PT Did the scene of Anakin killing younglings affect your perception of him?

And the audience is capable of deciding that he is still good, just as they think he was never a good person.

From your point of view. There is no "membership card". People can still make efforts to become a good person and succeed until they fail, just as they do with addictions.

We don't know what Obi-wan would do if it was someone that he cared for that tripped his trigger. After all, he nearly lost control while fighting Maul as Qui-gon died and again when Satine was killed. It's quite possible that Obi-wan could have done what Anakin did if one or the other had been in the same situation that Anakin and Shmi were in. Even Luke was tempted to do something that a Sith Lord would do. That is how powerful the dark side is.

 

Sinister, even if Obi-Wan found Anakin brutally mutilated and disfigured beyond recognition, barely alive after having been tortured by the Separatists... Obi-Wan is a Jedi. He’s not gonna go after the wives and children of the ones responsible. And he certainly isn’t going to walk into a room filled with terrified children whose only sin was being part of the Separatists... and ignite his lightsaber with the intent of killing them.

The thing that makes Obi-Wan different from Anakin or Luke is that he has better control of his emotions. Yes, he lashes out, but not to as psychotic degree.

 

Glad we agree that it's not Lucas who decides for us.

Maybe, but it's a looong road back from mass murder & the killing of children. That's not just my pov, that's almost everyone's pov. You kill children you're a terrible awful person & you'll be regarded as such for a long time to come.

No provocation would lead a person like Obi-Wan or Luke to murder a bunch of kids including a baby. That would be completely re-writing their characters. Lucas considers Obi-Wan the greatest of all the Jedi. You think he'd entertain Obi-Wan doing that for a second? Even after finding a temple full of butchered Jedi & children he didn't want to confront the person who did it.

There's a chasm of difference between a momentary temptation & following through on that act. As Yoda said, temptation is something all Jedi must face. It's overcoming it that counts. Luke did that in RotJ & TLJ, even though he has his father's bad blood that he must always wrestle with.

 

Obi-wan is a Jedi, but so was Anakin. The thing that separates Obi-wan from Anakin is that the former learned to master his emotions and thus prevent the dark side from taking hold. But it is a very finite control that Obi-wan has, because a Jedi must constantly battle their own emotions in order to be a Jedi. It doesn't just end with passing the trials as Dooku, Pong Krell and Barris Offee proved. Hell, just look at Mace becoming angry and willing to forego the Code. He may not have lost it for Anakin, but he would have for Satine.

I didn't say that either. I said that Lucas had written Anakin as someone who was still good even after killing the Tuskens. Whether the audience sees that or not, that was how Lucas made the films.

What the audience decides isn't the same as what the character actually is.

It's not just a matter of provocation. A Jedi who chooses the dark side does so due to a desire for power and control, and who lets fear, anger and hate take hold. Anakin kills the Tuskens because he felt powerless to stop his mother's death and control her fate. Obi-wan nearly kills Maul because he felt powerless to save Qui-gon and Satine. Luke almost kills Vader because he felt powerless to save Leia and his friends. He contemplates killing Ben because he feels powerless to stop his fall and is afraid that he will follow in his grandfather's footsteps. Being a Jedi is about facing the darkness and overcoming it. Obi-wan becomes a great Jedi because he choose to not let his emotions get to him. But the temptations were there for him, just as they were for everyone else. The Skywalker men weren't crazy or born evil. They were all tempted by the power that they wielded and their emotions. Same with the others.

Right. That's the point. Obi-wan was tempted to kill Maul in a fit of rage and was about to do so, when he's Force shoved away and put in a precarious spot. He only stops because he realizes what he did was wrong. Same with Luke and Vader. The reason Anakin didn't stop was that he had nothing to hold him back. He wasn't mentally unstable. He just let the power and the emotions control him. When he goes to the Temple, that's different because he has chosen to become evil and to do as a Sith Lord would. He was in control of himself when he went in there and made a more conscious and willing choice, than he did on Tatooine.

 

Pretty much. The Skywalkers and emotions do not go well together st all.

 

Palpatine forced Anakin into a pressure cooker with a countdown clock. Anakin was stewing over a decision he had to make. Turn to the dark side and save Padme, or remain a Jedi and potentially lose Padme? In that moment, Anakin couldn’t live with himself if Padme died and he didn’t take Palpatine up on his offer. But as we know, his actions created further misery, and indeed, Padme’s death.

By the time he helped kill Mace, he thought it was too late to go back. Anakin held resentment toward the Jedi, but without Mace’s death and Palpatine’s orders, I’m sure he wouldn’t have carried out Order 66. Those things tipped him over the edge. He committed.

