PT Anakin vs. Vader

There is one thing I've always found interesting about Anakin's transformation into Vader. We can look at this both from the in-universe explanations and from a real life psychological perspective.

In another thread, Anakin was compared, psychologically to a school shooter. He is narcissistic, emotionally driven, charged, impulsive, unbalanced, maniacal even (which causes him to lose a duel he should've easily won with Obi-Wan.) These faults are seen throughout II and III and are only heightened when he turns over to the Dark Side. He pretty much acts like an out of control coke fiend after his turn. Even Anakin on his worst pre-Sith day would never have choked Padme, for example. He has lost all concept of reason and seems utterly insane.

Contrast this with Vader. Vader, when we first see him again in Rogue One and in the Classic Trilogy, is ruthless but collected; violent, but not impulsive; completely in command of his mind and his temper. He has become, in a twisted way, the Master he always wanted to be. He has respect; he has fear; he has command over himself and his impulses.

I know much of this comes from being utterly broken on the inside - a hollowed out shell of a man - but I thought we would try to draw some psychological differences between Anakin in II, III in comparison to Vader in Rogue One - Empire Strikes Back (arguably the height of Vader's devotion to the Dark Side).

Is it not interesting that the Dark Side actually "mellowed out" a mentally unstable guy, to a degree? Yes he still kills willy nilly, but he's no longer a raging lunatic; he is no longer out of control. Even without the Emperor there to guide him (in ESB he is pretty much in command of the fleet and only talks to Palps once in the film), he is firmly in control of himself and others around him.

Besides being broken, why did it take falling to the Dark Side to psychologically balance Vader out?

 

Transitioning from a raging psychopath to a psychopathic sociopath does not represent balance or mellowing.

 

Overgeneralizations and hyperbole aside; Age. Experience.

 

Because he learned his lessons. Controlled anger is far more dangerous than white-hot, blistering rage. The former, you know what you’re going to do, exactly what’s about to happen to your intended victim. You control yourself so that you don’t get hurt.

The latter was what we saw with Anakin on Mustafar, and we all know how well THAT turned out.

 

"School shooter"? WTF... He isn't planning to kill anyone in cold blood. In AOTC, he's had nightmares about his mother for days, he finally sees her only to have her die in his arms... he snaps and gives in to the Dark Side. He knows he was wrong as he acknowledges later. By the way, all the locals think the Tuskens are just animals and Anakin was raised on Tatooine. He's also the only one who admits it was still the wrong thing to do for a Jedi.

 

How many other Jedi knew that it happened? I’m pretty sure that Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi would’ve told him that it was the wrong thing for a Jedi to do…and had they found out, he may very well have been court-martialed. Padmé Amidala was too blinded by her idiotic infatuation with him, and Palpatine is hardly an expert on morality.

Let’s be honest here. His behavior and pathology are very close to that of a school shooter. In fact, here was a psychological profile done shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting:

Motivated by envy? Takes place at a workplace where shooters felt rejected? So far this is a perfect description of Anakin Skywalker.

Yes, Anakin slaughters children…twice! Already fits the profile perfectly. He sees them as symbols of something he wants to obliterate? Good God yes! Anger and paranoid delusions? Again, good God yes! Low self-esteem? Debatable, but we’ll give half a point. A triggering event? I’d say that the death of his mother was pretty damn triggering as well as his dreams of Padmé’s impending death.

Good. ****ing. God. Yes.

Is this Anakin or what?

Mass Shooting Psychology: Spree Killers Have Consistent Profile, Research Shows

You can either choose to accept these facts, or you can choose to be dishonest and claim that he’s a true and noble hero, as pure as the virgin snow.

So, which is it going to be? Are you going to be honest or dishonest?

 

I agree with the general premise that OT masked Vader was more of a controlled violence. Speak softly and carry a big lightsaber. He was still psycho as he force choked everybody around him. I would say the change would be in the adjective of psychopath and not psychopath itself. Screaming psychopath v. brooding psychopath

However, in ANH he was still a bit in the screaming mode. "and bring me the passengers. I WANT THEM ALIVE!!!!"

