Anakin killing younglings?

George Lucas has stressed many times that killing of the younglings is why Anakin deserved to be punished in the end and it was his most evil act. Now I know this is going to be contraversial, but I am not sure I completely agree with him. The younglings are not helpless as can be seen by the fact that a boy of 12 was able to take out around six highly trained clone troopers. Also though Anakin is an exception look at the damage that an untrained 10 year old did in the TPM. The younglings are also heavily brainwashed and will fight to the end. An example of this it appears that only twenty jedi have ever left the order. Lucas has also established that a great deal of progress in the force can be made by private study meaning the younglings in the future could grow to especially dangerous to the emperor. So the younglings are by no means harmless and due to the jedi are major threats to the emperor.

Now imagine if the situation was reversed and a jedi had found a seven year old Palpatine that was strong in the darkside of the force. The boy obviously would not be turned and was very strong in the force. Not to mention that it's very likely that a young Palpatine would have attacked the jedi. From what I have seen in the films the jedi would have definately killed a young Palpatine without much thought. Would this make them evil? In real life are the soldiers in WWII that killed boys, who were members of the Hitler Youth evil? Are soldiers that have to fight against child soldiers in certain places in Africa evil? I seriously doubt that any commander in the world would allow dangerous children that attacked and killed their soldiers to survive. So is Anakin killing the younglings really his most evil action and would the jedi have acted in the same way?

 

Do you have the actual quote and the source?
I heard lotsa fans say that but I never heard or saw that Lucas quote, so do you have a source?

 

To me it looked like the younglings were scared out of there brainwashed minds, hiding behind stuff and craping their jedi pullups.
just my thought nuttin personal darth-skycrawler

 

To the Sith, killing Younglings and others is fuel, the ugly but necessary price one must pay to have vision and power. It is a positive, demonstrating manipulation and action through sheer force, strength and power and representing Sith manipulation of events and, possibly, the Force, to their advantage and ends. From the Sith perspective it is not the worst act committed by Anakin in the PT. Their death is a credit and in his doing so, he becomes more than he was. To paraphrase another manipulator "Tell me, Anakin. Did you enjoy it? Your first murder? Of course you did. And why shouldn't it feel good? It does to the Force. Why only last week on Tatooine, it dropped a temple roof on the heads of 34 of its Jedi, just as they were groveling for it. It wouldn't begrudge you for a few Younglings." The good doctor and the Chancellor are remarkably similar in their words, cadences, outlooks and philosophies. Death is but a part of the struggle.

 

I argued this point many times myself. Let's take this to a real life situation. The United States has been fighting wars in the middle east. Let's say a group of soldiers stormed a compound in a Qurtes (I'm making up a fictional country as to not make this too political. base and found a bunch of 10 year olds that were trained in warfare and had pistols. The rest of the Qurtes squad has been killed, but the children remain vigilant. They are no true threat to destroying the entire United States army, but they are refusing surrender and are firing their pistols at the soldiers. If the soldiers walk up and try to peacefully take the weapons away from the kids, they will get shot up. If the soldiers turn their backs and just leave them, they are likely to be shot in the back. What are you to do? The United States did not put 10 year old children on Qurtes Military bases and train them, the government of Qurtes did. They are NOT civilians.

Now let's say that the soldiers (Even the children) of Qurtes have a really strong sense of defending their way of life. The US troops are able to back away without causualties. Do you think these half trained soldier children are just going to say forget it? Their fathers, uncles, mentors, brothers, friends have just been killed. You can damn well believe that they are going to find some way to mount a counterstrike. No matter how unlikely it is they will do any real damage, the possibility is there.

Vader was told to "Do what must be done." Killing the younglings falls right into that category. The Younglings were armed and trained soldiers in a military stronghold.

Carnage

 

This scene totally destroyed in my mind the notion that there was still good in Anakin. If Anakin had hesitated and taken the youngling before Palpatine as captives, convincing him that it would be to his best interest to exploit the abilities of the children then I would have been convinced that there was still a spark of goodness in him. Sure Palpatine would have been angry and may have even severly punished Anakin but I could picture Palpatine falling for it. I have visions of a clone trooper cradling a newborn youngling captive named Mara Jade.

