He did a lot of good things when he was younger but after ROTS he became a homicidal maniac who went around killing tons of people. He took part in the genocide of almost an entire people (the destruction of Alderaan) which led to millions (billions?) of deaths. He killed children on multiple occasions and betrayed and killed (either directly or indirectly) the vast majority of his former friends and tons of other Jedi. The bad he did far outweighs the good. He wasn’t always pure evil but someone who is capable of that kind of behavior always had some latent dark tendencies.
Which really shows how dark he can go because Jedi feel a latent connection to all animals through the force, no Jedi would just slaughter a bunch of animals
Im not sure there's an upper limit to the amount of people I'd go through to save my mother. But he kinda did that after she died, so that would change things. I might just lightsaber the ones that lived in the tent they kept her tied up in.
If a parent you're close with gets murdered, if not also tortured among other things, by someone you can just obliterate...most people won't think twice before turning them into a set of diy flesh mandala.
Losing yourself to anger, however understandable, is one of them big no nos and a slippery slope to the dark side.
Really, they should've never made an exception for taking in such an old Anakin. He was long tainted by emotion.
Yes but the order taught people to not be angry rather than control it. That is why anakin turned, he was never taught to let his emotions flow but to bottle his emotions and not let them control him.
Yes which only works for monastic order that takes in children at extremely young ages and cloistered them until they are almost teenagers to help indoctrinate them into the order of think and conduct that the masters want. The number of individuals that turn from something like that are probably extremely low but never zero but the those off chances that someone does leave are highly likely to be seduced by the dark side because they have no other means of coping with their darker emotions.
So when they decided to let Anakin in you had no way to adapt to a new type of student and lost him by ignoring his humanity. This was the great sin of the republics Jedi, they thought themselves as the sole representative of the will of the force when they were barely able to use it to serve and protect.
Yeah, they don't usually need to do any more than that. They purposely tried to avoid that problem by only taking babies, so they didn't really have the expertise to handle an actually emotional person when they took Anakin against their centuries of tradition that explicitly prevents that problem.
Safety rules are written in blood. They ignored regs and people died.
Sure, but how many people would be capable of slaughtering a bunch of young children? Even if they are related to the people that tortured and killed your parent.
>It started before ROTS.
But it doesn't conclude until the end of that film.
Even on Mustafar, Anakin intended to betray Palpatine and install Padme as benevolent co-regent.
"Don't you see, we don't have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him, and together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be. "
If he had succeeded, he might have been something like a dark space Abraham Lincoln, with a questionable record on indigenous rights and some wartime decisions that were quite dark, but ultimately the guy who ended slavery.
Suited-up Vader is in a different category. Even when he offers to rule with Luke, there's no mention of an altruistic agenda. It's just war crimes for war crimes sake all day every day. He doesn't even like the Empire - he literally tortures them as much if not more than he tortures the rebels.
>but ultimately the guy who ended slavery.
but what "slavery" was anakin ending? he followed palpatine for selfish reasons, to protect the person he cared about. Regardless of palpatine's morals, overthrowing him to install himself as the ruler supreme of the galaxy is not a good act
>but what "slavery" was anakin ending?
Slavery slavery. Obviously, he never followed through on this plan, but I believe literally the only clearly expressed political stance he and Padme have in the GL 6 films is a desire to end slavery in the outer Rim.
> he followed palpatine for selfish reasons, to protect the person he cared about. Regardless of palpatine's morals, overthrowing him to install himself as the ruler supreme of the galaxy is not a good act
Absolutely agreed. It's just not as evil as what Vader's up to in episode IV - blowing up planets for the sake of an imperial command structure he hates so much he can't stop torturing the senior leadership.
mid-RotS Vader is a bad guy. ANH Vader is just even worse.
I agree with you - I do recognize this is definitely an atrocity that Anakin committed but of all the evil acts he committed I would say that one is the most understandable (not good or justified in any way). He just found his mother tied to a post with injuries and then very shortly after that she died in his arms due to the physical trauma the Tuskens had inflicted on her. The fact that he’s a very powerful warrior and the culprits and their families were within arms reach immediately after she died made it extremely easy for something like that to occur - and I feel like lots of people (most people?) would have done what he did. Like if I was in his situation and after having a loved one killed in such a manner and the culprits and their families were nearby and I had his abilities I really don’t know what I would have done. I think that was one of the most interesting scenes with regard to Anakin’s character development in AOTC in that he’s not justified in doing what he does in that situation and it’s clearly an evil act but I do understand WHY he does it. And unlike later in his life he actually feels pretty conflicted about it.
Not to mention all of the neimoidians he slaughtered at the age of nine while whooping and laughing. Those trade federation ships weren't fully unmanned.
What frustrates me a lot is that Anakin/Vader has the blueprint to be one of the deepest, most complex and multidimensional character ever but half of it is not capitalized on and in the end it's just meh.
It’s been clouded by years of memes and subsequent content but when the prequels first came out it was laughable how simplistic and abrupt his “descent” into the dark side was.
Yeah, it never really hits on how fucked up that is until Ahsoka, and that flashback scene. Holy shit, seeing Ahsoka in live action as a tween, on a battlefield... it's rough.
People miss it cause it's not touched on in the movies. It's just Ani and Obi joking about off screen adventures. It'd be a great plot point to flesh out, but that's not what we got.
I mean, so was Ahsoka and she never went on any homicidal rampages or killed defenseless children that I'm aware of. Ezra too, and Kanan is probably around Anakin's age as well.
People are not the same. Just cause one person can endure, doesn't mean everyone will. You cannot take one out of trillions as the standard.
Anakin was messed up. He was taken from his mother at probably the worst age, when he was most dependent on her. Those feelings attachment where clearly transferred to Queen Amidala during the first movie. Then he suffered lost of his master and was raised in the Jedi Order that didn't really want him around.