There are a couple of ways to take that.
1. They were still defining exactly what Vader's personality traits are. Fine tuning.
2. He's collected when he feels in control of his surroundings. He's less so when he starts to feel everyone around him isn't bowing to his every command.

 

I think part of the issue is that at the end of ROTS he's being inundated with dark side power in such a large amount over such a short period of time. This kid has gone from constantly harnessing his emotions to suddenly giving them free reign and he wasn't mentally prepared to handle it.

 

i've never heard the 'school shooter' comparison before.
don't agree on that one.

 

This is honestly the most ridiculous accusation I've ever seen (and I've seen all sorts of criticisms of the prequels, fair and unfair). Anakin does not plan to go and kill all the tuskens. All he wants is to rescue his mother. He doesn't go around every day thinking about killing Obi-Wan or other Jedi who's ever said something bad to him. He's also considered to be the Chosen One with the highest midichlorian count so he's not jealous of any other Jedi. He's even willing to leave without Padme or his mother (until he starts having nightmares and wants to save them). If you claim otherwise it means you're the one who's being dishonest here.

I never claimed that. Don't put words in my mouth. All I did was to disagree with Anakin being an antihero but more like a fallen hero. That's because he knows what's right and wrong but he's flawed and conflicted which eventually causes his downfall. But clearly he had something good in him or there would be no redemption.

I HONESTLY disagree with your assessment so let's leave it at that.

 

This is honestly the most ridiculous defense I’ve ever seen (and I’ve honestly seen all sorts of defenses of the prequels, some reasonable and some not). Anakin murders children on more than one occasion. He’s deeply bitter and resentful and goes around complaining about how Obi-Wan and the Jedi are being unfair to him and not appreciating his full talents every day. He constantly whines about being passed over and thinks that he should be a full Jedi Master without earning it because he’s so special, and the only reason he’s not is that everyone else is a meaniehead persecuting him. And then eventually, after triggering events, such as the death of his mother, he snaps and goes on a killing spree.

To ignore all this is to be dishonest. And yes, this is not too dissimilar from school shooters, who also don’t go around every day thinking about shooting up a place until after they snap. Until after the triggering event, as the article mentioned. By ignoring that last, you are deliberately setting up a straw man. But if you wanna do that, I can set up straw men as well.

The bad overwhelmed the good UNTIL the redemption. That was the point of it, or else there’d be no need to redeem him. His flaws led to an inevitable trajectory. Only when he finally decided to overcome those could he be redeemed. And before his redemption, even before the Official Fall, he never wanted to face his own flaws and overcome them. He nurtured them and embraced them. To quote Disney:

Decades of denial
Is simply why I’ll
Be king undisputed
Respected, saluted
And seen for the wonder I am

Anakin feels denied and disrespected by everybody, not too dissimilar to a school shooter. He’s bitter and resentful about that throughout his adult life…and once he snaps, he decides that he’s gonna show them. He even literally starts out in the third film by slaughtering a school (all the younglings we saw Yoda teaching in the previous film).

You can ignore all the obvious warning signs and red flags that the character displays. But it’s a particularly dishonest form of dialectic.

I honestly believe that you are simply refusing to see the obvious.

But I really am sick of seeing excuses being made for this pathetic loser. I know I could never get away with half the things that he does…and that’s not a good way to engender sympathy for your protagonist. It’s hard not to see him as a character who gets all sorts of special treatment and excuses made for him from Senators, the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic, and then rewards them by stabbing them in the back. This is why I think Lucas should’ve played up the slavery angle more than he did and made it much darker, akin to some of the darker scenes in movies like Pinocchio or his own production, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Then he would engender more sympathy because we could more easily see him as a victim of PTSD.

 

@Kuro

Let's back down on assessing other fans.
I'd really rather there not be an uncomfortable atmosphere. It's fine to debate aspects of characters themselves, but let's not go accusing others of anything

 

Regarding the Tuskens in Legends Anakin is very guilty about this and doesn't tell anyone except Padme Palpatine and A'Sharad Hett(a tusken jedi).

