PT "Only a Sith deals in absolutes" - Is there any good defense of this line or is it actually bad?

I think Ep III is amazing but people that hate the prequels always go to this one line and say the entire movie is bad because of it.

Are there any fair explanations for this like that don't sound like grasping at straws?

 

I think it simply shows Obi's Human because when he says it, he's wrong.

 

Does it really need to be explained? It's just Obi-Wan reinforcing the fact that Anakin became a Sith.

And just because the Sith only deal in absolutes doesn't mean one can't make an absolute statement.

 

It's an intentionally ironic line. The whole trilogy is about the Jedi saying one thing while doing the opposite.

 

i think it's a statement Obi-Wan makes in the moment to make a point to Anakin more than an something larger. ( not to mention George was making a political pioint with it)

 

Yoda tells Luke to do, or do not. There is no try. This to me, is an absolute. Either, Mr. Lucas forgot the point he, with his OT writers were trying to make, or he's very clever in trying to make clear the darkside isn't so different from the light. Crazy versus genius, if u will? If true, it's a pity he didn't put that much thought into all three prequels!.

 

Way to take the context away to prove your fallacious point.

Vader said:

"If you're not with me, then you are against me."

Obi-Wan was basically just saying 'look what you've become, only a Sith would say that'.

To take it literally and argue that 'many people could say that, not just a Sith' is missing the point on purpose. If people need to play dumb in an attempt to criticize something, it tells more about them than the work itself.

 

Yet, he doesn't paraphrase. He uses his words as a statement. 'Only a Sith deals in absolutes!'

Vader says 'If your not with me, your my enemy!' just before...
Surely, there both statements that can be perceived as absolutes?

 

Why would he? He got his point across.

 

Just because someone doesn't agree doesn't equal 'playing dumb'. Both characters make absolute statements that are wrong.

 

If Obi-Wan had of used the line 'We both know the Sith only deal in absolutes!' That would have made much more sense.

 

I don´t see a reason why I should consider it to be a bad line.

 

I don't see it as a bad line, just it could have been done with more subtlety. For me it comes across as a statement of aggression. Modified a bit, it would sound far more Jedi-like

 

It's about all sorts of people saying one thing and doing another. Obi-Wan is chief among them. In AOTC he tells Anakin to not do this or do that but he just as often does exactly that himself.

Well he isn't really.

He says only a Sith deals in absolutes which is true and exactly when Anakin says you are either with me or against me.

Which is along the same lines them saying Jar Jar is racist and all the other nonsense they try to tell you because "everyone knows that".

 

The original line was worse...

Obi-Wan: "Only a Sith would cut someones arms and legs off and leave them beside a river of lava!"

 

I've always found it funny Obi-wan says "Only a Sith deals in absolutes," which just happens to be an absolute.
I would just say this line reveals the contradictory nature of the Jedi.

 

It does seem odd that he's accusing Sith of dealing in absolutes with an absolute statement. And that only a Sith deals in absolutes. Maybe Obi-Wan is secretly a Sith.....don't panic, I'm kidding.

 

I never understood the line, even when the movie was released.

 

Out of all the lines in the PT, this one I never really thought was hated.

 

In my experience it's not hated it merely shows Jedi are judgmental yet again. I've known that for years.

 

Anakin tells him he's either with him or he's his enemy and Obi-Wan tells him only a Sith deals in absolute's. It's saying you don't have to approve of everything someone does to be their friend. It was also thought to be George Lucas' nod to Presiden't Bush's line about either being with the terrorists or with us (which some crossed up and misremembered as being about Iraq)

 

Bring out the hair splitters, this discussion a snake eating its own tail.

 

I mean, sure Lucas writes cheesy dialogue. But he does know what words mean. I think we can at least give him that.

 

It seems you have hit the point here!

I never thought it was a bad line. When I've watched the movie for the first time, I haven't paid too much attention about it until watching it for the third time. It made me scratch my head for a while until I knew what Lucas really meant by that. I think it's rather the audience who misinterpret it, but this is due to the fact that Lucas isn't too skilled by putting it there without any additional lines to make it clearer for the audience what he really meant.

On this line there’s a hint of a moral ambiguity. If you couple this line with Anakin’s later line in which he says “from my point of view the Jedi are evil”, it appears that Lucas was aiming for something more complex than it initially seems. The Jedi have always believed that the Sith are evil and they must be destroyed while the Sith, on the other hand, have always thought that the Jedi are evil and that they must destroy them. The film is, after all, called Revenge Of The Sith. The title is implying that there’s some sort of justification, for the Sith, to the diabolical events to occur on screen. It’s not about demonizing the Jedi, but it does try to show there’s something rationale to the Sith dark deeds.

In the novelization of Revenge of the Sith written by Matthew Stover, the author kept the exact same line from the movie: "Only a Sith deals in absolutes". But he added this to Obi-Wan's line later: "The truth is never all black or all white" making it clearer for the reader what Obi-Wan meant in its first line.

About that political reference to George W. Bush's line, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorist", I think that what Lucas was trying to demonstrate is the foolishness in american politics which consider that everyone who disagrees with the United States' global politics is an enemy while in reality, it has never been the case. You can disagree with things, but that doesn't make you an enemy. Same thing with the Sith and the Jedi: they have both different ways of thinking and using the Force, but that doesn't mean that they have to be enemies and consider one or another to be completely evil and establish this as a fact.

 

that's true, but i noticed when that line was referenced in the media later some people kept connecting it with Iraq, when he actually talked about it in a speech after 9/11 about countries harboring terrorists. (let's just leave it at that and not slide into politics here though)

As far as the Sith, Anakin may have rationalized that the Jedi are evil at that moment, but to me Sidious knows he's evil and just revels in it.