CT What Sort of Villain is Lord Vader?

I liked in Rogue One that they showed the political side of Vader. He is not in favor of just randomly blowing up planets.

 

Agreed. Additionally, he does say the following in ANH: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." If memory serves, Vader pretty much agreed with Thrawn's opinion regarding the Death Star in EU. Thrawn preferred resources be allocated to the expansion of the Imperial fleet. Sidious Palpatine wanted the superweapon built for the purpose of terrorizing the galaxy. That would enable him to have more time to study the dark side. That's why he had another one built.

But, then, Vader pretty much despises everyone under Sidious and himself in the Empire. There were a few exceptions, including Thrawn, Tarkin, and Piett, but those were few and far between. Disney canon depicts him hating the Inquisitors, and I'm certain he would loathe Jerec and Mara Jade in the EU. As I recall, he didn't seem to like Mara. Mara wanted to go and slay An'ya Kuro the Dark Woman, but Vader wound up with that assignment. It's really apparent that he both loved and hated Sidious Palpatine. After all, in a twisted way, the megalomanic sociopath was all he had left. All of this goes to show that Vader is both lawful and chaotic in his own ways.

Granted, if by some strange piece of magic Vader successfully ousted and slew Palpatine, I severely doubt that most of the Imperial officers would respect him. Most likely, he'd wind up killed by someone blowing up his ship, and then, to quote the Senate, it would be "civil war without end." I don't know why, but I like the way McDiarmid said that. Ha ha ha.

 

"Sidious Palpatine" would still be a better first name than "Sheev".

 

Occasionally, I will say "Anakin Vader." But I agree. I typically like James Luceno's writings, but for the life of me, I can't fathom why he decided to name Palpatine that in a Tarkin book. I personally think that Palpatine's father named him Cosigna after himself, and that's why Palpatine got rid of it. I think I referred to him as Darth Sidious Palpatine around 2005 and I decided to shorten it to Sidious Palpatine because it balances out both the Sith identity and the political identity. While he is the ultimate evil, I do think that Palpatine is a very human character because he embodies all the worst aspects of humanity. Ha ha.

I prefer Vader as a villain because he's complicated, whereas Sidious is only nuanced in his approach to things. Otherwise, there's not a lot to him. Having said that, I do find myself agreeing with some of his teachings to Vader, such as when he ordered Vader to shed his obsession with finding Obi-Wan and the Jedi in the EU. And we just saw this in OBK.

Sheev sounds like a good name for a gangster thug perhaps. Honestly, it doesn't sound like a Naboo name to me.

 

I suspect he got it from George Lucas. It's likely a reference to Michael Moorcock's "Kane of Old Mars" books, where the Sheev were a benevolent long-dead race of Martian precursors. But "evil be thou my good," in the words of Milton's Satan, so it was used for the first name for the GFFA version of Lucifer. (For another Paradise Lost reference in SW, see Belial talking about God potentially making renewed war against the devils of Hell: "...should intermitted vengeance arm again/His red right hand to plague us?")

 

Luceno didn’t create the name, it comes straight from George Lucas. It’s speculated to be derived from Shiva, which is greatly fitting for a Naboo name

 

Somebody should've shanked Sheev with a shiv.

 

Indeed. But Vader threw Sidious down. There's that. Heh.

I like the interpretation that Vader and Sidious grew apart because the of the events of The Force Unleashed. It's pretty clear that Vader and Sidious were more or less comfortable in each other's presence and working together before the end of that game. However, I like Vader's sarcastic line to Sidious at the end of the game, and Sidious almost seems irritated with the fact that he has to keep Vader as an apprentice instead of Galen Marek. The irony is that Sidious had three loyal apprentices. Maul was the most loyal; Tyranus was mostly loyal and only fleetingly considered betrayal; and Vader was loyal up until the Marek situation. But Sidious was hooked on his manipulation games and he knew how to alienate people.

 

Is it just me or did the relationship between Vader and Sidious change in New Canon, compared to Legends?

Looking back i have the impression that Sidious made himself appear to be more of a friend to Vader to manipulate him, in Legends.

While Canon Palps often treatened him with far more contempt, Vader seems to be far more willing to get rid of him.

 

From my understanding, he mistreated him in both versions. After the Death Star was destroyed by Luke, Sidious punished Vader differently in each version. In the EU, he severed his hand. In Disney canon, he demoted him and promoted Tagge until Vader re-proved himself. In Legends, Sidious attempted to steer Vader away from being obsessed with Obi-Wan and surviving Jedi, since he did not regard them as threats. In Disney canon, Sidious was focused on wiping out the Jedi completely. However, OBK shows Sidious swaying Vader away from being fixated on Obi-Wan, which is consistent with Legends. I like to think that Vader and Sidious' experience with Galen Marek in The Force Unleashed drove them further apart, but they were always frenemies, so to speak.

