PT Anakin's killing of Dooku

Am I the only person who doesn't view his killing of Dooku as an act that in and of itself was even of the dark side? I am not referring to the anger he used in his duel, but the act of killing him. It appeared to me that Anakin had calmed down a bit when he held the lightsabers to Dooku's neck, not unlike how Luke calmed down after defeating Vader in ROTJ.

The key difference here, in my opinion, is that Luke views Palpatine as evil and the enemy. Yes, he could have been egged on, similarly to bullies egging kids on. However, with Anakin, he viewed Palpatine as a kindly uncle and he was the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, somebody to be looked up to. Somebody whose orders MUST be obeyed. When Anakin killed Dooku, I viewed it as him simply following orders. He didn't do the right thing in any case, but the simple act just wasn't going to do anything to influence his turn to the dark side, save for opening up the Sith apprentice spot.

It would have been different if Anakin seemed angry when he killed Dooku. In the novel, Dooku mentions Padme. Why was this not included in the movie? It would have made him seem more angry and would have been a great mirror for Vader taunting Luke about his sister. THEN Anakin's killing of Dooku would have been more of the dark side.

Anyone else feel similarly?

 

Dooku had to die....it was time for him to die.

 

You have a couple of good points.

While that's somewhat true, Anakin was following orders from the Supreme Chancellor.

But Anakin had a choice and he could have chosen not to.

Also it is against the Jedi Code to kill an unharmed prisoner. Secondly, Anakin knew he shouldn't have killed Dooku like that. He even said so. And he wasn't just about "following orders", as Palpatine said, "He cut off your arm, you wanted revenge."Which is very much true. Why did Anakin take both of his arms? And revenge is a product of the Dark Side.

 

Yes and no. Clearly the act of killing an unarmed prisoner is not the Jedi way, but nor is refusing orders. And despite the isolated immorality, it can be no doubt that keeping a Sith Lord alive serves little purpose for the betterment of the Galaxy. So the end clearly justifies the means. The leader of the Jedi Council more or less agree with this.

In any case, the OP brings up an important point. Anakin does not appear to be angry or out of control, it does not look like this is something he really wants to do. He refers to the Jedi code in a way to justify his own morality, not to say "yes I want to, but I'm not allowed". At least that's what the acting is telling me. (The novel takes another view). So is it a dark trait? Yes since even the orders of the supreme chancellor doesn't supersede the Jedi code, but nor is it the act of someone about to go over the edge. Anakin's conflict is real. Compare it to the Sand People, or even his first encounter with Dooku to see the difference. Those are instances where he wanted to kill.

 

I always felt the scene to be rather sloppy myself,

I get what Lucas was trying to do, especially mirroring it to ROTJ and having Anakin kill him so he could replace him later on but the whole thing seemed kinda lame, especially since he had a big introduction in the latter part of AOTC.

 

The Jedi have a code that they live by and one part of that is that a Jedi must never kill an unarmed individual that cannot fight back, which is what Anakin did. Even when told to by the Chancellor, a Jedi must ever adhere to the Code first and foremost and not follow the passions of one individual. Anakin questioned what he did afterwards because part of him wanted to kill Dooku and part of him knew it was wrong. The whole point of the duel was to get Anakin to do that and accept the moral view of killing in cold blood is okay. Mace and Anakin are tricked as Palpatine was not helpless. Mace was manipulated into doing it because of how dangerous Palpatine truly was and Anakin lost sight of that.

 

If there is a problem with this scene it is that it really doesn't come off like Anakin wants to do it. He doesn't look angry or out of balance at all. I think I would prefer a bit more clear and concise dark tendencies.

 

When Anakin is fighting Dooku, he is told that he is afraid to use his anger and hate against him. Then he winds up going ballistic on him and manages to finally win. He doesn't have to look like Luke did. He just has to question himself, which he did. That's why Palpatine reminds him of his mother's death and his reaction then. If he looks like he wanted to do it, then he'd turn already. Lucas wanted us to see that it was more than just killing Dooku that sets things in motion. Hence Anakin goes back for Obi-wan which was not supposed to happen, according to Palpatine's plan.

 

Anakin looked at Palpatine as a father figure, and Palpatine just took advantage of that. I didn't look at Anakin killing Dooku as a pure dark side rage moment. He knew it was wrong but believed it was for the greater good.

 

When does Dooku mention Padme in the novel?

