Saga Anakin Skywalker - Character Discussion...among other things.

And there's no justification for taking or torturing Shmi.

For my part all *I'm* pushing back against is the claim that that's what I was arguing/the putting of words in my mouth; my point was only ever that, based on what the lore tells use about the Tuskens and their relationship with the settlers, the kidnapping probably wasn't a random act of violence that had no motivation behind it. Never said the motivation had to be a good one.

@anakinfansince1983 but I never said anything about moral relevance (heck I've made it clear that I *don't* think the act was moral or justified, and I said that right from the start), so why would anyone ever think to try and have that conversation with me?

All I did was point out that, based on what the lore says, the point Dagon made that it was a random act probably isn't true. I felt that to be a neutral statement of fact and in no way a controversial thing to say, but I'm sorry if I was wrong about that. My bad.

 

I agree, that Lucas is just trying to get the point across, the PT is the story of Anakin’s fall to the dark side after all

I just don’t think it’s particularly well done, like I said a few days ago, there’s just a lot of weird awkward scenes throughout the film, including the scene with Anakin telling Padme about killing the Tusken

and like @christophero30 said, if Anakin had just killed the warrior Tuskens, those who actually did the kidnapping and torture, it probably would’ve been better, and it would still get the point across, it would still be Anakin killing for revenge, out of anger, clearly not the Jedi way

 

If everyone just listened to me, the world would be a much better place.

 

I actually think this is a very good video about Anakin’s personality.

 

Don't people with BOP have problems maintaining stable personal relationships?

I never got that from Anakin (I mean, the guy maintained a more-or-less happy marriage with a person whose personality is pretty different from him in secret for three years).

BOP feels like it would be more fitting for Kylo; but even then I really hesitate to subscribe mental illnesses to fictional people (being mentally ill myself)

I'm inclined to agree, but then again this forum if we listened to you would be like North Dakota; pretty but boring and empty.

Granted as it is it's more like Florida - crazy, chaotic and way to full - so I can't really say that would be worse.

 

Especially when you’re a Jedi. Now if he was a Sith already, typical Tuesday.

 

I mean, Anakin’s relationship with Obi-Wan is pretty unstable. It quickly goes from, “You’re a father and a mentor to me and I love you” to “I hate your stinking guts, all my problems are your fault”, and then back again several times. His marriage literally ends with him Force choking Padmé and he ends up trying to kill Obi-Wan.

The thing with BPD people is that they actually can have stable relationships for significant periods, IF they avoid major stressors in their life. They can actually seem quite stable, charming and personable as long as things are going well and they’re not dealing with a significant amount of stress.

The key thing with BPD is that they’re absolutely mortified of losing relationships. They are highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone. When they feel that relationships are threatened, they react with intense feelings of fear and anger, and they make VERY impulsive life-altering decisions. Relationships with BPD people are typically VERY intense and dependent. Now does this sound like Anakin or what?

Because he didn’t feel the relationship was threatened during that time. As soon as he thought there was a threat to the relationship, he flipped. He essentially made a deal with the Devil, betrayed all of his colleagues, and turned to the dark side because he was so intensely afraid of losing the relationship. Predictably, this actually alienates Padmé, and as soon as she tells him that she can’t follow him down this path, and he thinks she’s betrayed him, he violently lashes out at her. I’m sorry, but that’s quintessential BPD.

 

It's not like that was an overnight changes, though; choking Padme was him lashing out in the heat of the moment while immersed in the Dark Side/having his paranoia fanned by Palpatine, and his rift with Obi-Wan evolved gradually over years of Palp's patient manipulations.

Yeah, that checks out more. I'm not a physiatrist and I don't know anyone (as far as I know, anyway) with BPD, so I was just going off what my impression was of it; I thought it was that one of their issues was a difficulty maintaining stable relationships.

Well, I think there's a bit more to it then all of that; for instance while he attacked Mace out of desperation in order to maintain the possibility of saving Padme, he slaughtered the rest of the Jedi because he had bought into Palpatine's lies, and his choking Padme seemed to be very much a heat of the moment thing he did without thinking.

