his parents and betrayed by Luke. He certainly does seem lonely.
Furthermore, he did hesitate to kill Han, to the point where he even asked for Han's help because he didn't know if he had the strength to go through with it.

That said, no, Kylo is not what Anakin should've been. I like both characters because they are what they are.

 

I agree with you, it is a huge load of crap. I didn't understand that perception of Kylo Ren. I had seen fans post the same thing and it made me wonder - Kylo has been presented to us as a 30 year old "man" but he acts like a spoiled, whiny, bratty child. Those same words were used to complain about Anakin in the PT (Anakin was even younger than 30) so why is whiny Crylo being praised and "whiny" Anakin accused of ruining Star Wars?

How can Kylo be conflicted yet truly heartless? Those are complete opposites. The only way we are introduced to the concept of conflict in Kylo is through what we are TOLD by other characters in the film or through Rian Johnson spoon feeding the word conflict in interviews. Snoke says he "stoked Kylo's tortured soul" and Rey says "his decision isn't made" to Luke BUT every time Kylo has a choice he chooses to do what's best for his ambitions with no hesitation. I definitely felt he was heartlessly manipulative in asking Han to "help" him with his mission to commit patricide but again Snoke is the one narrating the supposed conflict afterwards.

Spare Lor San Tekka and the villagers? Nope

Kill Snoke and be Supreme Leader or help Rey and the Rebellion? Definitely chose Supreme Leader Ren. Then lied and blamed Rey for Snoke's death.

The only time I saw him struggle with a decision was when he couldn't pull the trigger on Leia. But he didn't prevent anyone else from taking the shot. He didn't order the TIEs to disengage.

I don't see rage in Kylo, I see only an emo screaming/temper tantrum. Hayden had great facial expressions when he was angry. Once the dark side had twisted him, that rage was full on display, especially at the beginning of the duel with Obi Wan. Anakin was confident in his skills and abilities. One of my first favorite scenes in the PT is when he jumps out of the speeder and uses the force to fall/fly/reach Zam Wesell. He was definitely confident in his flying ability in the battle over Coruscant and his fighting skill when he and Obi Wan faced both Dooku and Grievous in ROTS. I absolutely love the look Hayden gives when he's on his back calling his saber to him while Obi Wan has a lightsaber to his throat. The dark side definitely made Anakin largely confident in the end or else he wouldn't have attempted to take the high ground.

Anakin holding his dying mother in his arms (after not seeing her for ten years) in AOTC carries more emotional weight, creates more sympathy in me for Anakin than "supposed" things that have happened to Kylo but haven't been SHOWN in the films.

 

It's ironic. Ani gave into the dark side to save his wife. But that very act has killed his wife.

 

I strongly disagree. I feel that his behavior shows a great deal of conflict. Snoke first expresses doubt about his devotion to the dark side and Kylo himself is then shown to share that doubt as he confesses to his grandfather that he feels a pull to the light. That pull manifests itself as clear hesitation when he is about to kill his father, followed by a hint of confusion/sorrow/shock in his reaction to Han's death. This leaves him emotionally unbalanced, which, along with the wound caused by Chewie's bowcaster, prevents him from being in control of his fight with Rey.
That his inner conflict is his greatest enemy is screamingly obvious to me. Even in his first scene, in fact. "I'll show you the dark side", he says, in a vain attempt to silence Lor San Tekka. When the latter then starts talking about his family, Kylo silences him for good. A pathetic attempt to kill his inner light side "demons" if ever there was one.
He adopts a new name and puts on a mask to assume a dark side persona and distance himself from the good kid that was Ben Solo. Whenever someone brings up his past, implying or saying outright that Ben still lives, he insists that it is not so; that he is Kylo Ren and that he has destroyed Ben. Even though he knows that it's not true. Even though he feels the pull to the light and his conscience keeps tugging at the back of his mind.

It's right there, clear as day. You may not see it that way, but I've seen it that way since day one.

He asked him because he didn't know if he had the strength to do it himself. That's hesitation.

They engaged before he had a chance to issue such an order. He got too emotional to react sooner.
That said, I don't assume that he would have ordered them to disengage if he'd had more time to react. His sense of loyalty to the First Order and the mission, as well as his self-denial, might have been too strong for that. Who really knows, though? It could have gone either way, as far as I'm concerned.


My point, to keep this on topic, is that I don't really see the point of pitting the characterizations of Anakin and his grandson against each other, because it's not a contest. No one has to choose one or the other. It's okay to prefer one over the other, even to strongly dislike one or both of them, but it's definitely possible to like them both. I do. They can and do coexist as fully formed characters in their own right. They share some character traits, but they're also quite different and that's exactly how it should be.

 

Even more ironic...

The same bait Palpatine used to lure Anakin to the Dark Side (the power to save his family from certain death) ultimately backfired on him years later, as Anakin DID save his family from certain death by killing Palpatine.

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That is your opinion and it's fine for you that you see it that way. Your comments are kind of proving my point. I'm being told how I am supposed to see it not being shown what I need to see in order to actually feel conflict. There are others who don't feel that it was "as clear as day" so it's not like I pulled my views out of thin air.

I don't think it's a contest either between the two of them. Most of those articles read like an excuse to bring back a resurgence of Anakin/Hayden/PT hate. As if it still isn't venomous after all this time.

 

Quite right. The anti-"prequel" campaign is incredibly stale and I just don't understand why people bother.

And for the record, my last paragraph was more of a response to that article than to your post

Not at all. You're just being told what someone else genuinely sees and feels.
It's fine that you don't see it the same way, even though it's a shame that the portrayal of Kylo doesn't seem to work for you and many others.

 

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"It was said that you would destroy the high ground!"

 

Which is odd as what they seem to be saying then is that they want no conflict in a character and just have them be evil all the time with no reasons given just empty platitudes of struggle.

As I've said before there does seem to be a portion of the audience that simply responds to movies in a different way whereby they like to be outright told things in dialogue in straight up manner as opposed to the Lucas way which is based on visual and musical storytelling with dialogue as support.

To me there is no comparison between Anakin who is actually conflicted as opposed to Ren who while they have pulled many aspects of Anakin from the PT into his presentation the end result is that he's simply evil because he is with no real support as to why that is the case. There is next to no struggle or conflict and what very little there has been evaporates quickly to concentrate on AD's emotive performance which is well done on his part no doubt but that's what it's mostly based on.

So while it's quite a tribute to the PT and HC in particular the way various aspects of Anakin have been incorporated into the ST I just wish there was more there to support the performance.

Well that's the other thing. If Anakin was like Ren then I doubt it'd be the same as then he'd have to become Vader.

 

^ I prefer to be shown through the actor's performance and facial expressions rather than being spoon fed through supporting character narrative or long explanations. For me, Hayden delivered several different emotions very well. I didn't need another character in the PT to tell me what Anakin was feeling.

Hayden's anger in the scene when Anakin is leaning in to Obi Wan's head/neck with the lightsaber during the final duel is one of my favorites.

I just don't get that from Driver. His expressions are all very similar unless he's screaming.

 

They ain't afraid to make Kylo abit whiney and flawed, which is odd since for a long time thats what Fans were complaining about Anakin for.

 

Hayden could've done a better job but his work in III near the end was spot on in my opinion, and he temple marched like a boss.