Saga "But Master Yoda said I should be mindful of the future..."

Why do you perceive Vader as "cold" and "calculating"? This is the guy who kills his subordinates left and right for very little provocation, orders "every ship available" to search an asteroid field regardless of the obvious futility of such an exercise and the obvious cost to his fleet, and cuts off his son's hand in an attempt at some father-son bonding.

 

Because I generally see individuals who can kill subordinates at a whim, who can plan to carbon-freeze his own son and cut off his hand, who can torture a young woman, who can torture a man in order to draw his son out - knowing from personal experience how that works (and therefore able to remove himself from any empathetic response to that) as the very opposite of warm and passionate. Cold and dispassionate (or calculating) fits pretty well. Those who have failed him are of no use to him, therefore they die - publicly; that sends a signal out to other officers - do not fail me.

Do you see passion in any of his actions? If so, why?

 

Yes. The opposite of "warm" doesn't mean calculating. All of his actions are completely impulsive, spur-of-the-moment actions, and thus "passionate." Including chopping off his son's hand, killing his subordinates, and ordering his fleet to do something as irrational as searching an asteroid field. None of those actions are characteristic of suppressing one's immediate impulses in support of a long-term goal, it's someone acting on those impulses.

 

Nope. We only know of the attack on the Lars homestead as far back as a month earlier. We don't know what happened in the preceding months. We don't know if there were others, kept in other hovels or not. That doesn't matter. But let me put it to you like this, in ANH, Luke isn't dead when Obi-wan shows up. You wouldn't say that Palpatine was behind this?

This happened at this point in time, because it did. Anakin could have chosen to stay or go home. Palpatine had no guarantee that Anakin would defy orders. Much less how he would react.

Yes, but Lucas also pointed this out...

"When you get down to where we are right now in the story, you basically get somebody who’s going to make a pact with the Devil, and it’s going to be a pact with the Devil that says, 'I want the power to save somebody from death. I want to be able to stop them from going to the river Styx, and I need to go to a god for that, but the gods won’t do it, so I’m going to go down to Hades and get the Dark Lord to allow me to have this power that will allow me to save the very person I want to hang on to.' You know, it’s Faust. So Anakin wants that power, and that is basically a bad thing. If you’re going to sell your soul to save somebody you love, that’s not a good thing. That’s as we say in the film, unnatural. You have to accept that natural course of life. Of all things. Death is obviously the biggest of them all. Not only death for yourself but death for the things you care about."

--George Lucas, quoted in J. Windolf, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005

As Lucas said, Anakin goes to Yoda for help, but he won't help him. So he goes to Palpatine. It isn't the same as it was in 2003, when it was more about the power over Padme. But there is still a motivation in wanting to be more powerful which came from his pledge to Shmi and his belief that Obi-wan is holding him back. I never said that it wasn't about Padme, but it was also about his desire for more power.

 

To the original question...though it is a little of a side-track from it the answers have all been in the form of a ...Qui-Gon-centric perspective. Qui-Gon's line here is taken to have seem deeper meaning with reference to the 'living foce' as some in-the-moment philosophy which Yoda grounded himself in after he became Qui-Gon's apprentice. Here's the thing though. I've mentioned it vefore but...the emphasis of Qui-Gon's battle with the Council in TPM is his belief in a prophecy....?! Eeermm...how does that match up with an in-the moment philosophy? And his last line to Obi-Wan is "He will bring balance to the Force" - which is in complete contradiction to the advice he gives Obi-Wan in that early scene.

I don't think I've seen anybody suggest that Obi-Wan might be seen as hugely insightful at this moment. That he is either sensing the distant presence of Palpatine, or that he has a sense of the tragedy that is to unfold - while Qui-Gon strangely senses nothing....

 

I know the opposite of 'warm' isn't 'calculating'. I thought I made that pretty clear when I said "...as the very opposite of warm and passionate. Cold and dispassionate (or calculating)..."

As I said, he kills officers, publicly, who have failed him. If they have failed him they are of no use, and their public execution sends out a signal to other subordinates; failure is not an option. It is calculated. He is not raging as he does it, he is in control. He cuts off Luke's hand and then calmly discusses his parentage. I just don't sense passion in his actions.

 

No, he does not kill them "dispassionately," he's very angry with them. He's not "in control" when he kills Ozzel, he's angry. You can hear it in his voice--nothing calculated about it. He doesn't chop Luke's hand off "calmly," Luke hits him, and in the resulting moment of fury (he yells out) lashes out and chops off Luke's arm, and then he forces himself to calm down. It's pretty damn dumb, after all, to chop off someone's hand when you're trying to get him on your side.

