PT Why do people defend Dooku?

I constantly read people saying that Dooku isn't actually bad. That he's just misguided but he has good intentions. Let's see here, he: killed a Jedi Master and used his identity to build an army, he purposely manipulated people in participating in a war that led to billions of deaths, helped plot Order 66, covered up a warlord's near fatal injuries and framed the Republic for it (Grievous), led an all-out assault on Coruscant, etc.

How is he not evil? He's just covering up his true nature by appearing "noble" or "political".

 

Probably the Beard. A good beard smooths out everything.

 

FWIW, I think he's bad/evil.

 

They may be subscribers to "Good motives excuse everything".

Never gets applied to the Rebels though.

It may sometimes be a case of "liking the actor leads to excusing the actions of the characters played by the actor."

 

When you only take into account the films, and not the EU (where Dooku commits his most heinous acts) it's easy to assume that Dooku is in actuality just a former Jedi who was manipulated by Palpatine into starting a false war. All the things you mentioned in the OP occur in the EU, so you have to take that into account. Plus he simply doesn't look as sinister as Maul and Sidious do. First impressions I guess.

 

TCW is EU - but it's not Legends. And after hearing Sidious address him as "Lord Tyranus" in AoTC it shouldn't take all that much thinking to figure that Dooku is the Tyranus that hired Jango.

 

Yup. However, I suppose that people might still call anything that's not the movies, even if it's "canon" - EU. But at the same time, not "Legends".

So, TCW is "Canon, non-Legends EU" to those who see the movies as something that stands apart from "Everything Else".

 

I would have thought that the casting of Dracula/Fu Manchu/Scaramanga/The bad guy in The Wicker Man/The nasty scientist in Gremlins 2/Saruman in the role would have made Dooku's general alignment screamingly obvious.

 

Don't forget the anti-candy father of Willy Wonka.

 

Well now that we've simplified that I was referring to "Legends" (that name is so lame), in the orginical Republic comic series Dooku can be quite cruel in his attempts to corrupt Quinlan Vos.

 

Indeed. His treatment of Ventress in Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, as well. In the RoTS novelization it hints that Dooku can't remember not being a sociopath anymore - that's how corrupted the Dark Side has made him:

He is the icon of the Separatist movement, its public face. He is to the Confederacy of Independent Systems what Palpatine is to the Republic: the living symbol of the justice of its cause.
This is the public story.
This is the story that even Dooku, in his weaker moments, almost believes.
The truth is more complicated.
Dooku is... different.
He doesn't remember quite when he discovered this; it may have been when he was a young Padawan, betrayed by another learner who had claimed to be his friend. Lorian Nod had said it to his face: "You don't know what friendship is."
And he didn't.
He had been angry, certainly; furious that his reputation had been put at risk. And he had been angry at himself, for his error in judgment: trusting as an ally one who was in fact an enemy. The most astonishing part of the whole affair had been that even after turning on him before the Jedi, the other boy had expected him to participate in a lie, in the name of their "friendship."
It had been all so preposterous that he hadn't known how to reply.
In fact, he has never been entirely sure what beings mean when they speak of friendship.
Love, hate, joy, anger—even when he can feel the energy of these emotions in others, they translate in his perception to other kinds of feelings.
The kinds that make sense.
Jealousy he understands, and possessiveness: he is fierce when any being encroaches on what is rightfully his.
Intolerance, at the intractability of the universe, and at the undisciplined lives of its inhabitants: this is his normal state.
Spite is a recreation: he takes considerable pleasure from the suffering of his enemies.
Pride is a virtue in an aristocrat, and indignation his inalienable right: when any dare to impugn his integrity, his honor, or his rightful place atop the natural hierarchy of authority.
And moral outrage makes perfect sense to him: when the incorrigibly untidy affairs of ordinary beings refuse to conform to the plainly obvious structure of How Society Ought To Be.
He is entirely incapable of caring what any given creature might feel for him. He cares only what that creature might do for him. Or to him.
Very possibly, he is what he is because other beings just aren't very ... interesting.
Or even, in a sense, entirely real.
For Dooku, other beings are mostly abstractions, simple schematic sketches who fall into two essential categories.
The first category is Assets: beings who can be used to serve his various interests. Such as—for most of his life, and to some extent even now—the Jedi, particularly Mace Windu and Yoda, both of whom had regarded him as their friend for so long that it had effectively blinded them to the truth of his activities. And of course—for now—the Trade Federation, and the InterGalactic Banking Clan, the Techno Union, the Corporate Alliance, and the weapon lords of Geonosis. And even the common rabble of the galaxy, who exist largely to provide an audience of sufficient size to do justice to his grandeur.
The other category is Threats. In this second set, he numbers every sentient being he cannot include in the first.
There is no third category.

 

Yeah I vaguely rememeber that excerpt. I never really thought of him as a "light" Sith just cos of his demeanour, he lies a lot (to the Seperatists that they are an ultimate part of the Sith plan, to Obi-Wan about whether he knew Jango, and his "petition"to have Obi-Wan released, etc) and that evil smile he does when he is overpowering Obi-Wan at the end of their duel in AOTC kind of stuck in my mind. I like the characterisation of him in the ROTS novel, blows the movie out of the water in that regard, but at least as a fan you can feel like you have insider knowledge as to what is really going on in the ROTS duel.

