PT Why does Obi-Wan not try to redeem Anakin?

Force speed was actually introduced in the Empire Strikes Back. Luke does it when he jumps out the carbonite freezing chamber in Cloud City.

I am in the school of thought that Obi- Wan indeed use Force Speed during his duel with Maul. I had this notion even since I was a child.

 

Even if he does use it in that sequence ( although to my eyes he appears to run normally), he most definitely doesn't when it is most needed. The last stretch through the energy beams is only a relatively short distance. If the opening of TPM is to be believed, he should have reached Qui-Gon in less than a second, and well before the energy beams closed the passage.

 

Oh god, is this "Obi-Wan could have force run through electric beams" going to be the new "Padme couldn't have known about the hangar"? Because if that's the case, I'm out.

Also it has nothing to do with anything, particularly the topic of the thread which is about Obi-Wan trying to redeem Anakin or not.

 

Obi Wan think is impossible to redeem Anakin after he has discovered his crimes.

 

This point is retroactive changing of canon by Lucas. It was another mistake he made when he wrote himself in a corner in the PT by having to be forced to squeeze Darth Vaders transformation into ROTS. If all three prequel films had been better spread out the last film could have focused on Obi going to Vader to attempt and redeem him somehow. Before the prequels came out I always head canoned that the prequels would actually show Anakin turn to the darkside at the midpoint of the saga and then he would secretly hunt down, betray jedi knights in secret. When he reveals himself, is when Obi is forced to confront him in the last film and although yoda and others think hes beyond saving, obi wants to try to save him. It would have given the saga more pathos but there was only so much lucas could squeeze into the last film.

Had phantom meanace started with a 16yr old already padawan Anakin the saga would have had more time to explore his downfall.

 

It wasn't just head canon, it was the way GL envisioned the backstory as well, as is evident from the ROTJ novelization, and transcripts of the story conferences during the development of ROTJ. In some ways it appears to have been a much more personal, character driven story.

 

This was never consistent in the OT. Palpatine and Vader didn't know where Luke was in ROTJ, and Palpatine doesn't even sense Luke arriving at Endor. In ANH, Vader senses Obi-wan is on the Death Star, but not inside of the Millennium Falcon. He doesn't even sense Luke until he goes to destroy the Death Star. In TESB, they don't know that Yoda is alive and on Dagobah where Luke is. Hell, Vader is ten feet from Luke on Hoth, but doesn't bother to walk to the other end of the hangar to find him. "The Siege Of Lothal" ends with Vader suspecting that Obi-wan might be alive, but Palpatine dismissing the idea. And Ahsoka doesn't know that Vader is Anakin until she touches Vader's mind via the Force.

It was never like in "Highlander" where Immortals cannot hide from each other when they're close enough.

Besides, Lucas addressed this in the PT itself.

YODA: "Hard to see the dark side is."

DOOKU: "The dark side of the Force has clouded their vision, my friend."

And he addressed it in his interviews and commentaries.

"It's not that they can't see the dark side coming, it's just that the dark side begins to envelop everything. It's like walking into a fog. The Jedi's ability to see lessens as the dark side grows."

--George Lucas, Starlog Magazine Interview

 

All that is established in the OT, is that they can sense each other's presence, but not necessarily pinpoint the person's physical location. The Emperor's remark in ROTJ reinforces this, because by his own admission it was strange that he couldn't sense Luke's presence. So, by OT logic the Jedi should at least have sensed the Dark Lord of the Sith was near, and acted a bit more pro-actively. As it stands, they appeared pathetically inept throughout the entire trilogy. In TESB Yoda remarks that the dark side is not stronger, only quicker and more seductive. The PT on the other hand makes a strong case, that the dark side is more powerful, as all the Jedi in the galaxy are not able the see through the cloud of the dark side created by one individual.

 

That doesn't make them inept. It means that their powers are weakening, which is mentioned in AOTC.

YODA: "Blind we are if creation of this Clone Army, we could not see."

MACE: "I think it is time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished."

That doesn't make them incompetent. That means that they cannot sense Palpatine. It isn't until ROTS that they start to put it together.

MACE: "The dark side of the Force surrounds the Chancellor."

The Force is going out of balance and the Jedi's powers are weakening as a result.

 

To be honest, that makes them seem more inept. They're looking for the Dark Lord of the Sith, and the dark side of the Force surrounds the chancellor, yet they can't put two and two together. Mace Windu even manages to appear surprised when Anakin informs him of the obvious.

