Why do people hate Anakin so much?

Okay, here's the thing. If the Jedi were already balanced, why did they get wiped out? Why did the Force lead them to Anakin, knowing full well what would result? If we are to assume that the Prophecy of the Chosen One came about through the use of the Force, surely the Force is able to see the future, right? I know that "the future is clouded" argument may come up, but the Chosen One seemed an awful certain one, and it did come true. If the Force can lead Qui-gon to a planet to find Anakin, then it can do anything it wants. The picture I have of the Force, after seeing the Prequels, is that it takes care of itself, and everything happens because that's how the Force lets it happen. The only requisite is that it seems to prefer a Jedi to do its will, because they have the clearest connection to the Force; it is most efficient and expedient. Anakin was the clearest conduit to the Force, would seem to be the primary vessel for the will of the Force, being that his midichlorian count is so high. That's why perhaps only he could be the Chosen One, because only someone with that much connection to the Force could bring about such a HUGE change as the eradication of the Jedi and the Sith. The message that some of us got was that the Jedi were the cause just as much as the Sith for what happened, because they had lost their connection to the Living Force. The Jedi would have continued to stifle the Force, controlling the destiny of the Jedi and the Republic for another 1000 years, and it certainly wouldn't have been the best way. The Sith were popping up left and right and the Jedi couldn't change to see it. They were blind to the Force.

If the Jedi were balanced, then why would the Force allow them to be wiped out?

It does, however, occur to me that the balance was neither Sith nor Jedi, but a new, fresh order. The new Jedi Order wouldn't be like the old one, but it would still be selfless. Like Sidious correctly observes, the Jedi didn't want to lose their power. They couldn't change, and it broke them.

 

EwokThatCried, it's late and I'm too tired to give you a long response tonight, but before I go, I'll give you a short one.

I assume the purpose of this thread is to explore people's thoughts and feelings about Anakin and if they 'hate' him, why they feel that way.

Okay, now I live in a society that permits, even condones abortion. As much as I dislike what Anakin did, my personal belief is that what abortion doctors do is even worse.

For one thing, I imagine the average abortionist has a higher death count than Anakin.

Secondly, taking motivation into consideration, Anakin is in an emotional crisis, desperate to keep his wife from dying at any cost. For the abortionist, it's simply business as usual - just another day at the office.

Even so, as a member of the society I live in, abortion is an ugly reality that I'm expected to accept. It's a woman's right to choose to terminate her unborn child. After all, it serves a practical purpose, right? The abortionist is simply taking care of a problem, right? - reducing the numbers of unwanted children.

I'm told: who am I to judge? After all, I'm not in their shoes, right?

I'm not in Anakin's shoes either...and neither are you.

Of course I don't approve of, or excuse what Anakin did, but wouldn't it be a contradiction to HATE Anakin BECAUSE he 'killed children'...

...but not hate all the abortionists in the real world who killed MORE?

Why should I be outraged by what Anakin did, but not be outraged by what goes on right down the street?

I have a suspicion that a lot of the people who 'hate' Anakin for killing the younglings...

...are not the least bit bothered or interested in what goes on at the local abortion clinic.

I would call that a contradiction.

 

"But but but, they're not fully human!"

And the younglings were a threat to the future of the Republic.

It's all a point of view.

 

LLS, so what you're telling me is that I'm a hypocrite because I hate Anakin for what he did to the younglings, but you think I condone abortions?

 

I don't think that was the argument being laid. It's about how society has generally accepted this practice, even if it means by silence, which some find evil. It is frowned upon to speak of abortion as being evil is the point, I think, while we are unmistakably supposed to consider Anakin evil for this action, which is the same to some.

 

i have seen change without orders being wiped out, people killed, hearts broken. it's a tough task. wiping out is quicker and easier. much like a volcano explosion. i realize that change is instrumental and that it always occurs. i realize that anakin was an agent of change but he himself as a character didn't like it. which makes changing things very very difficult. i also realize that the jedi order were afraid of change which is why they themselves would not have questioned their approach. which is why they needed an outsider to do it, who, ultimately himself didn't see how it was supposed to be done.