 

I have thought of this concept as well, but in differnt terms. What if Palpatine would have actually stepped down from his power once Grevious was dead. The Jedi know he is a Sith, but he is doign nothing illeagal. The Constitution protects peoples personal beliefs, the Jedi can not kill him just because he is a Sith Lord. What if Palpatine had said Greviosu is dead, i am returning my power to the senate, then the Senate re-elects him as Chancellor by popular demand. If that were to happen then the Jedi couldn't touch him legaly. What then? Would the Jedi just let him go? Personaly i dont see Mace going "Alright your a good little sith run along a play now." No, i belive that even if Palps had done this Mace would have killed him or atleast attempted to. Then that would just show the Jedi as hypocrits, they only protect and serve democracy as long as it suits them. They woudl have killed him dispite his democratic nomination and killed him on an issue of philosophy, then who is the dictator/tyrrant?
Palpatine is right, the Jedi and Sith are Similar in almost every way. It is just the Jedi happen to have the peoples support, which makes them the good guyes. What would happen if the Senate really supported Palpatine knowing that he was a Sith? Would the Jedi have accecpted it? Or would they have taken it uppon themselves to choose for teh galaxy and destroy the sith?
I dunno either way you look at it, both Jedi & Sith are just as bad as the other, it is all just situational occurances that make the Jedi the "good guyes"
~Azure_Angel

 

Did you ever hear of the tragedy of Darth Plagueis, the wise?

 

~can't help but snicker~ No, you wouldn't. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you. He was so powerful, he could even keep the ones he cared about ~dramatic pause~ from dying.

 

It's all situational that the Jedi are "good guys"? So it has nothing to do with the fact that they dedicate their lives to selfless, sacrificial service to their fellow beings and preserving balance in the Force?

Of course, Jedi kill Sith Lords because they're Sith Lords...not because the Sith Lords have been consumed by their own greed and hatred so much that they murder and manipulate the residents of the galaxy to their hearts' content. That's just a coincidence.

The cinematic impact of the youngling slaughter cannot be denied. When the audience sees the younglings, they see helpless children. And though, compared to the average person, these kids may not be helpless, they're certainly nothing much in the face of a fully trained Jedi Knight. And they're certainly as good as helpless when facing down the Chosen One.

 

Compared to a Jedi Knight/Sith apprentice that's a little more than half their age, of course they(the younglings) are defenseless. Anakin did the same thing to the Tuskin Raider children also. Anakin himself took out Cin Drallic!!! So killing the younglins would be a much simplier task.


A young Sith is more of a threat than a young Jedi, by the way!!!

 

I can't believe that you people would be defending someone that killed 4-5 year olds. That's how old they were in the Council Chamber. I'm horrified and appalled that you would think it was okay to kill kids that age.

I can see defending against kids 10 and older. They have more sense of aggression and anger. But he attacked them - in their home. How could they not defend themselves?

It is completely unacceptable to kill young kids. When Vader did that, he went from being a confused, powerful fool to a monster.

 

I dunno. IMO by the time we got to the scene, I had lost interest in the movie, so I can't say it had much shock value to me.

 

No, i belive that even if Palps had done this Mace would have killed him or atleast attempted to.

You mean Mace and Yoda. Mace was not the only one who had tried to kill Palpatine. By the time of Yoda's attempt to kill Palpatine, the Senate had unaminously accepted Palpatine as their new emperor. If Yoda had killed the Sith Lord, he would have been officially branded as an assassin and murderer.

 

I think he has to kill the younglings in the story to warrent his death /of sorts

 

I think he has to kill the younglings in the story to warrent his death /of sorts

 

It's a simple thing. He has to kill the younglings, because they are Jedi. Trained as such. They could be a threat to him. Just as Luke was a threat to them both in the OT. Remember what Obi-wan tells Luke.

Ben: "The Emperor knew as did I, that if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him."