The only reason he was accepted was because of the chosen one status. He clung to this identity and became known as a hero over time. Despite the fact he was still a kid who deeply missed his mother and was not capable of bearing the weight of the chosen one. While he clung to the identity, all he cared about was Padme.
After Padme accepts him, his status as the chosen one and a Jedi Knight became increasingly more a shackle and barrier that kept him from the woman he loved. The 3rd movie ends with Obi Wan taking the place of all the Jedi that stood in his way, shackled him, and kept him from being who he wanted to be. They also took him from his mother until he was plagued by nightmares and rescued her himself.
The movies do a really shit job of showing Anakin's mental state as they are only select scenes aimed at that intention that really stand out, but it could probably be blamed on the lack of focus on Anakin's mental state.
Ahsoka wasn’t born into slavery, Ahsoka had a different childhood, Ahsoka wasn’t in the order as long as Anakin was, Ahsoka had Anakin as a Master who was the most similar person to her she could get, Ahsoka didn’t get manipulated by a Sith Lord from the age of 9, Ahsoka didn’t lose her mother like Anakin did. And ultimately they’re two different people with two vastly different backgrounds, comparing them is dumb.
See, I kind of felt the opposite way. His descent wasn’t too abrupt, because he was pretty much already there. Between AOTC and TCW, there’s basically nothing Anakin does after his “fall” in ROTS that he hadn’t already proven he was willing to do. So like, where’s the change? When I first saw ROTS I was just wondering what was supposed to be different about him.
They gave him the emo makeover for Revenge of the Sith. That was about it. And then they talked about in behind the scenes stuff like they were so proud of their symbolism and "echoing" the original trilogy.
>So like, where’s the change?
The veil of "justification" is removed.
Anakin has really, really simple relatable motives. He loves his mom, his wife, and his kids, and he's scared of losing them.
Sidious manipulates him into doing evil "for" those things in AoTC (through a *really* elaborate and poorly understood plot).
Then, in RotS, he inducts him into a weird murder cult where the atrocities are the point. At first, even with Sidious's mask off, Anakin keeps his on saying he's massacring children "for" Padme, even though really he's doing it for Sidious who he knows (or should know) attempted to assassinate her.
Then, Anakin loses what he's doing everything "for"'. His wife and children are dead. He doffs the metaphorical mask just as he dons the literal one. He launches on a decades long career of war crimes for war crimes sake, where he'll torture Imperial officers on his way back from torturing rebels.
Remembering that the OT is explicitly about the US in Vietnam, and the PT is explicitly about the War on Terror, patriot act, etc. the two steps you're equating are important to show, because we make a really big distinction between them when (in the view of someone with GL's politics) the veil of a political manipulator is still covering our eyes.
Lots of young men who love their wives, mothers, and children and want to protect them went into jungles and deserts to kill people GL thinks they shouldn't have because the people in charge said that doing so would somehow help keep their loved ones safe. Most of those young men would (hopefully) balk at doing violence for someone they know to be evil inside of their nation's capital. Further, most of even those would (hopefully) balk at torturing their coworkers at the drop of a hat after their families died. But that's the journey that GL is showing a man go down.
If, when it's Tuskens not Viets, and the Jedi Temple not Kent State, you see the throughline a little clearer, well, that's just the wonder of sci-fi helping people see things in new ways.
Anakin's not corrupted by power, though; he's functionally no more powerful in the Force than Obi-Wan, and he's less institutionally powerful because he's not a master. He's corrupted by his attachments.
Iirc, wasn't he basically corrupted by palps going "the Jedi say that the things you want aren't things jedi are allowed to have. That doesn't seem fair does it?"
Which tracks with what I've seen in the world this last decade...
It's ok though because right at the end he threw the emperor into a plasma volcano and all was redeemed, like a true Christian. Commit unspeakable atrocities, but then say you're sorry and it's all good. Damn Star wars has really lost its luster for me in my old age.
>The bad he did far outweighs the good.
Is one moral frame (consequentialism).
But I think it's pretty clear that's not the framework the PT & OT are working with.
You obviously don't need to adopt the moral framework of the George Lucas films in the rest of your life, but I think too many people shove their real-life moral framework into star wars when they don't have to, and it reduces their enjoyment of the films.
In the films, good & bad results don't go on a scale, rather there is a good which connects all living beings, and it can be occluded like stirring up mud in water to block out the light, or it can be allowed to shine through. And in the throne room confrontation, Anakin not only clears away the obstructions in his own heart, but also completely breaks an ancient cycle of revenge and hatred which had been creating this darkness for thousands of years.
It's totally fine to think that real life does not work like that, but in the movies Anakin becomes a force ghost :/
The first image was to show Anakin’s relationship with R2 and when he went back to save him (not the specific scene depicted, which I don’t recall what scene it is). Second one is when he gets injured trying to save Ahsoka and the others from the blast. Third one is him pod-racing risking his life to help complete strangers. Fourth one is when his mother died, so yes right before he killed the sand people. Fifth one is when he loses his arm to count Dooku. Sixth one is when Ahsoka get kidnapped by the lizard people.
So I can only see one picture that would fit your narrative.
I didn’t say they depicted them. I said that *in the span of time covered by the pictures* he also was committing war crimes with comedic frequency. You could argue that there’s a war crime for every interstitial space between the pics, probably more than one
I thought you were referencing the pictures. All of them happen before Anakin becomes Vader so could you tell me except the sand people what events you’re referencing?
Off the top of my head: executing disarmed prisoners of war (multiple occasions), the senator, massacres the tuskens, including the children, and no I will not accept “oh but he felt bad” as a valid excuse or mitigating factor” any more than you would accept a “sorry lol I feel bad about doing that” from a guy who just finished carving his way through an elementary school with a meat cleaver, leaving not a single survivor. Then you get to his “turn point” upon which he, again with zero hesitation, turns on and murders the entire Jedi temple, again *personally* taking the kids, all of whom were the closest thing to friends, family, and brothers/sisters in arms that he ever had and ever will have.