 

Palpatine’s manipulations certainly didn’t help here, but much of that is also BPD. It’s actually pretty consistent with a concept known as “idealization and devaluation” or “splitting”.

Anakin tends to view people as being all good or all bad. There is no middle ground for Anakin. When Anakin views people as being all good, he attributes exaggeratedly positive qualities to them. When Anakin views people as being all bad, he attributes exaggeratedly negative qualities to them. He splits the world into black and white. And here’s the thing. This process can go from idealization to devaluation within a matter of seconds…and then back again.

Anakin Force chokes Padmé because he’s now devalued her. She’s quickly gone from being utterly idealized, the only person who understands him, to being someone who cruelly betrayed him to Obi-Wan and is trying to have Anakin killed. Same with Obi-Wan. Constantly goes back and forth from idealization to devaluation.

Anakin’s behavior is more or less textbook BPD.

In the long run, they do have problems with stable relationships. But a 3-year marriage is actually more common when you think. Basically, Revenge of the Sith is the story of how Anakin alienated everyone and ruined his life because of a BPD episode. (Most BPD episodes don’t result in people becoming Darth Vader. They’re more likely to make really impulsive bad choices, drive people away from them, blow a bunch of money, get a DUI, that sort of thing. Anakin’s episode is pretty radical and extreme.)

He attacks Mace out of desperation because he can’t bear the thought of losing the relationship. That’s textbook BPD. Acting impulsively in a desperate attempt to avoid losing a relationship.

He slaughters the rest of the Jedi because he (rather delusionally but also impulsively) believes that will give him the power to save the relationship.

It’s not actually about saving Padmé. It’s about his pathological fear of abandonment…which is why he rapidly turns on her and lashes out when he thinks she’s abandoned him. That’s classic BPD. Your impulsive actions end up actually destroying the relationship, rather than saving it, which causes the BPD person to rapidly devalue the person and lash out.

Palpatine’s main contribution is recognizing that Anakin has a pathological fear of abandonment (the Jedi apparently do not realize this), and recognizing that Anakin is starving for praise and approval (again, the Jedi do not realize this). Palpatine manages to use that knowledge to push all the necessary buttons to enslave Anakin.

 

Anakin does what the author needs him to do at any particular time. The PT is a narrative where you have to bury your head in the sand in order to not see the strings.

 

Did he?

I always thought he attacked them because he bought into (delusionally or not) the whole "the Jedi are corrupt and plotting to overthrow the Republic" thing. I mean, he even says to Obi-Wan that "he's seen through the lies of the Jedi" and that "the Jedi are evil!"

But anyway. This is all almost certainly coincidental; it's *highly* unlikely Lucas intended any of this to be read this way. And as I said, I'm personally hesitant to diagnose *any* fictional person with a mental disorder. So while it can be read that way and make perfect sense, I doubt it's the way we're meant to have interpreted it.

I hate sand...

 

In what sense exactly? At least in regards to Anakin.

 

I have no doubt that Anakin has successfully deluded himself into believing all that, but it all comes back to his fear of abandonment. What is Darth Sidious’s pitch towards him, after all? (Which the film heavily emphasizes.)

“He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.”

“Learn to know the dark side of the Force, Anakin, and you will be able to save your wife from certain death.”

“I have the power to save the one you love.”

“Just help me save Padme's life. I can't live without her.”

It’s all about saving his relationship with Padmé. It’s all because he’s utterly terrified of being abandoned. He’s utterly terrified of being alone. And he will do literally *anything* to prevent that. (Predictably, his attempts backfire and cause the very thing he wants to stop.)

I agree that it’s likely coincidental and unintentional on Lucas’s part. Still, it’s just about the only way anything Anakin does in Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith makes that much sense. I’m not sure it’s a great testament to Lucas’s ability to write this kind of a complex, tragic character that you have to diagnose the character with a personality disorder to make it work or for it to make any sense.

 

I'm just not seeing where Anakin's actions aren't logically consistent or require a mental disorder contrivance for explanation.

