Why did GL make Anakin kill the whole Tusken tribe, including the men, women, and *children*?!

Why did GL make Anakin do that? Why couldn't he have just had Anakin kill the men who tortured his mother to death? Killing the Tusken men who were guilty of his mother's abduction, murder, and torture would have still been Anakin's first step to the Dark Side because Anakin would have still been giving into his anger and hatred. Making Anakin kill the (possibly)innocent women and the children was overkill.

 

It was to show his overall immaturity. The fact that he couldn't use reason, or enough reason to just kill the men. It is a harsh scene when you really consider the context, but it has to illistrate how Anakin is really way out there on things, including himself.

 

Well, I never thought it had anything to do with maturity. I think the fact that he killed the whole villiage showed how strong his attachment to his mother was, and also his capacity for evil and revenge. But I still GL had just made Anakin kill the men; making Anakin kill the women and children was just unneccessary in my opinion.

 

Actually, in my opinion, Anakin was completely justified in slaughtering all the Tusken men. To me, any man living in that tribe was complicit in the act of kidnapping and torturing his mother for months. Is there any evidence otherwise? To ignore evil, or to do nothing and allow it to happen, makes them totally liable for what happened. I would even question whether or not he was absolutely wrong to kill the women. Children are different. But when you begin to exonerate grown men and women from the actions of the group they are alligned with, you are alleviating them of their responsibility, when in fact, they are the ones best situated to stop the problem. If you tell me that all the Sandpeople were enslaved by one evil dicator Tusken Raider and had no choice, then maybe I'd see things differently.

If Anakin hadn't slaughtered the children, it would not have indicated any kind of descent to the darkside at all. Was Mace Windu evil for wanting to kill Palpatine? Of course not. Taking out evil is a noble endeavor.

What was Anakin supposed to do? Capture the entire tribe, and then bring them before the Hutts for a trial? Tatooine is not part of the Republic. Any justice was going to come from him, and him alone.

 

Well, Windu was wrong in the way he handled that situation to me and i think it was intentionally wrong, but that's a whole 'nother debate.

There are many other threads on this topic if you look around, including one by me. I agree it's overkill but have learned to understand the intentions of the scene more clearly. You should read through those threads a bit, because i doubt many will reply to this. Even when i did it i got a lot of 'This question, again?' replies.

 

Um, to illustrate what could result from a Jedi allowing himself to be totally consumed by rage?

 

Anakin slaughtered every member of the tribe because Lucas needed to show the audience that Anakin committed an evil act. If he had just killed the men of the tribe, people could justify it by saying that he was punishing the people responsible for his mother's death. But by killing the entire tribe Anakin went overboard in his actions. There was no justice in his actions, just revenge.

Also, it shows how much Padme was in love with Anakin, that she could overlook his killing of women and children. You would think, based on her views, that she would have been angry with Anakin and would want nothing to do with him. But it seemed to bring them closer.

 

Exactly. This is pretty much how it comes across in the film. ROTS, as we all know, explains it further.

 

Before I saw AOTC for the first time, I assumed that Anakin would turn to the dark side in it and that it would happen because Shmi had been murdered by a Sith Lord.
When I saw the Tatooine sequence, I felt that my assumption had been correct, for the most part. It felt strange to me, though, that Anakin remained on the Jedi's side after abandoning them
What I came to realize was that Anakin was now tainted by the dark side. He still had a long way to go to actually turning, because he knew that he had been wrong in taking revenge, but the act had been so horrific that the dark side would haunt him for the remainder of the trilogy.

Luke never went as far as his father did and that might've been his saving grace.





Darkness - it's sweet
/LM

 

To show how extremely consuming and powerful the dark side is. It is nothing you can drabble in without serious consequences.
Killing only the warriors would have been evil as well. Last time I checked revenge was a bad thing.

 

That's highly debatable, in a culture to culture sense, but we'll let your Western morality stand for now.

Anakin murdered the women and kids to show that he'd gotten every bit as senselessly violent as his opponents-he stooped to the same level as the Tuskens murdering Shmi.

 

IMHO to show how all-consuming Anakin's rage was - how little "control" of himself he had when his ire (to put it mildly) was roused. He didn't just lose himself in a moment of rage by lashing out at the first Tuskens he saw...he let his rage rule him until there was literally nothing left to rage at.

Is there any evidence they were involved? Lack of evidence does not equal evidence as you seem to equate. Note: key word is evidence as that is the word used.

Anakinfansince1983 - when a thread is started about Anakin's slaughter/justifiable revenge/whatever topic, the focus is of course going to be on the thread topic.

In a topic such as this and the other, the thread is not inviting a wider view of justification or discussion; the focus is too narrow.

NO ONE belittles Shmi's torture; it's just not the topic.

IMHO, with all due respect.

 

Agreed.

I wonder: which is worse?
Whacking the entire Tusken tribe out of revenge.

or

Whacking the entire room full of younglings because Sidious said so.

 

I am going by Geneva-Convention, yes. But since the film was made mostly for a western audience...

Yeah, that too.

 

Three words: Start Of Darkness.

Anakin is supposed to be a metaphor for imperialism, in this case. The Sand People have been Space Indians from the minute it was decided they'd attack Luke in ANH. Their costumes actually show papooses. Yes, this is indeed a metaphor for the American Empire. That is to say, genocide is addictive: You can't really say "I'm above that." once you've done it, either. (Unless you're Turkey, in which case nobody remembers, but you have a bizarre tendency, when someone mentions your name, or the name of the unrelated bird, to go into a Suspiciously Specific Denial mode.)

 

Then what's the point of the scene? Yes, the torture of Shmi is utterly horrible, but murder isn't termed by degrees of brutality; it's killing another being that's wrong, not that you neatly decapitated them as opposed to torturing them to death with sticks or whatever.


Anakin's wrathful murder of the tribe is deliberately set against the Tusken's murder of Shmi; they're equally horrific.

 

I still (respectfully) disagree - the thread title specifically refers to: Why did GL make Anakin kill the whole Tusken tribe not: discuss the ramifications of Shmi's abduction and torture and how it played into Anakin's actions following his attempt to save her.

Personally, I'd prefer the broader discussion in a larger context. I also know it's highly unlikely such a thread would be started and be able to remain a dispassionate examination of the question.

 

As long as he isn't insane (which is actually debateable) he must be hold accountable for what he did. What happened to Shmi could be considered mildering circumstances.

 

This

That said, gotta love the Lucas bashing in the topic title.

 

Asking why something was done and describing that something as "overkill" is bashing?

 

Angry <> Insane

If you were to use the insanity defense in a court of law, I wouldn't buy it. I'd convict him of murder for the women and children and maybe knock it down to manslaughter for the men.