Is Anakin really more powerful than Palpatine?

Lucas said that Anakin had the ability to become more powerful than the Emperor. He could have defeated him some time after Mustafar if he wasn't injured.

Lucas said that the Emperor and Yoda are the toughest. The OS says the Emperor is the most powerful dark side user during ROTS. Yoda told Obi-Wan he is strong enough to fight Anakin, but not strong enough to fight the Emperor. The Emperor said that "Darth Vader will become more powerful than either of us". These statements indicate that Anakin wasn't as powerful as the Emperor during ROTS, but could eventually become more powerful.

 

sorry, double post

 

The OS Databank Entry on Yoda says: "Inside the spacious interior of the Galactic Senate chambers, Yoda challenged the Emperor. The two entered into a spectacular duel -- a contest between the most powerful practitioners of the Force's light and dark sides."

If the Emperor is the most powerful practitioner of the dark side, then he is more powerful than Anakin.

 

You still dont have a qoute that specificly says sidious is more powerful than Anakin.

The Emperors abilitys are beyond anything we have expierenced.But Nic said that before Ep.So at that point they were at beyond anything we expierenced.But not beyond anything we are going to expierence.

How is this qoute, "An unstoppable warrior"-Matthew stover.Reffering to Anakin

The simple fact is sidious is not the more powerful than the jedi.As was proven in the movie,Mace beat him.So if it is GL's statement vs Rick's....guess which one wins.

Sidious has yet to display the king of force power that Anakin did when he brought down the building.

Oh and if we are doing actor vs actor qoutes, "Anakin is the best"-Hayden Christensen.

The emperor could protect the galaxy himself, but according to Mcdiarmid the emperor is not the greatest warrior in the galaxy.

 

According to McDiarmid, the Emperor is more powerful than Anakin, answering the question of this thread. During his Celebration III interview, McDiarmid said that his character is "frankly much more powerful" than Anakin. The OS Databank Entry on Yoda that I previously posted confirmed that the Emperor is the most powerful practicioner of the dark side.

 

He never said "some time after mustaphar" .he said if he hadn't lost against obi, then He could've defeated the emperor.

 

Yet there are qoutes from other actors like HC that contradict Mc diarmeid's statement. So HC's staement holds just as much water as MD's.Plus the qoutes from Nic gillard,matthew stover and GL.

 

Lucas' quote didn't specify a timeline. I think he meant after Mustafar. All information that I've provided, such as the OS (which is approved by Lucas) says that the Emperor is more powerful. If the OS says the Emperor is the most powerful practicioner of the dark side, then it must be true.

In ESB, the Emperor told Vader that "he (Luke) could destroy us". Luke certainly didn't have the skills to destroy Vader and the Emperor in ESB; the Emperor was referring to the future. In the same way, Anakin did not have the skills to destroy the Emperor during ROTS. Lucas' quote refers to what Anakin could accomplish in the future.

Hayden never said he was more powerful than the Emperor. Being the best means the most talented. He isn't as powerful as the Emperor yet. Gillard never said Anakin was better than the Emperor. Being the greatest Jedi does not make him better than the Emperor, who isn't a Jedi. On the contrary Gillard said that the Emperor is the most powerful because his abilities are "beyond anything we've seen" and that you're a sucker if you think you're going to better him. Stover talks about Anakin being arguably the most powerful Jedi, but never says that he's more powerful than the Emperor, the ultimate Sith lord.

 

You dont know exactly what lucas meant, because you didn't ask him thew question.Here is somthing lucas approved,"An unstopoable warrior" which is from matthew stover's novel that lucas himself edited.

 

Obi-wan was able to defeat Anakin. Being an unstoppable warrior doesn't mean that the Emperor couldn't defeat Anakin, since Obi-Wan did just that. I know what Lucas meant in his quote based on what the OS, Gillard, McCallum, McDiarmid, Yoda, and the Emperor say, and based on what we've seen Anakin do in the film. He can't even use the ultimate power of lightning like the Emperor does.

 

As I said anything we have seen which is before Ep.3. Stover said flat out on page # 25 of the ROTS novelization that Anakin was the best.

 

No but then again the Emperor cant tell the future does'nt have a metal hand holding him back.Also I dont recall Sidious stoping lasers with his hands or force choking people for that matter.And the emperor met defeat at the hands of a jedi.So There go's half of you qoutes if we are ging to play it that way.

