PT "Anakin became evil too quickly"

I do agree with your general point, Palpatine talks in double-meanings and pov truths most of the time he is speaking. It seems very intentional on Lucas' part.

But you can catch him on a lie occasionally. For instance - "When the Jedi learn what has transpired here they will kill us, along with all the Senators." "I agree. The Council's next move will be against the Senate."
The Jedi would indeed, after learning the truth, likely attempt to kill Vader and Palpatine on sight. And Anakin's response, is from a point of view exactly in line with what The Council had been planning in taking control of the Senate. But kill all of them? I don't think Palpatine ever really believed this.

 

I agree, and I've specifically called that one out in the past. ( It would take too long to find the posts, though... )

 

PALPATINE: "Know the power of the dark side, the power to save Padme."

That's what, "I have the the power to save the one you love." means.

 

The fact that Anakin had been a slave in the past should have been brought up again near his turn. Beside the point, his slavery could have been shown as much more horrific in The Phantom Menace.

 

It is brought up, but in a more subtle way. He becomes a slave at the end of ROTS. He has come full circle in that regard.

 

Things could have been more "horrific" for Luke and Rey as well. Lots of things in the movies could be more horrific but that isn't the kind of movies Star Wars are. They are mythology and not "realistic" as such.

 

It's more simple than that. Anakin's time as a slaved doesn't need to be more traumatic. Having a bomb inside of him, that can be detonated if he removes or tampers with it, would be pretty traumatic enough.

 

I think we have to remember that SW characters are not necessarily "realistic" Anakin was falling into the dark side-as in he was swimming in a metaphysical supernatural evil source at the heart of the universe. In RL people don't do that.

 

I think being a slave with a bomb implanted in your head forced to work all day as a child laborer in a junk shop being bossed around by an abusive jerk with no other prospects and no other future is a pretty bleak existence, personally. And his past as a slave doesn't need to be brought up again, because it's already been amply shown. The context is already there for anyone who actually watched the movies.

This is true. The existence of the Force as a plot device allows for the portrayal of psychologically realistic but dramatically condensed and accelerated descents into evil. It's used this way in both trilogies. Simply giving into the dark side once during his second duel with Vader puts Luke on the brink of committing fully to the dark path with little hope of return. Realistically you'd argue that Luke would be able to pull back from that with just a little willpower and effort, but that's not how things are portrayed. The pull of the dark side is an almost irresistible force; it takes gargantuan strength of will for Luke to be able to step back from that ledge. And if he hadn't, he'd have been all but lost. If that were not the case, the scene (and the entire film, and the entire series) would be far less powerful.

 

This complaint could have EASILY been solved had Lucas just made the entire prequel trilogy start at the end of AOTC. The Clone wars in full swing and newly knighted Jedi Anakin emerging as the hero of the saga. He would have had 3 full films to explore his rise and fall instead of the crammed messed ROTS ended up being.

 

By previous Star Wars standards, the turn was actually quite long with many steps. Luke was only a heartbeat away. He didn't have conflict with his friends, the Rebels. He hadn't killed a bunch of Ugnaughts. He didn't get talked into cutting off Boba Fett's/Jabba's head. (Hey, Leia was going darkside).

Yet people talked about the idea of Luke going dark in RotJ as a real possibility. Some even have said the better path.

Now on the specifics of saving a defenseless Palpatine to killing Jedi younglings, perhaps. I like what somebody else thought about. Taking the kids hostage only to have Palpatine putting suited Darth Vader in front of them before the credits saying "Do it."

I'd only alter that by having the "still good in him" hide the younglings only to have the end event of Palpatine forcing Vader to kill them. As a defense mechanism, Vader has to convince himself they are not people. That he is no longer Anakin. And that defense mechanism takes over for the Dark Times.

 

"If I'd taken the prequel trilogy to a marketing company, Episode I would've started here [III] and Episodes II and III would've been about Darth Vader killing people. But in the end, I wouldn't be able to write movies like that. "

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith.

That is what he did do, when he went there. Palpatine tells him to not hesitate and to show no mercy. Just like he did with the Tuskens who were animals and he slaughtered them as such.

 

HUH? Who said having 3 films with Darth Vader killing jedi in it? Have you seen the Clone Wars TV show? Maybe actually showing Anakin throughout the clone wars and his natural progression to the dark side over the course of several years and three films would have made a more believable saga instead of the hamfisted ROTS turn Lucas gave the character.

 

The topic is did Anakin become evil too quickly, not did George make the movie he wanted to make. First warning.

 

Just from my point of view, in seeing the prequels in theaters, I always thought Anakin's transition to the dark side was paced perfectly, and I never knew it was a subject of controversy until the past few years on the internet.

 

troll elsewhere plz

 

The point is that the type of story Lucas wanted to tell, was one that didn't start with Anakin as a pre-established hero. It was a story about how a good person can go bad, not about the heroics. Lucas couldn't write a story about someone who had all these flaws, if we don't see the genesis of these flaws. That's why he started with Anakin as a young boy.

