CT Midi-chlorians were first conceived by George Lucas as early as 1977?

I believe thematically that's the idea. Or even if it wasn't intentional, it works pretty damn well

 

Well, the proof is in the pudding. The films in which he didn’t use those ideas became some of the iconic, beloved films ever made. Arguably, the only film to have as much of a cultural impact as the original STAR WARS trilogy is THE WIZARD OF OZ. The prequel films, by contrast, were incredibly divisive, at best.

Here are Darabont’s exact words:

It’s almost as if Darabont is saying that he would’ve written the film if it hadn’t been for Lucas’s issues with the WGA. And to be fair to Lucas, I actually think he was absolutely in the right when it came to parting ways with the guilds all those years ago. The way they treated Irvin Kershner was thoroughly despicable.

But he had no idea what he was doing. My point is that it’s frankly pretty bad writing when one of your main characters saves the day and has no idea what he did or how he did it. Luke used the Force to blow up the Death Star, but that was satisfying because Luke knew what he was doing and chose to do it. It’s like that episode of THE SIMPSONS where Homer accidentally prevents the nuclear power plant from having a meltdown with eeny, meeny, miny, moe. What, Homer was trusting his instincts, too. Not to mention that that episode also had everyone praising Homer as some sort of great hero despite being a complete moron who succeeded via pure dumb luck. Of course, in THE SIMPSONS, that’s the joke, whereas Lucas plays it straight. If you have no idea what you’re doing, you can’t even be considered competent, let alone talented.

Hell, using your logic, there’s no reason the Force couldn’t have made the STAR WARS equivalent of Homer Simpson be the Chosen One. I understand that it would’ve require Lucas to actually put effort into these prequel films and use some creativity, but using the Force as a giant deus ex machina has the effect of making the climax of the movie pretty damned lame.

In other words, he became an insufferable **** offscreen in between movies.

The only reason Portman loves him in this movie is because somebody has to give birth to Luke and Leia. In terms of it actually being believable she’d fall for this creep, I again refer you to the scene where Travis takes Betsy to an adult movie theater. That’s how Portman should’ve reacted to this loser, and that’s how any real woman would’ve reacted. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time believing that a woman who looks like Natalie Portman would have any difficulty finding a guy who’s not a mass murderer. In fact, I’d argue that mass murder is much worse than taking your girlfriend to a pornographic film. So if anything, Portman had far more reason to dump Anakin than Betsy had to dump Travis. (NOTE: I’m not saying that Betsy was wrong, simply that Anakin’s transgressions were far worse.)

No, once you’ve committed mass murder, you’ve become evil.

And my point is that once you’ve committed mass murder, you’re no longer a good person. As far as I’m concerned, that’s where he becomes Darth Vader. Everything else, such as the Sith inauguration, putting on the suit, turning against the Jedi, etc., is just a formality.

Yes, we get a 1-minute scene which is basically just telling the audience, “Don’t worry. They became friends offscreen in between movies.” But for the rest of the movie, they do nothing but argue with each other when they’re together. In fact, they barely seem able to tolerate each other. When they’re not together, they just constantly complain about each other. Granted, Obi-Wan’s concerns are actually legit (that Anakin is an insufferable impulsive **** with a giant ego), but, while I might agree with what Obi-Wan says, I don’t necessarily buy the idea that they’re friends. I buy it a little more in REVENGE OF THE SITH, since in that movie, at least Ewan McGregor acts as if he has affection for Anakin, rather than just constantly being irritated by him.

I thought you were referring to the whole business where he figures out that she’s a Changeling, like Odo on STAR TREK. And I got loss of a “peaceful” vibe from him during that scene and more Russell Crowe in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. I guess this was Lucas’s pathetic attempt to make Anakin into some kind of a badass.

Does Travis really strike you as a ladies’ man? And the underlying question is why didn’t Anakin’s actions bother Portman? In fact, she explicitly tells him at one point that he’s making her uncomfortable and he responds by just creepily leering at her. His actions would’ve bothered any real woman.

Of course, the answer is that Portman isn’t playing a character in these movies. She’s a plot device who serves only two purposes:

1) give birth to Luke and Leia

2) motivate Anakin to team up with the Emperor

Remember how Leia was an actual character who had a personality? Remember how Leia had actual human emotions? How Leia actually had her own set of goals, her own desires and actually did things? It would’ve been nice to have a female lead in the prequel films who actually had a personality and did things, rather than just being a plot point. I guess after his divorce, Lucas just wanted his lead female character to be a total cipher who’s so dependent upon her husband that she loses the will to live after “losing” him, rather than have her be an independent human being.

Actually, now that I think about it, women really come off badly in Lucasfilm productions ever since his divorce. For example, we had Marion being totally awesome in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK before his divorce. Afterwards, we had Kate Capshaw spend an entire film being a useless burden to Indy who does nothing but scream, whine and get our heroes into trouble. In the third movie, the lead female was a greedy Nazi who betrayed Indy. And we also had Marty McFly’s mom trying to seduce a duck. And apparently, according to the prequels, women cause you to become evil. Yeah, this guy has no issues with women at all.

They pretty clearly are trying to dissuade Han from going out there. Of course, we already know that Han Solo don’t take orders from nobody.

I’m comparing to Scorsese because Anakin really reminded me of Travis Bickle. My point is that Scorsese knows how to make a film about insecure young men who are mentally unbalanced, emotionally disturbed, incredibly violent, and extremely dangerous. Lucas doesn’t. Scorsese knows how to make a film about repugnant characters compelling. In fact, when it comes to dealing with these types of characters, Scorsese is the high water mark. It takes a very talented filmmaker to keep an audience invested in a story that revolves around someone like Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta. Anakin shares much in common with both Bickle and LaMotta, yet his story is nowhere near as compelling. For a film trilogy that’s supposedly a character study, the first half of a grand epic called THE TRAGEDY OF DARTH VADER, it really doesn’t succeed at psychologically probing its lead character or giving the audience any reason to care about his story. As disturbing as TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL are, those films give us insight into their lead characters, and we come away with a deeper understanding of and empathy for them, even if they’re thoroughly repugnant, awful individuals. Yet despite having unlimited resources at his disposal, a level of creative control arguably unprecedented in film history, and THREE films to work with, Lucas somehow failed to make his main character a fraction of a percent as compelling as the Scorsese characters. Even Orson Welles still had to deal with budget restrictions on CITIZEN KANE, despite the legendary level of creative control he had on that film (and as Roger Ebert points out in his brilliant commentary, Welles actually used as many visual effects on CITIZEN KANE as Lucas used in any of the STAR WARS films).

I had my share of disagreements with my parents when I was Anakin’s age. The difference is that, when wooing my college girlfriend, I never went on a whiny rant about them. I never started shouting, “It’s all my dad’s fault! He’s jealous! He’s holding me back!” And speaking of my college girlfriend, I also didn’t commit any acts of mass murder after she was killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. I just sorta became depressed and lonely for the next couple of years. So, I actually know a thing or two about loss.

Exactly. Anakin is never given a personality beyond, “Whiny violent temperamental brat whose upset that he can’t stop people from dying.”

Well, here’s another thing I never understood. Why not gang up on the Emperor? First, Obi-Wan and Yoda go after the Emperor together. Then they go after Vader together. But maybe Yoda felt that that would be unsportsmanlike.

As for Vader planning to overthrow the Emperor, even the originals are pretty inconsistent on that one. In EMPIRE, that’s almost certainly Vader’s real goal (“Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me and together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son.”). Yet in JEDI, he’s singing a completely different tune (“I must obey my master.”). REVENGE OF THE SITH decided to go with the EMPIRE version of the character. Whatever. Really doesn’t affect my opinion of the prequels one way or the other.

 

But if a child has a midi count that makes it a potential Jedi, say 10 000.
That would mean that at least one if this child's parents ALSO has this 10 000 count.
So even if that child is taken to become a Jedi, if those parents have another child, that second child would also have a midi count of 10 000.