 

As a wise man said, "good" is a point of view.
I bet Dooku knows that his actions would once have been deemed evil by his younger self, but he probably sees it as him having gotten wiser because he's realized the truth: There is no good or bad, just different points of view.

 

There were a good number of sith, dark jedi, and allies that actually believed their cause to be just and what's best for the galaxy. Dooku was promised a high position in the empire, but beyond promises of personal gain, I think Dooku truly believed the destruction of the jedi and the corrupt republic was necessary, with whatever lives had to be destroyed along the way an insignificant cost. Given the circumstances, if I was in the star wars universe and had no prior knowledge of what was to come and what the ultimate plan was, I would probably side with the separatists myself, granted the massacres of Grievous were covered from the public eye.

 

I agree.

 

I think he attracts a degree of sympathy because his original beef was something that so many people can identify with - the inefficiency and frustration caused by bloated, pompous and even corrupt bureaucracy and government. Whereas Palpatine just used the desire to change this as an excuse for his actions, Dooku genuinely wanted to change it.

Maybe.

 

the word "evil" is tossed around far too easily around these boards.

Anyway

1.he: killed a Jedi Master and used his identity to build an army

believe this plot point is called a "legend" now, and is not something supported in the films.

2. he purposely manipulated people in participating in a war that led to billions of deaths,

not to bring real earth politics of the last 10 years into this but...oh well I won't.

3. helped plot Order 66
proof?

4. covered up a warlord's near fatal injuries and framed the Republic for it (Grievous), led an all-out assault on Coruscant, etc.



Dooku was simply a pawn in the master plan of a sith lord and was too idealistic to see past the flaws of said plan, which ultimately led to his death,
that to me is a sign of a tragic character,

besides an evil man would have stabbed Obi-Wan in the heart,( not the leg), and lopped Anakin's head off, (not his arm)

 

The Kaminoans claim a Jedi Master called Sifo-Dyas ordered the army 10 years ago - Obi-Wan is "under the impression he was killed before that" - Jango, the Prime Clone, has never heard of Sifo-Dyas and claims to be recruited by Tyranus - Dooku is revealed as Lord Tyranus, Apprentice of Darth Sidious, at the end of the movie.

it is not hard to put the pieces together and conclude that Sifo-Dyas was killed by Dooku, and at the very least that Dooku recruited Jango as the Prime Clone.

Given that Palpatine wants Anakin as his apprentice in future, it's not hard to conclude that he would have (without revealing his reasons) insisted that Dooku not harm Anakin.

 

Even if he didn't know, I think Dooku thought differently than previous sith. Dooku had big plans for the future. As revealed in the literature, Dooku wanted to, after the empire was formed, found a sith analogue to the jedi order and conscript any surviving jedi and future force sensitives to it while doing away with the rule of two. Dooku didn't want to just kill all the jedi like, say, Grievous. Dooku wanted to turn as many as he could to the sith, even if that meant permanent injury and capturing jedi.

 

it is not hard to put the pieces together and conclude that Sifo-Dyas was killed by Dooku, and at the very least that Dooku recruited Jango as the Prime Clone.
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could easily have been implied it was Sidious who killed him, hence the whole Sydo-Dyas thing.


Given that Palpatine wants Anakin as his apprentice in future, it's not hard to conclude that he would have (without revealing his reasons) insisted that Dooku not harm Anakin

true, but why would he have reason to tell him twice? (since he tells him in ROTS -according to the novel) also Palpatine probably didn't anticipate the battle on Geonosis (to the extent that it happened he knew there was going to be a lightsaber duel in the hanger) so why warn him here?

 

I think there are people who feel sympathetic to Dooku, what with the way Palpatine betrayed him in his bid to recruit Anakin as his Sith apprentice. If you just go by the movies, it's obvious that he's not a good guy, no matter how noble or aristocratic he seems to be. Not only do you realize he had something to do with Sifo Dyas' death when lining the dots together, but there's also his part in the mass killing of numerous Jedi on Geonosis, and his hand in the assassination attempts on Padme. In ROTS, he "kidnaps" Palpatine and launches an attack on Coruscant. Even if that's partially a ruse, it's still an act of war that he's consentually taking part in. Then when you get into TCW, you find he truly is Syfo Dyas' killer and watch him do all sorts of treacherous things.

I think the other thing is that he's never shown killing anyone onscreen. The worst he does is take off Anakin's arm. In contrast, Maul kills Qui-Gon and Sidious kills Mace. Secondary bad guys like Jango take out Zam and Coleman Trebor, while Grievous (in a deleted scene) takes out Shaak Ti.

 

I think Dooku kind of had it coming though.

Sidious: "Okay, so you're going to turn the chosen one, prophesied to hold the power to restore balance in the force and sought by the sith for ages so they could corrupt them, to the dark side as one of our dark jedi agents. He'll help you defect so we can kill the jedi and you'll be my right hand man in the Empire, despite you only having a few good years left, as opposed to the chosen one who's young and very powerful. But don't worry, we won't need the chosen one after that because I have you."