 

Anakin wasn't in a fiery rage the moment he executed Dooku, but that doesn't make it any more justifiable. Even if the order did come from the Chancellor, did he have the authority to command a Jedi Knight to carry out the death penalty to an unarmed prisoner? Given Anakin's dialogue immediately afterward, I think not. Plus, he ignores Palpatine's later direction to leave Obi-Wan behind. This early in the film, Anakin is already conflicted as he is being pulled emotionally in multiple directions. His grabbing Dooku's red-bladed saber and igniting it, I think, is a sort of visual metaphor indicating that he is torn between light and dark. This particular instance involves a choice Anakin is presented with multiple times in ROTS; each of which have serious implications. Anakin killed Dooku because he wanted to. He wanted revenge not just for himself, but for all the Jedi Dooku had killed. Perhaps the galaxy would in fact be better off with Dooku gone, but even that alone is not reason enough to kill an unarmed combatant who could well have been more valuable alive than dead.

 

This exactly ^^

 

Dooku's death is an instance of what I consider to be the destructive side of the light side. The tenants of the light side call for Dooku to be spared, but having to drag a literally unarmed prisoner along with the "defenseless" chancellor and an unconcious obi-wan (though he later awakened) through the flagship of the enemy fleet is unfeasible. Destroying yourself and your allies through an irrational level of adherence to the jedi code.

 

So Anakin was just following orders? Where I have heard that before.....

 

First off, the Invisible Hand wasn't damaged yet. Second, capturing Dooku would result in staying in the general's quarters until Obi-wan was revived. Then they would take off for the shuttle bay. Dooku could be used as their insurance for getting off the Hand.

 

I think that was the point - murdering someone in cold blood is, in some ways, worse than an unpremeditated/heat of the moment attack. Not any better for the victim, obviously, but the fact that Anakin chose to do it when he wasn't out of his mind with grief or anger is closer to the sort of calculated cruelty we see from Sidious, Dooku, etc. - which is exactly why Palpatine encouraged him to do it.

 

Anakin's killing of Dooku was an emotional reaction. Just because he wasn't frothing at mouth with anger and rage doesn't mean it wasn't an emotional response. Dooku's execution was just Anakin being greedy and giving into his want for revenge. This is hammered home through the exposition of Palpatine reminding Anakin it was only natural to feel that way because Dooku cut of his arm, and reminding Anakin of how he felt with the Tuskens.

We hear Anakin say it is not the "Jedi way". This tells us that the Jedi are not suppose to execute people. So we know that Anakin is aware of this rule. We now know Anakin realizes right from wrong as it pertains to the "Jedi way", however he ignores that and simply cuts off Dooku's head anyway. So it is an emotional response, Palpatine is just that little devil that is sitting on one of his shoulders telling him it's ok to do it, where as the "Jedi way" is sitting on his other shoulder telling him not to (picture a cartoon).




However, go further into the movie where Mace is about to execute Palpatine. Once again we hear Anakin say it's not the Jedi way, however, we know that this reasoning is only to try and convince Mace not to kill Palpatine. The real reason is an emotional reason. As Anakin becomes more frantic to convince Mace not to kill Palpatine, we finally hear Anakins real feelings come through, "I need him!". Once again an emotional reaction, not a reaction really grounded in the "Jedi Way".

Just a little side note, I love the mirroring of those two scenes. In the Dooku murder scene we hear Palpatine say that Dooku was too dangerous to stay alive, then in the Mace vs Palpatine scene we hear mace says Palpatines too dangerous to stay alive..

 

It's an emotional reaction, sure, but there was also calculated thought behind it in a way there wasn't when he massacred the Tuskens.

Similarly, in the scene in Palpatine's office, there are emotions behind Anakin's decision - but it is a decision, something he pauses and thinks about before making his choice.

So, yes, definitely emotional decisions (and not terribly rational ones), and he knows what he's doing isn't right/the Jedi way...but with the Tuskens, I don't think the idea of "the Jedi way" or right vs. wrong even entered into his mind at the time. In that sense, his killing of Dooku was emotional, but it wasn't purely emotional.

 

That's why the novelization has a line that describes it as if he was given permission to do what he wanted to do.

 

I'm not sure I entirely agree with you. You have to be pretty calculating to hunt down and slaughter every single member of a camp. Don't forget it was not just the men, but the women and children. To suggest that he wasn't in his right mind when he killed them all, comes across as alleviating him of some of the fault in his actions. It sounds like he didn't have a choice, when clearly he did have choices, and he chose not to only to murder the specific tuskens that may have carried out his mothers kidnapping, but, he chose to kill women and children that may or may not have even known.