I think it would have created more dramatic tension, if the Jedi had suspected Palpatine of being the Sith Lord, but couldn't prove their allegations, or even better, if the Senate was too corrupt to act on the allegations.

 

Maybe he was too tired to go as fast. His body could been exhausted from his duel with Maul. They need to use the force to height their reflexes to duel so fast.

 

It was established time and time again in the PT in lots of ways that the dark side was clouding everything. There were a lot of points of the PT that were tragic, but the Jedi being enveloped in the dark side, having to rely on their own mortal/human assumptions of the world without that extra help and becoming blindsided was one of them and was a main theme of the PT.

I mean, you either like it or you don't, but it wasn't a plot hole, it was a major plot point and consistent throughout the movies.

 

Mace doesn't sense the dark side surrounding Palpatine until recently. The Jedi have never sensed it before which is why they trust him until the start of ROTS. When ROTS begins, they're uncertain of his true intentions which is why they want Anakin to spy on him. They believe that he might be compromised by Darth Sidious, who Dooku claimed had control of the Senate. So they want Anakin to find out if Palpatine is in league with Sidious, or if Palpatine's just a corrupt politician who is taking advantage of the situation to his advantage. Palpatine's decisions continue to bother the Jedi Council and it is when Mace says this, he believes it is because of other factors. That's why he is surprised when he hears Anakin tell him that Palpatine is Sidious. It had never occurred to them that he was Sidious and hiding in front of them. That's why he says that it is their worst fears come true.

 

I'm aware that it was a plot point throughout the PT. However, the OT makes it very clear that the dark side isn't stronger than the light, yet one dark side user is able to diminish the ability to use the Force of thousands of Jedi, to the point that "the dark side clouds everything". One dark side user is enough to tip the balance in the dark side's favour. I would hardly call that equally powerful. So, it is a plot point throughout the PT, that is inconsistent with the description of the balance between the dark side and the light side in the OT.

 

The story is constantly evolving. Even now post-Lucas. For instance, the PT had this prophecy that Anakin would bring balance to the Force, we are lead to believe this prophecy is fulfilled in ROTJ by destroying the Sith, when his non-Sith grandson wipes out the Jedi and one of the first lines of TFA establishes that the Force is not in balance. And then there's the idea that the Jedi Temple is built upon the ruins of an old Sith Temple and that the Dark Side in it had weakened the Jedi over the course of a millennium. That idea has been canonized post-Lucas, but I believe there was a script for an unfinished (due to cancellation) TCW episode in which this concept would have been established. And Lucas was involved in the story meetings of TCW.

I think the implication is that the Sith Temple on Coruscant weakening Jedi was something Lucas signed off on, but I highly doubt that idea had existed in his head when writing AOTC.

In ROTS, it's established by Palpatine that only Plagueis could cheat death, but then Lucas wanted Maul in TCW and established that Maul could use his hate to keep himself alone after bisection.

I think there's enough anecdotal evidence to show that Lucas was fairly insistent that continuity not get in the way of a good story. Darth Vader is originally supposed to be Anakin's killer, but then is made Anakin himself. The inconsistency is waved away in the "point of view" spiel.

He'd attempt to remedy inconsistencies however he could, even if it was virtually just a hand waved dismissal. I think a previous post said it best that as he worked out the story, he'd alter details as he'd decide on new events and scenes that he thought would work better. E.G. Palpatine is scarred by Force lightning, instead of gradually deteriorating as a result of age and Dark Side use. It doesn't really make sense,since nobody else gets scarred, but it is what it is.

And it's not just Lucas, even after Lucas departed and sold his company, there still are revisionist attitudes. For instance, in the OT, Yoda seems adamant that Luke must confront Vader, while Obi-Wan drives home that if Luke cannot kill Vader, then the Emperor has won.

But now in Rebels, Yoda comes across as a pacifist who doesn't seem keen on seeing Jedi fight the Sith and seek another way to win. The supervising director had in the past expressed the opinion that Yoda and Obi-Wan really didn't want Luke to kill Vader and they wanted him redeemed the whole time, but thought Luke needed to arrive at that conclusion on his own and so told them things he didn't want to hear to manipulate him.

I'm not sure I like the idea of Yoda and Obi-Wan using reverse psychology on Luke, but that seems to be the route they are going in Rebels as Yoda seems not very eager about seeing any Jedi fighting Vader and saying the Jedi gave into fear and the Dark Side when fighting during the Clone Wars.