Palpatine: "He could destroy us."

Palpatine: "The son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi."

Palpatine: "So be it, Jedi. If you will not be turned then you will be destroyed."

Anakin still has good in him, because he is crying on Mustafar over what he has done. Palpatine could never drive the good out of him. Just bury it deep down, under all this muck and filth. It needed a spark and Luke was that spark.

 

With all due respect, how can we equate the Sith with the US Military? Our soldiers are trained on the rules of war, which include not harming innocent civilians. When that happens, it is seen as an aberration of both international and US standards of behavior during armed conflict. And while the children are not civilians, neither do they pose any immediate threat to Sidious or Vader - they are killed in a preemptive action against a threat that had not materialized. They were not seeking Vader out to confront him, but rather hiding in the safest place they, or their elders, could think of. The only time we see Jedi children of their age with lightsabers, it's in a basic drill against a remote. Hardly seasoned, trained killers ready to destroy the chosen one.

I can't see this argument as anything but another attempt to justify even the most atrocious actions by Anakin Skywalker. Even if that means making killing children morally acceptable as a military necessity.

 

To give you all a morality puzzle:

1. Have Adolf Hitler become a serial killer. Destroying more people than any other (private) serial killer in history. Say 1,000 total.

2. Have Hitler be the man he is. Destroying more people than any other human being in history. Roughly 50 million people.

Who is worse?

By comparison with what he did to countless planetary populations, both directly and as a doberman for Palpatine's other stooges, what Vader did to the Jedi Trainees was a pittance. If he could have been _stopped_ there, forced to flee into anonymity with his wife or whatever. THEN he could have, perhaps, been redeemed through the actions of 'replacing' the deaths he had caused with the careful raising of the fruit of his own loins.

After his rampage across the galaxy, no. I think not. And this (along with Ewoks and other such nonsense) has bothered me LONG before the PT.

The Younglings are just Lucas' bumbling way of forcing the issue with Vader's evil at the last second. It was an inevitability with the direction and progress made in TPM and the essentially 'new character intro' of Christensen in AOTC. Frankly, in Palpatine's place, I would not have thrown away Force Adepts only to replace them with Military Governance at such a monumentally incompetent level. Children being swayed with the techniques he uses on Anakin seems a much more likely route to success in fact.

Indeed, the ultimate sadness being that everything Anakin does makes so _very_ little sense that the killings of the kids is more or less "Well, what do you expect, Lucas has made him do everything else wrong...".

And Yet... Nobody who has seen war like Anakin has is a hothead anymore. You just can't keep up the facade of wasted energy. Nobody who would give his life freely to go back and assist his fellow fighter pilots would have the selfishness of Anakin's supposed character. Nobody who had had his life, wife and body interrupted, threatened and maimed as Anakin had by the Sith would _ever_ react to Palpatine as person who inspired his pain. Certainly not with anything less than first-we-try-then-we-trust scepticism.

Anakin is a smart boy to have built the pod racer and learned to handle the likes of Sebulba in a street-wise sense. He is not gullible nor yet particularly cruel if his actions with the Assassin (who threatened Padme` it must be remembered) are any evidence.

Forceful, yes. But not needlessly excessive in his actions.

To combine these facets together into a mulish moron whom _The Jedi_ did not take 'firmly in hand' (if you've ever been through Basic you know whereof I speak) is simply inexplicable or justifiable.

IMO, this is what happens when Dramatists, thinking to 'stir things up a bit', break old molds and move away from the so-called expected, simply take character progressions and do whatever they have to with them to advance a blanket agenda in an otherwise dreadfully flat plot. That they _destroy_ the audience's belief in the characterizations _as empathizable people, is what is wrong here. For one of the old chestnuts of the trade is and always has been 'must have a story to tell, not merely angst to sell...' related to the development or devolution of PEOPLE.

Failing to understand or accept this is what truly separates the hacks (those who will write anything for money, usually by stealing from multiple other genre's to make a Frankensteinian monster of amalgamated ideals) from the merely talentless.