Also, the films don't say how the Jedi go about selecting potential candidates.
All we do know is that those are taken in at a very, very young age.
Given this and given the midi testing, it seems likely that this selection process is based partly on the midi count.
It seems likely that all children born in the republic have their blood tested after birth and a midi count is taken. If the number is high enough, the Jedi are alerted and come and ask if the they can take the child. At least I hope they ask and don't just take what they want.
So I would imagine that some parents say no and keeps their child.
So this high count can then be passed on to further children and grand children.

Thirdly, even for counts that are deemed too low for the Jedi, the average count WILL increase over time IF the highest count is always passed on. Low midi counts will slowly be bred out and the average count will keep increasing.
Say that a count of 9000 is just below the number required for being a Jedi.
And say that one million people have this count. 1000 years later and assuming two children for each of these people. Now you have about 1000 trillion people with this count.

Lastly, IF potential Jedi are selected due to mostly/only their midi count.
Then they are selected not really on who these potential Jedi are but rather what they are.
So they are chosen based on blood, not how wise, patient and overall good people they are.
Sure if the potential Jedi display really bad behavior then the Jedi might kick them out.
But this selection process seems mechanical, clinical and rather detached.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

The Force was still the Deus Ex Machina in ANH, because it is the only reason Luke is able to destroy the Death Star. Regardless of his intentionally accessing it, he can only destroy the Death Star because of a divine power that no one else can use but him. And actually, Anakin does know what he did because he as soon as he hits the power core, the chain reaction begins. Just because he didn't realize that his choosing to use photon torpedoes would have that effect, doesn't mean once he sees the whole thing start to blow up that he isn't aware of what he did.

Padme loves Anakin because she sees something in him beyond just killing the Tusken Raiders, whom she's been told were mindless monsters who kill and torture without reason. She saw someone who truly regretted his actions and believed that she could help him. She was already in love with him before then.

He has to choose to be evil, in order to be evil. Otherwise, Luke would be evil for killing everyone on the Death Star and all of Jabba's goons. Same with everyone else. That's the point in the Saga.

Han and Leia are constantly bickering in TESB, yet people didn't have trouble with the idea of them being in love. Anakin and Obi-wan bickering doesn't mean that they aren't friends, or care for one another. We knew going into this that they wouldn't always agree on things and that the tensions that lead to Anakin becoming Vader would have to start somewhere. It would be no different if Lucas had them together as Master and Padawan in TPM, because then the tension would be there as well. It's important to see them as friends, which we do and for more than one minute, as much as we see them having these arguments. The backstory of Vader is that he was not always seeing eye-to-eye with Obi-wan, just as it is with Obi-wan being good friends with Anakin.

The point was that we see the two aspects of Anakin. One who is a good man and tries to approach things as Obi-wan does, hence trying to talk in a calm and soothing voice. And then when Zam doesn't respond, we see the other part that is Vader come through.

He's had more experience in talking to women and being around them. He only screws up with Besty on their date because by that point, he's screwed up and makes poor choices.

Padme's talk of being uncomfortable is a call back to Leia and Han and how they were. Such as in the cockpit and she gets defensive about him holding onto her and later, when he takes her hands and starts rubbing them, but she tells him to stop that. Anakin looks at her because he's in love with her and she feels a bit of something for him, but doesn't want to go there. And in real life, there have been women who have gone with guys who were like that.

Uh, that's how it is in the "Howard The Duck" the comics, which predated the film by ten years. He's in a relationship with Beverly. You need to take issue with Steve Gerber and not Lucas, Katz and Hyuck. Also, a lot of those ideas in the Indy films weren't all Lucas. They were Spielberg, Kennedy and Marshall as much as they were with Lucas.

Uh, it's not the simple. It's having emotional attachments that cause one to want to have power to stop people from dying.

Dissuading is not the same as giving an order. Also, if Han knew that going to Cloud City was a trap, he wouldn't have taken Leia there.

Being "The Tragedy Of Darth Vader" never meant that it was going to be so far different from the OT, that it winds up being like "Taxi Driver". The tragedy was always meant to be simple, since Lucas's target audience has been young kids. The tragedy is that he had everything that he could want in the world, but it wasn't enough for him and that was due to greed.

Yes, but you weren't obsessed with being the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be.

Yes, but again, you don't have a superpower that drives you to do these things. Anakin only lashes out because of the Force being fueled by his emotions. And just because you haven't gone around killing people in retaliation for personal loss, doesn't mean that other people haven't.

I meant what facets are you looking for. Anyway, we also know that he disagrees with politics and finds the whole process to be a pointless exercise. We know that he is a person who cares about people more than principles and values loyalty above all else.

Uh, did you not see what happened when the Jedi Posse went up against him? Kit Fisto, Saesee Tinn and Agen Kolar were on par with Obi-wan, in terms of both skill and power. Obi-wan would be killed as quickly as they were. This goes back to what Lucas said about Palpatine being powerful.

"You have to be either Mace or Yoda to compete with the Emperor," Lucas says. "If Anakin hadn't got all beat up, he could've beat the Emperor."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 204.

That's why Yoda sent Obi-wan to kill Vader and he went after Sidious.

Lucas did address that to Kasdan, Marquand and Kazanjian when the story meetings were going on. Vader's goals aren't changed, when he says that. He's telling Luke that he will not turn away from the dark side, but he still has the goal of overthrowing Palpatine once he's converted Luke.

Which doesn't matter if the child is or isn't taken in as well. They have to be identified and trained.

The Jedi do ask. But beyond that, it doesn't matter if the count is passed on, it doesn't change. In the old EU, Luke's decedents aren't any more powerful than their father and grandfather. Even when Luke married another Jedi, his son was no more powerful than he was. Same with Kol and Cade.

When the Jedi train from a young age, like Obi-wan, they help them to become the Jedi like Obi-wan and Qui-gon. Everyone still comes out different. Hence we have Dooku who was the idealist, Qui-gon who was the maverick and Obi-wan who was the peacemaker. These personality traits arise from their experiences as Jedi out in the field. This is different from Anakin, Luke and Ezra who weren't trained in the traditional methods. Who had lives before becoming Jedi and their experiences are derived from that point on.

Anakin was a good child who was kind and selfless, but knew nothing of greed. Qui-gon takes him in initially because of that and because of his raw power. Over time, Anakin starts to become evil because of his attachment to his mother and his attachment to Padme. And he is twisted by Palpatine who is turning him into a fascist. Now he is a greedy individual who is motivated by his own selfish desires.

Luke, who was raised as poor dirt farmer and who longed for adventure and excitement was also selfless. Though a bit familiar with greed, he is not as greedy as his father. But like his father, Luke has anger and fear and he has attachments to those that he cares for. But because he was never motivated by thought of reward and never had someone fill his head with such tripe, Luke instead becomes an idealist who wants to help.

Ezra, who was raised by his parents for about eight years before they were murdered by the Empire, is good at first but is becoming seduced by the dark side. He isn't selfish and seeking greed, but he longs for family. But what is turning him is his desire to protect his loved ones from harm. Like Anakin, he wants power to effect change and to make those who have hurt him pay for their crimes. Like Anakin, he has a great deal of fear within him.

So the selection process is not a problem.

 

Evil because of attachment.... I wonder what message the storyteller was trying to convey about a system where that was possible?

 

The message Lucas was going for is that you can love people, but you need to be willing to let them go when the time comes.

 

The first film actually sets up and builds to that conclusion. There’s a reason we have that scene where Obi-Wan is training Luke on the Falcon. The ending where Luke destroys the Death Star is the payoff to all that.



Luke takes everything that he learned in this scene, then applies it. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere. Lucas even went so far as to have Obi-Wan’s voice tell him, “Use the Force, Luke. Let go, Luke. Luke, trust me,” just in case anyone didn’t get it. At no point in THE PHANTOM MENACE does Liam Neeson ever say, “Just shut your eyes and do random things.” The difference is that Luke MEANT to destroy the Death Star, and he consciously lets the Force guide him. Anakin just randomly starts pushing buttons. In other words, Luke makes a deliberate choice. Anakin just pulls a Homer. The idea of the Force enabling you to pull a Homer was never established at any point before the climax of THE PHANTOM MENACE, either in the movie itself or in the previous three movies. Even “stretch out with your feelings” implies a conscious decision has to be involved in the process. You have to reach out to the Force and ask it to guide you. In other words, it partially controls your actions but it also obeys your commands.