 

Very good thoughts!!!!!!!!!

 

Nothing? Luke learned the truth about his father, namely that both his father and Darth Vader are the same person. Plus, by being on Bespin, Luke gave Lando the opportunity to ambush the imperial troops so he can free Leia and Chewie.

Okay, so the best way to be a Jedi is to shut off your emotions and to not give a crap about the people that you've sworn to protect, especially the ones who love you because their lives mean nothing compared to the situation at hand, namely ridding the universe of the Sith.

It's no wonder why Anakin fell to the Dark Side.

That was exactly what the Emeperor said to Luke and look what happens? Luke outsmarts him by refusing the Dark Side.

But Luke is nothing like his father because he didn't slaughter all the citizens of Cloud City like Anakin did with the Tuskens and he knows that Leia and Chewie are still alive. Just because nothing is written in stone doesn't mean we should sit around and do nothing which is a huge mistake the Jedi made since it allowed the Emperor to take over the republic and slaughter the entire Jedi Order.

Luke was only wrong to go up against Vader but he wasn't wrong in trying to save his friends because he didn't want their deaths to be on his conscience for the rest of his life just as Anakin let the deaths of both Padme and his mom to be on his. There is no room for rationality when your friends are in trouble regardless if its a trap or not.

He wouldn't be ready even if he did stay on Dagobah and completed his training because as both Dooku and Anakin showed us, no amount of training would keep a Jedi from being seduced by the Dark Side and Luke will explode in a fit of Dark Side rage towards both Yoda and Obi-wan like Anakin did towards the Tuskens.

It did more harm than good for Obi-wan and Yoda to lie to Luke about Anakin.

 

"It seems strange that people can't accept that the Jedi are not perfect"

They were not perfect at all, obviously, or they would have come
out on top, BUT they can't be blamed for every idiot decision
Anakin made.

 

We must remember that this is a man who forces his own hand to become evil. Remember his vow to his dead mother on her grave, "I will not fail again". Now the dreams have returned, threatening his wife and child. Out of the shadows of a father and son relationship comes an opportunity to sieze the power to prevent it, all he has to do is become the thing he has been taught to despise...learn to use the dark side of the force. How could he resist? Could you? It doesnt excuse his crimes, but at least puts them into perspective. I would have done the same thing, Im afraid.

 

Luke was only wrong to go up against Vader but he wasn't wrong in trying to save his friends because he didn't want their deaths to be on his conscience for the rest of his life just as Anakin let the deaths of both Padme and his mom to be on his. There is no room for rationality when your friends are in trouble regardless if its a trap or not.

Okay thats an interesting point but had Anakin used some rationality then he wouldve known Padme would never condone him slaughtering younglings and then putting the blame on her. What did she say on the balcony scene. For Anakin to even think that somehow killing and murdering people was going to make Padme happy and everything would be fine is foolishness on his part. Sometimes you have to use rationality "it is the only way."



How could he resist? Could you? It doesnt excuse his crimes, but at least puts them into perspective. I would have done the same thing, Im afraid.


And that is why he failed. All he had to do was have faith in his wife when she told him she wouldnt die in childbirth but no he puts his faith in a SIth lord to help solve his problems and then goes out and kills everybody. Now how much more could a woman who is pregnant and fighting to keep the republic and democracy endure? NO wonder why she dies brokenhearted, anakin didnt exactly help her now did he?

 

He would have learned that eventually and in a safe, supportive situation. From Yoda, who had every intention of telling him when his training was complete.

And there's no way they would have done this w/o Luke being there?

Did I say that? Everyone in a war or a rebellion has to accept that people die. That's the reality. And if you're willing to accept the fact that other people's friends and loved ones are dying, then you must accept the fact that yours may.
If my uncle had screwed up the invasion at Normandy to save a couple of friends - would it have been worth it? Would it have been right? That's the life of a "soldier", like it nor not. And the only way to honor the sacrifice of friends is to let them make their own decision to be involved.