The story changes. Band aids get slapped on discrepancies created by the changes. Some are better than others.


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I never bring TCW or rebels into any of this.

TCW and Rebels are great shows, but never mix them in the films...

 

TESB - on it's own - didn't make Obi-Wan a "lying liar". ROTJ did that. TESB's "I am your father" very possibly could have meant that Vader really was the father, but that Obi-Wan was telling the truth as far as he knew it to be . Iow, Obi-Wan had assumed that Annikin was the father, when it was actually Vader.

 

Or it could have meant that Vader was actually the one who's lying. I think we should also make a distinction between a retcon, and an inconsistency. Many of the examples mentioned actually fall into the latter category, as they are never reconciled within the films themselves. While the OT has it's fair share of retcons, I think consistency wise it holds up very well. On the other hand, while the PT is consistent as a stand alone entity, the PT and the OT are like two puzzle peaces, that don't quite fit.

 

The dark side is stronger.

"The key part of this scene ultimately is Anakin saying "I'm not going to let this happen again." We're cementing his determination to become the most powerful Jedi. The only way you can really do that is to go to the dark side because the dark side is more powerful. If you want the ultimate power you really have to go to the stronger side which is the dark side, but ultimately it would be your undoing. But it's that need for power and the need for power in order to satisfy your greed to keep things and to not let go of things and to allow the natural course of life to go on, which is that things come and go, and to be able to accept the changes that happen around you and not want to keep moments forever frozen in time."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.


Yoda's not going to encourage Luke to use the dark side to win, because it will destroy him. No sane Jedi would ever tell their Padawan to do this. But a Jedi can be as powerful as the Sith, by taking the long and arduous route to get there without using the dark side. To reach a point of enlightenment. The thing is that the Sith will always be stronger because they use emotions, whereas the Jedi don't use emotions and win through other means. Luke isn't stronger than Palpatine and Vader, until he uses the dark side to beat the latter. When Luke stops himself and refuses to fight anymore, he is floored by Palpatine who is stronger than him and he was stronger than Yoda. Lucas even said in 1981, that Palpatine was more powerful than Yoda.

So the dark side is stronger. But the true strength of a Jedi is not using their emotions, and instead use compassion and wisdom to not fight. How they choose to fight is more important than actually winning the fight. Palpatine has grown strong in the Force due to his knowledge and his ability to bend the Force out of balance.

"If good and evil are mixed things become blurred - there is nothing between good and evil, everything is gray. In each of us we to have balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything. It is dangerous to lose this. In The Phantom Menace one of the Jedi Council already knows the balance of The Force is starting to slip, and will slip further. It is obvious to this person that The Sith are going to destroy this balance. On the other hand a prediction which is referred to states someone will replace the balance in the future. At the right time a balance may again be created, but presently it is being eroded by dark forces."

--George Lucas, Cut Magazine Interview, 1999.

Palpatine brings the Force out of balance by creating a universe filled with gray. Palpatine has exploited the very fabric of people in the GFFA and this is how he has grown to be so strong in the Force and how he is able bend the Force out of balance.

But it is fairly accurate based on what is presented in the films. Yoda says that a Jedi should never use the Force to attack, but the implication is that they want Luke to do that very thing against the Sith. What Yoda wants Ezra to understand is that it isn't about winning the fight, but in how they choose to fight. Yoda doesn't say that it is right or wrong to fight. Ezra thinks that he has to destroy the Sith and the Inquisitors. He's still acting on emotions. He wants revenge for his parents deaths. Yoda sent him to Malachor to show him that just fighting to win will result in nothing but death. The truth strength is not in the fight, but in accepting when it is time to fight and when you shouldn't fight. Lucas even says as much.

The key issue in these movies is for a Jedi not to use anger when he’s fighting. So the final confrontation here is primarily about trying to make Luke become angry, so that when he fights his father he’s fighting in anger, therefore begins to use the dark side of the Force, and therefore sort of succumbs to the dark side of the Force. In The Empire Strikes Back we had them confront each other and fight together. But in this film Luke has become more mature so that now he knows he shouldn’t be fighting him—that is the path to the dark side. So it’s basically a confrontation between two people and one of them doesn’t want to fight, and the other one keeps trying to push him into it. And then in the end when he gives up and they really do fight, what’s happening there is that ultimately Luke is turning to the dark side, and all is going to be lost."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary, 2004.