 

I will refrain from commenting on the differences between Yoda's and Windu's duels (because that has been debated enough already) and go to the main point. And yes, I think I can understand what you mean. In the OT, it is implied that you cannot truly beat the darkness with force of arms, and yes, I can see how Mace overpowering Palpatine in combat and being on the verge of finishing off the last Sith could compromise that message. Well, I think that in some sense they were still right about that message in the OT (although perhaps not in a strictly literal sense), with the characters that were available at the time. There are other messages in the OT whose literal meanings are compromised in the Prequels. Yoda says that "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." or something very like it, yet when the crude matter that is a Jedi's physical form/body takes enough violence, they will still very much die. So it seems even a Jedi is their crude matter for most purposes after all.
Palpatine, for all his fancy Force powers, is still flesh and blood. To think that he would be totally indestructible due to violence is to stretch believability even in a fairy-tale. He is not, and never was, a God.
However, it is still true that the dark side of the Force itself cannot be defeated with violence. Practitioners of the dark side, on the other hand, are made of flesh and blood and can thus, like all beings of flesh and blood, be destroyed (although some can have their spirits hang on a bit longer through the Force). When Luke entered that cave, he was going into a place strong with the dark side of the Force only, but with no dark side practitioner available. And when Vader finally threw the Emperor down the shaft, it was an act of violence. Although Luke, by throwing away his lightsaber, paved the way for Vader's decision to finally turn on the Emperor, it was the Vader's act of throwing the Emperor down to his death that killed the Emperor (Luke throwing away his saber alone could not have killed the Emperor).

 

Anakin being the best means the most talented or the greatest of the Jedi. The OS flatout states that the Emperor, not Anakin, is the most powerful practicioner of the dark side.

I think lightning is more impressive than choking Imperial officers or deflecting blaster shots with your hands. Vader was only able to overpower non-force users. He couldn't do that to Luke in ROTJ. Even in ESB, he had to fight Luke with a lightsaber to win. The Emperor was able to dominate Luke much more easily than Vader. He didn't even need a lightsaber, lightning was good enough. This is why the Emperor's force lightning makes him much more powerful than Anakin.

 

" Anakin being the best means the most talented or the greatest of the Jedi. The OS flatout states that the Emperor, not Anakin, is the most powerful practicioner of the dark side. "



Might that be because Palpatine has more control over the dark side?

Anakin began using it....like, yesterday.


IMO Anakin is stronger with the force, Palpatine has more control over it. Therefore, outside of overwhelming Palpatine, Anakin probably wasn't going to beat him without more experience. That being said, it's possible he pulls a Dooku and simply overwhelms him.

 

IMO Anakin is stronger with the force, Palpatine has more control over it. Therefore, outside of overwhelming Palpatine, Anakin probably wasn't going to beat him without more experience.

I think this is an accurate assessment. The Force is stronger with Anakin because he has the highest midichlorian count. However, the Emperor has much better control of the Force at the time, which makes him more powerful than Anakin. Because of Anakin's innate gifts, he has the potential to have better control of the Force than the Emperor, but hasn't gotten there yet.

 

I've no problems with that one due to the Jedi ability to achieve immortality, i.e. retaining their consciousness while becoming one with the Force. That's exactly what my understanding of a "luminous being" is.

The dark side is a part of human nature and thus can't be destroyed anyway. What must be destroyed is the Sith, because they prey on the dark side and actually fuel it. That's why Lucas said, bringing balance implies destroying the Sith. And Sidious, at this point of the Saga, didn't even have an apprentice, so he literally was "the Sith".

And I didn't mean that he should be invincible or godlike. Of course he could be destroyed by violence. I wouldn't have a problem if he could be killed in the war or by a bomb in the office or something like that. But he shouldn't be beaten by a Jedi in a one-to-one fight.

Vader's act of throwing him down the shaft was an act of violence, agreed. But it was still something completely different since Vader was well aware that this act would cost him his life.

I really see only two possibilities of accepting that commentary that could be consistent with the OT message mentioned. First, Sids allowed Mace to overpower him or at least would've been able to defeat Mace in the end with lightning or somehow else, and second, Mace was using the dark side when he overpowered Sidious. And I really don't like that latter option.

If they didn't want to make him godlike they should've refrained from suggesting he could have created Anakin or be able to keep people from dying, and above all they should have refrained from ascribing healing powers to him in the Novel and the Junior Novel and from hinting in the commentary that he actually created Anakin and had the power to keep people from dying. That's what is making me feel uneasy, it makes him a lot more "godlike" than if he faked the defeat against Mace. If anything, healing powers should be the domain of the Jedi, not the Sith. Or if they just hadn't portrayed the Jedi as being completely ignorant of what's going on during all of the prequels on the nebulous grounds that "the dark side clouded their vision" - without explaining why on earth suddenly the dark side was so powerful to be able to strike hundreds of Jedi with collective blindness unless Sidious had something to do with this. I would feel much better if they hadn't portrayed the Jedi as blind victims to his manipulating and concealing talents. Or if they had clearly stated he lied on the life creation/death preventing thing and instead had just resolved that fighting problem by simply st

 

The difference in power and experience between Anakin in ROTS vs Anakin 5 years later minus his injuries probably would've been similar to Luke in ESB vs Luke in ROTJ.

 

They made him too powerful in the wrong areas, for my tastes, and then, to prevent him from being godlike, they made him vulnerable in the one area he shouldn't be.

I agree that the Emperor should not be portrayed as vulnerable in combat. His appeal came from the fact that he used force lightning, a power that no one had seen before and was so effective he didn't even need a lightsaber to own Luke. To show force lightning as not being 100% effective ruins the character and the saga IMO. Its more exciting for the saga to have an ultimate villain who seems insanely powerful, as he did in ROTJ.