It’s not as if he’s exactly impressing her with his actions before that, though. During the scene where she’s packing, for example, he starts throwing a tantrum about Obi-Wan (women typically don’t find it attractive when grown men constantly throw 2-year-old temper tantrums). During the scene where she’s talking with the Queen, he won’t stop rudely interrupting her and the scene ends with him giving a sarcastic apology.

For me, the sticking point is that she tells him outright that he makes her feel uncomfortable. But for some inexplicable reason, the fact that he just threw yet another 2-year-old tantrum, went on a psychotic megalomaniacal rant about becoming all-powerful, and admitted to an act of mass murder makes her comfortable around him. Yeah, that adds up. If anything, this should make her more uncomfortable around him. Hell, I’d actually pretty damned stupid for not high-tailing it outta there immediately after that scene, because after that, any rational person would be thinking, “Holy ****! This guy is completely ****ing crazy! He’s an imminent danger to himself and everyone around him! I’m afraid that at some point, he’s gonna flip and attack me!” I mean, after that, is it really shocking that he eventually flips and strangles her? Anyone with half a brain should’ve seem that coming. In fact, I guarantee that if anyone in the real world said those exact same words to a therapist or a psychiatrist, they’d be committed in a heartbeat. This is a dangerous and unstable man.

The situations are completely different. When Luke destroyed the Death Star, he was going after a legitimate military target during a time of war. When Luke was on Jabba the Hutt’s barge, not only was he acting in self-defense (remember, Jabba planned the whole event as a public execution), but he also repeatedly warned Jabba not to go through with it, and that Jabba’s actions would have consequences. In fact, Luke makes multiple attempts to negotiate things peacefully with Jabba. He even warns Jabba not to underestimate his powers. Jabba rebuffs every single attempt Luke makes at settling this peacefully and through diplomatic means, and stupidly ignores Luke’s warnings not to underestimate him…even after Luke successfully kills the Rancor. Jabba literally puts Luke in a position where he has no other choice. The Sand People’s village was by no means a legitimate military target during a time of war, nor did Anakin ever attempt to settle things diplomatically. And exactly what was stopping Anakin from just sneaking out of that village the same way he came in? I mean, I guess he had to carry the body with him in order to give his mom a proper burial, but would that really be too difficult for a trained Jedi under cover of darkness?

You’re comparing two totally different scenarios. In EMPIRE, Leia is struggling with her feelings for Han and trying to deny them, both to Han and to herself. Han is perceptive enough to see through that. Only when she’s afraid that Han will die and that she’ll never see him again does she have the courage to finally admit that she loves him. And Han’s now-iconic “I know” response is perfect, because Han is telling her that he was already aware of her feelings for him. It’s almost as if Harrison Ford and Irvin Kershner understood the character of Han Solo better than George Lucas did.

With Obi-Wan and Anakin, the trajectory should really be playing in the exact opposite direction of Han and Leia’s trajectory. They start off as great friends and gradually, over the course of the films, they become estranged from each other. Instead, we get the impression that they can’t stand each other from the very beginning. So the comparison to Han and Leia really doesn’t work, because that relationship starts with them hating each other and ends with the two of them in love…or as Disney might put it, “Barely even friends/Then somebody bends/Unexpectedly.” With Anakin and Obi-Wan, it should’ve started with the two of them being very close friends and ended with them trying to kill each other on the planet. Instead, it starts with them hating each other and ends with them trying to kill each other.

There’s no progression of anyone’s character from the beginning of ATTACK OF THE CLONES through the end of REVENGE OF THE SITH. They simpy intensify. Anakin starts off as an evil crazy person. By the end, he’s even more of an evil crazy person. Anakin and Obi-Wan can’t stand each other from the very beginning. By the end, they’re trying to kill each other.

Actually, I didn’t even necessarily see Vader come through. Vader’s approach usually consisted of being sarcastic or taunting people, or a combination of both.

“If this is a consular ship, where is the Ambassador?”

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

“Your powers are weak, old man.”

“Apology accepted, Captain Needa.”

“All too easy. Perhaps you’re not as strong as the Emperor thought.”

Getting in people’s faces and shouting at them doesn’t really seem like Vader’s approach. That’s more the approach of a whiny temperamental brat.

Yeah, what proof do you have that Travis is experienced at talking to women and being around them. If anything, Scorsese, De Niro, and Paul Schrader were eerily prescient when it came to predicting the psychology behind many of the mass shootings we’ve seen during the last 20 years. Isolated, frustrated (both frustrated with society and sexually frustrated), lonely social misfit who feels as though he hasn’t gotten the recognition he deserves from the world…and I say “he” because most of these shooters tend to be young, angry white males. It honestly frightens me just how precisely Scorsese, De Niro, and Schrader predicted this pathology.

Han didn’t follow that up by committing an act of mass murder, throwing a 2-year-old temper tantrum about Luke being a meaniehead, and delivering a psychotic, megalomaniacal rant about being all-powerful. Anakin did. In other words, Han never did anything that would’ve intensified Leia’s feelings of discomfort, whereas Anakin basically responded with, “If you think this is making you uncomfortable, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

I’m aware that Han wouldn’t have gone to Cloud City if he’d known it was a trap for Luke. So let me ask you this, are you trying to tell me that Anakin believes Christopher Lee and Boba Fett captured Obi-Wan in an attempt to set a trap for Portman? Because…it really doesn’t play that way. It’s pretty obvious that Lee and Boba Fett imprisoned Obi-Wan because he was a spy. Imprisoning people for espionage is pretty common in a situation like that.

Again, I’m not saying it needed to be like TAXI DRIVER. The truth is that I really did not go into ATTACK OF THE CLONES expecting Anakin to be anything like Travis Bickle. In fact, I was a bit surprised that Lucas went in that direction. My only point is that if you’re gonna go in that direction, get it right. If you’re gonna make a Travis Bickle-like character, then you really should give us a damn good reason to care about your story, because if you don’t, then all you'll do is make the audience wonder, “Why is it that a guy who has unlimited resources at his control and whose creative freedom is unequalled in film history decided to make a series of films about such a worthless cretin?”

I could point to THE GODFATHER as an example of how to do the whole “tragic downfall of a good person who becomes evil” storyline right, but let’s instead the prequel films to another huge popular blockbuster that came out only 3 years after REVENGE OF THE SITH. I would honestly argue that Christopher Nolan did a far better job with a similar story in THE DARK KNIGHT. In that film, Harvey Dent starts off as a young, idealistic, charismatic prosecutor until a personal tragedy pushes him over the edge and he becomes a psychotic killer. We even get to see a bit of Harvey’s dark side early on when he’s interrogating one of the Joker’s goons (and amazingly, Nolan managed to show that without having Harvey committing an act of mass murder). Not only was it far more believable, tragic and effective than what Lucas did, but Nolan managed to pull it off in one film, as opposed to the three that Lucas had…and Harvey is a supporting character in said film! He’s not even the main character! At no point did Harvey Dent remind me of Travis Bickle before his tragic downfall. In fact, Nolan’s portrayal of Harvey Dent is more or less how I always imagined Anakin. That film also manages to show that Harvey and Batman have genuine respect and admiration for each other before Harvey becomes evil, which makes the ending where Batman kills Harvey all the more powerful. And Nolan also managed to give Harvey a believable tragic love story, where it actually made sense for Rachel Dawes to fall in love with Harvey. He even managed to foreshadow the idea of Harvey’s attachment to Rachel being his downfall without having him commit an act of mass murder. It even goes so far as to set up Harvey’s frustrations with the system (“Gordon, I don’t like that you’ve got your own special unit, and I don’t like that it’s full of cops I investigated at internal affairs.”), which the Joker preys on and uses to corrupt Harvey, and that eventually lead him to blame James Gordon for Rachel’s death, similar to Anakin’s frustrations with the Jedi, which the Emperor preys on and uses to corrupt Anakin. And Nolan made it so that Harvey had a legitimate point rather than just coming across as petulant. It’s frankly stunning how Nolan hits so many of the same plot points that Lucas hit. The only difference is that Nolan shows us that Harvey Dent was initially a good person, whereas Lucas shows us that Anakin was always a bad seed.