"It will be about how young Anakin Skywalker became evil and then was redeemed by his son. But it's also about the transformation of how his son came to find the call and then ultimately realize what it was. Because Luke works intuitively through most of the original trilogy until he gets to the very end. And it’s only in the last act—when he throws his sword down and says, “I’m not going to fight this”—that he makes a more conscious, rational decision. And he does it at the risk of his life because the Emperor is going to kill him. It’s only that way that he is able to redeem his father. It’s not as apparent in the earlier movies, but when you see the next trilogy, then you see the issue is, How do we get Darth Vader back? How do we get him back to that little boy that he was in the first movie, that good person who loved and was generous and kind? Who had a good heart."

--George Lucas, Star Wars Trilogy VHS Box Set 2000.

And Filoni's view is based on what Lucas said.

"The part I am working on now is mostly about Darth Vader, who he is, where he came from, how he became Luke and Leia's father, what his relationship to Ben is. In Jedi, the film is really about the Redemption of this fallen angel. Ben is the fitting good angel, and Vader is the bad angel who started off good. All these years Ben has been waiting for Luke to come of age so that he can become a Jedi and redeem his father. That's what Ben has been doing, but you don't know this in the first film."

--George Lucas, Star Wars-A New Hope: The Annotated Screenplays, 1997.

So the idea of the Jedi putting Luke in a situation where he has to figure it out on his own isn't that out there.

 

While of these comments are certainly interesting, they were all made more than a decade after the OT was released, and are mostly examples of GL revisionism. Remember, GL also is quoted as saying during the development of the OT, that Yoda is a Jedi guru, who isn't good in a fight, only to have him whip out a lightsaber two decades later. Just because GL changed his mind, doesn't make any of this any less inconsistent, especially since most of these explanations are nowhere to be found in the films. A consistent story line shouldn't require extensive commentary to fill plot holes.

 

I see what Lucas is saying in the films.

I think the difference here is either you see Star Wars as this living document, a quilt work of stories with mythological themes and where there is something for everyone. To me that's what separates an "epic" story from a mundane one.

Or you want it concrete and static and never changing. Well, I guess that's anyone's prerogative, but it's not necessarily the way everyone wants to view it, and it doesn't make anything "bad".

I mean, I rolled my eyes at the return of Darth Maul, but then I think it adds now to this never ending saga and I look forward to a cameo of Maul and Ventress sitting at the bar having a drink in Episode VIII. (Kidding here but you get my meaning.)

 

I too like to see change, but I don't equate a consistent story to a static or mundane one.

 

I mean we could roll around all day with the "It's consistent!" "No, it's not!" back and forth. I'm sure that will not be frustrating.

I think one of the things I love about the Saga is that GL always gets the main things right. I remember watching ANH after ROTS and man if Luke and Leia aren't basically perfect mixtures of Anakin and Padme.

Or when he changes the main arcs, he does it in a way that it builds upon the story.

Like in the actual topic of this thread, which is "Why does Obi-Wan not try to redeem Anakin?" Everyone in the Saga has a point of view and Vader does remember this intervention 23 years previously one way. Then we find out how it really happened and it's not exactly what we thought. And it's actually even more sad because he was the only person that Obi-Wan ever loved, but he was totally psychotic and there was a point of no return.

So Vader, who is a surprisingly reliable narrator in the OT maybe wasn't so reliable after all, which makes sense in a way.

Or maybe as much as Vader hated Obi-Wan (which equaled how much Anakin loved him), he still always gave him more of the benefit of the doubt than even Luke did. Which is a fascinating characterization.

 

I will agree with you there. GL is a great story teller, even if I feel he does need a good screen writer, and director for his films to reach their full potential.

 

Lucas went back and forth on Yoda being a fighter. In the Brackett draft, Yoda does spar with Obi-wan's ghost. So he wasn't that far off the mark when he utilized that idea in the PT. But that aside, Yoda still is not powerful enough to beat Sidious which fit in with his earlier statement to Kasdan about that very thing. The idea that Yoda and Obi-wan wanting Luke to figure out on his own to save his father isn't too far fetched. Especially when Obi-wan himself in the film doesn't tell Luke that he has to kill him. Just confront him. Luke concludes that he has to kill him. And while it was stated at one point in the script that Obi-wan did say this, this line was never in the film.