 

If the Emperor's abilities are beyond anything we've experienced, then they are beyond Anakin's. If you're a sucker if you think you're going to better him, then that means Anakin cannot better him. If he's even more powerful than the Jedi, then he's more powerful than Anakin.

If he's more powerful than the Jedi, then how did Mace AND Yoda both disarm him?

The ROTS novel was line-edited by George Lucas, and many times in there it labels Anakin as the most powerful Jedi. Nick Gillard also has mentioned this many times. So if Mace is under Anakin in terms of power and he was able to beat him, then it's certainly possible that Anakin could as well.

 

Guys, I am really enjoying this debate and wanted to throw in my two cents worth....

George Lucas had an interesting interview in Vanity Fair back in May where he talks about Anakins strength in the force-
"Another scene sure to be a highlight is what promises to be the ultimate lightsaber duel, between the master Obi-Wan Kenobi (played with a Zen-action-hero cool by Ewan McGregor in all three prequel films) and Anakin, his apprentice. Even casual Star Wars fans know that the Darth Vader costume is not just a black shell meant to look scary?it's a life-support system made necessary by the near-fatal injuries Anakin has suffered. Although the duel doesn't end in a knockout victory for Obi-Wan (who is slain by Vader in A New Hope), it has positive repercussions in the galaxy first dreamed up by Lucas three decades ago.

"Anakin, as Skywalker, as a human being, was going to be extremely powerful," he says. "But he ended up losing his arms and a leg and became partly a robot. So a lot of his ability to use the Force, a lot of his powers, are curbed at this point, because, as a living form, there's not that much of him left. So his ability to be twice as good as the Emperor disappeared, and now he's maybe 20 percent less than the Emperor. So that isn't what the Emperor had in mind. He wanted this really super guy, but that got derailed by Obi-Wan. So he finds that, with Luke, he can get a more primo version if he can turn Luke to the Dark Side. You'll see, as this goes on, Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with. Anakin says yes and Luke says no."

Darth Vader is popularly seen as the ultimate movie villain, a dude so bad he can choke those who annoy him with a little Dark Side application of the Force. But throughout the original trilogy he remains the Emperor's assistant. He's just an evil number two, which will become clearer to millions of moviegoers this summer.

"You learn that Darth Vader isn't this monster," Lucas says. "He's a pathetic individual who made a pact with the Devil and lost. And he's trapped. He's a sad, pathetic character, not an evil big monster. I mean, he's a monster in that he's turned to the Dark Side and he's serving a bad master and he's into power and he's lost a lot of his humanity. In that way, he's a monster, but beneath that, as Luke says in Return of the Jedi, early on, 'I know there's still good in you. There's good in you, I can sense it.' Only through the love of his children and the compassion of his children, who believe in him, even though he's a monster, does he redeem himself."

Also, concerning the Mace Windu vs. Sidious fight, in the DVD commentary in the movie Lucas makes it clear that Sidious is feigning losing to Mace Windu in order to make Anakin take an action so horrible, he goes to the Dark Side. Anakin wanted Sidious kept alive to go to a trial so he could learn the secret of avoiding death, but when Sidious flung Mace out the window he realized he could not be a Jedi anymore.

 

All this time we agredd on the same thing.Okay I cmpletly agree the emperor has more control.The only thing I disagree on is the fact that that makes him more powerful.Like his force pushing contest with Obi Wan Anakin got up and force jump across the room while Obi kind of hobbled to his feet.

 

Yeah but luke didn't have a lightsaber.Vader didn't use a force choke against luke because he didn't want to kill him.Matthew Stover's ROTS Novelization states that Anakin is the best in all areas of combat.

 

Yet he was defeated by the level 8 Obi-Wan. So, he's certainly not unbeatable.

Does anyone else think that Sidious is good at manipulating Anakin? Do you think he could have used this to his advantage during a duel with Anakin?

 

Only three Jedi are known to have achieved that power. And even they cannot affect the physical universe of the living in the same direct way as Force spirits as they can when they are alive.
This is nit picking and I understand perfectly well what Yoda meant, but if we are to take some OT Yoda statements at face value, why only do so in some cases.

Of course.

I don't see the problem, given that the Jedi is skilled enough. I think the concept that Palpatine was invincible to a Jedi in one-on-one combat had limited applicability to the era of the Original Trilogy, where the Jedi who were strong enough to be able to threaten him with brute force had been killed, grown old, or joined him.

Well, in better circumstances, had he gotten the experience he had in the Original Trilogy without losing a lot of his potential like he did on Mustafar, Anakin would almost definitely have been able to kill the Emperor without losing his life. Anakin has been established as having the highest potential of all, after all, so it was only a matter of time before he became even stronger than the Emperor. That is, of course, until he was defeated on Mustafar.

Or third, as I mentioned above, the OT message had limited applicability, because the time of the OT wasn't the "Golden Age of the Jedi" like the time of the Prequels.