 

Maybe it’s just me, but I always thought the fact that he went from feeling anguished over his actions (“What have I done?”) to child murder within a matter of hours was pretty f-ing rapid. It makes sense if you assume he has a personality disorder. All the “I love you, I need you, I’ll die without you” stuff in Attack of the Clones is pretty cringeworthy anyway, but it’s a bit easier to stomach (although not much) if you assume he has BPD. It really explains why Anakin always overreacts to things and behaves in such an impulsive, reckless, and irrational manner. It does make sense of how his relationships with people just quickly turn on a dime.

Viewing his turn to the dark side in Revenge of the Sith as a desperate, irrational attempt to avoid the pain of losing a relationship at any cost, makes much more sense of it. Here’s the thing: He also would’ve become Darth Vader if Padmé had divorced him. It was never about saving her life. It was always about “You can’t leave me. I’m not emotionally equipped to handle that.” That’s why he strangles her after he thinks she’s betrayed him and that she’s in cahoots with Obi-Wan.

Idealization and devaluation, or splitting, really makes sense of his relationship with Obi-Wan. It explains how he can quickly go from loving Obi-Wan, and regarding him as a mentor and a father figure, to hating his stinking guts, and then back again, within a matter of less than 3 minutes. It’s all black and white for him. Love or hate. Good or evil. No in between. No nuance.

I’ll grant that “Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader because he had a personality disorder” might not be the most compelling story in the world (and it honestly isn’t that much fun either, as much as it is just kind of exhausting), but that’s what the films gave us.

 

I meant that in the sense that he has BPD. Sorry, I should have tagged the previous comment.

If you have to diagnose a fictional character with a mental disorder just so the authors writing makes sense... and that mental disorder was never meant to be there by the author in the first place... then the character is most likely just badly written. I mean, if the point of the PT is that the Jedi essentially failed to raise Anakin in a healthy environment, then that kind of slaps the OT across the face for just reestablishing everything.

Honestly, I don't think Lucas ever had a point to any of this. He just threw everything and the kitchen sink at the screen in order to get Anakin into a Darth Vader suit so that he could get his special effects demo reels up to feature length.

 

I don’t entirely blame the Jedi for this. They do give Anakin some excellent advice that he should really take to heart. The stuff about keeping your mind in the present, meditating, being emotionally self-aware and not letting your fears and anxieties control you is basically what’s known as dialectical behavior therapy, and it’s considered the gold standard for treating BPD. And the films do make it pretty clear that Anakin ignores the DBT and doesn’t really take it to heart (how much of this is his own stubbornness and how much is Sidious’s malign influence is left ambiguous).

The problem with the Jedi is that teaching him not to connect with people is pretty dogmatic and delusional, and it’s just bound to end in failure. They actually continue banging this drum with Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, when they tell him, “Just let Han and Leia die” or when they tell him, “Don’t redeem your father. Just kill him.” However, Luke is actually a stable, emotionally self-aware human being, unlike his father, so he just ignores their advice, he doesn’t listen to them, and he turns out fine. No wonder he grows disillusioned with them in The Last Jedi.

It also doesn’t help that Obi-Wan’s teaching style seems to be a combination of sarcasm, harsh criticism, and visible frustration with Anakin. (He’s much better with Luke.) This one falls under, “Much of this could’ve likely been avoided if Qui-Gon had lived.” Luke basically ends up providing Anakin with what Anakin could’ve had if Qui-Gon had lived- someone who’s supportive of Anakin, someone who loves Anakin unconditionally and won’t abandon him, but who remains calm in the face of his outbursts, expects the best of him, firmly but gently sets clear boundaries with him (“I will not fight you, father”, “I will not turn”, etc.), and won’t tolerate his crap or make excuses for him. Luke doesn’t redeem Anakin, but he opens the door for Anakin to redeem himself, when Anakin finally realizes that Luke isn’t gonna abandon him. Luke is willing to die for Anakin. Anakin won’t lose this connection (as long as he does something right now before Sidious murders Luke, obviously), and he finally is able to feel confident and secure about a connection in his life, and thus, he finally finds peace.