 

I'd argue Vader's disposition is neutral evil. Sure, he speaks of wanting to "end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." He is authoritarian and he does like order, but he ultimately wants to establish his own order. He would happily kill the Emperor and assume his position if he could get away with it. He says as much in TESB and ROTS.

Darth Vader is entirely self-centred and power hungry. He would betray almost anybody to get his own way.

 

First thing we need to acknowledge is that Anakin is Vader and Vader is Anakin. Vader has always been there deep inside Anakin before ROTS. Ultimately we all know it was his choice and his choice alone to pursue his selfish desires over what he should actually do as a Jedi of the PT era. He knows he's not supposed to break the Jedi Code and pursue a romance with Padme. He did it anyway....and married her too.

Anakin/Vader has consistently put himself ahead of the greater good when a choice was presented to him. Therefore, when Anakin was at his very best, he is chaotic neutral at best. But the moment Vader seeped through and took over him completely, he is definitely chaotic evil. Anakin/Vader are extremes and nothing short of Luke Skywalker would've have saved him in the end.

Thank the Force for Luke.

 

Yes, but his desire to "bring order to the galaxy" would make him lawful evil in my estimation. I think he's mostly lawful with some chaotic traits.

 

Yeah, but it seems that is aspect changed over time (in canon).

Early Vader (after Mustafar) was more chaotic evil than anything else imo, as rage driven and cruel as he appeared in OWK for example.

 

Being rage driven or cruel has nothing to do with being Chaotic or Lawful in the definition of Dungeons & Dragons. The nine point alignment chart was defined in AD&D 1e, and according to that Lawful characters believe the universe is structured and support hierarchy in society while Chaotic characters believe the universe is random and believe a society of laws is a futile effort. Darth Vader believes in bringing peace, justice and security to his Empire and ordering the universe the way he wants it to be, clearly a Lawful Evil alignment by the original definition. I think Anakin changed from Lawful Good to Lawful Evil, he wasnt Chaotic at any point.

 

My point still stands. In OWK it didn't seem that he cared about peace, justice and security at all. Just about killing his enemies and revenge against Obi.

He even acted against these interests by killing innocent bystanders

 

Nothing that indicates he is Chaotic. And just because the series doesn’t touch on it doesn’t mean Anakin/Vader’s ideals he’s always had in the PT and OT changed.

 

One thing is for certain: TESB, R1, and OBK portrayed Darth Vader as a figure from your worst nightmare.

 

This is what I've been saying for a while now.

 

I think that Vader comes off as neutral evil in terms of his selfishness. However, unlike his master, Vader truly believed that bringing his own perverted brand of order to the galaxy was a positive quest. He is basically Clone Wars General Anakin morphed into a Sith tyrannical general. As such, professionally he is lawful evil. In his personal life, he's chaotic evil, particularly in TESB, OBK, Rebels, and other presentations. In R1, he's strictly lawful evil. In the EU, he jumps between all three types of evil. It's important to note that he is a twisted version of a lawful neutral character. Melisandre from Game of Thrones was such a lawful neutral character. Not truly evil, but devoted to restoring order and peace to the entire world through any means necessary. The clone soldiers of the Clone Wars were programmed to do that for the galaxy, but Sidious twisted them to destroy the Jedi, just as he did with Anakin/Vader.





The thing is that Luke feels almost consumed by Vader's darkness, and it was through his strength of will that he was able to avoid the temptation to join his father. Vader is not a person we should admire or pity. Far from it. We must deplore the majority of his horrid actions as Anakin and Vader. But when we see how good he could be to civilians, to his friends like Ahsoka and Obi-Wan, we see that light in him and we desperately want him to be redeemed by Luke. Luke provided the blueprint, but Vader was the one who chose to overthrow Sidious at the cost of his life. This is why he is the most interesting Sith apprentice of all time. Full stop. This includes both ancient and modern Sith in the EU. Vader was fearful of his master and only learned smatterings of Sidious Palpatine's teachings over 23ish years. His act to kill Palpatine was done to save his son, but also to avenge himself, Padme, Ahsoka, and the Jedi... He had to die to atone for all the wrong he had done. Had he lived as we see in the Star Wars Infinities comic where he dons the white suit, it would have been nice for him and Luke to work together. But the galaxy at large would never have accepted nor forgiven him. Leia struggled to forgive Anakin, and it makes sense.