Frankly, I see no reason why Lucas couldn’t have approached THE TRAGEDY OF ANAKIN SKYWALKER the same way Nolan approached THE TRAGEDY OF HARVEY DENT. The more I think about it, the more I begin to suspect that Nolan constructed the whole Harvey Dent/Two-Face storyline in THE DARK KNIGHT as a deliberate rebuttal to the STAR WARS prequels. “Here, George. This is how you tell this story right.” Jean-Luc Godard (a director who heavily influenced some of Lucas’s earlier experimental student films) once famously said, “In order to criticize a movie, you have to make another movie.” With that Godard maxim in mind, I’d argue that THE DARK KNIGHT is the best criticism we’ll ever get of the STAR WARS prequels.

So my point is not that the STAR WARS prequels failed to be like TAXI DRIVER. My point is that the STAR WARS prequels WERE like TAXI DRIVER, but that Lucas ****ed it up. He did not have to make Anakin into a Travis Bickle-like character. But, for some reason that I still can’t figure out, Lucas DID make Anakin into a Travis Bickle type. I’m still not sure whether this is the result of a conscious decision on Lucas’s part of whether it’s simply the result of Lucas being a horrible writer, but that’s what we ended up with. And if we were gonna end up with a Travis Bickle-type character, then, for God’s sake, at least get it right. Lucas failed to do that.

I can be a perfectionist. I may not have been obsessed with being all-powerful, but I certainly sought to be the best that I could possibly be, and I pushed myself in order to achieve that goal. Yet at no point did I go to my girlfriend and throw a tantrum about how my boss or my teacher or my parents were holding me back.

The thing is, though, that I did wanna kill the drunk driver who killed my girlfriend. I never followed through on that impulse, but I certainly had the desire. I even fantasized about it. However, I never had any desire to wander in daycare center and murder children. I did not respond to her death by slaughtering an entire town.

Hell, even in the STAR WARS movies, you can point to counter examples. Did Luke go on a murder spree after Vader killed Obi-Wan? Luke certainly saw Obi-Wan as a father figure. No, because sane, rational, well-balanced people don’t do the things that Anakin did. Someone like Travis Bickle does.

Yes, we see that he supports a fascist dictatorship (Portman even calls him out on it, and Anakin just smugly replies with, “At least they’ll make the trains run on time”- another point against her having any reason to fall for this creep).

Ah, thanks for reminding me of the Fisting Jedi (whom I shall henceforth refer to as Caligula). And where do the movies ever show us that Caligula is Obi-Wan’s equal as a swordsman. He held his own pretty well against Vader during both of their confrontations? Obi-Wan beat Vader during their first fight and Vader only won the second fight because Obi-Wan willingly sacrificed himself in order to assure that Luke, Han and Leia could safely escape with the Death Star plans. After all, let’s actually apply logic here, instead of just using argumentum ad Lucas. Obi-Wan can beat Anakin. Anakin can beat the Emperor. Therefore, logic dictates that Obi-Wan can beat the Emperor.

Yeah, and look how that turned out.

That really doesn’t seem to be his goal in JEDI. In fact, he seems to adopt a morose, defeatist attitude in that movie that he never previously expressed. “It is too late for me, son. The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now.” After all, if Vader wanted the Emperor dead, then why did he prevent Luke from killing the Emperor (“Strike me down with your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!”) Personally, I always figured that they just decided to tone down Vader’s character for two reasons:

1. They wanted to emphasize the Emperor as being the real bad guy.

2. They wanted to convey the internal conflict within Vader at that point.

I actually have no problem with this, by the way. The needs of dramatic storytelling outweigh the needs of consistency. I get it. A work like this is gonna have little inconsistencies popping up, especially when you’re coming up with it on the fly the way Lucas did. If you have to create inconsistencies in order to make the story better, then I’m in favor of creating inconsistencies. I’m only against them when they either serve no purpose or they actively make the story worse. That’s why I’ll always defend Lucas’s decision to kill off Natalie Portman’s character at the end of REVENGE OF THE SITH. Yes, it’s inconsistent with Leia remembering her mother in RETURN OF THE JEDI. Unfortunately, there was no way to be consistent with JEDI and simultaneously and have that character’s fate be dramatically effective. It would’ve been really lame if she’d just died offscreen in between movies. The only way to have that be dramatically effective was for her to die at the end of REVENGE OF THE SITH. Now you can argue that she was a poorly-written character (I agree with this criticism) and you can argue that the idea of her “losing the will to live” was utterly moronic (I also agree with this criticism). But the fact is that she needed to die onscreen and in the movie. As soon as Lucas announced the prequel trilogy, I knew that Luke and Leia’s mother would die at the end of EPISODE III…and I have no problem with it.

Oh, and as for love being synonymous with greed, how is it possible to interpret that as anything other than, “My ex-wife took half my assets in the divorce and I’m still bitter about that 20 years later.”?

 

James Kahn (RoTJ novel writer) managed to work around that:


When the Emperor reached the bottom of the ramp, Commander Jerjerrod, his generals, and Lord Vader all kneeled before him. The Supreme Dark Ruler beckoned to Vader, and began walking down the row of troops.
'Rise, my friend, I would talk with you.'
Vader rose, and accompanied his master. They were followed in procession by the Emperor's courtiers, the royal guard, Jerjerrod, and the Death Star elite guard, with mixed reverence and fear.
Vader felt complete at the Emperor's side. Though the emptiness at his core never left him, it became a glorious emptiness in the glare of the Emperor's cold light, an exalted void that could encompass the universe. And someday would encompass the universe ... when the Emperor was dead.
For that was Vader's final dream. When he'd learned all he could of the dark power from this evil genius, to take that power from him. seize it and keep its cold light at his own core - kill the Emperor and devour his darkness, and rule the universe. Rule with his son at his side.
For that was his other dream - to reclaim his boy, to show Luke the majesty of this shadow force: why it was so potent, why he'd chosen rightly to follow its path. And Luke would come with him, he knew. That seed was sown. They would rule together, father and son.
His dream was very close to realization, he could feel it; it was near. Each event fell into place, as he'd nudged it, with Jedi subtlety; as he'd pressed, with delicate dark strength.
'The Death Star will be completed on schedule, my master,' Vader breathed.


'Search your feelings, Father. You can't do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.'
But Vader hated no one; he only lusted too blindly. 'Someone has filled your mind with foolish ideas, young one. The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master, now.'
Vader signaled to a squad of distant stormtroopers as he extinguished Luke's lightsaber. The guards approached. Luke and the Dark Lord faced one another for a long, searching moment. Vader spoke just before the guards arrived.
'It is too late for me, Son.'
'Then my father is truly dead,' answered Luke. So what was to stop him from killing the Evil One who stood before him now? he wondered.
Nothing, perhaps.


Slowly, Luke and Vader circled. Lightsaber high above his head, Luke readied his attack from classic first-position; the Dark Lord held a lateral stance, in classic answer. Without announcement, Luke brought his blade straight down - then, when Vader moved to parry, Luke feinted and cut low. Vader counterparried, let the impact direct his sword toward Luke's throat... but Luke met the riposte and stepped back. The first blows, traded without injury. Again, they circled.
Vader was impressed with Luke's speed. Pleased, even. It was a pity, almost, he couldn't let the boy kill the Emperor yet. Luke wasn't ready for that, emotionally. There was still a chance Luke would return to his friends if he destroyed the Emperor now. He needed more extensive tutelage, first - training by both Vader and Palpatine - before he'd be ready to assume his place at Vader's right hand, ruling the galaxy.
So Vader had to shepherd the boy through periods like this, stop him from doing damage in the wrong places - or in the right places prematurely.

 

QUI-GON: "Are you all set, Ani? Remember, concentrate on the moment. Feel. Don’t think. Trust your instincts. May the Force be with you."