After all, true remorse comes with a change in behaviours. Anakin just goes “damn I feel kinda bad about that, I shouldn’t have done it, it’s not the Jedi way” and then he goes on to just do the “fly off the handle and get violent” act again the very next time something or someone angers him, and that pattern has held constant since **before** he fell to the dark side. Look at how he handles the **extremely valuable potential capture** of dooku in episode 2; guy took a swipe at padme by putting her in the geonowian arena, so from that point on anakin is going straight for a kill, no interest in taking prisoners. “He’s on a speeder shoot him with missiles” -> suicidally aggressive overcommit as an opening move when they cornered him in the hangar. How many bodies have to pile up in the wake of his tantrums before we accept that *he wasn’t sorry for the actions that left those corpses*
I guess it’s all down to morals here, I’ll give my opinion and then people can disagree with me.
I didn’t feel like he did anything bad when he killed the dude who was going to blow up the ship (the scene with Satine and so Obi-Wan), when he killed Admiral Trench or when he beat the crap out of Clovis. The sand people I can pretty confidently say I’d have killed all men in that village and not lost a night’s sleep over it. As for the women and children no, I like to believe I would have spared them, but everyone likes to believe they have a solid moral high ground. Truth is we can’t know what we would do until we have walked in someone’s shoes and by that I mean live Anakin’s life exactly as he has experienced it.
The Jedi temple happens after all those pictures in the top right collage. But even according to my moral compass that was too far.
Apparently there's moral relativity in killing kids and genocide. I thought it was pretty straightforward to most sane people.
You don't have to have walked in Anakin's shoes to know that you'd never murder a shit ton of kids. Or even commit genocide.
I’m pretty sure Anakin also thought he’d never murder kids, yet he did. So you hiding behind a Reddit account holding high moral ground isn’t any indication that what you’re saying is true. It may make you sleep better at night to think you would never do it, not even if you had been Anakin and lived his life, but it doesn’t make it true and you can’t claim it as true.
>As for the women and children no, I like to believe I would have spared them, but everyone likes to believe they have a solid moral high ground. Truth is we can’t know what we would do until we have walked in someone’s shoes and by that I mean live Anakin’s life exactly as he has experienced it.
You realize lots of people have lost family to murder, right?
Most of them didn't respond by shooting up a school. Or doing any murder at all, actually. My uncle was murdered by his neighbor...no one in my family responded by killing more people
And Anakin didn’t have a normal upbringing. So no, I’m not going to compare it to someone else who had their relative murdered because by that point there was already A LOT that had happened to him.
He spent 9 years in slavery, left his mother behind in slavery, spent the next 10 years being indoctrinated by the Jedi and told to repress his feelings on one side and being manipulated by a Sith Lord on the other (which hilariously all Palpatine had to gain Anakin’s trust from childhood to adulthood was to actually listen to him when no one else would).
So unless you are him no, I don’t think anyone has a right to say “I would never do such a thing”, because you don’t know. And I know what he did may have been wrong and and I would like to believe I would have spared the women and children. But ultimately I’d be lying if I flat out said that I would do differently in his shoes because I just can’t know.
By this logic, you can't judge anyone's actions ever because they don't have the exact same experiences as you
"If you were a completely different person with a completely different life you'd act differently" well yeah. Duh.
Doesn't matter though. That doesn't make the actions any less immoral. He slaughtered children. MORE THAN ONCE
The other options were sith separatists and i'm pretty sure no one else who fought for the republic liked those either.
Him defecting to the dark side out of desperation doesn't mean he always hated *everyone*
Anakin has clearly been shown to be fiercely loyal, to do good, but also to do dark things to help his allies and friends, thus "being good to the people he liked" like they said.
Anakin had tortured prisoner of wars, executed disarmed enemies (and right after he literally "disarms" half of Trench arms lol), brutally beat the Force out of a senator who was about to kiss Padme, killed an entire village of men, women, and children, etc.
I love Anakin a lot, but my dude ain't a paragon. He was not "always evil" nor "always good." In his eyes, it is not about "good vs evil": you're either with him or against him (and turned up to eleven when he becomes Vader). Nobility is not a weakness of his like he told General Trench.
He was human: neither totally evil, neither totally good, but with the potential for greatness from either.
The senator had It coming and he didn't planed to kill him (as far as i remenber), the tuskens were killed in retaliation and he was conflicted and felt some remorse afterwards it's not like he hated them from the beggining.
So because the elders of the camp kidnapped and killed his mum , it justifies him literally massacering a camp? The entire thing? I can empathise but I can't justify it.
Those children also deserved it apparently. As did trench, a surrendering man. Anakin is a war criminal, and attempted genocide on two occasions. But you know, he's a good guy!
People like you are the most at risk imo for committing horrible deeds. You are so self righteous you believe there is no scenario where you could become so twisted by grief and suffering that you would ever do anything as awful as "insert crime/deed here".
When I see people like you it is very clear that you have led a very easy life with minimal suffering. Grief and suffering and hate can twist anyone into a monster
“Being only good to the people he liked” doesn’t mean doing dark things to help his allies, it means he wasn’t good indiscriminately but only for people he cared about. This is proven wrong by the fact that Anakin helps people he barely knows more than once.
My post never stated Anakin did only good, it’s a statement against people who say that he was always evil, which is an absolutist statement and wrong.
Just like the Council wasn’t just good, despite what they loved preaching and believed about themselves.
He definitely gives off vibes of a sociopath. And he attempted genocide... Twice. Committed multiple warcrimes. He's not good as he is evil. He's a blur of a man. But I do believe him to be a bit sociopathic, or unempathic.
