PT Was Anakin Skywalker a "bad" Jedi?

During the indian wars, different tribes would treat their live captives differently. Some would just assimilate their captives, some would enslave, and some would kill their prisoners by torture that had strong sacificial overtones where the entire tribes would watch and participate including the children who would break and twist the captives fingers. Often they would give their captives breaks where they could rest up and even feed and watered them to prolong their suffering. Sadly I think this is what the one tribe of Sandpeople who abducted Shimi were doing to her. It seemed Anakin showed up during a torture break. We don't know if the tribe that attacked Luke would have also done that to him but it is likely.

 

I think Anakin himself, clearly understands that he went too far in killing the women and children. His "I'm a Jedi, I know I'm better than this" probably extends to his killing the men as well. (at least the ones he wasn't killing in self defense)

But it is a grey area given that the Sandpeople are presumably a vile and sadistic culture. Are the women really "innocent", given that they stand by as the men in their society abduct a simple nonthreatening, middle aged woman out to pick mushrooms and torturing her to death over the course of a month? Who's to say what age the children are indoctrinated into this practice, but it's safe to say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

As someone said previously, the Sandpeople have been shown to have no redeeming qualities throughout the Saga (taking pot shots at passing pod racers, robbing Luke and God knows what else they'd have done to him) so it's easy to say "No big loss" when dealing with such a hostile group of people. Granted, genocide is never the answer. But it's tough for me to feel sorry for them, given that their society seems so depraved.

 

Yeah I have a hard time feeling sorry for them too, which I think is part of the reason Lucas choose sandpeople for Anakin to kill in rage. Its wrong but not full out evil like killing Jedi younglings.

 

Did you miss the point I made about "Given what was going on at the time (of aOTC)"?...I regard the ratcheting up (exponentially) of the 'innate evil' of these (kind of) people as...unfortunate given the prevailing situation that this movie was made in.

And...people viewing IV-VI also saw Luke in danger. But...joining the dots, that's what I have a problem with.

It is absolutely to do with religion...I mean, what does it mean to say "It owes its origin to religion, but actual religion is a whole other matter."? The story that you recounted regarding Star Trek...absolutely hinges upon a religio-social structure within which the "bloodline" would be tainted by the sin of the father.

And your last line....is exactly what I am getting at (and I knew you were alluding to)...because the argument you make is that...it's real. And this runs, again, into the trope that I find so offensive (and "the sins of the father..." is an aspect of the idea...as are "bloodlines") - that this peoples/race are (all) like 'this'

The argument that can very, very easily follow from this is that....yeah, maybe it's ok to kill the kids because...heck, they'll grow up to be just like their parents....

When an allusion to real-world conceptions is included in that then I think that is irresponsible...at best.

 

What a barbaric & ludicrous notion. Murdering babies in cold blood bcs of the actions of their parents. Pathetic.

Yeah the Tusken infants & babies we see are far less innocent. Really hard to feel sorry for them. Not "full out evil" at all to slaughter them

 

But why unfortunate?

Why? The films were designed to connect the stories together.

Why is it offensive? Why is it difficult to believe that more than one tribe of Tuskens would carry on these traditions? If there were two tribes splintered off from one tribe, it isn't unreasonable to see that certain traditions carry over?

I'm not saying that it was right to kill the Tuskens. I'm saying that Anakin's reasonings aren't that far off from how society can and has viewed the notion of sins of the father. The films make a point of saying that Anakin was confused over the rightness and wrongness of his actions. That he was trained to know that it was wrong, but he's also told that he was right by the devil in sheep's clothing. And why is it irresponsible to include real world concepts like this? It would be irresponsible if Lucas didn't have Anakin question himself, much less didn't receive some sort of punishment for his crimes, which he does on Mustafar.

Of course it is. That's the point. We know that it is wrong and Anakin does to a degree, but he is also fueled by negative emotions and justifies his actions in order to live with himself. It sets the stage for what he does in the Jedi Temple where Palpatine uses the same reasoning again.