 

We don't have proof of that. Obi-Wan's mother wasn't murdered. So why should he have killed, and who? Sure, maybe he just controlled his emotions, or maybe he is just emotionless through Jedi brainwashing to begin with?

Also one of the greatest liars.

 

It is only subjective to them due to their strong connection to the Force, which Lucas did address.

"As evil begins to take over, it pushes the Force out of balance. It's easier to succumb to evil than it is to be a hero and try to work things through on the good side. Evil is inherently more powerful—it doesn't have the burden of worrying about other people. What Luke sees in Darth Vader at the end of ROTJ is something that I thought was worth understanding: the idea that Darth actually was a very good person. Except he's slightly more powerful than other people and when you get into that situation, your ability to do evil is much easier to come by."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.

So we see that Anakin and Ben fell because they were strong in the Force and were manipulated into believing that they needed to be all powerful in order to achieve their goals. Luke just happened to work out better because he saw himself in his father and that allowed him to break free.

The Jedi have emotions, they just control them. Even parents teach their children to behave properly, especially if they're emotionally volatile to begin with.

 

Not really, since if you look closely during that part you can see some tears on his face, like he doesn’t want to kill these younglings, but they’ll grow to be corrupted by the Order (in his opinion) and to save Padme and his own children he must do it. May seem selfish, but the scene on Mustafar where he’s standing on the platform and again you see tears, really shows he’s not totally enjoying what he’s doing, but he’s too deep into the dark side now to stop.

 

Well Luke's choking Jabba's guards is pretty gratuitous as is his then blowing up Jabba's barge and all who were on it, the latter is an odd moment where the tone of the film, from the music and acting, seem too light and flippant for what should be considered darker and more serious.

 

Luke's actions in Jabba's palace and the sail barge are precursors to the confrontation with the Sith in Palpatine's throne room. Those earlier actions hint that Luke still has much to learn about the balance of light and dark.

 

We do. Vader's troops murdered Luke's parents. And Luke still refused to kill him. Not to mention when he threatened Leia.

 

DarthDownunder wrote "Obi-Wan OR Luke". I was referring mostly to Obi-Wan. He never lost anyone in his family that we know of. So his situation was totally different from Anakin's. He only lost Qui-Gon in a fair duel. But Anakin's mother was actually tortured before her death, and he felt betrayed by the Jedi's unwillingness to help. Who can tell for sure how someone else would haved reacted in such a situation? We just have no way of knowing.

 

To answer the question at hand -- yes it did alter my perception of him and solidified him as beyond redemption. Regardless of what drove him to it, it was an unnecessary act of violence and brutality that showed his complete turn to the dark side.

I felt padme's crying in the scene after was a reflection of what the audience should be feeling -- almost like she knew the hideously awful events unfolding in the temple. Anguish and helplessness.

There was no justification for what anakin did or forgiveness. How does our society view acts like that? Do we justify that acts like that are ok if driven by fear of loss? No

 

Obi-Wan touched the dark side briefly in his duel with Maul (novelization & Guide to the Force), even in the film you can see him fighting with anger rather than with peace. So, does that answer the question?

 

Again, he may have been angry for a short while until he killed Maul, then quickly was in control again. But as I said, Anakin losing his mother in such a brutal way was a "little" different. So Obi-Wan never was in Anakin's situation, neither was Luke. That was my whole point. Obi-Wan must have been in many lightsaber duels in his life, probably saw many fellow Jedi die. That's what happened in TPM. It was basically a "fair" fight, actually more than fair for the Jedi, two against one Sith. That there could be a loss battling a Sith was something they all must have foreseen, at least been prepared for.
Not the case with Anakin. Shmi wasn't a warrior and totally defenseless. Her death was absolutely random and unnecessary. Get my point? When you fight in a battle you expect casualties. You accept that. You don't necessarily accept a group of bandits without any cause kidnapping and torturing an innocent farmer to death for ONE MONTH. This sort of extreme cruelty is probably something Obi-Wan had never once witnessed, much less Luke. I'm not arguing that Anakin was right or wrong, just that his situation, motives and reasons were very different from Obi-Wan's AND Luke's.
I'm not talking about the younglings here. That was entirely different. But what happened to him in AOTC is something that could not be undone, so was his killing unarmed Dooku. Those were the things that led him to the dark side. Killing the younglings was only a logical step further towards it. Was it strictly "necessary" from a storytelling perspective? Maybe not, but it did make sense.

 

No one is ever in the exact same situation as anyone else. Even if Obi-Wan's parents were massarced by savage on some other planet, it would be different since maybe their a different species. All 3 characters have a loved one die and are angry enough to briefly touch the dark side; Obi-Wan and Luke are able to pull themselves back, Anakin is not.