BPD is actually strongly associated with childhood trauma, and I would say that literal child slavery more than fits the bill there.

 

I'd suggest that being separated from Shmi at 9, combined with "she's still in slavery, and thus, in some degree of potential peril and suffering" might have been preying on his mind for much of the 10 years that go by between TPM and AOTC.

It's a long-term, ongoing trauma in that respect.

 

This is one of those areas where it makes no logical sense for Shmi to have remained a slave that whole time anyway. Yeah, I can see what Lucas is going for, but I have to toss common sense out the window in order to get there. The Jedi and/or Padme could have bought her freedom moments after TPM ended, but they didn't because...

And this is where I again mention that the events of the PT are cranked up to 11 for no reason. Both Anakin AND Shmi could have been freed in TPM and the story reworked so that she had to remain on Tatooine. AOTC could have still involved her getting married to Cliegg and subsequently kidnapped by Tuskens. She didn't need to remain a slave, but Lucas wanted her to remain a slave so that it weighs heavily on Anakin... even though it doesn't make any sense for no one to have went back for her.

 

In Legends, Qui-Gon arranges for her to get goods, in secret, that would make her able to buy her own freedom if she's reasonably sneaky and manages to get some kind of assistance (to get around "a slave's property is also their master's". The fact that Obi-Wan never tells Anakin about this, when he knows, is a little odd - but it may be, that he simply didn't want to distract Anakin from attempting nonattachment, with talk of possibilities.

The Jedi didn't go back for her because they valued nonattachment so much, maybe.

Padme, in the "Disney Canon" did send someone back for her the moment she ceased to be a "Naboo public official" and became a private citizen again - but by that time she'd already been bought by Cliegg.

It would appear that Lucas, for one reason or other, wanted Anakin to not know what had happened to Padme until his return to Tatooine - whether she was still a slave or not, alive or not, etc - maybe for Anakin's visions to be extra-traumatic.

 

Well, when it comes to Shmi, there’s basically a big direction problem and performance problem in The Phantom Menace. We get that he’s sad about leaving his mother, but we never really see just how much this has gutted and traumatized him…which we kinda needed to see.

I think if someone like Spielberg had directed the film, we really would’ve gotten a sense of Anakin’s total separation anxiety here, which would’ve better set up the next two films.

 

“Now his failure is complete.” -Vader on Obi-Wan, ROTJ

 

You certainly aren't the first to get whiplash from that. Anakin I don't believe intended for Mace to die there. He was trying to protect what he perceived to be his one chance at saving Padme. I don't think he realized - at least not immediately - that by slicing off Mace's hand he was condemning him to death. He's in shock by what he just saw unfold, "What have I done?" but by this point there is no going back. Really, this scene is why the confession scene and really everything that takes place on Tatooine in AOTC is so important when it comes to his turn. Anakin killing the Tusken women and the children set a precedent that he has it in him to commit horrific, irredeemable acts in the name of either avenging the ones he loves or in this instance allegedly protecting them. I know many struggle with TPM and AOTC for a variety of reasons, but I think people who believe you can just excise them and watch ROTS often perceive Anakin's turn as rushed, when really it's far from it. That cake started baking the moment he promised his mom that he'd "come back and free her."

Now when it comes to the romance, I simply saw it as GL's attempt at making something in the vein of Romeo & Juliet(not the first or the last to make this comparison, I know.) I do understand why people find it cringe-worthy, but to steal a line from George Lucas that's usually used to mock him "It's stylistically designed to be that way" and for me it largely works. I enjoy the Greek tragedy angle Lucas was going for and a courtly romance fits that narrative aesthetic. From my POV applying a personality disorder to that is adding a level of realism to a fantasy genre where it isn't really compatible. If that makes it easier to swallow for you, then yeah, I mean, good, but given the genre it just seems out of place to me.

