PT George Lucas, Post-ROTJ, states beautifully why the Prequels were necessary

That scene in ROTS always makes me uncomfortable, in a good, dramatic way. How did they get that little kid to flinch like that... ?

 

Child molesters aren't forgiven for their crimes. I don't believe it would happen or if it does, we don't hear about it too often. Once identified and confirmed as a predator, they're entered into a database to warn other families about them in case they ever move to their neighborhood. Charles Manson is not forgiven for his crimes either, as he's still in prison and has shown no signs of remorse. This is difference with Vader as his crimes were great, but he has displayed remorse for his actions and at the end, made an effort to be a good person as he was dying. Manson is the type of guy that would laugh the whole time he was being executed.

 

Anakin became evil out of fear, whereas the argument could be made that Manson was always despicable.

 

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter..." so was Manson always Manson? If he was incarnated into a different body does he/she not get another chance so to speak?

 

I think that might be the basic philosophy behind the death penalty, where crimes are so unforgivable that execution is necessary. I think this applies with Vader. He had no way to redeem himself in life, so the most appropriate thing to do was opt for death. Anakin's fear of death, ironically, was what caused him to turn to the dark side in the first place.

 

Perhaps...

 

When leaders commit crimes, the general course of action is to either take them out (such as by promoting a revolution in the country of interest) or to declare war, if the rest of the country is behind them. The USA didn't just decide, one day, to start dropping nukes on Japan because we thought they might be in league with the Nazis. No -- they attacked us at Pearl harbor, we declared war on them, we firebombed the crap out them with conventional weapons, and then we dropped the nukes on cities that had a military presence/value (rather than a cultural center like Kyoto).

And of course Alderaan is part of the Empire. Leia is a Senator not an ambassador. There's a huge difference. Ambassadors (such as those we send to the UN) are there for diplomatic relations, but the body that they are part of is not a governing body. Senators, though, are -- they are part of the government and form a group that will directly affect the lives of the people.

And the UN still wouldn't be able to justify nuking any one of its member countries into oblivion. Sending out a military intervention if a genocide is taking place is a possible course of action. But the UN doesn't have nuclear weapons on hand to drop whenever they feel like it and with no prior warning simply because they get mad at the ambassador of a particular country.

No, I'm saying that torture often doesn't leave any physical marks or alterations. And I say that Leia was tortured because we do see her tortured -- threatening to blow up her planet (and then going ahead and doing it) is a form of psychological torture. Or Han -- after he was tortured in ESB, he didn't have any marks on him and besides feeling terrible and exhausted, looked exactly the same as normal. Given what happened to Han, there's no way Leia wasn't tortured.

I'm saying that any "justifications" for either act are BS. You can make BS justifications for the killing of the Jedi children too -- that Anakin couldn't refuse Palpatine or he risked being killed, that the Jedi children (given that they could take out individual stormtroopers) were military threats to the Empire because they had been indoctrinated by the Jedi, that Anakin wouldn't be able to get Palpatine to give him the information necessary to end the war unless he killed them, that Anakin needed to win Palpatine's trust now so that he could kill him later, and so on and so forth.

It's not difficult to find "justifications" for these types of things. They're still bull.

And as for Vader stopping Tarking, you're also assuming that Anakin could have stopped Palpatine (which isn't 100% for sure given that he loses to Obi-Wan). But, in no way is that an excuse.

Regardless, though, Anakin never even tries to stop Tarkin and in fact helps the guy out by being there to intimidate Leia.

 

Force Ghost Anakin must stay at least a 1000 yards from the Force Ghost Younglings.

 

Not fear of his own death, but fear of someone else's death.

 

Manson is Manson. Whatever it is that really makes him tick, it was there a long time ago and any good that was in him, didn't exist for very long. If at all. This is the opposite of Anakin Skywalker who was born a good person and only became evil because he couldn't control his emotions, gave into dark desires and let the darkness consume him. But he was never pure evil like Palpatine.

He wasn't thinking about redemption and death when he did what he did. Anakin was thinking about saving the life of someone that he cared about, but only in a way that he should have in the first place. Dying was just the result of what happened.

 

Hmmmm....trying to keep away from too many 'real life' discussions but...I have to question this. That Anakin is the 'opposite' of Manson and that he was born good. Some pretty dangerous ideas implicit within this, not the least of which is the idea that some are born evil. In terms of Manson - there's none of us trapped in his head, with his memories and all of us should feel rightly blessed by that. He is clearly not well, and the cloying attention he has received over the years has hardly helped him toward any sort of recovery, given that he is an intelligent and manipulative man. Whatever has lead him to his odd and dangerous world views, from his formative youth, is likely an aspect of being in his mind that we should all be thankful we do not have to share.

The idea of a 'bad seed', of individuals 'born evil' is an idea that offends every rational cell in my being.

 

The USA hasn't declared war since World War 2, so obviously governments do just go to war and do harm to civilians without declaring war, based on the actions on the leaders of those people. And as I pointed out, the USA and Canada etc... are all members of the UN, but we aren't UN citizens. There might be no such thing as an Imperial citizen. And clearly there is a different between the EMpire and the UN (no being evil the other not).

We don't see Leia tortured. We see a droid with a small needle and a door close. You filled in any torture yourself. She could just as well as been questioned under the influence of drugs designed to make her tell the truth.

Sure there is very little justification for attacking Alderaan (though there are some), but you said the acts are equal in regards to Anakin, they aren't. One he is an active participant, one he is a passive one. I'm not assuming Anakin could have stopped Palpatine.