 

When Obi-Wan commented that Yoda said that he should be mindful of the future, Qui-Gon stated that "not at the expense of the present". Qui-Gon was not dismissing the idea of being mindful of the future. But he was trying to point out to Obi-Wan that being mindful of the present was more important, especially in a particular situation.

 

Hmmm... You say here that it doesn't matter what we know - but you seem to have made assumptions, or certainly extended, what we do know. You said that "The Tuskens did what they had always done"... we have no evidence at all that this was normal Tusken behaviour. All we have seen of the Tuskens prior to this is a group of them knocking Luke to the ground and running off because Obi-Wan scared them off and them shooting at pod-racers in TPM.

I don't really see what you are asking here. Firstly, the reason I questioned whether Palpatine might have been involved is that Schmi's kidnap and torture benefit Palpatine's plans - rather conveniently. I don't see how Luke not being dead accomplishes anything for Palpatine (nor does Palpatine know about Luke...)

Luke not being dead....I think its a massive leap to the idea that what follows is kidnap and torture. In fact the Tuskens show no interest in Luke, they are far more interested in looting his stuff. I just don't see any similarity to Luke still being alive and Schmi being alive. A far better example would be, Luke is still alive and Cliegg is still alive.

You say later that Anakin was spurred on in his fears by his mother's death. If that is the case, and it was just fate that Schmi was held prisoner, tortured and kept alive long enough for Anakin to seek her out and find her... that means that far from being a great, strategic genius Palpatine was supremely lucky that Anakin had exactly the right fear inculcated within him that Palpatine could later lever him with.

Anakin followed the lead to the roup of Tuskens that had taken his mother in the raid (clearly, as she was there). he slaughtered "all" of them, so he must have gone through every tent to be sure of that. He brings no-one else back and mentions no other prisoners. What we are shown is Schmi is the only prisoner held and tortured. In fact she was the first to be taken, she was taken in the initial raid. And she is the only prisoner discovered in the camp.

He knows his man. We see them together in Palpatine's office and the advice that Palpatine offers to Anakin at that moment? "Trust your feelings."....

I don't know why you said he also pointed this out. That simply restates what I said. he wanted the power for the sake of saving Padmé, not for the sake of having the power itself. That it was a mistake is obvious....which is why I don't buy that he, twenty something years later, is acting in the interests of the Empire and the Emperor with such seeming zest. He would have to have been the most stupidest of stupids not to have figured out at the end of ROTS that he had been duped; played for a fool.

 

Not really here to hang out on this thread's line-of-thought, however to quickly address this ^^^, of course Anakin knows he's just been played (er, rather he realizes he's actually played himself) but it's pretty much too late to do anything about it...at least not in the immediate sense. His last opportunity to do the right thing was in Palpatine's office during the Windu situation. 3 big things are what compels and dictates Anakin's position and decisions from that point:

1. His desire for certain power(s) in order to be able to save people
2. His knowing that Palpatine was certainly more powerful with the Force than himself and could certainly kill him if he chose to
3. The fact that he can no longer go back to the Jedi Order nor can he distance himself from Palpatine because he'd be an all-out outlaw

 

Well, an early draft of ROTS did have Palps telling Anakin that Dooku had arranged for Shmi to be kidnapped by the Tuskens - the idea was abandoned (quite rightly, IMHO - it makes everything a bit too neat and calculated), but though it can't even be taken as something simply not mentioned in the film, it's a plot point that did cross GL's mind at one time.

 

"The overriding philosophy in Episode I—and in all the Star Wars movies, for that matter—is the balance between good and evil. The Force itself breaks into two sides: the living Force and a greater, cosmic Force. The living Force makes you sensitive to other living things, makes you intuitive, and allows you to read other people's minds, etc. But the greater Force has to do with destiny. In working with the Force, you can find your destiny and you can choose to either follow it or not."

--George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Making of Episode I, 1999

Qui-gon doesn't want Obi-wan to be distracted by something that he senses that may or may not exist, since he couldn't sense it. And that he needs to be paying attention, because anything can happen within the next few hours.

Luke was knocked out and dragged to his speeder, while they sifted through it. We don't know for certain what they would have done next, had Obi-wan not showed up. But the implication now with Shmi is that the Tuskens have a tendency to kidnap and assault people. They can't do that with Podracers while they're in a race. Also, the other clue is that Owen and Cliegg never state that it was an unusual move to kidnap someone. Not in the final film, nor the script for AOTC.