In the clone wars he was cocky, arrogant though grew in wisdom and seemed more mellow if excited by battle by ROTS. Remember he's under a lot of pressure-the secret marriage, visions of his wife dying, he feels slighted at not being made a master-a sentiment Palpatine further inflames, his relationship with the lead members of the jedi council are strained though he is still friends with Obi Wan. All of leads to him becoming a sith Lord.

 

But the thing is that we practically see nothing but the instability and violent tendencies. He seems like he could snap at any moment. This is where I think the Episode I decision really hurt the trilogy. Because they spent so much time on him as a child, they had to rush all of the adult Anakin stuff and sideline some of the stuff that could’ve shown that he was indeed a flawed hero rather than just someone who was so dangerous and disturbed that he comes across as more of a ticking time bomb than a tragic hero.

 

Anakin was very unstable. It only got worse as time went on. I think things really fall apart after the Tusken massacre. He seems to regret what he did yet what he did is not forgivable. He continues to grow more and more distabled until he is completely gone and hurts the one person he truly loved Padme. When he becomes Vader by putting on the Suit he just brushes that all away and hides it deep in him as a ball of emotions.

That’s how I see all that anyway

 

I mean before his turn.

 

Anakin is clearly troubled, and lacking in moorings since TPM, but I don't see him as anything like psychotic or sociopathic (words that describe states that are poorly understood by current mental health). These terms are flung around too often IMO.

 

I think that’s fair. I don’t think that psychosis is an apt diagnosis for him, since psychosis is “a fundamental derangement of the mind characterized by defective or lost contact with reality especially as evidenced by delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech and behavior.” Anakin is unbalanced, but this isn’t him. He’s not experiencing hallucinations, his speech is coherent, and while he’s certainly paranoid, I don’t think that he’s experiencing a total break from reality. Nor is he a psychopath. A psychopath is a violent person, with no regard nor empathy for others. This might initially seem like Anakin, but a psychopath has charm, superficiality, cunning, no conscience, and often a sexual promiscuity, among other traits. Yes, he shows violent tendencies, but he’s utterly graceless, has little cunning, and was likely a virgin before marrying Padmé. So clearly, he’s not a psychopath, either.

Instead, I’d say he has borderline personality disorder:

Is this a description of Anakin or what?

 

I don't think Vader is as much in control as he's commonly claimed to be. He has emotional outbursts all the time. What else would you call it whenever he impulsively strangles or murders a subordinate out of anger? He's also not averse to sudden outbursts of frustrated, rage-filled shouting ("Tear this ship apart until you've found those plans and bring me the passengers, I want them alive!", "You are a part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor!", "Bring my shuttle!" etc.).

Nothing about Anakin's portrayal makes me think he's a "ticking time bomb" or someone who "could snap at any moment." He strikes me as an intense yet kind and caring young man. Someone who sometimes has trouble controlling his emotions, especially his anger, but in a way that's symptomatic of him being a free-spirited twenty-year-old raised in an incredibly restrictive environment, more than it is anything pathological.

I can relate to Anakin a lot, so I have to admit I find it kind of distressing that so many people seem to just write off so many aspects of his personality as being indicative of a "school shooter"-in-waiting.

 

I think it's all just showing someone growing up:

TPM Anakin is a child full of hopes and dreams.

AOTC Anakin is a melodramatic teenager.

ROTS Anakin is a young man. I think we see who Anakin really was in the beginning of ROTS. He's a caring man who wants to help his friends. He wants to help the clones in the starfighter, he wants to rescue his mentor Palpatine, and refuses to leave Obi Wan for dead (A favor Obi Wan will not return). At the same time he is still a bit prideful and arrogant (his taunts to Dooku and Grevious) This is the same heroic character we have in Clone Wars.

The second half of ROTS is where Anakin loses control and snaps. That is a brief moment where he is, understandably, blinded by rage of everything going on around him. His mentor was lying to him all these years, he learns the Jedi order is a lie and taking over, he still thinks his wife is dying, and his best friend has come to kill him.

By the time of the OT, Vader is at that age where he is comfortable in who he is. Set in his ways. Yeah, he's a horrible person, yeah he has regret, but he's accepted it. He finally has the control he always wanted. Finding out he has a son is what brings the change in him that ultimately leads to him coming back to being a good man.


.