CT Did Obi-Wan and Yoda not completely accept Anakin back to the light side?

This is how I've always seen it: they were relieved the nightmare was finally over, impressed that Luke proved them both wrong, and delighted to have their old friend back on their team. Being resentful and nursing grudges seems like a Sith thing, not a Jedi thing.

 

They accepted him enough to give him a face lift. Not even Obi-Wan got that honor.

 

They didn't do that. According to Lucas, because he went to the dark side and then came back, the idea now is that his inner self stopped aging. Obi-wan and Yoda remained good up until they shed their corporeal form and thus they remain as they were.

 

I know why GL put Hayden in that shot- it's for the audiences' benefit and it is a total misfire against the story narrative. His explanation is stupid (and not even the real reason). So if I make a poor decision, my inner-self freezes to the moment I was last a 'good guy'? Even the great William Shatner knew this was bogus "You can't take pain and guilt away with the wave of a magic wand- they're the things we carry with us that makes us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves." (ST:V, yeah!)

This doesn't even add up to Lucas' logic. Just how far down the 'dark path' do you have to go before your inner-self seizes up? I assume this is Anakin right before Sidious belches out "you shall be known as Darth **gurgle** Vader ***gurrrrgle**." But Anakin had already killed Dooku and the Tuskens by this point. He has said Anakin's fall was about choices- then he totally smashes that with the Hayden shot. It's counter to one another.

If we followed GL's logic to Anakin's last moments of embracing the light, we'd see....




But back to topic- Obi-Wan & Yoda seem to accept Anakin back into the fold. Despite everything he's done, there doesn't seem to be any hard feelings...incredulously. I suppose like DARTHLINK said- Jedi don't hold grudges.

 

Eh, I think Lucas's explanation sort of makes sense. It's not that Anakin's soul actually was frozen at age twenty-three - I mean, he's a ghost, he probably doesn't have a single "true" form in the way a living person has a corporeal body. But if that (that being the younger version) is how Anakin thinks of himself when he thinks of what he looks like as a good person, then that's how he appears. He never saw himself as an uninjured, unburned man in his forties, so why would he appear that way? The last time he thought of himself as Anakin Skywalker and not Darth Vader, he looked like Hayden Christensen.

Just because they're smiling at his return doesn't mean there are no hard feelings at all. I always interpreted that as more of them being incredibly relieved and grateful he made the choice he did at the end of RotJ. Of course they're going to be glad that the old, light Anakin seems to have returned - but that doesn't mean they've just forgotten everything else he did, just that it's not the most important thing in that moment. I imagine that if we saw them interacting in the afterlife in the long term, they'd be having some serious talks...

 

But then again, if I were a ghost and was able to choose what age I looked like- I'd pick my younger, better looking years too.

QUI-GON: ...what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let go of the Dark Side now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

 

I never thought that Obi Wan and Yoda were giving Anakin nasty looks or whatever. I doubt that's what Lucas intended.

But I couldn't blame them for still being a little peeved, considering he did massacre all their friends.

 

What do you believe the real reason is?

I agree with you that GL's explanation is an imperfect one that raises questions such as the ones you mentioned about the tuskens and Dooku, but the same can be said for the original Sebastian Shaw ghost because Anakin never looked like that. When he died a 41 year old man, whether that was as Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker, he was a charred up, horrifically scarred man who was half machine. If his ghost was supposed to truly be his true form when he died, then he should look like that... scarred and limbless. At least with younger Anakin as a ghost, it's more feasible to me since he did appear that way at one point. I'm not saying it was the right change for GL to make, or that his explanation makes perfect sense, but to me, it makes more sense than the way it was before.

 

Not necessarily. It all depends how one interprets the words 'true form'. The Hayden Ghost makes zero sense regarding the story I agree particularly as Ben and Yoda aren't deaged. The Shaw Ghost does fit just fine for me. It doesn't matter he never looked like that in the films prior. That's rather the whole point. He was a man restored but based upon his charred form not his rash, child-self, rather the tried and tested man.

 

You could see Anakin trying to come back before he threw Palpatine down the shaft. Endor and earlier in the battle. Maybe after Cloud City even. That to me means that the part that was Anakin was always there. Deep down of course. If Anakin Skywalker was dead for good after ROTS I don't get how he could come back. There has to be a little part of him left for him to come back in ROTJ. And if there is even just a little part of him left that part would age and we would get older Anakin in ROTJ. As old as Shaw looked? No idea. Give us a scene with Hayden in his 40's when he gets there.
Older Anakin makes sense since he succeeded where younger Anakin failed. Kind of cool seeing an older Anakin looking on proudly at Luke like a son than Anakin being the same age as Luke.

 

The pain and guilt isn't lost. It's just let go of. Even in the original version, he had let go of all that weighted him down.

Anakin hadn't given in to the dark side until his pledge, which was the point. It would still apply in the original version, which is why he doesn't come back looking all ****** up.

 

I always assumed that the form a force-ghost took depended on how the person saw themselves. So Obi-Wan and Yoda appeared looking just as they had before they died, while Anakin - who associated his older, scarred visage with being Darth Vader (even though the good parts of himself were still there) and his younger-self with being good/light-side (even though, yeah, he did some pretty terrible/dark-ish stuff even before he turned) and had never seen himself older and unscarred - appeared looking like he had before he turned. I mean, I'm pretty sure Vader spent a good twenty years trying to disassociate himself from Anakin Skywalker before Luke came along, so that's just not...how he likes to think of himself now that he's redeemed.

 

I believe they did, they weren't standing away from him, they gave him room to appear, if anything, Obi-Wan seemed happy to see his old friend as he remembered him.

 

That's interesting that you say after Cloud City, but, now that you mention it, I do recall that one moment after Ouke escaped his clutches, he simply did a single back take and walked off, silent, didn't bother choking an officer, didn't even give chase, he just walked off. I think that may have been his first Anakin moment.

 

Luke threw himself off the thing he was ganging onto to get away from Vader. His own son would rather kill himself than join him. I'm sure that would be taxing on Vader. That would be the beginning. You could see Vader just drop his hand and that to me is telling. And then when Luke escaped on the Falcon, Vader was still despondent. It began there.

 

Forget the Machete Order, the best way to watch the films is this: IV, V up until Vader tells Luke to search his feelings, I, II, III, V when Luke screams NOOOOOOO, VI.

Everything is much more powerful when Luke realizes that his father was briefly a nice kid before becoming the worst person ever.