But it was rational in a universe where there's such a thing as the force. The Jedi weren't giving him any options from his POV. Palpatine presented him with a solution to his problem. He can't just dismiss his dreams as dreams when he knows from past experience that they're actually premonitions. Anakin isn't the type who can let things go. All the prequels demonstrate this in one way or another, so it makes sense for Anakin to gravitate towards a solution that allows him to preserve the status quo with Padme and doesn't involve "celebrating" her becoming one with the force a.k.a. her death. Yoda really dropped the ball there from Anakin's viewpoint, I imagine. I agree that his love for Padme was predicated on codependency and he saw her as a possession of sorts; disturbingly enough she'd become a surrogate mom for him ever since they left Tatooine in TPM, adding a whole semi-creepy Oedipus vibe to their romance. It's all insanely toxic to state the obvious.

When it comes to Obi-Wan, he's has a love/hate relationship with him since Clones. He feels that he's holding him back. It's natural - I think - for someone who is a prodigy like Anakin to feed into their own hype and feel very early on that they're "above" being trained. There's nothing BPD about it; it really comes down to petulance and a swollen ego.

Seeing things in terms of black and white, that's Star Wars, really. Star Wars is largely a morality tale and doesn't leave a lot of room for ambiguity. Though I do feel the prequels brought more shades of grey to the universe than the OT and that's one of the reasons I admire them so much. It's more ambiguous, less clearly defined with who is good and who is bad.

Edit: I know you were referring to how Anakin views the world, but that is how things are mostly defined in the world of Star Wars: black & white.

 

I dunno. I think it feels rushed because he actually seems as if he’s in a pretty good place for the 1st half hour or so of Revenge of the Sith. He’s laid-back, he’s confident, he’s calm. He and Obi-Wan are on much better terms than they were in the last movie. I actually kinda like this guy…then it spirals downhill pretty quickly once his pathological fear of abandonment and rejection is triggered.

Yeah, basically, I just kind of have to declare that both of them have very serious mental health issues to accept that romance even slightly. I’m not sure what Padmé has, but she certainly possesses some of the characteristics of an enabler:

- She makes excuses for his violent rages (“To be angry is to be human”)
- She hides his dysfunctional actions (slaughtering the Sand People) from public view
- She keeps secrets for him (the forbidden marriage, and again, slaughtering the Sand People)
- She refuses to confront him or protect herself when he physically assaults her, instead just dying of a broken heart and maintaining that there’s still good in him

The relationship is just totally dysfunctional and really not fun to watch. It’s actually kind of painful and unpleasant to watch, but never really handled with the seriousness or gravity it deserves.

But does he have any proof that the Force has the power to cheat death? The only person saying it does is the Sith Lord whom he KNOWS has been lying to him for over a decade. If it does exist, why didn’t the Jedi use it to save Qui-Gon, for example? Still strikes me as pretty irrational.

And wouldn’t it be easier just to take her to the best doctor on Coruscant and basically say, “Make sure nothing happens to the very important Senator.” That would actually be a rational response. But no, trust the guy who’s been lying to everyone for years and years. I’m sure he’s trustworthy.

But he does the same thing with Padmé. One minute, it’s “You’re the only one who understands me, whom I truly love”, then, seconds later, when he thinks she’s with Obi-Wan, he tries to kill her! He definitely qualifies for unstable and changing relationships. Notice how, with him, everyone is either on a pedestal or he hates them. There’s no in-between for him. He either totally idealizes people or he totally devalues them.

Well, Anakin himself is an example of a character who isn’t entirely good or evil. I’d also name Han Solo and Lando Calrissian as characters who have more shading to them.

I’m pretty solidly convinced that Anakin has BPD. He meets many of the criteria for it, he has the background of childhood trauma, he acts in ways that suddenly make a sense of great deal of sense if you accept the diagnosis. Again, I posted a video where an actual therapist basically says, “Anakin’s a textbook case of BPD.” Honestly, the story just makes more sense if I accept he has it.

I think that’s part of why I enjoy the original trilogy more. No personality disorders. No toxic, dysfunctional relationships. Just good, fun, solid space adventure. A hero’s journey, dogfights in space, broadly appealing and likable archetypes, that sort of thing.