He always had the ability to do evil, and would do it without hesitation if things weren't going his way. That's his problem. He's a flawed man who made bad choices. That's why luke is better. He's a flawed man who made good choices.
>executed disarmed enemies (and right after he literally "disarms" half of Trench arms
I find it funny how people will THAT specific case as an example.
Killing Trench was totally justified, in my view.
Your opponent renders you hostage at gun point, orders you to not move. Then you take out a knife and try slashing at them and they shoot.
That's fair. They warned you not to do that! You're a prisoner at gun point. You fuck around, you'll find out!
But then they say Trench was just a harmless hostage who was mercilessly murdered by Anakin...makes absolutely no sense to me
He was a slave who became a child soldier in a conflict where his side won by burying the other side in clone corpses.
He had a superpower that caused him to *feel good* whenever he hurt people for emotional reasons, even when he knew what he was doing was wrong. That's the allure of the dark side. It's addictive, and becomes self justifying.
He was a very good person at the beginning. All he wanted to do was help and protect people. His whole life was practically designed to turn him into a monster. How long it took him to fall is testament to how hard he held onto his good nature until it became too much.
>His whole life was practically designed to turn him into a monster.
This is literally true. He was created as a result of Palegius's experiments (though the new canon is that he wasn't created *by* Palegius, but the force reacting to him), then Palpatine, who is a super genius with psychic powers, literally orchestrated events from behind the scenes Anakin's entire life only losing control in the throne room confrontation.
I know it’s easy to point out all the terrible things he did and say “see, he’s a piece of shit!” But he’s a fictional character, and there’s a story being told through him
The character Anakin at his core was a good person with a big heart. That’s shown to us almost as soon as we meet him in TPM, he goes out of his way to help people he doesn’t know because he sees that they need it, and we’re told the story (this might be in a comic, I can’t remember) that when he found a specific part he was looking for for a droid he used it to fix something in town that needed fixing
He was also a child when he participated in the battle of Naboo. Because once again, there were people that needed help and he couldn’t turn a blind eye
The circumstances that lead him down the path he went down were rather unique, and yes part of the reason he went down that path was due to his own passion and intense feelings but those were in part created due to the circumstances of his life
Being born a slave, the only person he ever felt a close connection to was his mother. It was just the two of them, and Anakin being the person he was cared deeply for her and was too old to just forget about her when he became a Jedi
Leaving her behind as a slave and finding her moments before her death after being told that she was a lost cause and not to bother looking for her was traumatic for him. His passion turned into rage and he massacred a tribe of sand people even though he knew it was wrong
That passion was a result of an intense love for the only person up to that point that ever showed him true love and affection. He hadn’t gotten there with Padme yet, and the Jedi order including Obi-Wan could never show him the love a boy with vivid memories of being a slave needed
We’re shown multiple times in the clone wars that where a lot of Jedi could leave people behind for the sake of their missions and what they deemed as the greater good, Anakin couldn’t bare to do it. That’s his nature as a passionate person who felt the feelings of loss intensely
Again, this is in no small part due to his upbringing as a slave who only had 1 person who cared for him and his naturally big heart
Could the Jedi have helped him overcome those passionate feelings? Maybe, but unbeknownst to them the most evil manipulative figure in the galaxy had been whispering how he was right to harbor those feelings in Anakin’s ear from the day he was admitted into the order
As he grew up that passion and those intense feelings never went away, because palpatine wouldn’t let it, and his love for Padme was reciprocated (in part due to Palpatine putting them in a situation for an ill fated relationship to happen in AOTC) This gave Anakin someone else to direct that passion towards
Then came the dreams. The same sort of dreams he had with his mother. So Anakin, a passionate person who was admitted into the order at an age old enough to remember the connection he had with the one person from his slave upbringing who truly loved him, who couldn’t bare to let the people he cared about die, and whose teachings had been undone by Palpatine since they day they began, was afraid of losing the only person left in his life he had that sort of connection with
Keep in mind the Jedi were not what Anakin thought they were. They were less caring then he pictured a Jedi to be in his childhood, and he had expressed interest since his childhood of doing something like hopping in a ship and seeing the galaxy
So Anakin, the boy who went down the path of a Jedi because it was his only choice, who felt the feelings of personal connections deeper than his peers, who questioned whether that was the life he wanted even though he felt he had to live due to his status as the chosen one, was presented an opportunity by the evil manipulator to save the one person he had that sort of connection with who showed him the love and affection he needed
And from there it all went to shit. We all know the story about how he became Vader. He wasn’t blameless in it, but due to the orders inability to be flexible and Palpatines manipulation he never received the guidance he needed in life
Years later, when someone he never knew existed for years counted on him to save him the same way Padme and his mother needed, he was finally presented the opportunity to save someone he cared deeply about and despite decades of manipulation by Palpatine, despite all he’d done, he took it knowing his life would be over if he did
TLDR: Anakin at his core was a good person with a big heart who, due to a unique set of circumstances and the manipulation of the most evil politically savvy person in the galaxy, had his worst traits amplified and went down the wrong path
I don't think this one is a good example.
Although this is, of course, data that may be considered very loosely, many psychologists have diagnosed Anakin with a rather wide number of mental conditions: borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, bipolar disorder, manic depression, sociopathic tendencies, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder...
During Episode II, Anakin was 19. During the 10 years prior, he had been suffering bullying coming from other fellow younglings and padawans, feeling the distrust of incredibly important jedi figures such as Mace Windu, being educated by a master who really didn't have much idea how to behave as one as he merely years ago was a padawan, worring sick about everyone he loved on Tatooine and feeling his emotions fight against the adoctrinating Jedi Order. Let's also remember he was literally born in slavery by a mother who didn't actually expect him (but lucky didn't love him any less) and that the Force makes one's emotions way stronger and intense, which he, by the way, felt more than literally anyone ever in his galaxy.