 

and you're done.

 

It's not really a story of how someone could "go" bad if their badness is defined by their selfish inability to let go of their attachment to the most important person in their life or cope with fear of losing them. Anakin is shown to have this crucial fault right from the beginning. In spite of it being prerequisite for a jedi, the training necessary for a young child to break a emotional attachment to a parent or parents is withheld. And despite Anakin repeatedly showing signs of of this shortfall in his Jedi training, it is never addressed until too late and amounts to being told that he is simply wrong to feel the way he does and he must train himsef not to be. Every other Jedi is trained by Master Yoda in this critical stage of their development as both a jedi and a person. The chosen one is told to do it himself.

Saying "This is the story George wanted to tell." is tantamount to, "These go up to eleven."

It's like saying there are no possible alternatives that might have painted a more convincing picture of the processs of going from a "cunnig warrior and a good friend" or someone considered an exceptional guardian of justice but is seduced into being the twisted and evil dark lord.

 

It is a story of someone going bad since Anakin goes from wanting to do good to no longer caring about that; from knowing nothing of greed to wanting the galaxy for himself.

The transition is quite neat when you think about it.

* In TPM, he reluctantly accepts that change can't be stopped, intending to free his mom later on.
Still on the light side. His motives are ultimately selfish, as he intends to free his mom because he wants to have her around, but he's still not selfish enough to wanna hurt or kill people.

* In AOTC, his mom is instead taken from him permanently and he kills the perpetrators and their families as revenge. He also vows to learn how to stop change.
Now, he's in the gray area. What he's done is wrong but it's also understandable that he would get angry enough to seek revenge.

* In ROTS, he kills innocent people, including children, in order to learn how to stop change. In the end, he expresses a desire to rule the galaxy as he sees fit.
Greed has won him over and he is now definitely on the dark side.

 

In TPM, Anakin is reassured that leaving her behind is the right thing for him to do, for him. Not for his mother. So naturally, once he has become pre-eminent, he would feel beholden to repay the gifts that opportunity has given him so far(doesn't any son or daughter?). Being pre-cogniscant of her impending ordeal is a major exacerbating factor.

Killing the Tuskens in afit of pique was terrible (Anakin acknowledged this at the time). But it's not because he greedily wanted his mother to be around him. It's because he didn't want her to die such a brutal agonising death as the one he eventually witnessed and had ample prewarning to intervene beforehand but was dutifully protecting Padme, against her wishes, instead. (Ironic in the long term, huh?).

Maybe the Tuskens wouldn't have been slaughtrred at all if Anakin had been given the training to overcome such feelings and could only repress them until they are catastrophically unleashed. Maybe the anxiety that lead to him being sensitive to her pain would not have persisted in his mind over his duty.

The alternate scenario to what Anakin goes through in AOTC is Anakin receiving notification that while he has become a great Jedi, the mother that made this possible has been brutalised to death by Sand People. The Anakin that wouldn't have "gone bad" because he didn't want to know if his mother was in a better situation than the one he left her in, would not have had any emotional reaction to this. i.e. What we would normally call "compassion".

The story of someone going bad is about the middle 45 mins of ROTC. Everything preceding that is story of someone whose destiny is defined by a mass of contradictions. And not least by the characters in the film.

Note: I'm saying this in the context of supposedly every single instance of Anakin, from age nine, expressing ambivalence about being seperated from his mother, she remaining in slavery, is indication of greed. How many fairy tales are there where a child is taken away from their parent or regrets running away and the nominal villain berates them for their selfishness and greed or makes them feel bad for wanting or having what every child in a civillised society should reasonably have.

I can't believe that people would be so quick to uncricitcally endorse such an unusual definition of greed and the one's promoting it in the movies.

 

Noone says that Anakin is greedy simply for wanting his mother around. What's greedy is his unwillingness to accept reality because he wants to keep his loved ones around forever, regardless of the consequences.

 

Nowhere does Anakin say that he just wants his mother around him. Not even as a nine year old. He wants to know that his mother is ok.

The idea of keeping people around forever (he doesn't specify who, just people, and his mother's dead so it's a bit late for all that) only comes up in a fit of pique amidst the grief of watching her die, horribly.

Reacting strongly to the "reality" of loss is not greediness. Knowingly and willingly harming others or allowing them to come to harm in response to grief or to pre-empt potential grief is greediness, selfish etc. Although kiling the sand people did not gain Anakin anything except an opportunity to satisfy his righteous anger. Does that really qualify as greed or selfishness?

Consider this also. Qui Gon didn't want Anakin to be involved in the battle of Naboo. Padme is against a child being involved right from the star on Tatooine. That makes Anakin's actions on Naboo selfish, according to the usual arguments.

 

You keep claiming that people are saying things that, to my knowledge at least, have never been said and use that as a basis for your arguments.
That makes this discussion rather pointless, as far as I'm concerned.