Saga what makes the sith evil ?

everyone decided the sith are evil. but why ? what makes them evil ?

both the jedi and the sith swore to kill eachother since childhood, and both purged eachother, the jedi thought the sith are completely purged.
both train and indoctrinate children.
both use mind control (the jedi seems to overuse it).
both has no problem to cut limbs of random people.
both have no problem to keep people in slavery, even when they can free them.
both send their apprentices to wars.
both act in self-interest (despite what they claim).
both live in wealth.
both seek to retain the power they have.
both seek more power, their source of power is just different.

palpatine might be evil, as he did and ordered plenty of atrocities, smiling all the way through it. but darth maul never did something is evil, or even bad. and other sith before palpatine, we dont know much of them, but never received information that tell us they are evil.

 

This is why the opera scene in rots is so good it explains the difference...and the similarity

 

The Sith wear black and carry red lightsabers. So they are as wicked as anything, man.

Put simply: traditionally Star Wars represents good vs evil in very black and white simple terms.

We have cackling bad guys gleefully calling things the dark side of the force.

Sith know they are bad, but don't care. If being bad gets them more power they'd do it.

We don't ask if Malificent was justified in wanting to kill an innocent for not being invited to a Birthday party (something far beyond a baby's control)

we don't ask if Grimhilde is misunderstood because she wanted to kill Snow White because of the subjective view of one entity in a mirror, etc

Sith are bad because they are designed to be that way...because that is how Star Wars was originally structured.

 

There were always shades from the moment we knew anakin was Vader and became redeemed

 

yes but that was the exception to the rule,

Before Dooku and all that

"once you go down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny"

 

Quite a few were on the edges..some stepped back.. some stepped over the line..sone engulfed

 

The Sith believe that good is a weakness and that evil is a point of view. They believe that the galaxy is in chaos and that by ruling by fear is the only way to bring order.

 

yeah but I'm talking about SW at it's conception..

a fairytale set in space. Where Good Vs Evil was in simple terms,

not this "moral relativism" that is so prudent in storytelling is today

In 1980 it was pretty simple "forever will it dominate your destiny"

notice the complete lack of "well mostly...." or "well in certain instances" or "unless your name is Caedus, or Kyp...or ..."

 

just another example of the way they indoctrinate students.

"do what i say or become evil and be treated as such"

 

As we see in the prequels Lucas was always thinking about it more deeply..and more multi layered

 

I'll repeat as you seem to be missing the point I am making:


They openly celebrate using the dark-side of the force

this isn't meant in a grand colour-scheme decor kind of way...

it means dark...twisted...unnatural...

nobody who thinks of themselves as good would call it a dark-side, they'd bend it to something more positive

 

I'm pretty certain that's not indoctrination. That's the abilities that are unnatural. The Sith disrupt the balance to the Force and the Jedi need to restore the balance.

 

Some consider to be.... unnatural

 

during ROTS he didnt murder children. he murdered jedi younglings.
the jedi AND the sith are warrior monks (the sith are more flexible with this). these children were warriors in training. they swore to kill any sith, and they can probably beat some really good fencers in fencing competitions.
in the robot suit he murdered anything that moved.

it is pretty clear george lucas created the jedi as a very flawed organization, and even in the originals. we saw how they were so quick to change luke with "there is another".
i dont think that is very moral of them...
they clearly willing to discard life of others for their own goals.

*like it or not, they DID try to overthrow the government and takeover the galactic senate, the courts and the military.
and they didnt do in the name of all good, they did it in the name of kill a sith.
the war was already won, the clones were destroying the last control ships. and they didnt know of order 66.

and i find the "floor" to be pretty low when you cut limbs of civilians, mind control them and indoctrinate children.

the floor of the sith is not genocide. no sith committed a genocide in order to grow more powerful with the dark side. the dark side didnt make them do it. they did it in order to gain tyrannical control.
darth plagues the wise, we dont know anything about him (george wanted him to stay a mythical sith), but we know he was very powerful and we dont know of any atrocities he committed. we can guess he messed around with corpses or kidnapped people due to his experimentation with life, but we dont KNOW that.

 

The Younglings were still children regardless of their training. Trying to put qualifiers on it just white washes the whole thing.

Luke was determined to leave and they couldn't stop him from going by force. Yoda, however, is aware of something in the Force that gives them hope. They fear that Luke will fail and he surprises them all when he doesn't.

The Jedi weren't trying to take over. They were going to remove Palpatine and let the Senate and the courts decide his fate. Then Palpatine manipulated Anakin into making the wrong choice.

1. The Jedi only use violence as a last resort and only on criminals and assassins. Obi-Wan was defending himself against Zam and Luke from Evanzian and Ponda. Note that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan never reach for their sabers when dealing with Watto and Han.

2. The mind trick is way more passive than aggressive negotiations.

3. It's not indoctrination. Jedi training is a life long commitment that requires years of study and mental discipline. Just like studying martial arts is best learned from a young age, or another language.

Vader literally committed genocide in order to gain a stronger connection to the dark side. This same genocide has made the dark side grow stronger and the light becomes weaker.

 

Maul was assisting Sidious in his goals, which makes Maul an accomplice in evil.
I agree that we don't know about previous Sith. We have that line from Anakin "The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves," which doesn't tell us much. I sort of wish the Sith philosophy was explored just a bit more in the movies (I'm a movie-only canon person).

About the Jedi as an organization, I think it's pretty clear they're good guys, at least the generation we see in the movies. Being good doesn't mean you have to be a sitting duck while your enemies are literally killing you, it just means you have standards. Example in ROTS, Obi Wan didn't have to risk his life in a duel, he could have just held Padme hostage (they were on the same ship, Obi Wan can easily get her before Anakin reaches the ship) to force Anakin to surrender, but he chose not to because he has morals.

 

You wanna know how you can tell Sith are evil? It's very simple. Being a Sith and/or using the Dark Side makes the handsome physically ugly. While being a Jedi makes the conventionally unattractive more cute and adorable. Examples:

Anakin is a hottie and he goes from this:
to this because of the dark side.




Meanwhile, using The Force for good (as Jedi do) makes these uggos beautiful and adorable...even when barfing...still cute.

Case closed.

 

Honestly, the conflation of "ugliness" with evil is a super problematic trope in cinema. It's one of the areas where SW uncritically follows in the footsteps of older movie tropes, to the point of replicating their flaws, and it's something that's hugely ripe for subversion.

I genuinely think this is one big reason why a lot of people (including Rian Johnson) couldn't imagine that Kylo Ren might not be worthy of redemption, despite the fact that the writing and acting in both TFA and TLJ never gave the slightest sign of Kylo being anything except a toxically shallow, immature psychopath: they thought Adam Driver was simply too hot for his character to be really that evil.

 

I

I was joking. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I thought it was funny because...

These days, there are plenty of physically attractive evil/villains and plenty of not so attractive heroes in fiction.

Case in point: Yoda is (how to say it?) not "conventionally" handsome. He looks like a troll (fairy tale, not online). Conversely, Anakin, is evil but he is still hot. In fact, the more evil he becomes the hotter he gets (rimshot).

 

I feel like almost all the points here are "it's ok when Sith do it because Jedi also do it" while ignoring the fact that one side openly advocates for peace and compassion, while the other side openly encourages people to take things by force (heh) for themselves and trample anyone who gets in their way no matter the cost

I mean, I'm all for nuance and stuff, but SW isn't really something that delves into "shades of grey". It's pretty damn black and white when it comes to morality, childishly so. Which I think is a good thing, especially since the target audience is kids and young teens