"I Know There Are Things About The Force That They're Not Telling Me"

Dingdingding!

I think a lot of people really underestimate just how much influence Palpatine had on Anakin. He spent years subtly grooming Anakin into precisely what he wanted him to be. If he hadn't been there whispering in Anakin's ear and subtly inflating his ego and undermining his Jedi teachings at every turn, Anakin may have turned into a very different Jedi. Still not "perfect" but it seems clear that a lot of his arrogance has been carefully cultivated by the guy telling him "You're going to be the bestest Jedi ever!" every time they talk. Not to mention the mistrust cultivated by all the "The Council doesn't trust you/is afraid of you" talk. We only get a few moments of that in the films, but the insinuation is that Palpatine's been doing that very same thing for the better part of a decade.

Given that Palpatine was the most important person besides Padme and possibly Obi-Wan to Anakin, I don't think his contributions to the person Anakin became should be understated. He preyed upon Anakin's flaws and in so doing inflamed them to "critical mass." Given Anakin's desperate desire for acceptance, if he didn't have someone who's "teachings" were running contradictory to everything Obi-Wan and the Order were telling him, he might have accepted his place among the Jedi much more wholeheartedly.

 

qft.

 

Doubtful. There's ten years for Anakin to learn the dangers and choose to ignore them, because he is too headstrong and reckless for his own good.

Palpatine is only a part of Anakin's downfall. It still comes down to the fact that Anakin had the training and knowledge about the dark side, but he chooses to ignore them because he has become the very thing he was once opposed to. Palpatine did his best to undermine Obi-wan, but when it comes right down to why Anakin turns, it's all about Anakin. He fails to consider his lessons. He ignores the dangers of the dark side. He chooses the quick and easy path to a solution, rather than work it out through normal means. He lets his emotions guide him instead of thinking first.

 

Could be argued though, that the Jedi should have been more mindful since Anakin started so late. Those dangers you spoke of were not ingrained into him like other Padawans. Anakin's path was more of a crash course. His latent ability set him apart, not his smarts. How much formal training did slaves get on Tatooine? How far behind the learning curve of the other Padawans was Skywalker when he started?


More and more, I get the feeling that the Jedi high council allowed Anakin's training:
"Just in case the prophecy was true..."

 

Not to mention that he clearly had amazing potential in the Force, and they'd just been slapped in the face with the return of the Sith, one of whom was short either an apprentice or a master (and in either case was the "Master" then). Leaving Anakin to his own devices may well have been like handing him over to the Sith as a preteen.

Then again, I'm not sure that idea ever occurred to the Jedi. I bet if they -had- cut Anakin loose, Palpatine would have quickly "adopted" him. He'd have a perfect pretext for doing so, to boot, since he'd just played a key role in saving the planet he represented.....

 

See, it all comes down to us. We. The individual. We're the ones who have to make the choices. We're the ones who have to sort out our problems for ourselves. We cannot always rely on someone else to do it for us. One can teach only so much, before leaving it up to the student to apply these life lessons. Luke had what he needed to face the Sith. Now he had to apply it. Same with Obi-wan on Naboo. Same with Anakin throughout everything. He fails because he does not fulfill his end of the bargin, if you will.

 

But neither Obi-Wan nor Luke had a Sith Lord as a "best friend and father figure" for the better part of their lives, either. Anakin ended up with the deck stacked against him. If someone -you- loved like a father, who had never been anything but kind and supportive towards you, and was now telling you he could help you protect the person you love more than anything in the world was being threatened by someone that had already admitted to your face that he didn't trust you, and whom you felt no real connection or attachment towards...what choice would you make? If someone told you this person was the embodiment of evil, would you believe them on faith, or would you be more likely to doubt that he's really that bad?

It's easy for people to condemn Anakin when they've never been faced with that kind of decision. Was he selfish? Certainly. Naive and bordering on ignorant? Possibly. Did he make the wrong choice? Absolutely, but the fact remains that Palpatine, more so than anyone else, carefully maneuvered him to that point where it would've been nigh-impossible for Anakin to -not- choose to side with him.

 

And that is why he fails. At the end of the day, Anakin knew right from wrong. He chose to follow the wrong path because he failed to follow through on his Jedi teachings. He eschewed his Jedi training in favor of the quick and easy path. He let his greed get the best of him.

 

Palpatine's little pep talk worked all too well! It even broke through the "fourth wall" and convinced some members of the fan base. Like Matt Stover, for example.
The ROTS novel is full of references to Anakin being the most powerful Jedi ever, not in terms of potential, but in the present.
And they're not all Anakin's thoughts, which could be chalked up to hubris. Some of them are the opinions of characters like Mace.
Now I know why everyone that read the novel has less than rosy things to say about Anakin's performance in ROTS.
I should have known something was up when an interviewer referred to Anakin in this way and Stover didn't correct him. Also, since Stover claims Lucas line-edited his book, it seems as though these references went through with Lucas' tacit approval.
(Of course, we know that power can have many different connotations in SW... Vader admits Luke is significantly powerful due to the mere construction of a lightsaber.)

 

Well, he might've had more raw power than anyone else but simply didn't have the control to accomplish some of the feats folks like Yoda could pull off. Like a generator that's only got a few things drawing on its' power load, there's lots of energy there, but it's not all being utilized.

Or conversely, in the minds of the Jedi, perhaps potential is power. Or because Anakin learns more quickly and increases in power more quickly than anyone in their recorded memory, they accept that as a measure of his "power."

In any case, I've always felt there was room for interpretation in those "power" statements. But I never took them to mean that Anakin was already the "best Jedi ever." Just that he was demonstrably more "gifted" than any other Jedi of the time. A prodigy, if you will, but only of the technical "skills" side of the Force. Obviously the whole philosophical side of things wasn't his strong point.

 

The pursuit of power is not what being a Jedi is all about. That's why they don't care about being all powerful. Measuring Midichlorians serves the purpose of letting the Jedi know if the canidate is capable of being trained in the ways of the Force. It's not about saying, "You're powerful so you will be the best of all of us." The Sith are in the pursuit of power and care about having the best of the best and forget all the rest. A bionic Anakin would not be an issue for the Jedi. They would just encourage him to work at being capable of being an active Jedi again. The Sith, on the other hand, will look for a replacement.