Saga Anakin should not have been redeemed

Had quite enough of this back & forth about film ratings - it's off topic, hijacking the thread and going nowhere. Drop it, both of you.

 

I think for some that is the issue, they assume if somebody is redeemed they are forgiven for their past atrocities. There is another objection, though, that Anakin's redemptive behaviour isn't exactly altruistic or the sudden moment of clarity it is normally made out to be. The good Luke found in Anakin is the same impulse that drove Anakin to the dark side in the first place: attachment.

The British Board of Film Classification works in a very different way from the Motion Picture Association of America. It's not 'trying to be clever' to discuss PG13 movies that are PG13 in the country that came up with the term PG13.

 

So if your going to use that as part of your argument don't assume it was PG 13 everywhere else in the world. There's a big wide world out there that doesn't just consist of America.

 

PG13 is an American term so it makes sense that references to that would be concentrated on what the MPAA thinks about films and how they classify them. And weren't you just warned to drop it? I'm dropping it now myself, somehow Darth_Nub's post didn't show up until I had already spoken.

 

Best we drop it.

 

Poor Mace Windu! Still the fans' scapegoat for the Jedi Order. I guess people would like it better if he was deferential to Anakin.

Which is probably why I like it so much. Gray is so much more interesting.

 

How could there not be an objective standard about a villain whose crimes involve spousal abuse, child-killing, torture, genocide (cosmocide?), and the brutalization of his offspring?

Seriously, what transgression hasn't Vader committed? Rape? (Undoubtedly, that's only because the Mustafar fires wreaked havoc on his phallus.)

 

If Anakin wasn't shipped off to join the Jedi, would he still have turned evil?

 

To me, redemption would stem from counter-measures (and throwing your boss down the shaft in order to save your kid's life fails to cut the mustard).

Based on his crimes, Vader's redemption would entail (1) dismantling a Death Star, (2) handing over vital information concerning his fellow Imperial war criminals. (3) digging a grave for every man, woman and child he murdered over the course of twenty years and finally (4) bringing himself before a war crimes tribunal, declaring himself guilty, and accepting the punishment.

Instead, he offed a guy who had just announced his intentions to whack him, enjoyed a reconciliation with his son, died and went to Jedi Heaven. That stinks.

 

Aaaaaannnd what, again, would you rather see happen? Luke flipping him the bird, Vader dying in agony, and the last shot being him being given a lava swirly by the devil?

Cos that don't sound very Star Wars to me. Nor fitting for a fake theology with roots in Tao and Buddhism.

 

Reveen: As I explained on the first page, ROTJ should have been about a penitent father making a conscious effort to save both his son and the galaxy from the regime he served. So that it's not about Luke snatching his father from the flames, but of Anakin ensuring that his wife's son doesn't follow him on the path to Hell.

The end of TESB suggests a sort of "softening", and I would have loved for Lucas to take this conceit and run with it.

 

Correction: "could have been".

What should or shouldn't be is only up to Lucas to decide. Not the fans.

 

Star Wars is a fairy tale. Of course he didn't deserve redemption, imo he is just as bad as Palpatine and I'm a fan of Darth Vader. But the point of ROTJ was, that no matter how bad you were before - even if you killed more innocents than all mass murderers in human history put together - you can still become good again.

To go a bit meta, if a child does something bad (or an adult for that matter) and is ashamed of this and gets into a downward spiral of depression and self-hate, the message of SW can give some hope. No matter how bad you are, you are nowhere as bad as Vader and even he could become a good person again.

The story in ROTJ isn't about justice, it is about hope.

 

This is a beautiful sentence.

 

Agree with most of that. But for me, Palpatine is just bad full stop. He's the ultimate villain and there is no redeeming qualities in him at all. Anakin/Vader was a tragic character who was manipulated into doing evil things. Ok he had issues due to what had happened to him, but he wasn't inherently evil. (Though Vader in ANH/ESB was utterly ruthless) Luke ultimately brought him his redemption. He could feel the good in him, the conflict.

 

There's only so much you can be forced to do through manipulation. At some point (probably when he kneeled before Palpatine in ROTS) he knew fully well he would do very bad things and he chose to do those very bad things. You're not supposed to sympathize with OT-Vader too much because he is frigging evil (I personally still do, but anyways...).

If Vader, a devil-like figure in most of the OT can be redeemed, so can in theory Palpatine. At least that's what the big message tells us and I don't think it should be watered down with exceptions.

The novelization in ROTJ is interesting too. There Luke thinks that he doesn't hate the darksiders, but the dark side itself. Ergo, he doesn't hate evil persons, he hates evil itself. Evil is viewed as some affliction that can befall you and that you can free yourself off.

Going meta again: If you did something bad in real life, you are not a rotten, damned person. Your animal instincts drove you to do something bad. With effort, you can atone for your mistake and free your "real self", become an enlightened being.

 

Offcourse. But if you've done something bad, and you feel bad because of your conscience then that's called having a soul. But if you consistently do bad things or 'evil' things and show not even an inkling of remorse for it, do you have a soul?

 

Are you asking me in a SW context or real life context?

In real life I'm a positivist and don't believe in a thing called soul.

In Star Wars, your soul can apparently be tainted by the dark side, but you can never really lose it.

 

It's not like ROTJ is saying "Anakin is hereby redeemed. Forgive him!" All it says is that there is still good in him.
He is redeemed, though, in the sense that he is brought back to being Anakin Skywalker.
I think GL himself said it best:

"It really has to do with learning. Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can't be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he's caused. He doesn't right the wrongs, but he stops the horror.
The end of the saga is simply Anakin saying 'I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I've grown to love - primarily the Emperor - and throw away my life, to save this person. And I'm doing it because he has faith in me; he loves me despite all the horrible things I've done. I broke his mother's heart, but he still cares about me, and I can't let that die.'
Anakin is very different in the end. The thing of it is: The prophecy was right. Anakin was the chosen one, and he does bring balance to the Force. He takes the ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son."

- "The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith", page 221





- He's more machine now than man - twisted and evil.
- From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!
/LM

 

Here's a question that I'm sure has been asked before: if all we had was the OT, would people's opinion of whether Vader was "redeemable" be different? In other words, if you lived in the 1990s and the prequels were just a figment of Lucas's imagination, and Vader was a brutal military enforcer but none of what was seen in ROTS happened ("yet") would that make a difference to anyone's opinion here?

 

Yes.

 

I have to ask, but why? This isn't just applicable to you in particular, by the way. It's something that's always puzzled me in that people say after seeing the prequels they can't forgive Anakin, but with the OT, they could.

How is anything Anakin did in ROTS worse than his complicity in the destruction of Alderaan? There were billions of people on that planet. Even if you only hold him 1/1000th responsible (though I think it was more, personally), that's still "equal" to a million people's lives. And it was so utterly senseless too. I can see some kind of ****ed up logic concerning the attack on the Jedi Temple and the Separtists. Not in the case of Alderaan though which was destructive idiocy at its worst.