Not really. Cliegg and Owen surviving means that they were able to get away. Luke surviving means Obi-wan showed up thanks to the Force.

Not really. Palpatine intended to use the war to bring about Anakin's turn. Finding out about this is just good fortune.

If there were living strangers, he would have brought them back. If they were dead, they are of no concern to him.

Except that even then, he's not always right. Anakin killed Dooku, but didn't leave Obi-wan behind. Meaning he didn't turn.

Because it was a combination of the two. Anakin did feel that there was more to the Force that he wasn't being told, before talking to Palpatine at the opera house. That's why he went to Yoda in the first place. The Grand Master of the Jedi Order. An individual who has been around a long time and knows a lot about the Force. If anyone could help him, it would be him. But Yoda doesn't and Anakin still believes that there is more. It isn't until Palpatine confirms that there is more, than he starts talking about it.

True. I recall that.

 

only one kenobi, I'm sure Anakin eventually realized just how duped he was. The problem is, by the time he did he was so entrenched in the Dark Side, he truly believed it was "too late for him" as he told his son. Obviously he hated Sidious and desired to overthrow him from the moment he embraced the Dark Side. But hate is what keeps him going as a Dark Side practitioner. It's his M.O. The more he looks at everything through a hateful lens, the Jedi for screwing up his training, Sidious for seducing him, the rebellion for causing chaos in the galaxy, the more powerful he becomes. He believes that hate, fear, and all the other elements of the Dark Side are all he has left, forever. 19 years of living under this belief will cause one to become pretty cold and calculating. His M.O. is the reverse of the Golden Rule. It is "Do Unto Others What Is Hateful to You". I thought the whole situation with his mother's death was one of the genius things about the PT story, because it shows how deeply entrenched in the Dark Side he is by Episode V that he would tactically use the same pain that motivated him to lure his son.

[edit]Also, I think he knew it was probably a trick when Sidious offered it, but he was so desperate to stop his wife from dying, he had promised his mother and himself so strongly that he would "not fail again", he was so doubtful of everything he thought he knew, that he clung on to any possibility of saving her. He had lost to temptation to the Dark Side before (the sand people massacre), and now there was an order (Sith) that encouraged embracing it rather than call it a loss. Once he embraced it, Power superseded saving Padme's life as the paramount goal in his life.

 

Sorry about the double-post but the time limit ran out.

[edit cont'd] Power superseded his desperation. Which is why he seems so calm when Padme visited him on Mustafar. He *finally* achieve his goal: the power to do as he wished.

 

Qui-Gon's attention to the living Force in no way precludes belief in a prophecy. If Force prophecy exists, and it does, he would simply be aware of that fact. Qui-Gon does not fail to believe in the unifying Force, and Force prophecy seems to result from the effect exerted by the aperion ( or unifying Force ) on spacetime.

 

All Obi-Wan said was: "But Master Yoda said I should be mindful of the future." It doesn't contradict anything in TESB, where Yoda is criticizing Luke's lack of concentration on the moment. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

 

If you read my whole first post, I was under the (apparently) mistaken impression that "this one" meant Obi-Wan, not Luke. It still looks like he's talking to Luke about Obi-Wan, but I guess I'm the only one who got that impression :/

 

Odd. No, I for one never took it that way. Certainly the script clarifies that he's talking to Obi-Wan about Luke:

CREATURE: (irritated) I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.

Luke's head spins in the direction the creature faces. But
there is no one there. The boy is bewildered, but it gradually
dawns on him that the little creature is Yoda, the Jedi
Master, and that he is speaking with Ben.

BEN'S VOICE: He will learn patience.

YODA: Hmmm. Much anger in him, like his father.

BEN'S VOICE: Was I any different when you taught me?

YODA: Hah. He is not ready.

LUKE: Yoda! I am ready. I...Ben! I can be a Jedi. Ben, tell him I'm
ready.

Trying to see Ben, Luke starts to get up but hits his head
on the low ceiling.

YODA: Ready, are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years
have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be
trained! A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious
mind. (to the invisible Ben, indicating Luke) This one a long time
have I watched. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was
doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these
things. (turning to Luke) You are reckless!

http://www.blueharvest.net/scoops/esb-script.shtml

 

I never read the script. In the movie, I thought he was saying the whole monologue to Luke. Good to get official confirmation that I was wrong. Confusion cleared up.

 

A couple of lines are missing from that one:

"All his life has he looked away, to the future, to the horizon."

 

I think Yoda grew much wiser throughout the years after the fall of the Republic