Lit Are there times the Sith are the "good guys"

I have recently come under the impression that the Sith are not ALL bad, albeit they are portrayed as bad guys. I found that some people agree that there are good sith and bad sith, and some that think that anything "sithy" (for lack of a better term) is evil. While I will agree that a lot of the sith are not the best people, but neither are all the Jedi. So basically My thought is that sometimes the jedi are bad and the sith are good, and sometimes its like it is in the movie. What do you think? (I will get more in depth with why when I have more time to write)

 

What is good and what is bad? I don't believe there is an absolute definition

"We're keepers of the peace; not soldiers."
-Mace Windu

"Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy! And we shall have.... peace...."
-Darth Sidious

Same motivation, different method

 

No. If a Sith became Good they would not be Sith.

I hate to break it to people but just because they are all fiction-cool and dress in black and so forth does not mean evil = good or grey or enlightened against the stiff minded Jedi.

 

Cushy believe Good and Evil are defined and very real. I likewise believe all people real or fictional are Grey except the Lamb. Thus, I believe I am similar to the OP that the labels Jedi and Sith are not all-defining. Instead, individuals of both Orders are defined by motive and actions. I do not think Jedi are good and Sith evil. I know many do and that is fine. However, for Cushy the films prove that all are Grey and that Jedi do have wrong motives where some Sith and Imperials have good ones.

 

The fact the Jedi are warriors when they say they aren't rather proves they aren't as innocent as they claim as does accepting the clones.

 

At no point is it said that jedi are goodie goodies. They have to deal with a hostile GALAXY of high technology. They are not monks. Are police warriors? No, though thye may use such tactics and as we see they are forced into warfare to...yes that's right...to stop evil from overunning them and everyone else.

Defending yourself with violence does not make you evil.

 

When exactly are the Sith 'good guys'? One example is all I ask.

Mace said they aren't soldiers, which is true. That's not their role and never was. The point was that they couldn't be considered a solution against an army in a possible war, considering their numbers were so low.

 

When do the Jedi ever claim not to be warriors?

 

"Wars not make one great."

 

Sidious: Plots a war that results in the deaths of billions. Orders the murder of children.
Vader: Murders children. Murders his subordinates.
Maul: Tries to murder a child.
Dooku: Plots a war that results in the deaths of billions. Orders the execution of innocent people.

You can argue (endlessly) on whether or not they were "evil," but the Sith certainly aren't "good" people by any measure. They did not have good intentions, and their actions resulted in pain, suffering and death for themselves and others.

 

a lamb is not a person


Evil and good are not tangible positions set in stone,they are merely a matter of opinion,subjective in nature..for example if I was a force wielder
with a lightsaber and I were taking a space bus with jar jar and he wouldn't shut up..."meesa this and that" would it be "evil" of me to pull out ol' sparky and lop off jar jar's head..some would say yes..some would say no,if there was a law allowing people to apply lethal force to people that annoyed them past a certain point..lawful yes in this instance,moral?evil?good? certainly evil for the guy that was too annoying,but good for the person being annoyed,if there was another law allowing citizens to beat up known rapists and sex offenders..evil?good? thats subjective...one mans evil is another mans good
If you had to choose between the population of a city to another to feed trough a winter and you chose a town..are you evil?..good?--there is no such thing..evil and good are stuff from fairy tales,and we as adults should really know better and not be wide eyed dreamers..Ive noticed the evil and good mentality being extra prevalent home in the US,overseas in the EU they dont have that much of this type of delusions..wonder why this is,maybe because of endless wars,plagues and tyrannical kings so the common memory kinda know better

Where home stateside,people are more naive and optimistic..I count myself fortunate to have been able to travel and move around a lot to observe these things. sorry for the rant.

 

The Lamb is title of Christ and He was a person, thanks. Yes, I know that is what many here think. I don't.

 

Good and evil are points of view. If you are a Sith who believes that everything is fair game, that it's alright to murder the innocent to gain power, then from your point of view, you could say that the Sith are good.
Most likely though, you'd say that you're neither good nor bad; that good and evil don't exist.

EDIT: On the topic of harming and killing the innocent, I do believe it's possible for a Sith not to do that. The dark side is about selfishness and power through emotion. Attacking people is probably an effective way to wrap yourself in darkness and find strength in it (which is what Palpatine is talking about in ROTS), but I doubt that it's the only way.

 

Just because you have a point of view does not mean it is right or good.

 

That depends on your point of view.

 

It doesn't. Killing innocent people isn't "good" by any measure.

 

It depends, so I think the answer could be YES.

If the one who writes the story is a "black and white", 2-dimensional author, like Lucas or Tolkien, then NO.
Lucas's characters are mostly just good or just bad. Tolkien's orcs are all evil.
So, if the Sith use the dark side, they are immediatly evil.

BUT, is perfectly possible that one writes a story where there may be a good orc (Thrall, in Warcraft 3) and a Lannister who is not evil (Tyrion, in George Martin's books).

Isn't Starkiller (from Force Unleashed) a Sith apprentice who ends helping the Jedi and the Alliance against the evil guys?

OK, the dark side can make the person less friendly...
But he could control midi-chlorians to create life, use force lightning against enemies, use his aggressive feelings as a shortcut to be more strong, and YET not wanting to kill anyone, nor be an evil ruler. Why not?

 

I think the thread is referring to the Sith in the films. I would also argue that Starkiller was never a Sith. And the other characters from other works don't really apply here.

 

The Jedi are one thing - there's been plenty of arguments about just how flawed they were presented as being in the PT, just how 'good' they really were - but I don't think there's much doubt about the Sith. If you accept the existence of good and evil/bad (Palps says they're simply points of view), then going by the films, they're evil. I can't think of a single time when a full-blown Sith (Anakin's a bit of a different issue) acted in any way that wasn't purely motivated by self-interest and without regard for others.

Yes, Anakin/Vader might appear to be a bit of a different case, but I'd argue that when he decided to toss Palps down the reactor shaft, he ceased to be the Sith Lord Darth Vader and became the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker once more, just as Obi-Wan said that he had once ceased to be Anakin Skywalker.
Between the moment in ROTS when Palpatine says, "Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth... Vader" (or maybe when Palps tells him that he killed Padme) and in ROTJ when he decides to kill that same Sith Master, virtually everything of significance that Darth Vader does is either cruel, violent, selfish or in the service of his own pursuit of power. Sounds pretty evil to me.

 

Padme is a head of state who is refusing to agree with their way of resolving the violent dispute in question (signing the treaty) it's not Maul's fault Naboo only elects teenage girls as their queens.

 

From the OP: "My thought is that sometimes the jedi are bad and the sith are good, and sometimes its like it is in the movie."

Also, the poll question is "Do you think that Sith can be good?"

...from your point of view.

I'm not saying that you are wrong. I'm saying that no truth is absolute.
That includes everything I'm saying too, of course.

 

I say YES. Why? Because they have been sorta the good guys already, like in the Tarkin novel, where they are after terrorists. There are also some comics I could list, like ghost prison or Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin. So yes, under the right circumstances, they can serve the role of "the good guys".

If they were to do a Vader spinoff, they would probably have him fight even worse villains than he is.

 

I think I'll have to move this over to Literature, there should be more material for the point of the discussion.

The movies are pretty clear-cut when it comes to 'Sith = bad', unless you really want to argue if good or bad really exist, which doesn't appear to be the OP's point (who actually separated "what it's like in the movies" from the idea that the Sith could be good anyway).