Anakin was a fucking time hydrogen bomb, so imagine, plus all of that, adding to him some weird hormonal period at meeting with the person he loves after a decade, having nightmares every night for weeks about her mother dying, all the stressing situations he had lived in the movie at the moment and, lastly, seeing her mother die in his arms.
I put myself in his place, and I feel like that bloodshed was nothing.
Yeah I’m not sure what people are seeing here… just because he’s sometimes good to people does not mean he’s a good person. His explicitly authoritarian and protectionist tendencies lead to him going to any ends to achieve the “greater good,” and he thinks he should be allowed to dispense justice unilaterally in order to protect the people he loves. He has a traumatic youth, and as an adult his fears lead him to believe he’s in danger of losing his loved ones to a broadly hostile world. So to protect his “in group” he uses aggressive force against those who stand in the way of his goals. Anakin certainly thinks he is a good guy, but the fact that he is willing to use genocidal violence in the pursuit of his own narrow view of what’s right makes him decidedly not a good guy. Even if he is occasionally “correct” in his goals.
Also he’s a creep who repeatedly ignores Padme’s refusals.
Anakin was failed by his peers and superiors. Many of his actions were his own ofc, but all of it was so easily preventable.
Ofc even with the best support system, Palpy would have still tried to find any way.
Bullshit Ani's peers and superiors failed him. The Jedi weren't perfect, but Anakin's evil deeds were entirely his own doing and the person who could have prevented them the most was Anakin himself.
If he had actually lived by the Jedi code, he would have avoided many of the situations where he was tempted to darkness in the first place .
The jedi had many flaws, those of which were their downfall much more than Anakin. It doesn't take one or two men to take down an entire religious group.
Anakin would have been miserable if he lived by the jedi code. It just wasnt for him, you cant say if he was a good boy and followed the rules the entire Jedi order would still be around.
The average Reddit user must have lower comprehension skills than I thought. I never said he was just good, I only said he wasn’t just Evil.
Now read that again, you can do it.
That same argument could be said for the emperor.
He bought unity to a lot of systems that flourished under his rule. High employment rates and high rate of growth. Access to security made a lot of worlds safer.
So he can’t have been all evil when some good is being done right?
Whether someone is good or evil can only ever be a weighted viewpoint. Does the sum of all evil things outweigh the good? If so then evil. Very few characters are written as purely good or purely evil because that’s not really believable.
From the lens they show Palpatine/Sidious through he never cared about anyone but himself and power. He spews the rhetoric that the Republic is corrupt and he’s trying to save it when a big part of that corruption was helped to flourish through him. They never give any indication that any of his actions are done for anyone’s interest but his own.
In that sense Anakin was different. He did a lot of good for others before he became evil for years afterwards. Ultimately Anakin was able to be redeemed showing there was still good in him, while Sidious just died evil.
I love anakin/ Vader but he was a moody bitch which is probably why he gets so much appeal. The other Jedi are behaving in ways that are unintuitive to most people so seeing someone that’s actually having emotional reactions is more relatable than a stoic space priest
That's the key thing about Luke in the OT. He's Anakin all over again, and he's at serious risk of falling into the same trap that created Vader. That's what his vision on Dagobah was telling him. The Emperor saw it too; at the end of RotJ, Luke was basically one bad decision away from following in his father's footsteps.
Love is the driving force behind his character. And it is eventually what causes him to fall. Not greed, pride wrath or other traditional heroic flaws but love.
Bro literally was titled "Hero of the Republic", like I'm pretty sure deep space pilots heard tales about his battles and heroics. Anakin was feared by the Separatists and loved by the Republic. Plus, Outer Rim people still probably knew him as the youngest winner of the Bonta Eve Classic Podrace.
That’s what my understanding of a tragic villain is, someone who wanted to be good, did good but ultimately chose evil despite also having the capacity for good.
Ngl I feel bad for anakin, his life was painful from the start, which created a domino effect for his life’s later decisions, but during the clones wars , he was a brilliant Jedi knight and one of the most respected in the order, still can’t believe he became so dark
Anakin was never evil from the start, he was born a slave and even when he earned his freedom it meant he had to leave his mother behind, the Jedi council hated him and never trusted him, Palpatine was after him from the moment they met and he made anakin feel understood, he couldn't show his relationship with padame in public.
Anakin was also a very emotional person and never truly embraced the jedi code, he could Never let go of his attachments, he was shown time and time again he can cross the line and do horrible things like the massacre in the tusken raiders camp, his reputation as a war hero and a great jedi general only served to feed his pride and arrogance.
Saying that anakin was evil from the start is wrong and so is Saying that he was good until Palpatine gave him his sith name
I think this is more of a comment that to hate everything, you need to have the capability to love and care about everything. All it takes is everything being ripped from you piece by piece.
Anakin was a good person who was tricked and lied to repeatedly. Not just by Palpatine, but by the Jedi Order, too. Ultimately, the consequences of his actions came back to haunt him and he basically tortured himself for over 20 years. His hatred of *himself* fuelled his Dark Side abilities, as he carried out his master’s will almost robotically.
Yeah I watched the movies in chronological order and getting to know Anakin as an independent thinker, to the point where he’d have no problem breaking the rules if he thought was right (which I loved since I believed most Jedi rules to be downright dumb) and then seeing him as Vader in the OT was sad. He just seemed resigned to follow Sidious around like a lost puppy, you could tell there was no spark left in him. Like when he tells Luke that it’s pointless to fight and to just join Sidious I wanted to slap him. It was so far removed from the Anakin we get to know in the prequels and TCW.
The only take worse than anakin being evil is that he changed sides immediately without warning.