As I said earlier, he may not have been in a blind rage like he was with the Tuskens, but the killing of Dooku and Mace were no less emotional. He killed the Tuskens because they took something from him. He killed Dooku because he took something from him (his arm), and he essentially killed Mace because Mace was about to take something from him (Padme through Palpatine). If Dooku had never caused Anakin personal pain, well I think Anakin would of been a little less eager to kill Dooku. If Palpatine hadn't put the stories of being able to save Padme into Anakins head, well I don't think that Anakin cuts Mace Windu's hand off. Those are decisions he made based off of emotions, just like slaughtering tuskens.

I's also like to point out that he may have paused for a moment with Dooku, but, even before he paused he still brought both lightsabres up to a broken and beaten Dooku's neck. You can tell Anakin wanted too kill him right from the moment he cut his hands off, but, so I don't think it was so much permission from Palpatine that put him over the edge, but it was more the justification from someone else that he wanted to hear...

 

That may have been poorly phrased - Anakin definitely had a choice when it came to massacring the Tusken and was entirely responsible for his decision, I'm not trying to suggest otherwise. But, in that moment, he was also overcome with grief and rage. He was also angry when he killed Dooku, but he was calm enough to talk about the choice he was making with Palpatine. He pauses, and then says "I shouldn't..." while clearly struggling with the decision. In the Tusken camp, he doesn't hesitate or seem to consider what he should do. We don't see him have any internal conflict until after it's over when he's talking to Padme.

When he killed Dooku, he was angry over losing his arm - but that happened three years previously, it wasn't the same immediate impetus. He was angry that Dooku had hurt Obi-Wan, but there's a difference between someone he cared about being hurt and them being murdered. So it was an emotional decision, but it was emotional in addition to a considered decision. He acknowledged verbally that he "shouldn't" do it, and then did it anyway. He wanted to kill Dooku from the start, but he had enough control over himself and his emotions to pause and consider what he was about to do...and then he chose to do it anyway.

And in Palpatine's office, yes, it was his emotions over Padme that drove him to make that decision. But it was a decision he had time to think over, first when he stayed behind in the Council chambers while Windu and the others went off to arrest Palpatine, and then when he interrupted the fight and stood there listening to both sides trying to convince him.

It's the "time to think over" his decision that makes the difference, to me. His murder of Dooku and intervention in the Palpatine/Windu fight were both premeditated; his massacre of the Tuskens was not. That doesn't make his actions excusable, but it does show a different mindset.

 

I guess I am not sure what you're trying to say...? I see that you are trying to draw a line between what Anakin did to the Tuskens, and what he did to Dooku and Mace, but, I am not sure what you are trying to say about that line and the differences.

Could you elaborate further please?

 

Sure.

There isn't a moral difference between what Anakin did to the Tuskens and what he did to Dooku - both were murder, and both were wrong. (I'll leave out Mace for the time being since Anakin didn't actually strike the fatal blow, even though he was involved in his death). You could even make the argument that the killing of the Tuskens was worse because of the scale and the innocents involved.

But there is a difference in Anakin's mindset - the difference between "premeditated" and "unpremeditated." When he had Dooku at his mercy, he clearly wanted to kill him, but he was in a rational enough mindset to pause and think about what he was doing. He was aware enough of the wrongness of what he was considering that he was able to voice it aloud, telling Palpatine that he "shouldn't" do it. And then he went ahead and did it anyway.

Anakin's massacre of the Tuskens, on the other hand, was framed as him lashing out as an immediate expression of his grief and rage. We don't see him hesitate. We don't see him think about it. The moment Shmi dies, his expression transforms into one of rage and he goes straight out of the tent and takes the first swing at the Tuskens outside. It all seems very "heat of the moment."

Basically the difference, in my opinion, is that the Tusken massacre seems like more of a reaction (a morally awful and vastly out of proportion reaction, but a reaction nonetheless) to something terrible. It's not something that seems likely to happen again, as the circumstances were extremely unusual.

His murder of Dooku is more proactive - while it was influenced in part by things that had happened such as Anakin losing his arm or Dooku knocking Obi-Wan unconscious, those are less immediate (the arm thing was three years before) and less extreme (I'm sure Anakin's seen any number of enemies give Obi-Wan similar minor injuries and managed not to behead them). Even though Anakin is obviously upset, it's not because he's suddenly having to cope with something horrible and traumatic that Dooku just did. He's less upset than he was on Tatooine, and more able to think about what he's doing. And since he chose to do it anyway, it seems more likely that he might choose to do something similar again.