Which is what Anakin did during the Podrace and what he does during the Battle of Naboo. Especially inside the control ship.

And Anakin does that very thing, based on what Qui-gon told him to do. The only difference is that Anakin verbalizes what he is doing. He uses his feelings and they tell him to fire both blasters and torpedoes.

He's not trying to impress her in those scenes. He starts when they get to the lake house, have the picnic and then have dinner. In the first scene, he's just talking to her because he has someone to talk to that isn't a Jedi and isn't Palpatine. Someone that he can really open up to about what he's feeling. In the latter, he was asked about what his plans were for protection and Padme interrupts him, which leaves him feeling frustrated and annoyed.

The uncomfortable aspect is that she's attracted to him, despite the rant that he went on and she realizes that he's attracted to her. And I hate to tell you, but there are women who are and have been attracted to and involved with guys they shouldn't be. Take a look at the world around you and you can see it.

Murder is never okay, no matter what kind of justification one wishes to engage in. It's a reason that it is called a sin. You know, "Thou shall not kill". It doesn't say, "Thou shall not kill, except in times of war or self-defense". As to Jabba, he's not a military target and rescuing Han was not a military mission. It was a wannabe Jedi, a princess, a scoundrel, a Wookiee smuggler and two droids acting on their own. Hence no military force coming in and knocking down Jabba's doors. Hell, Luke's actions are both noble and wrong since he's rather aggressive as his father was. Choking Gammoreans, which a Jedi does not do. Threatening Jabba. Being gleeful in Jabba's refusal to negotiate. Lucas and Kasdan even discussed whether or not Luke's a noble Jedi, or more like a Sith. He's less like Obi-wan and more like Anakin.

As to Anakin, you're right, he should have left with her body and not done anything. But he let his anger and hate get the best of him. Then it got out of control because as Yoda warns, the dark side will quickly join in a fight and take over one's sense of logic and reason.

Anakin and Obi-wan can stand each other, but as it happens with relationships like this, problems emerge. They care for each other, but they're having a period of difficulty because they both expect a lot out of each other and feel that they're not being heard. Obi-wan cares for Anakin, but he's frustrated by his recklessness and his lackadaisical attitude towards his training. Anakin cares for Obi-wan, but is frustrated by what he feels is a lack of respect for him and his abilities. The film shows that they're friends, but are at an impasse during this period. The next film shows the two of them on a different keel because Anakin has finally become the kind of Jedi Obi-wan had hoped he would be and Anakin feels the respect that he's been seeking has finally been given to him.

Saying, "Tell us now!" isn't being whiny and temperamental.

That's not even remotely what happened when he smiled as she walked away. Lucas didn't direct Hayden that way and that was not Hayden's intent. That's you reading into something that's not there.

That's not what I said. I said that Anakin doesn't want to endanger Padme, but she shows that she is willing to take the risk and the blame for it. Han rushing off to find Luke is not even remotely comparable because he's going out alone to find him. The closest analogy would be Han going to Cloud City with Leia, knowing full well that the Empire might be there waiting. In that case, he wouldn't go with her. He'd go alone with Chewie, but he wouldn't risk her neck unnecessarily. In fact, we actually get that in ROTJ when Han doesn't tell Chewie and Leia about what he's going to do. He didn't want to force them to go along, but they both volunteered to face the danger together.

Because Lucas wasn't approaching it that way. And as to Two-Face, Nolan was in no way making a criticism or rebuttal of Lucas and Anakin Skywalker. He was following the basic foundation of the comic book version of Two-Face and put his own spin on it.

Or the more obvious and simple explanation is that you have "Taxi Driver" on the brain and made an unjust and unnecessary comparison. Lucas was not trying to mold Anakin on Travis Bickle, that's what you want to see. Not what is. There's a reason that most people don't associate the two.

Again, just because you didn't do it, doesn't mean anything.

And that's the point. You have learned to control your feelings, Anakin hasn't.

We see Luke start shooting at the Stormtroopers and trying to hit Vader, before Obi-wan tells him to run. He was intending to kill every last one of them until then.

PADMÉ: "That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me."

A mischievious little grin creeps across his face.

ANAKIN: "Well, if it works…"

PADMÉ stares at ANAKIN. He looks back at her, straight-faced, but can’t hold a smile.

PADMÉ: "You’re making fun of me!"

She thinks that he's being facetious, not deadly serious. That's why when he does say it again on Mustafar, she realizes that he was being serious.

ANAKIN: "Don’t you see, we don’t have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him, and together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be."

PADME: "I don’t believe what I’m hearing . . . Obi-Wan was right. You’ve changed."

Obi-wan beat an Anakin Skywalker who was not at the peak of his power and was unable to control his anger and was filled with arrogance. When he fought Vader, he was fighting someone who wasn't as powerful was he was before, but he wasn't able to beat him either. Palpatine is way more powerful than Obi-wan. He was way more powerful than Yoda. He was way more powerful than Mace. The Jedi Posse were made up of the strongest and most wise of the Jedi Order. Hence those four were on the Council and why they went to confront Palpatine.

Yes, because Obi-wan didn't kill Anakin and twenty four years later, this happened.



Yoda would have killed Anakin, Palpatine would have killed Obi-wan and then they'd be up **** creek without a paddle.

Nope. It was very much what I said and had nothing to do with toning Vader down. You can read it in "The Making Of Return Of The Jedi".

That's because it isn't. Anakin states in AOTC that the Jedi are encouraged to love, through compassion and unconditional love. Greed is holding onto that bitterness after twenty years. Greed is in wanting to become all powerful in order to hold on to your loved ones.

"If you’re going to sell your soul to save somebody you love, that’s not a good thing. That’s as we say in the film, unnatural. You have to accept that natural course of life. Of all things. Death is obviously the biggest of them all. Not only death for yourself but death for the things you care about."

--George Lucas, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005.

"I have what I call two sharp "right turns" in the movie and they are very hard to deal with. For the audience, it's a real jerk, because you're going along and then somebody yanks you in a different direction. Anakin turning to the dark side and killing Mace is a very hard right, because we're dealing with things that aren't so obvious. The audience knows Anakin is going to turn to the dark side, but the things that he's struggling with are so subtle that it may be hard for people to understand why his obsession to hold onto Padme is so strong.

Showing how much Anakin and Padme care for each other is one of my weak points. Expressing that is hard to do. It's really hard in the end to express the idea, I'm so in love with you that I would do anything to save you; I'd give up everything -friends, my whole life- for you, and make that real-make that stick-and say it in two minutes. When I created it I knew I wanted two hard right turns-it's designed to be that way-and I knew I was taking a real chance that it wasn't going to work. But you have to see if you can make it work. If it doesn't work, well then I'm going to get skewered for it. But if I can make it work, it'll be neat. It'll be good."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith.

That's greed. That's selfishness. That's possessive love.

"The end of the Saga is simply Anakin saying, I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I've grown to love- primarily the Emperor- and throw away my life, to save this person. And I'm doing it because he has faith in me; he loves me despite all the horrible things I've done. I broke his mother's heart, but he still cares about me, and I can't let that die."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 221.

That's compassion. That's selflessness. That's unconditional love.

 

No, Luke makes a conscious decision. Anakin pulls a Homer.

ANAKIN SKYWALKER: Okay. Okay. Think back to your training.
( cue flashback )
QUI-GON JINN: This may well save your life one day.
( Anakin is paying no attention, instead preferring to play with a Rubik’s Cube)
QUI-GON JINN: Anakin?
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: Yeah?
QUI-GON JINN: This button controls the emergency override. In a battle, push this button, and only this button.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: Ooh, a side.
QUI-GON JINN: Skywalker!
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: What?
QUI-GON JINN: You see which button?
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: Yeah, yeah, push the button. Got it.
( end flashback )
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: (picks up Rubik’s Cube) This is all your fault. Got to pick a button. One potato, two potato—no, wait. Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish. How many pieces do you wish? No! No! Eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eeny, meeny, miney…moe.
( Anakin pushes button; control ship blows up )
PADMÉ AMIDALA: Thank you, Annie, for saving my planet with that idiotic rhyming! Do you even know what button you pushed?!
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: Sure—moe.