Why would you make that assumption? Did you watch the film?
A. Obi-Wan is a padawan. He's seen less real combat that every other Jedi, if any at all.
B. The Sith have been thought extinct for 1000 years. Maul is the first the Jedi have encountered in that time.

There was nothing random about it. She was a farmer on Tatooine. Being a farmer on Tatooine and being killed by Sandpeople is a realistic risk. It has a much higher probability than being the first Jedi in 1000 years to be killed by a Sith. Anakin knew his mother was still a slave on Tatooine and he did nothing to help her. He had to of known harm coming to her was very likely., and should have prepared himself emotionally.

When you live in a barren wasteland ruled by heartless gangsters and roamed by murderous savages, you should also expect casualties.

Luke saw the charred corpses of his parents.

I disagree. Up until that point Anakin had at the very least been killing adult combatants. He could have drawn the line at killing helpless children, who trusted him.

 

Except for some of the Tusken on Tatooine: "And not just the men, but the women and children too..."

 

Yes that's true, but the Tuskens are so savage that it's easier not to feel empathy towards them like human children. At the very least their inaction was part of the tradition of kidnapping strangers and torturing them to death.

 

I believe that is why Lucas wrote it this way in particular. We've all day dreamed about Vader being this super strong killing machine turned loose against the Jedi, getting his arms and legs cut off and still taking them out one by one because he is such a bad dude!

What worked better, and you felt to be "watered down", was that his fall to the darkside wasn't the last 5 minutes of Rogue One. Sidious told him to attack the temple,take them by surprise and destroy them all: Only then would he be strong enough in the dark side of the force to save Padme. Merely defeating armed Jedi in an attack is hardly evil. Now, having the children come out of hiding to you because they trust you and then running them through with your saber is the way you want to go. Lucas chose not to have Anakin's deliberate descent into darkness a hack and slash dismemberment orgy but rather unspeakable, horrendous acts of violence against the weak, the cowardly and the innocent.

 

To me, Anakin is a good man until that moment in the Council Chambers. Up to that point it's possible for him to just stop and think for a moment and realize that what he's doing is wrong. To turn back and make amends. But after that lightsaber ignites, it's too late. Whenever I see that scene, I'm always hoping that he'll just stop. That he won't do that horrible thing. But after that point, Anakin is unquestionably evil. He deserves what happens to him on Mustafar.

Getting all his organic limbs sliced off and being left to burn to death is a fitting punishment for killing children.

 

To be honest, the minute he killed his first Jedi, he was far gone. From the time he sliced off Mace’s hand to when he was approaching the Temple, he had time to reconsider his actions, turn right back around with his troops and confront Sidious.

 

Agreed.
While killing Mace was partly spur of the moment and out of desperation, his pledge and conversation with Sidious following shows full resolve.
He is selling his soul, knowing full well he is committing to an evil path.

Having said that, I don't think he is fully the cold calculated Vader of the OT until Padme dies.

 

This.

The younglings murder only added for the audience an example of how Anakin had so thoroughly succumbed to darkness.

 

Well for one ROTS was my first introduction to Star Wars ( and what an intro wew ) so my imagine of good man father of Luke hadn't yet been shaped in my mind by ANH or ROTJ

Plus I saw the movie at the age of 9 so I didn't quite comprehend what I was seeing, and with the breadneck pace of the movie never had the time to fully contemplate what happened inside the temple

However, years in hindsight and with an adult mind I think it could have been executed much more tastefully



If Lucas' intention was to have Anakin not yet quite 100% fully evil, he shouldn't have let him kill dozens of tykes within the first 5 minutes of his fall

If I had my way I would have extended the Tempel Massacre a little, have Vader take on several expierenced Knights and Masters, with ease

only to either purposely 'ignore' the children at the higher levels yet being aware of the troopers killing them with his senses ( and perhaps some off screen screams, gruwesome as that may sound )

or

I would have take the 'honorable route' following Ned Stark's example of " he who passes the sentence must swing the blade " surprise killing them in one fell stroke while he distracts them with something

" look children it's alright, Master Yoda is coming, look outside the window .. Wahzaaam!'

I would have even been fine with Anakin thinking he's gonna do it, ragequits when the kids look him sadly in the eyes and orders his troopers to do the deed. Still being the man who made the call but still having enough humanity not to it personally. Remember this was Vader in his earliest stages, only moments removed from the man who thought 'killing is not the Jedi way"

And also forshadows Vader's fate where he could coldly witness Alderaan destroyed by someone else miles away, but couldn't get himself to kill his own child.

The way the movie depicts it the Clones were gunning down the battle hardened knights, while he snuck upstrairs to go on a kid killing spree