 

Motivation: The wants, needs and beliefs that drive a character.
Anakin is responsible for his wants, needs and beliefs. To me.

 

To answer the initial question, I don't hate Anakin. The character is excellent. I just happen to think the actor who plays him sucks.

 

Luke was only wrong to go up against Vader but he wasn't wrong in trying to save his friends because he didn't want their deaths to be on his conscience for the rest of his life just as Anakin let the deaths of both Padme and his mom to be on his. There is no room for rationality when your friends are in trouble regardless if its a trap or not.

As Yoda had indicated to Luke, there was no certainty that Han and Leia were going to die, despite the gravity of their situation. Luke?s problem in "Empire" was not the caring or compassion he had for his friends, but rather his attachment to them; much like his father, Luke wanted to interfere with and control matters of life and death, instead of allowing events, however unfortunate, to unfold naturally. The younger Skywalker?s decision to interrupt his training and attempt to rescue his friends was a hasty, irrational move that conformed to the anti-intellectual nature of submitting oneself immediately to more base desires, a matter that is perfectly encapsulated within Yoda?s warning about the Dark Side being "the quick and easy path." It is infinitely more difficult to affect a detachment from the situation, considering all of its aspects in a deep, pensive manner, and then responding to said circumstance in a more reasonable fashion.

Okay thats an interesting point but had Anakin used some rationality then he wouldve known Padme would never condone him slaughtering younglings and then putting the blame on her. What did she say on the balcony scene. For Anakin to even think that somehow killing and murdering people was going to make Padme happy and everything would be fine is foolishness on his part. Sometimes you have to use rationality "it is the only way."

The issue here is that this dilemma has everything to do with Anakin?s own sense of confusion and insecurity. As much as he cares for and loves his wife, he is more frightened by the prospect of losing her, than of her dying; in other words, the underlying conundrum pertains directly to Anakin?s possessiveness, his unwillingness to separate himself from the natural course of events (which is perhaps a nearly impossible task to ask of anyone outside of a Saint). All of these psychological details are made plausible by the transpirations of the previous installment, in which the relative abstraction of Anakin?s nightmares concerning his mother?s suffering was put into an immediate, practical application; the fact that Anakin was unable to "save" his mother only gives cogency to the nature of his conflict in "Episode III," where these thematic conceits are once again advanced to another tier.

On a side note, it is interesting to observe that many of the shots which comprise the Tusken Raider scenes in AOTC were lifted directly from John Ford?s great 1956 film, "The Searchers," a picture in which the protagonist, played by John Wayne, is determined ? and eventually becomes obsessed - to save his niece, Natalie Wood, who has been captured by Indians, yet in reality might not want to be saved.

And that is why he failed. All he had to do was have faith in his wife when she told him she wouldnt die in childbirth but no he puts his faith in a SIth lord to help solve his problems and then goes out and kills everybody. Now how much more could a woman who is pregnant and fighting to keep the republic and democracy endure? NO wonder why she dies brokenhearted, anakin didnt exactly help her now did he?

Given the fact that Anakin?s previous premonitions became fully realized, we can understand the character?s angst; Palpatine carefully exploits the political ambiguity which characterizes the foreground of the picture in order to lure Anakin closer to his promise of metaphysical alchemy ? a Faustian entreaty. At one point, following the transformation sequence, Palpatine (now as Darth Sidious) tells Anakin that the only way to attain the ability to control matters of life and death is to become immersed in the Dark Side power; the manner in which this power is achieved is by acquiescing to

 

Tyranus_the_Hutt - What can I say???


Thanks for that tid-bit about "The Searchers" parallel. I didn?t know that.

 

i just can't take the part when he says "yes master" or "my maaaster", the guy's acting is terrible

 

I wouldn't say Hayden was bad at all.
He's young and not as experienced as Ewan or Ian, but
he still did a good job IMO.