While I do think that Vader is portrayed pretty consistently between old canon/EU and the new Disney canon, I do think that the newer stuff makes Vader and the galaxy in general get caught up in his own dark legend too much. This particularly true in the Sequel Trilogy. It's similar to how Batman gets caught up his own dark but well-meaning antiheroic legend. Vader is not an antihero. He's antivillain, unlike Sidious who is a Caesar/Hitler-like pure villain. Vader is a villain who saw what he could have been if he had been braver like his son, accepting both his noble traits and his massive flaws to fashion them into something stronger. Luke was able to do that without allowing his insecurities to consume him. Vader only truly understood that at the end of his life. Ahsoka and Luke knew how to merge their gifts and their flaws to make themselves better warriors and leaders. That's something that Vader only learned how to do at the very end, and that's what makes him tragic. Mostly understandable, not sympathetic.



Credit to the late Chester Bennington and Linkin Park for this song.

 

To be honest, I always classified Vader as a tragic villain. To me Anakin was made evil by forces out of his control which destroyed him and then remade him. The loss of his mother, the shame of hiding his marriage/feelings, and then her death made him snap.

I feel sorry for tragic villains, honestly.

Other examples of tragic villains...
Callisto, as young girl had to watch her village be slaughtered and swore revenge against Xena.
Broly, as a child King Vegeta feared him so they attempted to kill him and dump the body on a planet about to explode.

 

I can see that. The reason I described Vader as "understandable, but not sympathetic" was because he did so many terrible things as Anakin and Vader. There are some things that Vader does in comics (both in Legends and the new canon) and video games that are truly appalling. I think that Vader is at his most evil in the Force Unleashed video games. Even so, there are those moments when Vader questions Palpatine on the use of slaves, and then there are a few stories like the one where he interacts with those animals in a surprisingly human and understanding manner after the first Death Star was destroyed. The many tragedies in Vader's life are what humanizes him as a character. Sidious is not a complicated person, but Vader is, which is why people actually find him interesting.

The understandable, but not sympathetic notion stemmed from me mentally comparing Darth Vader to Demona from Gargoyles. The difference is that we actually see Vader's redemption and we get quite a few emotionally complex scenes between Vader and Luke. In contrast, while Greg Weisman has said that Demona will have an epiphany during which she will realize that she was the cause of her own sorrow and misery, we never saw that story. Plus, when Demona interacts with his daughter, Angela, she's manipulating her until she is forced to choose between her dark ways and protecting her. Thankfully, she chooses the latter in that episode. Even so, her plan to destroy humanity seems more important to her than her own child. While Vader was forced by Palpatine to fight Luke, he was really conflicted about it, and when push came to shove, he chose Luke over Palpatine. For these reasons, Vader comes off as a tad less evil than Demona. Now that I think about it, they are somewhat similar characters, though Vader is less chaotic than Demona. I remember Angela telling her mother that her excuses and background don't explain why she could do so many "terrible things," and that's pretty similar to how Luke wanted his father to wake the **** up from the dark side.

 

I mostly agree with what you're saying. However, strictly speaking, I think that Anakin vacillated from lawful good, to lawful neutral, to chaotic good. It depends on which which scene and how he behaves. I'm taking his portrayal in both TCW and the original Clone Wars comics/novels/other stories into account. He'd be lawful neutral whenever he's just following orders from Palpatine, but he'd typically be chaotic good.

But, yeah. Vader is clearly lawful evil, but even still, a quite nuanced variant of lawful evil at that.

 

I was watching the scene where Luke is brought before the Emperor and noticed something. Some shots of Vader have him framed by the large white light panels, which are to the sides of the elevator. I was wondering whether it's meant to be hinting at his return to the light.

As examples of what I mean, there are shots of Vader framed by the panels when Luke and Vader reach the top of the steps; when Vader passes Luke's lightsaber to Palpatine; and during the Emperor's line "...as is your Rebel fleet."

 

Interesting. I was inclined to say you may be right. But TESB has many far better shots of Vader than ROTJ. Even so, you may be correct and that is one of the better shots in terms of cinematography of Vader in this film.



What primarily sells Vader's inner conflict is Prowse's choice for the man's mannerisms...the head movements, what he does with his arms and hands, etc. As George Lucas said, this is analogous to Japanese theater and cinema in that it's about acting with the mask, given the lack of facial expressions.