Is Anakin a hero? The answer is no.

And by the point by they get to the lake house, she has no reason to give this guy the time of day. He’s already shown that he’s a jerk.

The uncomfortable aspect is that he’s obviously a disturbed creep with severe mental issues. She clearly recognizes this when they’re on the BLADE RUNNER city planet. But unfortunately, when they went into hiding, she apparently forgot to bring her brain medicine that stops her from being stupid because she inexplicably falls for this loser.

Well, that’s not what Lee Marvin told him. “We don’t murder. We kill.” I mean, Obi-Wan and Yoda are trying to convince him to commit patricide, remember? Even Yoda says that “a Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense”. Luke was defending himself and his friends from Jabba. Unless you’re arguing he should’ve just let Jabba shove him and Han into that Sarlacc pit.

Then show that friendship, instead of just having us assume it happens offscreen. Here’s what we actually see onscreen:

OBI-WAN KENOBI: His abilities have made him arrogant.

OBI-WAN KENOBI: And you will pay attention to my lead.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: Why?
OBI-WAN KENOBI: What!

ANAKIN SKYWALKER: (whining) He’s overly critical. He never listens. He doesn’t understand.

ANAKIN SKYWALKER: It’s all Obi-Wan’s fault!

ANAKIN SKYWALKER: If Master Obi-Wan caught me doing this, he’d be very grumpy.

OBI-WAN KENOBI: The boy is dangerous!

ANAKIN SKYWALKER: He’s jealous!

Yet he tells Luke that they were good friends. I’m not seeing it. If this is all that we actually see in the movie, people are come away with the impression that they can’t stand each other. A 1-minute scene in an elevator where they reminisce about things that happened offscreen doesn’t cut it. Actions speak louder than words and they act like they can’t stand each other.

Actually, I was comparing Han’s behavior in between the Falcon kiss and Leia’s confession of love to Anakin’s actions in between “you’re making me uncomfortable” and the arena nonsense of “I love you. I really truly deeply love you. No, really I do! Please believe me, audience, that I really truly deeply completely absolutely unhesitatingly love this guy and that it’s not just a stupid script contrivance. Maybe if I say it enough times and use enough adjectives people will buy this horse dung.”

And why can’t Anakin just leave her with Owen and go after Obi-Wan himself? I mean, he earlier said that they were good people and that they’ll protect her. And they did a pretty good job of hiding Luke from him for over 20 years.

In other words, Lucas instead approached it by making Anakin like Travis Bickle. It’s not my fault that Lucas did that.

I demonstrated how Lucas could’ve done the story of Anakon without inviting comparisons to Travis Bickle. By your own admission, Lucas decided not to go with that, and instead made Anakin into a weak sauce Travis Bickle. Therefore, it is completely legitimate to criticize Lucas for making Anakin into an unlikable, despicable and thoroughly uninteresting character. Again, we have a guy who, at the beginning of ATTACK OF THE CLONES, is already emotionally disturbed and mentally unbalanced. As the story progresses, he continues to spiral downward until he snaps and goes on a killing spree. The only difference is that Anakin went on about half a dozen killing sprees as opposed to Travis, who only goes on one, and Betsy actually is smart enough to get rid of this loser before he can hurt her, unlike Portman. The difference is that we understood Travis and gained some insight into him, whereas Anakin was simply a loathsome ****.

It means she didn’t dump me.

Yes, because he’s dangerous and unstable. Stable, sane human beings know how to deal with their emotions in productive ways that don’t hurt others. Disturbed, unbalanced like Anakin Skywalker and Travis Bickle don’t.

And they were shooting at him. In fact, even before Obi-Wan tells him to run, Luke still has enough of a grip to heed Han’s advice, “Blast the door, kid!”

Good God, is she an idiot! He didn’t change! He was always this way! You’re shocked that he murdered children? You already knew he murdered children before you married him! You’re shocked that he’s a fascist? He told you he was a fascist before you married him! Why did you marry this creep? MORON!

Why would the Emperor have killed Obi-Wan? I’m not saying that Obi-Wan necessarily could’ve taken out the Emperor on his own…but neither could Yoda! Hence they take him out together. Gang up on him. Balance the scales in their favor. But I guess that Yoda left his brain medicine that makes him not do stupid things on the Wookiee planet with Chewbacca.

More argumentum ad Lucas. The Vader we see in JEDI is very much toned down from the Vader of the first two (in fact, it was one of the common criticisms directed at RETURN OF THE JEDI at the time). He’s no longer the bold, intimidating, ruthless, and seemingly indomitable figure of evil that he was in those first two films. Here, he seems much more pathetic, as it were, less ominous and malevolent, and a bit more…honestly, a bit more of a Gollum type. Someone tragically twisted and corrupted by the forces of evil and turned into a pathetic wretch, both physically and spiritually, and who, in a surprising turn, ultimately ends up being the one who defeats the bad guy (although Vader did it by choice, whereas Gollum did it by circumstance).

And the reasons for it pretty obviously were to emphasize the Emperor as the real villain and to illustrate the conflict within Vader. Vader’s redemption probably wouldn’t have worked if, for the rest of the film, he’d still been the Vader we saw in EMPIRE, ruthless, determined, and always strangling his subordinates.

So possessive love can thus be defined as, “The kind of love that resulted in my evil ex-wife stealing half my assets from me”, whereas compassionate love is sort of this sterile emotionless thing that shuts down the possibility of another costly divorce. Got it.

 

Great conversation between you two but on this point:

I don't see this unlikable, despicable and thoroughly uninteresting character in Anakin that you seem to in the least.

Quite the opposite. He a likeable but flawed young kid who is simply too honest and open with his feelings and therefore as awkward as hell as any character you are ever going to meet. It's not only the viewers who feel this it's totally present in the fiction as well. Look at the reactions of all those around over and again. His spiral is connected to the one event on Tatooine.

I don't know where this half a dozen comes from as the Tuskens was all one event.

To call Anakin loathsome is perplexing to me and the first time I ever heard anyone say that.

The homestead scene after is pure insight into Anakin. He knows what he did was wrong. He says so. His whole reaction and Padme's is based around that.

The incredibly strong friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin jumps on the screen to me in both AOTC and ROTS so I can't relate to what you see.

What I find interesting is that it's actually far stronger than Luke and Han by far because they spend next to no time together in the OT outside of ANH (where they don't really become friends until the very end anyway.)

 

Perplexing? First time, huh? Different versions of that statment have been said a hundred times over since the films have come out. Have you ever had an intellectually honest conversation in your life?

And those times in the middle where Han risks his life on Hoth to find Luke and Luke risks his life a couple more times to save Han but yeah, they were never friends until the end. You just love adding nonsense to a good conversation.

 

Kuro how do you see what friendship really is? Seems like everyone thinks that friendship is all "I love you bro" "Lets joke bro" and no conflicts.

Just a false reality....Friends aren't all love and no confliction...

 

Given that in A.O.T.C., Anakin's first line is delivered in an aggressive, confrontational manner, and that they then spend the period until they split up arguing and acting antagonistically towards each other, and then after they split up, they complain about each other behind their backs, yes, I can really their friendship bloom and bud in that film; it's better in R.O.T.S., but there is still tension between them although it is probably more 'fitting' at that point in the story.

And Anakin is loathsome. He is a person in a position of power and privilege who (as seems to be all too common), 'wants more' and who exerts no self control; and who complains incessantly about people who don't think he should be afforded everything he thinks he should be given. And his character progression is pretty simple; he just gets more —ed off with things not working out in his life how he'd like them; really, his fears of loss come down to this, and of course, he can't deal with loss; done. Furthermore, he antagonises others around him, which in Q.R.B.'s world makes one likeable, and to me he comes of as more of an externalising sort: he is 'held back' by others rather than his own inflated view of himself causing problems. Yes, he does admit a few times that he has a problem too, but these seems disconnected as he lapses back to being antagonistic; he makes little visible effort to deal with his own problems.