And as rich as Mr. Lucas is, he has no excuse for being talentless...


Saberist.

 

Each child has training in the ways of the Force. Be it rudementry like the Younglings or experienced like Zett Jusska. They are a threat because of this. They have enough training that they can become a threat if they go into hiding, as effectively as Obi-wan and Yoda did.

Just cause we can justify why they were killed, doesn't make it right. It just means that there is a reason to do so.

 

If it is just coincidence then what about Plagius? He was considered to be "passive" as far as sith go. He merly meditated and contimplated the nature of the dark side of the Force, and learning its deepest darkest secrets. Now as far as we know he may have never committed a crime in his life (he probably did, but it is inconsiquencial) Suppose Yoda had stumbled upon him years ago, Yoda has absolutly no evidence that he has committed a crime, but he is a sith lord teaching his religion/philosophical ideals to his apprentice. Would Yoda just keep on walking, leave them in peace? Or would he try and destroy them?
The answer (as i belive it to be, and as logic points to) that Yoda would have the Sith destroyed, not because they have committed any crime, but merely because of who they were.
Now i recall someone using a Hitler analogy? Suppose the Sith had like a school (i know they dont, but humor me) say they had a school with several hundred, or even several thousand students, all learning the secrets of the dark side of the Force. Then they are discovered by the Jedi, most likely the Jedi would have them all destroyed, everyone the teachers, students and younglings alike. There is no denying it, especialy with luminaries such as Mace Windu on the Jedi Council. The Sith would be seen as a threat and destroyed simply because of a philosophical differance. How is that different from Hitler? How is this differnt that Sidious and Vader?
The Jedi do claim to be selfless, but they are only selfless when there selflessness protects others would will inturn take care of them, adn preserve theri exsistance. (Jedi protect republic, republic gives them nice cushy temple, all the money they want, all the tecnology they want, thus preserving the Jedi)
Now as i used as an example earlier, what if the Senate knowingly elects a Sith as Supreme Chancellor, the Sith has every qualification, but he is a Sith, maybe not a Sith Lord, but he still studies the Dark Side. What then? The Jedi arn't going to serve a Sith, so he must be destroyed. So teh Jedi remove him because they percive him as a threat. In doing so they undermind the Republic, thus prooving the fact that their selflessness goes only so far.
What i am saying is that its not really the Jedi who are the good guyes, they just appear so because their natural enemies happen to be the bad guyes in the story.
~Azure_Angel

 

This scene totally destroyed in my mind the notion that there was still good in Anakin. If Anakin had hesitated and taken the youngling before Palpatine as captives, convincing him that it would be to his best interest to exploit the abilities of the children then I would have been convinced that there was still a spark of goodness in him.

But Sidious told him "Do not hesitate, show no mercy". Anakin knew what needed to be done (look at his facial expression) when Sidious says "kill all the Jedi in the temple". It a tough decision. Sidious knew that.

Vader also didn?t immediately slash out at the kids though. Maybe a slight hesitation but he went along with it. Maybe because he thought of overthrowing Sidious eventually, by doing his bidding first.

 

I'd disagree on how much/what kind of training the children had, given the rather inept "trianing session" we saw in AOTC. Also, they were also hiding behind some chairs, not running off into hiding, or rushing Vader like pint-sized Viet Cong.
Killing them proves again how shortsighted Palps became after seizing power. Wouldn't it be smarter, as some have posted, to corrall those kids and get them retained, oh so carefully, into his adepts? Palps was a great one for adapting to changing circumstances, and probably'd abandon the "rule of two" if it strenghened his hold on power. Plus, he'd have a gaggle of potential replacements for his maimed apprentice to keep Vader in line.

 

"Master Skywalker, there're too many of them. What are we going to do?"

wernnnnrnnrnrnrnnrnrnrnrnrnrnrnnr (lightsaber sound!)


That part was the BEST scene in the whole PT. VADER!

 

Well remember how Luke was all like "NOOOOO" when he finds out that Vader is his father? I think that somehow implies that turning to the dark side is worse than death. So the kids got it off relatively easy.