And that's what Palpatine wanted. Not just for Anakin to kill people when he's upset and then think about it afterward and realize he shouldn't have, but for him to choose to kill someone when his head was already relatively clear. Not ignoring all the reasons why it's wrong, from morality to the Jedi Code, but thinking about them and then consciously deciding not to care.

Anakin's actions on Tatooine showed his potential for the dark side. But his actions on the Invisible Hand showed his potential to be a Sith.

 

OK I am with you here...

I think calling them premeditated and unpremeditated is a bit of a stretch. Anakin didn't search Dooku out for the purpose of killing him. It was a decision based on the circumstances he had in front of him, not a planned decision, which to me is not premeditation. Both decisions, the Tuskens and Dooku were snap decisions based on the circumstances in front of him. That snap decision based solely on his emotions of selfishness, revenge, and anger. The difference being the level of emotion behind each action. Obviously he is going to be more ramped up because of the death of his mother.

Again I disagree, if anything we see Anakin give into those snap "heat of the moment" decisions. The Tuskens, Mace, Padme, the various Imperials in Empire. That's one of Anakin's problems is that he can't control his emotions, and that is what makes him susceptible to the Dark Side.

I don't see Anakin able to let go of the anger he has for what Dooku did to him, even if it's 3 years prior. Again, that is one of the character faults of Anakin Skywalker the inability to let go. To let go of his anger, his love, his attachments etc...

This one I thought about a while, and I started to maybe agree with you until I thought of the difference between Darth Maul and Darth Tyranus. I picture Maul being more what happened on Tatooine, just a fuel raged ball of hate, lashing out at anything in his path. Whereas Dooku was a more reserved Sith. I think that the contrast in the two shows that there was room for both in the Sith ranks, that one wasn't any better than the other. I think Palpatine was the Ideal Sith because he could spark that rage at a moments notice (ROTJ, ROTS), but, was reserved enough to control himself and his emotions to not give himself away.

Those are just my opinions.
Great post by you, gave you a like for a very well thought out and articulated post.

 

To quote the Revenge of the Sith novelization:

Now, obviously this is Anakin's own biased perspective, and I don't think we can take it totally at face value. I would disagree, for example, that his slaughter of the Tuskens had been beyond his control. That was his own choice, too, even if he's denial about it. But it's clear that there's a difference between the two actions. Elsewhere in the book, we see Dooku described as "the victim of Anakin Skywalker's first cold-blooded murder." His first. That suggests there's a difference between his murder of Dooku and all the people he'd killed previously, and the difference is in his mindset. Killing Dooku wasn't a "snap decision based soley on his emotions of selfishness, revenge, and anger" because you don't pause to deliberate aloud with the other person in the room over whether or not you should do something in a snap decision.

We do see him make heat of the moment decisions all the time, but not on the scale of massacring an entire village, including innocents. That's the sort of thing I was pointing out as unlikely to be repeated. If he had never joined the Sith, then from what we see in AotC and TCW, he's only likely to hurt/kill someone unnecessarily if either a loved one is in danger, or has been injured/killed. Which isn't good, obviously, but it's a far cry from Force-choking random Imperial officers to death just because he finds them irritating. That's a pattern that starts with Dooku: killing people not because he's overcome with grief/vengeance/anger, but just because he wants to.

He still has anger over Dooku cutting off his arm, but it's not immediate or overwhelming. On Tatooine, everything he did after his mother died was clouded with his grief and anger. Even when he's in the garage with Padme he's ranting, throwing things, breaking down into tears, etc. With Dooku, he's no longer in that stage. He's angry, but there's more going on in his mind than just his anger.

Ah, but Maul clearly wasn't a very GOOD Sith, was he? I mean, he got himself killed in a single movie

I may not have phrased that very well - I don't think having that rage is mutually exclusive with being a Sith, but I do think you need that colder anger and cooler temperament as well. So there's room for both in the Sith ranks, but a Sith who isn't in control of their anger won't go very far. With Maul, he uses his violence only as ordered by Sidious - he's not running around with his actions being determined solely by his emotions. So yeah, I don't think we actually disagree on this one - it's the capability to have that reserve that really matters, even though a Sith might choose to let their rage take over.