Moreover, I'd say that he is not particularly open and honest in the homestead scene; he is not admitting guilt or wrongdoing, but rather trying to excuse, rationalise or justify his actions by dehumanising his victims and blaming things on other people. That Padme does not act at least a bit more circumspect about Anakin after his rant is strange to say the least, given that she is generally independent and strong-minded (although I can see how it might happen).

\\\^^^///​

​

Ezon, friends don't spend large amounts of time antagonising each other or sniping at them to other people. If that is the case, that is what is false reality, false friendship; thinking otherwise is pretence; a failure to recognise that you aren't as strong friends as you make out, a problem that needs dealing with. A true friend wouldn't be glade that their mate isn't around, or blame their problems on them, both of which Anakin does. If two people are barely on speaking terms with each other, they are more former friends whose friendship has broken down. ​

 

I hardly see him as likable. I see him as a ticking time bomb. I mean, even before he commits mass murder, he’s still an entitled jerk. All he does is throw tantrums, argue with Obi-Wan, and act like a creep around his crush. What’s there to like?

Honestly, I just really don’t see a good man who was tragically seduced to evil. I see that with Michael Corleone. I see that with Harvey Dent. I don’t see that with Anakin Skywalker.

Acts of mass murder Travis Bickle commits: the shootout at the brothel.

Acts of mass murder Anakin Skywalker commits in the prequels: Sand People massacre
Killing all the Jedi
Killing the green guys on the lava planet

Tell me if I’m missing any.

He’s angry because he can’t stop people from dying. That’s the one note the character is given to play throughout the course of three films. Didn’t need a trilogy to get that point across.

Yes, you can really tell how much he likes Obi-Wan when he constantly blames all his life’s problems on him. That’s what friends do.

You mean like when Han risks his life to save Luke at the beginning of EMPIRE? When people attempt to dissuade him from going out there, pointing out that not only might he fail to find Luke, but that he might also get himself killed, remember how Han responds? “Then I’ll see you in hell!” That right there shows me how close they are. That Han is willing to sacrifice his own life on the mere chance that he might be able to save his friend. How about when Luke rushes off to Cloud City to rescue Han and Leia? Or the first 45 minutes of RETURN OF THE JEDI, with that little side quest where Luke, Leia, and Lando Calrissian go out of their way to rescue Han from Jabba?

Even in the first film, we see their friendship start to develop. At first, they don’t really seem to like each other, but by the time they get off the Death Star, you can see them starting to grow fond of each other. Look at the ease of their interactions when they fend off the TIE fighters. “Great, kid! Don’t get cocky!” Or when they’re talking about Leia in the cockpit.

LUKE SKYWALKER: So. What do you think of her, Han?
HAN SOLO: I’m trying not to, kid.
LUKE SKYWALKER: Good.
HAN SOLO: I dunno. You think a princess and a guy like me-
LUKE SKYWALKER: No!

Notice the little smirk Han gives at the end of that conversation. I always interpreted that as Han realizing that Luke also has a crush on her and that he knows better than to push it. Or look at the way they interact right before Han leaves.

LUKE SKYWALKER: So. You got your reward and you’re just leaving then?
HAN SOLO: That’s right, yeah. I got some old debts I gotta pay off with this stuff. Besides, you don’t think I’m fool enough to stick around here, do you? Why don’t you come with us? You’re pretty good in a fight. We could use you.
LUKE SKYWALKER: Come on! Why don’t you take a look around? You know what’s about to happen, what they’re up against. They could use a good pilot like you. You’re turning your back on them!
HAN SOLO: What good is a reward if you ain’t around to use it. Besides, attacking that battle station isn’t my idea of courage. More like suicide.
LUKE SKYWALKER: OK. Take care of yourself, Han. I guess that’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?
HAN SOLO: Hey, Luke. May the Force be with you.

Already you can see that Han likes Luke. Notice how Han tries to convince Luke to come along with him. Also, despite having earlier dismissed the Force as “a lot of simple tricks and nonsense”, notice what phrase he uses to say goodbye to Luke. Even if Han himself doesn’t believe in it (yet), he knows how much the Force means to Luke, and he respects that. And do you really think Luke would be so frustrated and disappointed with Han unless he really had begun to view Han as almost being like a big brother. Hell, here’s the very next bit of dialogue Luke has.

PRINCESS LEIA: What’s wrong?
LUKE SKYWALKER: Oh, it’s Han. I dunno, I really thought he’d change his mind.
PRINCESS LEIA: He’s got to follow his own path. No one can choose it for him.

Again, Luke is disappointed in Han because he regards Han as a friend. That’s why it’s such a powerful moment when Han returns and saves Luke. Because the film has carefully built up the friendship between the two. I’ve been at screenings of this film where people stand up and cheer when Han returns at the end of the film to save Luke. In fact, I’ve heard an anecdote that apparently Marcia Lucas told George that if people did NOT stand up and cheer when Han returned, then the film was a failure. Marcia made many humanizing suggestions throughout the course of the film, apparently, and Mark Hamill is on records as saying that while George Lucas was the brains behind STAR WARS, Marcia Lucas was the heart behind STAR WARS. And, to me, that’s the most important quality the prequel films lacked- heart. They just feel cold and sterile to me. There’s no humanity to them. They’re just so lifeless. Yeah, some of the effects were impressive for the time, but I feel as though someone needed to remind Lucas not to be too proud of this technological terror he’d constructed because the ability to put anything he could imagine onscreen via CGI is insignificant next to the power of forming an emotional connection with the audience.

Friends don’t routinely blame all of their life’s problems on each other. Maybe if they’re very bitterly estranged from each other, but I thought ATTACK OF THE CLONES was supposed to take place during the height of their friendship. I feel less friendship between them in this film and more animosity, irritation and resentment.

Besides, when you’re telling a story, you have to choose what to focus on. You can either focus on their conflicts with each other, which diminishes the impact of their final conflict by simply making it seem like an intensification of all that’s gone before, or you can create a dramatic contrast between their earlier friendship and their climactic duel to the death. The former is flat and uninteresting. The latter is tragedy. Lucas claimed he was making a tragedy, in which case he should’ve highlighted the earlier friendship. Imagine if you had all the scenes of them having fun together and enjoying each other’s company playing in the back of your mind while they were fighting each other. Imagine how much more heartbreaking and tragic that would’ve been. When you never show them liking each other onscreen, it reduces the dramatic impact of the story you’re trying to tell.

 

Well, I will for one say, that here is much to see them of them being "friends"

What you are implying is that they must have those scenes of "happy happy marry me happy" scenes.

In AOTC, you see them not having eye 2 eye. Anikan and Obi-Wan consider each other friends, but they aren't quite on common grounds becasue of Obi-Wan's strict nature on trying to train Anikan and Anikan's nature to rebel him. Plus, you have that in ROTS of them enjoying themselves more. But I get the OT sentiment of the fans wanting MORE. More love, more hate, more playing with eachother and so on.

The only issue in this is that you and I see friendship differently.

It's a different kind of interpretation. It's a different kind of sentiment when looking at it with no eyes or mouth.

 

There doesn't have to be "happy happy marry me happy" scenes. The issue people have with their relationship in AOTC is that they are antagonistic towards each other in virtually every scene they have together. And when they're not onscreen together, they're criticizing each other to other people. I actually think TPM did this better with Qui-Gon & Obi-Wan's relationship. Those two seemed like actual friends who respected each other; so when they got into an argument, it had a greater impact since it made for a contrast with how they normally acted. But with Obi-Wan & Anakin in AOTC, they're constantly arguing and so this has less impact. It's like when people say bad words once in a while, they have a greater impact; but if they're used too often, we become desensitized to them and they lose their impact.

 

I could say that anybody is my friend, but that is different to actually being somebody's friend. Being a friend is in the actions, and in a film, we need to see them being friends in order to see that they actually are friends. True friends don't hate each other, but if one did not have the knowledge that Obi-wan and Anakin are supposed to be mates in A.O.T.C., there is little that would make one think so. They appear to be stuck in an unhappy mentor–student relationship, with Anakin feeling limited and unrecognised by Obi-wan and Obi-wan feeling frustrated with the intransigence of his pupil. In R.O.T.S., they are closer although there seems to be still a gap between them which is more excusable at that point in time than when everything is still comparatively 'easy'.