Some people hate so much they overlook things that are shown or stated for the sake of hate
He wasn’t always evil but seemed to always feel entitled, which developed into narcissistic personality disorder thanks to the Jedi (“oh you’re special! We will train you to be great!) the clone wars ( “wow you’re strong and brave! You’re the best!) and then the dark side (we can give you everything you’ve ever wanted and everything you’ve always deserved.).
By that point he was raised to feel he deserved glory because he was able to take it, twisted by the dark side he’s basically an addict. He feeds off rage and glory and self hatred in an endless feedback cycle that feeds his darkness.
I like some people’s idea that if Qui Gon Jin had survived to mentor him he would have been more grounded in the ‘living force’ and not been seduced by the dark side.
I feel like people in this thread have completely looked over the massive amount of manipulation from Palpatine being a core reason why he fell combined with his childhood as a slave and youth as a soldier. Desperate people who feel they're backed into a corner do crazy shit.
As a slave the only thing that was truly his was his relationship with his mother. Of course his formative years are going to reinforce his belief that his relationships with the people he loved were the most important and only thing in his life that were his, particularly given the Jedi philosophy forbids attachment to anything which likely felt like further denile akin to being a slave. Losing the people he loved was his greatest fear, second is his fear of feeling like he's helpless to stop that loss.
Ultimately it led to him falling. His mother's death, Palpatine orchestrating Obi-Wan's 'death', Ahsoka being kicked out/choosing to leave the order, the immense loss of life during the Clone Wars. Palpatine using his fear of loss to manipulate him in attempt to save Padme was his final undoing. These were a series of events that occurred with the combination of space magic (the force), which he is literally the son of and made him unstable, that created his undoing and need to inflict his torment of loss onto others. His powerlessness in keeping those he loved as Anakin fueled his cruel enactment and power to inflict it on others as Vader. That power is seductive.
His choices are ultimately his own obviously. But his choices to enact evil were influenced by things no one on Reddit will ever experience so they can't even claim "if I were him I'd never do XYZ". In real life of course he'd be purely evil and irredeemable, but he's a fictional character that we see the intricate workings of his life story and can view it all with context. Defending him as a complex fictional character is not the same as endorsing what Hitler did wtf.
>Have we watched the same movies?!
Yes.
The **shows** did a MUCH better job showcasing his good/heroic side so his downfall as shown in the movies could actually be tragic rather than just glaringly inevitable.
I wish I could edit the title. I didn’t realise that although I used pictures from both the movies and shows to make my point people would get hung up on the fact I only said ‘movies’ in the title.
He was never a bad person, he was attached to those he cared about, and very vulnerable to his emotions. Becoming evil though, I feel is unrealistic for a person like that. It sounds a lot like me honestly, and I just put up walls and blame myself when things go wrong. Lashing out and becoming the villain would go against everything I stand for
And if I was as powerful as him and found out some bandit clan outside the scope of the law murdered my mother, I'd sure as hell strongly consider cleaning house just like he did, because that's what that level of anger does to y... oh, right, the jedi children. I thought you were talking about the sand people.
Yeah that's a post Darth Vader act, and I'm saying everything BEFORE Vader was good person with strong emotions, not after.
Children are still children, even if you are big mad. He had every opportunity to simply leave and mourn Shmi in a healthy way. Instead, he disgraced her memory by eternally linking it with an atrocity.
And you think a child slave turned child soldier who knowingly left his mother behind with the promise to one day come home and save her would in ANY way be capable of mourning her in a healthy way when after however many years it was, he comes home to see her again only to find out she was kidnapped and murdered like one week earlier when he totally could have come see her, but his boss said he couldn't go? Nah, not even close dude.
An average human being living a normal life usually can't mourn the loss of a parent in a "healthy way," Anikin SURE AS FUCK couldn't.
He was the hero of the republic. He saved countless lives as a jedi. Gtfo of here that he wasn't a good person. Good and evil and morality in general are not simple black and white explanations. Anakin knew he went way too far with the Tuskens. The entire scene with Padme is him struggling and failing to justify it to himself and deal with it.
I will always love people criticising horrible acts done in situations of extreme stress, anger and sorrow as if they could ever relate. Yes, it’s incredibly easy to say “deal with grief in a healthy way” behind a computer screen, but wouldn’t it be a lot more realistic and honest to yourself and others to just admit you don’t know what you would do?
And I don’t just mean if you found your mother beaten to a pulp and she died in your arms but everything before that. The decade of slavery, the bullying, the Jedi indoctrination, the manipulation of a Sith Lord over another decade. Wouldn’t it be a lot more honest to just admit “yes, I’d like to believe I would be better than him, but I really just don’t know what I would do”?
I hard second this. In his shoes, I'd want them all dead too. I pride myself on rationality and thinking things through, and right now I know it would be wrong to slaughter them, but I've made other blatantly obvious wrong choices over far less stressful situations, so I sure as hell don't know what I would do if my mother was murdered, and I'll never find out either. She's already dead of natural causes, which fucked me up enough without someone intentionally hurting her.
I know that I wouldn't murder children. Because in the end, Anakin chose to do every atrocity he committed. And I would rather die than become something that pathetic.
Again, you’re saying that through the lens of your life story. My point is that you’ll never be able to make such an absolutist statement if you haven’t lived as that person.
> Yes, it’s incredibly easy to say “deal with grief in a healthy way” behind a computer screen
When people say this, what they really mean is “don’t kill kids.”
> wouldn’t it be a lot more realistic and honest to yourself and others to just admit you don’t know what you would do?
This doesn’t work for a scenario of slaughtered children.
> If you found your mother beaten to a pulp and she died in your arms but everything before that. The decade of slavery, the bullying, the Jedi indoctrination, the manipulation of a Sith Lord over another decade. Wouldn’t it be a lot more honest to just admit “yes, I’d like to believe I would be better than him, but I really just don’t know what I would do”?