 

Tyrannus, great post!!! ROTS is designed to be very gray in all aspects, some way more than others, but the ambiguoty is there. Sidious spend Anakin's life as a Jedi prepping him for that moment. By the time ROTS rolls around he had probably planted some seeds about the Jedi in there that made them out to be the not so good guys. Anakin is very responsible for his actions, but I think he sees at the end, he listened to the wrong guy and beleived because he wanted to out of greed.

 

Lemme just say that I'm a massive fan of Luke...and Anakin's the only guy that's gotten close to overtaking that. I love the parallels between Luke and Anakin, their differences and similarities.

When it comes to a lot of Anakin's misfortunes, there but for the grace of God (or The Force) goes Luke...

 

Absolutely, Damon. I feel the same way.

Warning folks, this thread is about Anakin. This isn't the thread to bash Hayden. Keep it on topic.

 

this is what it comes down to, right, sinister? if i take the will of the force as a metaphor i no longer have a right to interpretation.
stop stealing my thoughts and ideas.

and some have to be made to be understood why they shouldn't be made. are we discussing anything here?

or they get neat scissor cuts by sith lords. or they are being surprised. or they experience and see something which the thumb-twiddler won't see because the thumb-twiddler still sits inside and ponders what might happen. fools rush in and the impatient ones. but they get to see different things. you cannot mold all people to fit your ideal world. practise your unconditional love, sinister, which you hold up so valiantly, and accept that everybody's different. some people rush to rescues, some are better left to dust off files. it's all a very individual thing.

luke didn't lose, he refused to fght. well, my memory is cloudy on that one. anakin put up a fight with dooku alone next time without obi and he was AWESOME and yes, sometimes it's better to wait but then i don't think anakin and obi together would have been much of a good match with dooku, since dooku so easily dispenses with obi-wan anyway.

the jedi cause the imbalance as much as the sith. both orders use the force, they both misuse it and they will both pay for their abuse. the jedi have limited force abilites and they apparently listened so intently to their energy field that they forgot taking actions against a supposed sith lord that was sitting in front of them all the time. yeah, apparently the jedi are deaf.
i rest my case.

 

I actually adore Anakin.

 

I will respectfully disagree because it is my view that neither God nor the Force controls the ability of the individual to make choices in life.

 

Amen Bariss, Amen!!! But no - we can't hold people accountable for their choices can we?

Well, everyone but Anakin, right?

The thing I don't get is why he's the only one who gets off the hook? Why not Mace, huh? When he was killing Palps he was only protecting his Order - his family, right? No different than Ani, shouldn't he get a pass?

And Obi - oh poor Obi - snatched at birth from a real family - he gets a pass whenever he thinks he's protecting his family - the Jedi -right? So even if you think that's all he was doing on Mustafar, he get's a pass, right? And he didn't really want to train Ani - it was forced on him - so we need to give him a pass on any mistakes he made there too, right?

Or was that Qui's fault? Oh, but he was snatched at birth and didn't know any better, either, hmmm. And he was taught by the evil Dooku. He must have had it really hard growing up too - Dooku didn't seem like the affectionate type so we'll let Qui go too.

Well, Yoda. We can hold him accountable - he might even remember when the Jedi were different, wouldn't he? But wait - he's ~850 yo, and 30 years from natural death. The guy's gotta' be senile and set in his ways. And how was he to know that those darn Sith would change? That was really mean and unexpected of them, wasn't it? You can't really expect a guy that old to change his ways. Well... we'll give him a pass too.

So do we blame Palps? Well, didn't some nasty Sith Lord indoctrinate him? He didn't know any better, right? He was just ruining Ani's life so he could fulfill his dream of galaxy domination - fufilling his role as a Sith, right? No, we can't hold him responsible either.

Ohhh what a lovely story the PT is - no villians at all - just victims, victims everywhere you look. Sigh.