PT Anakin's Character Consistency in PT

Of course he lied, Anakin was never dead nor did he get killed by Vader, fact.

 

He had his reason to lie, it was not the time to tell the truth, but he still lied. At the same time gave Luke false hatred.

One of the reasons that Luke was so shocked and angry was not just Obi Wan lied, but told him Vader killed his father to let him hate Vader.

He totally could have said "Your father died in the war".

 

See, it's funny, but people often cite Han and Luke as a good friendship, but when you compare the number of times Luke saves Han to how many times Anakin saves Obi-Wan:

In ESB:
--Luke goes after Han and Leia to save them (though he fails)

In ROTJ:
--Luke goes to rescue Han from Jabba

whereas

AOTC:
--Anakin saves Obi-Wan as he's free-falling on Coruscant
--Anakin goes after Obi-Wan when he's been captured (though he fails)
--Anakin jumps into the middle of Dooku's strike to save Obi-Wan

ROTS:
--Anakin helps to steer Obi-Wan's damaged ship into the Invisible Hand
--Anakin refuses to leave Obi-Wan behind and instead carries him on his back as they escape

Yes, Anakin and Obi-Wan butted heads a lot and Anakin whined about Obi-Wan. But Obi-Wan's also his teacher and his guardian. Think of how many times Luke whined at Yoda -- "You ask the impossible!" -- and while Anakin may have been more egregious, at times, than Luke his relationship with Obi-Wan was also much more complicated and constantly being subverted by Palpatine's malicious advice.

They say actions speak louder than words. Well, by their actions, Anakin's certainly put himself on the line for Obi-Wan. At least before his turn, I don't think that he's a terrible friend simply because he is frustrated and complains. It would be a different story if Anakin went out of his way to get Obi-Wan into trouble or constantly tried to take glory for himself, but ROTS shows us that's clearly not the case.

 

He shouldn't say "Vader killed your dad" at all, it had no benefit other than let Luke hate Vader for false reason, and would suffer backlash once Luke learned the truth.

Yeah, in PT Anakin showed friendship many times, compare to OT their relationship was far much better.

 

This is true; he did become the hero before the villain. In the end, GL had to show that Anakin would betray everybody, and it could never be something that turned out less disgusting. Jake and Hayden's acting sort of ruined the rise and fall of the character for a lot of people, though. If they had given a great performance, I'm sure a lot more people would have applauded the way the story turned out.

 

Hmm...but given that, at the time that Alec Guinness said this line it was true then...it seems odd to put the blame for a later change onto the original iteration.

 

I don't Slowpokeking was talking about changing the film, though. I think he was merely stating that -- in universe-- there was no reason for Obi-Wan to tell Luke that Vader killed his father. That he could have just left it at "Your father was killed when the Empire attacked the Jedi." Or something like that. Saying that Vader murdered Luke's father makes it unnecessarily personal.

The conversation was about Obi-Wan's statement in the context of the story.

 

Sometimes I think - if Obi-WAN had not left Anakin on Mustafar, and took on a ship ...
the Guy just confused... and no one helped him...

 

The lie was understandable in the circumstances, but the whole 'certain point of view' thing makes Obiwan out to be a bit of an arse who won't front up and admit to his mistakes.

 

Im not sure it's a PT-OT thing, but rather ANH vs every other movie in the saga, thing. For a lot of ppl (myself included) there was a healthy skepticism regarding anything that came out of Obi's mouth by ROTJ. Even many of us kids weren't buying the whole "POV" shtick in 1983. If you manipulate your words to make somebody believe something other than the truth - you are lying. It's not like Obi was shocked that Luke didn't understand his "POV" - he knew he was cynically shaping the facts.

"Whaaat? You thought your dad was dead-dead!? No man. Were you not listening to me on Tatooine? What part of 'Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father' wasn't clear?

 

Are you suggesting that the writer of Episode IV didn't watch Episode III before completing the script?

 

More like suggesting that the writer of Episode III didn't rewatch Episode IV before writing the script.

 

I really don't understand @Slowpokeking's hatred of Obi-Wan. In the prequels we have Anakin's arrogance, sure, but he cares for Obi-Wan ("He's like my father!") and Anakin saves his life 9 times (cause you know that business on Cato Neimoidia doesn't count) during the Clone Wars. But after his fall to the dark side, Obi-Wan sees a security holo of Anakin slaughtering Jedi in the Temple, and he still begs Yoda to send him after the Emperor so he doesn't face to face killing his closest friend. After Anakin Force-chokes Padmé, though, stating that Obi-Wan turned her against me, he'd seen enough of the dark side in Anakin to lose hope of his redemption. Anakin had finally become Vader in Obi-Wan's eyes, and he was ready to do what he must. 2 decades later, he still remembers the good that Anakin was, but believes him long dead at the hands of Darth Vader. Obi-Wan and Yoda both agreed that Luke wasn't ready for the burden of knowing who his father really was, so Obi-Wan gave the FACPOV excuse.

 

If a poster is invested in a character, one will always see events surrounding the fav character in the most positive light, and events surrounding the character(s) who don't understand/empathize, sympathize/act to the best to fav character in the worst light. Ok, rough sentence, there, but it's true of us all, although I believe most of us attempt to overcome this initial bias (though even then, such posters are often accused of "overlooking this or that.")

And if one takes the most extreme view, then each poster is correct no matter how absurd the conclusion might be to others.

 

Perhaps, but that's a really odd way to enjoy movies and their characters, IMO. What makes characters in SW most interesting is that they are all to a certain degree morally or motivationally ambiguous (notably in the PT). Trying to figure you wtf they were thinking is half the enjoyment

 

I concur, but many posters choose not to/cannot see beyond their own viewpoints.

 

Indeed which can be extremely frustrating particularly when one seeks discussion and ends up in an argument. It's most wearying.

 

I'm with you there. It's a shame because SW discussions can be both fascinating and entertaining when they don't descend into "you're wrong", "no, you're wrong". As Karl Popper said, 'one of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other.'

On the subject of the thread, I think that we can find inconsistencies in all the movies. This isn't surprising, considering the amount of time that passed during their creation, the number of people involved and the development of the story over the years. We can either nit-pick all the plot holes (which can be fun if you like that kind of thing) or look at the bigger picture as it was meant to be taken.

Personally, I would have liked it if Anakin had been more 'mature' in ROTS, as he was in TCW. The Palpatine rescue was fine, but he seemed to regress a bit after that. All the same, it's the story that I love most, so that's what matters to me.