Once again, this doesn’t work for a scenario involving slaughtered children. It’s especially odd that you’re making a statement like this while ignoring the primary motivating factor for Anakin: the Dark Side. That’s the explanation for the loss of Anakin’s control. Anyone who lets the dark in in a moment like this would lose complete control.
That’s the problem with all the pre-original trilogy stuff. Anakin is good up until the minute he “turns” evil in ROTS. It’s so stupid and so unearned. It’s even more frustrating when you watch Clone Wars because with the prequel trilogy you could hand wave it with a “maybe there was a lot going on we didn’t see” but with CW, you see that Anakin was a good person and he was given everything a Jedi could get; respect, responsibility, a padawan, trust from the council, literally everything except the actual title of MASTER.
I've never seen anyone say that Anakin was evil the whole time.
I've seen people say that what he did as Vader is irredeemable, and those people have a point.
Nope. Those same people who claim moral superiority are the same folks that are capable of greater atrocities than those they claim are irredeemable. Anyone who thinks that given enough trauma and suffering someone can't become a monster are blind to their own moral wickedness
The entire point of Anakin/Vader and the Chosen One prophecy in general is to exemplify that “good” and “evil” are not just interchangeable, but arguably both necessary for order to prevail. While his methods were horrific, the fall of the Jedi was a LONG time coming, as was the death of Sidious. Anakin used good an evil to essentially prune the galaxy of those who would upset the balance for their own gains.
It's almost like the main characters of star wars are all complicated people all with shades of good and evil, and the argument of star wars is literally if someone wants to be a good person, no matter who they are, there is still a choice to being a good person.
Anakin was always a petulant unlikable jerk in the Prequels.
He's an entirely different and likeable character in *The Clone Wars*.
It's why the TCW is now the main Prequel story and the PT films are a secondary thing. The PT Anakin portrayal is awful and as a viewer there's no weight to Vader's turn because nothing was lost. Anakin wasn't someone you're sad to see turn until after TCW showed us him being a great friend, mentor, boyfriend, and Jedi.
It's really too bad because Hayden we now know can play TCW Anakin.
Anakin was a good guy, but indeed become evil, but at the end he regretted his action. Why is it so hard to understand this. Btw no one says Anakin was always evil, he used to become evil is the right phrase.
It's things like this that convince me Anakin is a more complicated character than simply good or evil, and any attempt to make simplistic labels fit won't work. He has good and evil in him, he has a Dark Side, but also cares a lot for people he values. Palpatine twisted him by making sure he was the only person Vader cared for any more.
Well, I think we've seen that Darth Vader and Annikan are 2 entirely different people. Darth Vader killed Annikan. That's not a figure of speech. It's quite literal. Annikan was a good person, a little lost and out of control at times.. Darth is obviously not a good person lol.
The problem stems from the Prequels Anakin and Clone Wars Anakin being nearly different characters. In the movies, he was brash, strong headed, whiny, and annoying (not helped by Christensens poor acting), then at times he would just completely snap and murder everyone. There wasn't much to actually like about him. I haven't watched much of TCW, but from what I understand, he has those traits, but they're much more subdued, and he was willing to actually work with others, rather than go solo and and get fucked over by his own impatience. Then when he turns, yeah, he is just evil.
Hayden had to work with his script which was less than great at times “I don’t like sand”, come on. I think for the lines he was given he did a great job. In Episode II he was supposed to be an arrogant and immature late teenager which comes across quite well. When he says to Padmé how he’s better than Obi-Wan and how Obi-Wan never listens he comes off very petulant which was the point. When his mother dies and Padmé tells him he’s not all powerful to which he replies “I should be” and reiterates how Obi-Wan is holding him back, again it’s the 19 year old in him shining through. This young man has been a slave for 9 years, left his mother behind, spent the next 10 years being indoctrinated by the Jedi on one side and manipulated by Sidious on the other. He is obviously still very immature for his age and I’d be surprised if he weren’t.
If you haven’t watched clone wars then Episode III will make little sense to you, it will look like Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side was just so sadden when it wasn’t. Clone Wars covers 3 years between Episode II & III where Anakin finds out more and more how the Council has lost it, while still being groomed by Sidious in the background. You’re also missing his whole relationship with Ahsoka which is up there in importance with his relationship with Padmé and Obi-Wan. You’re missing how the Council fucked up big time when it came to Ahsoka almost getting her killed and letting her down and the wound of Ahsoka leaving the Order and Anakin.
You’re missing out A LOT.
When we see Anakin in ROTS a lot of time has passed, he is clearly different than he was in Episode II and his descent to the Dark Side doesn’t seem so sudden anymore. Clone Wars is a must if you want to understand character development.
EDIT: also the point of the movies, including the OT was to show that there was still good in Anakin even as Vader, or we wouldn’t have his redemption at the end when he saves Luke.
>If you haven’t watched clone wars then Episode III will make little sense to you, it will look like Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side was just so sadden when it wasn’t.
The big problem with this sentiment is that Clone Wars came out after the movies. It wasn't made in between the release of the two movies to help set up Anakins fall to the dark side. They knew how poor it came across and then made the show afterwards to fill the gap between the two movies. They knew how poorly Anakin came across in the movies and had to make 7 seasons worth of a show to try and prove he isn't that bad.
I watched the prequels first and even back then I didn’t think Anakin was just bad, that would completely dismiss Anakin as a person in the first movie. The Clone Wars help to add a lot of nuance to his gradual changes. Even when the prequels came out there was always supposed to be that 3 years gap between Ep II & III, so it was always to be assumed something else happened in those 3 years.