 

Here's one of the things I've a problem with: do we really know that much about the Tuskens aside from opinions of a selected few who aren't really happy with them? There's that EU novel/episode/comic where one of the Jedi is a Tusken and is revealed to be human. Maybe if we had gotten some humanizing qualities about the Tuskens, it would've, I dunno, made it a bit clearer just why Anakin's slaughter was wrong? He acts like he just butchered a tribe of humans yet from what we saw, what he did was no different from butchering an entire den of wolves. Yeah, kind of over the top, but as we clearly see, there are some here who think the Tuskens were just like the wolves and deserving of death. Not people with a culture that...ah...clashed with our perceptions of right or wrong.

 

I haven't read the A'Sharad Hett stories, so I don't know if he considered it normal or not for the Tuskens to do what they did. The stories that predate AOTC didn't have the Tuskens doing this, especially those in the time period of "Junior Jedi Knights", when Tahiri Veila was adopted by them as a young child and later allowed to go to the Academy on Yavin 4.

But in terms of how they're viewed, note that in the film and the script, the Tuskens are pretty much seen as savages. ANH didn't have that label, but they were considered very dangerous by Luke, Obi-wan and Biggs. I think that's why Lucas left it somewhat ambiguous. He wanted us to feel that it was the wrong thing that he did, but that there was a sense of right in taking vengeance against those who were so...'inhuman'.

 

Yeah...see this kind of answers the question as to why I find it unfortunate that this was the depiction that Lucas decided to go for, and for the very reasoning you think he did so....


and this doesn't really sit well with your previous post

"Of course it is. That's the point. We know that it is wrong and Anakin does to a degree, but he is also fueled by negative emotions and justifies his actions in order to live with himself."


because what you're claiming latterly is that we're not meant to be clear that what he did was bad, but that actually "there was a sense of right..." in what he did. It is that idea that I find...unfortunate (to say the least).

 

Anakin does refer to them as animals and he "slaughtered them like animals." It is supposed to be very grey, yes they were very bad people who tortured, maimed, and kill without remose and even seem to enjoy it. But was it right to wipe them out in a fit of rage, it is supposed to be a disturbing question without an easy answer.

Also it is supposed to be the opposite of Luke, while sadden by his loss acepts it and that his life as it was, is now over. He doesn't go on a revenge trip to kill the ST squad that murdered his Uncle and Aunt.

 

Shouldn't Palpatine have promised to make Anakin the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy instead of a Sith? The twist of this he kills all the other Jedi instead.

 

Palpatine isn't a Sith and doesn't like them, so he wouldn't even consider it.

 

The thing is that people are very much vengeance minded, no matter how much they would like to claim otherwise. That's why the concept of "An eye for an eye, blood for blood" exists. When people are emotionally hurt in such a profound way, they can easily resort to, "Kill them all and let God sort them out." We've seen it all too often in human history. So there is a certain segment of the populace that would see Anakin's actions as justified, because that is an emotional response that people will fall into. "You hurt me, so I gotta hurt you back." It becomes a natural response.

But when it comes to whether Anakin was right or not, the film makes it clear that Anakin did something wrong by taking out his frustrations on the Tuskens. Going as far as he did. This was evident in his mood when he returned, saying that he knows that as a Jedi he is better than this, even having Williams use both "The Imperial March" and "The Emperor's Throne Room" when he starts confessing. For Padme, she doesn't condemn Anakin because she is not being judgmental, nor being the moral authority. This helps in setting the stage for where Lucas took her.

Palpatine tells Anakin that he will be the greatest of all Jedi in AOTC, but then in ROTS, he points out that the Jedi are the problem. That they're holding him back and that by joining the Sith, can he gain a life of significance and conscience that he cannot get as a Jedi. It is his way of telling him that he must abandon the Jedi way of thinking.