PT Did Lucas go too far in Revenge of the Sith?

What do you mean? That he could have killed Palpatine? That is highly debatable.

 

So...he does nothing to stop the destruction of an entire planet, despite his obvious rank, but that's not really being complicit? He's part of the Empire, part of the thinking behind the Death Star...he knows very well what it is for.

And....torturing young female prisoners? Ok? (I mean...any prisoners, really). And, when the Jawas and Beru and Owen are killed by the Storm-troopers. You don't think Vader approved those actions? You think the storm-troopers are daringly taking a risk that Vader won't find out how wicked they've been? Not that "leave no stone un-turned" means exactly what occurred? (just like "kill them all" means exactly what occurred)

You think Vader was some sort of ...vaguely fluffy kind of evil with some sense of justice? Why?

 

Because he was the villain that you hate to love. It's the same way that fans of Freddy Krueger don't mind that he killed little children, but allude to his molesting and raping them first, and suddenly....



It's no longer acceptable to like the bad guy if they're actually evil. It's okay to see Vader choke and torture people, but killing kids and all bets are off.

 

Obviously. I like my villains the way I like my serial killers.....Likeable. Oh....wait.

 

Reading all the replies to my posts almost looks like a "Sithstorm".

If you all really feel that he was a monstrous evil mass-murderer from the beginning, then let me hear what you did personally in your environment to discourage friends from buying and stores from selling Darth Vader toys and costumes?

That's what a friend of mine did following ROTS, writing to Hasbro and Lego about it.

Back to the thread question: Yes, the suggestion that Vader butchered unarmed and helpless children and walked in their blood was a cheap effect for added shock value and Lucas went too far.

 

The act of killing children is a believable step in Vader's character in my opinion. I mean he's a murderer and a bad guy, and I don't think children would be some unbreachable line that would make him throw up his hands hands and stop. Also, he is Darth Sidious' right hand man and a guy like that won't put his trust in someone who hasn't "proved" themselves by doing some heinous stuff. To me it's much more ridiculous to presume a person in his position hasn't done stuff like this before! Maybe it's the act being [sort of] shown is what upsets people.

 

darth-sinister wrote

Vader makes it clear to Luke that there are only two ways this can go; join them or die.

That's what he said, but did he really mean it? A poster just wondered about Vader's "hesitation" in ROJ and here is my interpretation, i.e. Vader was never really committed to kill Luke:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...ecide-to-save-his-son.50038642/#post-53242098

 

So....you don't think he went too far in AOTC....where he also killed children? (he even straight out uses that term there)

 

The argument is that the second-degree murders in AOTC by Anakin Skywalker are compatible with OT Vader, but the first-degree murders in ROTS are just too out of character.

 

Hang on. So...it's alright to slaughter children....as long as you haven't thought about it first? I'm afraid to say that my lines of demarcation are rather thicker painted than others' appear to be.

 

Your friend is your friend. Not everyone reacted the same way. It was the same way with the Transformers brand. The 1986 animated film had killed off Optimus Prime, among others and there was a backlash and a letter writing campaign to bring the character back. Years later, other versions of the character were killed off without so much as a peep from angry parents. Especially after "Revenge Of The Fallen". Parents and children are different, whether it be generational or within the same generation gap.

If I had kids, I wouldn't do that. I would judge whether or not they're ready for that, just as I would for letting them watch "Friday The 13th". I wouldn't get upset at them for promoting Vader, anymore than I would Jabba with his implied raping of Oola and Leia. What your friend did was their business and their business alone. As to Darth Vader, no, I don't think he was born evil. He just became evil and he was portrayed as a serious villain when Lucas first introduced him. Many of us understood that the first time we saw ANH. He wasn't a noble villain who killed when it benefited him, or was necessary. He killed because he had anger issues and a low tolerance for BS.

Yes, he did. He didn't want to kill Luke in TESB, because he needs him for his purposes. Lucas even says as much.

"At this point, Vader’s plan really, now that he knows he’s his son, is to convince him to come with him. Join the dark side and together they’re going to overthrow the Emperor, which is the thematic devices used through the whole movies in terms of the Sith, which is Sith Lords are usually no more than two because if there are three, then two of them will gang up on one to try to become the dominate Sith. Anakin would have been able to do it if he hadn’t been debilitated and now he’s half machine and half man, so he’s lost a lot of the power of the Force, and he’s lost a lot of his ability to be more powerful then the Emperor. But Luke hasn’t. Luke is Vader’s hope. His motives at this point are purely evil. He simply wants to continue on what he was doing before which is get rid of the Emperor and make himself Emperor. He only sees his son as a mechanism for the ambition. His mad lust of power."

--George Lucas, TESB DVD Commentary.

It is only when Luke has a brief moment where he feels good, that the hope that he might be turned back comes in. But Vader is still struggling when they fight.

LUKE: "Your thoughts betray you, father. I feel the good in you...the conflict."

VADER: "There is no conflict."

LUKE: "You couldn't bring yourself to kill me before, and I don't believe you'll destroy me now."

By this point, Vader is still struggling. He doesn't want to kill his son, but he also knows that if he won't turn, he'll have to do it. He doesn't think he can do what Luke wants him to do and turn away from the dark side. He doesn't think he is worthy of redemption and forgiveness. That's why he is trying to turn him, so that he can avoid making that choice. It is only at the end when he has to make a choice, that he finally does so.