 

Because the movie was aimed at younger ages. It was a U-certificate, for example, in Britain- visceral on-screen torture would have precluded that. The novelization makes it clear that actual torture was about to take place. I think it might also be referred to as a "torture droid" in the script.

Vader goes on to say "Her resistance to the mind probe is considerable. It will be some time before anything useful can be extracted from her" in the movie.

 

There is a difference between allowing evil acts and performing evil acts, but there's also a significant difference between allowing evil acts out of fear and allowing them out of indifference. Vader didn't care about Alderaan. Its destruction didn't bother him in the slightest, nor did the torturing of Han on Bespin. By my reasoning, that level of indifference is just as evil as anything he did in ROTS.
And let's be honest. Who here truly thought that Vader had not committed unspeakably heinous crimes prior to ANH? Who pictured him as someone who'd spare the lives of children out of the goodness of his heart, that he'd never gotten his hands really dirty?
I, for one, did not. The picture that this trilogy paints of Vader is perfectly consistent with how I've always pictured him: Evil.





- Is Anakin all right?
- He is more machine now than man.
/LM

 

So blowing up Alderaan and killing BILLIONS of children gets a pass but killing a few kids in Episode III is heresy? Anyway, the whole reason he killed those kids was because the moment they entered the Jedi Academy, in his eyes, they stopped living. They would not be allowed to love, or have attachment, they would be living lives as slaves to the Republic. I guess he figured killing them would be better than letting them live a life like that. Not defending what he did, just saying it's not as crystal clear as the critics may claim.

 

Just highlighting this in hopes you'll re-read it and figure out how silly that sounds.

 

It was pretty much a given that Vader did stuff that made Obi-wan and Yoda believe that there was no hope for him. The only thing that shocked people was that he did kill kids and attacked his wife, things which weren't mentioned in the earlier backstory pieces. I think that absence is why some people cannot deal with it.

 

Having Anakin Skywalker murder children and strangle his wife to near death ultimately ruined Darth Vader for me. While Darth Vader was undeniably evil I think we all got the idea that he was also a sad and pathetic man who lost everything and deserved at least a little sympathy. Having him cross that line where he murdered children for no reason just ruined the whole illusion for me. These kids had no choice in joining the Jedi Order and were still young and fresh minds. While the Jedi didn't deserve to be slaughtered it makes sense for Anakin to project all of his emotional issues onto them as a whole. It doesn't make sense for him to do that with kids. As far as his wife is concerned I refuse to believe that Anakin is so far gone and foolish that he'd strangle his wife just because he thinks his old master is boning her. I mean...come on people. The whole idea of Anakin's fall is hinged on him being weak-willed and stupid. I refuse to believe that Anakin was either.

The Anakin from the Original Trilogy, anyway.

 

Anakin murdered children for no reason other than proving his devotion to the dark side. He was desperate to keep Padmé in his life and the only person who'd offered to help him happened to tell him that he needed to kill everyone in the Jedi Temple without hesitation or mercy in order to get what he wanted. The scene with the younglings is there to show us just what that means - and how far Anakin was willing to go to satisfy his greed.
Obviously, we are not meant to sympathize with this. We are meant to see the extent of Vader's evil and understand how he got there. I agree that Anakin was a fool. I would probably not have done what he did, because I don't fear loss as much as he does. He is scared to death of it, though, which is why I can understand his choices. Still, he made a foolish choice because he latched on to a faint glimmer of hope, thereby ruining countless lives in order to MAYBE save one.

When he choked Padmé, Anakin was too far gone, his mind too twisted, to think straight. The dark side had poisoned him and the slightest suspicion would set him off on a tantrum. At that point, the power of the dark side itself had become more important to him than Padmé and that's the real danger of the dark side. Once you give in to it, it will begin to overshadow everything else. Your very thoughts will be poisoned by it. Anakin choking Padmé illustrates that and, quite effectively, magnifies the tragedy.

Weak-willed and stupid? Anakin was none of those things. I'd say that he was too strong-willed and foolish. Not to mention afraid.





- See through you, we can.
- That's what I'm afraid of.
/LM

 

Yeah, I don't get this notion that we're meant to sympathize with Anakin during his fall. Where'd that come from? I always thought we were meant to see why Obi-Wan and Yoda thought Anakin was dead and all that was left was Darth Vader.

 

Yoda: Do not underestimate the powers of the emperor, or suffer your father fate you will... I think that line sums up perfectly Anakin's fall

 

That's not evil, though. It's over-kill. We understand that Anakin is evil because he turned against his fellow Jedi and slaughtered them, but killing younglings? That doesn't make any sense at all. It takes a certain kind of sociopathy to be willing to kill children. Something that Anakin simply doesn't possess.

 

That is evil to the extreme just like force choking his pregnant wife, since his turn everything is done is evil its just theres different levels to it.

 

Maybe that's the whole thing about the Dark Side - it "consumes" people who start down the Dark Path- leaving them "twisted and evil"

We already knew Anakin had no problem killing Tusken younglings- was it really that much of a jump for him to become willing to kill Jedi younglings?

 

Yes. There are very strong stereotypes against the Tuskens. Everyone thinks that they're always going to grow up to do evil and hurt their loved ones. As horrid as Anakin's actions were it's not that hard to make the logical leap from "These Tusken warriors killed my mother" to "These Tusken younglings are going to grow up to do similar evil things". That's a vile and racist thought to have but it's not hard to make that connection if you're a weak-willed and foolish individual.