Fighting is not friendship, it breaks friendship up. It is possible to repair friendship, but the problem is that in A.O.T.C., we don't see the friendship to give us the sense of their 'normal' relations to then cast the developments in the movie against; it's reduced to throw-away lines at the very start of the film. As R.O.T.S. is about the only time we do see their friendship, it's a little late to develop it much by then, and when it breaks, there won't be as much of an emotional impact.

You seem to think that people wanting to see or feel things in movies isn't something to respect, at least when it's convenient to defend films you like. This is just like another warped person in another thread who argued that it wasn't necessary for people to develop some sort of an emotional connexion with the audience, when this simply reduces the audience to passive, disinterested, and often uninterested viewers. Saying that things that are not friendship are merely a 'different interpretation' of friendship doesn't cut it, and philosophical sounding language is merely a form of evasion; in A.O.T.C., their friendship rests on the mouth as it is only through a bit of dialogue that we really see them being friends. And for 'looking at it with no eyes' or whatever, this is fluffy B.S.: film relies on two things, sight and sound, to communicate with audience; if things are not communicated using these, then they don't exist in film.

 

You keep missing the point, I am not saying that Anakin's children would have a higher count than him.
I am saying that IF the highest count is always passed on, THEN the average midi count of the whole galaxy WILL increase.
If you have one person with a count of 20 000 and he/she had two kids and they had two kids and so on. THEN after say 2000 years, you would have one quintillion people that have the same 20 000 count.
And this WILL increase the average midi count of the whole galaxy and thus the galaxy will get more and more Force sensitive.

[/QUOTE]

I think it is because they are excluding people that might have made good or even great Jedi based just on their blood.
It is no different really if the Jedi said "To be a Jedi you must be a man."
Sure they can still produce good or even great Jedi but a portion of potential candidates are excluded for things they have no control over.

To me, I just find it better if a potential Jedi is taken in because of WHO he/she is and not WHAT he/she is.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

I'll simplify this further: by introducing midichlorians, George made the Force, or the ability to learn and use it, a physical attribute, which contradicts the ideas displayed in the O.T.

 

I said that friendship, to me, is looked upon differently. Just as he interpreted the scene, and many others, as did I.

Everyone has different ideals

You can't act like their perspective is of false mannerisms, just because they see the world with a "High 2 Low" standard.

The way I "talk" isn't a form of evasion. Maybe the way you talk is a form of X and Y and perhaps "X-I-A" but how would I know?(good job, but this is the internet. Merely, an existence of a self prevalent identity, that we form out of fear, realizations, to be one, etc. Like you.)

My analogy is that, with no eyes, you hear. With no mouth you say, not a peep. Eyes will deceive you, conversing with the hippocampus, attempting to show you the path. Of course, neither path is wrong.

~One just chooses to see the world upside down and around the town of the Cellular city- Midi Analysis

https://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/cell-analogy_key.html

They are True Friends. Truer than True.

 

Talking about 'high 2 low standards' and the hippocampus and whatever does not address the fact that they do not act as friends on-screen during A.O.T.C.; you can try obscure things by talking about 'the existence of self prevalent identities' and such stuff, but all of it is just mumbo-jumbo that evades the point whilst trying to sound deep and profound.
The animosity they show towards each other is inconsistent with true friendship: you can't claim to like somebody if all the time, you express dislike towards them. Hence, if either of Anakin or Obi-wan were to tell me that they were friends, and I was to then experience the way they think ill of each other both in each other's presence and when the other is absent, it would be clear that they are in fact not friends: their claim to friendship is false, it is a lie. You are claiming that hatred is friendship, a sort of Orwellian statement that can be used to simultaneously confirm and deny anything. Your ideals are apparently that you would be fine with your 'friends' being rude or bossy and spiteful to you, and whispering nasty things about you in your absence: this is not a different interpretation of friendship, it is a delusion, lying to oneself, believing you have friends when you really don't. Anakin does not conceal his animosity towards Obi-wan even in Obi-wan's presence, so there's no excuse of the sort, 'I didn't know he could say such things about me behind my back.'
Anyway, based on how the characters act in A.O.T.C., they are not true friends because they hate each other. Of course, they like each other more in R.O.T.S., so why did it take 3 films?

 

I agree with this as I've always had a hard time seeing them as friends at all, especially in AOTC. I'm more bothered by the fact that if they were truly friends in all the films then them dueling each other in ROTS would be even more tragic. Even in ROTS I feel they needed more scenes together.

 

Uh, no. Anakin's first line is "Not at all", in response to Obi-wan saying that he was tense. Hardly aggressive and confrontational. His next line is scoffing at Obi-wan for misremembering what happened with the Gundarks.

ANAKIN: "You fell into that nightmare, Master... and I rescued you, remember?"

OBI-WAN: "Oh... yes."

When they argue, yes, they argue. Friends and family do argue. And they do talk about each other behind each others backs. Friends and family do that. I can remember riding with my mom and her youngest sister to see our grandmother and the two of them talking about her behind her back. Later after the latter left, it happened between my mom and her mom. Don't tell me none of you or your loved ones don't do that.

And that is important in setting him up as Darth Vader. The whole certain point of view really comes through here. But that doesn't make him loathsome. He is only loathsome because you wish to view him that way.

He does admit that what he did felt right, but he also admits that he knows that he was wrong.

ANAKIN: "I'm a Jedi, I know that I'm better than this."

He knows that he shouldn't have done what he did. And when he firsts talks about what he did. you can hear a bit of disbelief in his voice. But the more he talks about it, the more he starts to become angry because he's venting his frustrations.

They aren't antagonizing each other in AOTC. Obi-wan is trying to do what Qui-gon would do and it doesn't work here as it did with him. And Anakin feels that he's being undervalued. As to sniping at each other behind their backs, again, it happened in my family. They loved each other, but they also had flaws that drove each other nuts.

Barely on speaking terms? What movie are you watching? Anakin isn't glad that Obi-wan isn't around. He feels confident that he is allowed to go solo without Obi-wan's help, or having help from another Jedi. He's been looking forward to this kind of assignment, which he was envious of others who were already doing so and at a much younger age. The only other time he would even come remotely close to saying that is when he's showing off with the Force and notes that Obi-wan would lecture him about it. And their friendship hasn't broken down as we see in the turbolift scene, after Padme goes to her room for the night and the conversation between them while Padme's asleep.

Except that as I've pointed out, it didn't happen in the old EU and given what little we know of the ST going forward, it isn't an issue.

But they still produce great and terrible people based on how they're raised, how they adhere to the training and what their experiences. Luke is still Luke regardless of being twenty or being a newborn. Look no further than Ben Solo. Strong with the Force, but not mentally strong enough to become a Jedi. But Han and Leia agreed in the end to sent him to Luke, but it wasn't from birth where Luke might have been able to keep Snoke from turning him.

They do not hate each other in AOTC. Obi-wan is frustrated with Anakin because he's not living up to his potential and he feels that he is letting him down and is letting Qui-gon down. Anakin is frustrated with Obi-wan because he believes that he isn't being respected and feels that he is being held back. The only time Anakin is ever angry at Obi-wan is after the Tusken slaughter and that's because he needs someone to blame for his own failures.

In ROTS, the situation is different because they are different. Anakin's a Jedi Knight now. He no longer feels that he is being disrespected by Obi-wan and Obi-wan feels pride in his successes. Their equals now.

 

Not at all. ROTJ is an OT film. Lucas had already envisioned a race of aliens that had an innately higher awareness of the Force in the 70s. By 1983 we had exceptional Force potential being passed down in a bloodline, and we knew that any child of Anakin Skywalker would have been a threat to the Emperor. Even before that we had seen Luke called the last hope of the galaxy, and we had learned that the Emperor feared his potential; we were given the opportunity to consider not merely what Yoda said but who he was saying it to; we watched a Sith lord comment on his unusual importance. And all of this happened long before the introduction of midichlorians. Not everyone gets a trophy. It's tragic, isn't it?