 

vader is a murderer. always has been. one of the first things he does in a sw movie is strangle a guy to death and break his damn neck.

 

Still second-degree because it wasn't premeditated (and an enemy rather than an "innocent").

I don't see the distinction as big enough though, to say premeditated murder of innocents is so out of character compared to OT Vader, that the character is "broken".

 

still murder.

 

I bought the padawan slayings completely.

"Now, Lord Vader. Go to the Jedi Temple. Kill all the Jedi over 18."

Besides, you saw that the one that Bail witnessed being killed (was that GL's son?) was pretty handy with a lightsabre. They had to die. Darth Vader is the epitomy of evil, for a long time.

Don't forget about the creche on the Death Star, or all the innocent radar technicians. Luke killed about 300,000 people? 299,000 probably weren't evil - they were doing their job fighting against terrorists threatening to take down their Empire, from their point of view.

 

Hahaha, really? Your friend wrote to toy companies to boycott Vader toys? Are you ****ing kidding me? Was he the guy that got positively wrecked in the response?

 

I think reading about and trying to understand psychopathy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy) is helpful in trying to understand Darth Vader and his motivations.

Psychopaths basically lack any sense of empathy. Their conscience doesn't trouble them; they feel no remorse for their actions. They also tend to be bold, confident personalities, often highly charismatic. They use cruelty to gain empowerment and, over time, may discover the thrill of dominating and even destroying other people. And while their pathology may have a social or enculturated component, the condition is essentially physiological: their brains lack the necessary mechanisms required to feel empathy. In short, they are "born evil".

Darth Vader isn't a psychopath. We see him weeping after his slaughter of the Separatist leaders. We never see him laughing or exulting in his homicides.

As it turns out, Vader felt empathy for at least one person -- his son -- and possibly his daughter, though this is unclear. Depending on whether you consider Anakin and Vader to be the same "person", he also felt empathy for his mother and his wife. In childhood his mother described him as "giving with no thought of himself."

So far as we can tell, Vader's actions in dominating and controlling others don't give him pleasure. He is certainly "bold and confident", but he performs evil acts out of a sense of duty to his station and obligation to the Emperor. His motives are also selfish in that -- at least initially -- he joined the Dark Side in order to save his wife from death. These are not the traits of a psychopath.

Clearly, Anakin was not "born evil". His turn to evil developed over time and through various channels, including his own selfish attachments and his personal sense of what was "right" for the galaxy. His murder of the Jedi children was a cold, calculated move, intended to quell the defiant Jedi order and so bring peace -- at least the Sith version of that term -- to the galaxy.

 

It was Anakin as a Jedi who was a murderer. How Vader removed the Jedi including the 'Younglings' (correct term), was perfectly legal.

 

right.

 

Palpatine can legalize murder all he likes - that doesn't change the nature of the act.

 

Seeker Of The Whills wrote

Hahaha, really? Your friend wrote to toy companies to boycott Vader toys? Are you ****ing kidding me? Was he the guy that got positively wrecked in the response?

No, it wasn't about boycotting toys, it was about motivating Hasbro and Lego as important licensees to look into the matter and ask Lucasfilm to have the childkiller scene removed from the film asap or at least from the subsequent video release, especially since it was a rather late addition to the screenplay. Alas, they obviously didn't care according to their replies.

A general question to all of you: You are certain that never once in your lives you ended up in a situation where somebody treated you so badly or caused you so much pain that the thought to kill your tormentor didn't enter your mind? In the case of AotC it's blatantly obvious that Anakin slaughtered the Tusken's in rage and as an immediate reaction to his mother's death. He didn't travel to their camp with intentions to kill them (he could have done that from the very start, had he really wanted that).

In contrast the killing of the Jedi children was something completely different and the majority of our lawgivers acknowledge this difference.

 

that was sarcasm btw.

 

Whether or not anyone has ever experienced homicidal ideation aside (and I would caution anyone from even answering that question on a public message board), I've held a very "eff the Tuskens" view. They not only tortured a woman for no reason, they murdered 26 of the 30 people trying to rescue her and I think of them as dangerous, vicious animals. Anakin shouldn't have given into his pain and done it because he was giving in to his anger and the dark side. That they died, even the children, has no effect on me. If I found a nest of scorpions, I'd exterminate the eggs too.

But here's the thing. Anakin cared. He cared that he slaughtered women and children, even if they were Tuskens, and humanized them enough to say "women and children" (rather than say "breeding females and whelps"). So Anakin knew that he did something terrible in a rage. So in that way, it made sense that when he became Vader and put Padme's life over every living being in the Jedi Temple, he allowed himself to double down and murder younglings. It doesn't take away from the story and shows how far down the rabbit hole he went.

Neither Anakin nor Vader is a badass. Both aspects of his personality got twisted by rage and led to things that shouldn't have been done.

 

Lucas himself states he may have "gone too far in a few places" talking about episode I. Judging by the rest of the trilogy, i'd say he would definitely reiterate that statement.

 

You are false. That was because it was in pre-editing and rough cuts. That had to do with technical stuff.