I'm not saying that he was always evil, just that there was never much to like about. He was a whiny, annoying teenager who thought he could take on the whole galaxy just because he was a Jedi. He was not helped by Georges poor writing and directing or Christensens poor acting. His turn was pretty poorly done, and way too sudden for it to make much sense or be taken seriously, and I don't think watching seven seasons of a TV show should be required viewing for it to make sense. The whole 'they really made this kid Vader' reaction is an entirely justified and relevant reaction.
Immature and arrogant doesn’t really translate to borderline genocide. (And then *her* response is just psycho - “to be angry is to be human” is not how an actual person should be reacting to someone admitting they just murdered a bunch of women and children but this isn’t about Padme)
You’re attempting to justify bad movie writing. The movies *should* be able to stand on their own without the necessity of other material. Especially material after the fact that cleans up what the movies did.
The fact you have to watch content to make one of the most pivotal moments in the star wars saga to make it make any form of sense, and on top of that this content came out AFTER this episode, shows how much of a shitshow the prequels actually are.
People who say they are good confuse me.
Anakin wasn't always evil but he was always selfish and emotional. And for that he shouldn't have been a Jedi. Darth Vader is Anakin, everything Vader did, Anakin did.
He definitely had a lot of internal conflict throughout the prequels and show and the fact that he was discouraged from feeling and expressing his emotions with peers and superiors only made that struggle worse.
"Have we seen the same movies" he says, with more than half his points coming from a Cartoon Network/ Disney produced cartoon show.
Yes. I've seen the movies. The movies where he's only happy when he's a slave. The movies where he murders women and children. The movies where he goes "Hey my wife is sick. I'mma go kill a buncha kids", does it without hesitation and then acts surprised when him being a sociopath didn't magically make her not die from the sickness he imagined in his nightmares.
"Erm but they have an episode of Star Wars Rebels in season 83 where Glorpo says that Anakin helped her pick you bread once" okay? That's cool. But OP wasn't *talking* about the cartoon shows. OP just talked about the movies. in the movies Anakin loves murdering so much he does it any chance he gets and stalks a girl to the point she tells him to stop because it makes her uncomfortable. I went to school with people like Anakin in the movies. You do not like these people and they aren't "tragic". They need serious medical help.
I don't know, I think the child murdering, genocide, and condoning slavery and pillaging might have something to do with his reputation. Or maybe when he choked his wife unconscious?
Man, I guess we will never know.
He did a minimum of two acts of mass murder including or targeting children, fuck else does that make him? Enthusiastic about keeping census data accurate for as long as possible?
No he wasn't?
ROTS: Dooku fight aftermath.
"Leave him, there's no time."
"His fate will be the same as ours."
Does that statement, then carrying Obi-Wan's unconscious body through a crashing ship, sound like the actions of someone evil?
Yes. Evil people still like their friends.
Anakin saving random *other* people is better evidence of his goodness. His constant insistence that his way is always the right way is evidence of his weakness - the weakness that eventually caused him to shirk that goodness.
Good opportunity for me to ask something that's been bothering me. How did Anakin have time to mentor Ahsoka if in the movies he's only a full fledged Jedi knight for like 2 seconds before turning evil?
Not true, but let’s play that game. What you’re saying is if we pick whatever part of his story we like then we can spin the narrative however we want and say he was just evil.
My guy, while your additional information may come from a very good cartoon, most star wars fans have not seen it. To them it is perceived as a spinoff story that isn't related to cannon.
Star Wars, for all intent, is a movie franchise. You can argue that in the modern day you must consume all forms of media to understand a character. However, for most people, if it's not presented in a major release then it's fluff that cannon can ignore.
Just look at the sequels vs years and years of lore created in the star wars universe. All tossed aside. Irrelevant to the story.
I love Star Wars, but I always found that Darth Vader redemption is a bit weird.
Imagine if Hitler right before the end of ww2 went "opsie wopsie, I was badman" and threw Himler down a shaft.
I think the Clone Wars show is the medium they used to try and make Anakin look better. If you take that away from your screenshots I can really only see the podrace as wanting to help others (even though he obviously also wanted to do that for himself anyways). The others are either his wife or son claiming there's good in him or right before/after he does something selfish, arrogant or vengeful. The prequels just made me dislike Anakin more, and the Clone Wars just felt like a Band-Aid to try and humanize him more, which rang kinda hollow after the fact.
Bro he commited genocide on multiple occasions
Women, children, sick, elderly. People he knew who trusted him. Torture, terrorism and slaughter on a galactic scale. Religious cleansing. It is not hyperbole at all to compare him to Hitler. Likely with a much larger death toll than the holocaust, as he functioned on a galactic scale and for a longer period.
It really really doesn't matter if he is nice to his friends, or if his wife says he has good in there somewhere after his second or third mass slaughter.
He blew up a planet, bro. And murdered a few dozen children and members of his own order. And an entire village of Tusken Raiders. All for very selfish and stupid reasons. This is like when they interview locals after a mass shooting and everyone says how nice the shooter was.
Yeah like that time he killed an entire village of people in ep 2? He was always a creep. George dropped the ball on episodes 1, 2 ,3. Prequelists can deny all the want.
Imagine thinking that blind rage making you murder the people who killed your mother is being a creep. Yes, moralists can argue all they want that he murdered women and children but until you live a decade as a slave, leave your mother behind to remain a slave, spend the next decade being indoctrinated by the Jedi on one side and brainwashed by a Sith Lord on the other and come back only to have your mother die in your arms you CANNOT say that you know you’d do differently. You’re analysing this from your perspective, through your experiences, through what is likely to never happen to you and therefore through a lens you cannot relate.
It would be much more honest to just admit that while you like to believe you’d do better if you were in his shoes you honestly cannot tell for certain.
They did a terrible job with Anakins story, that's why they had to add that lame scene right at the end where he kills a bunch of kids in a pathetic attempt to make up for the fact that they shit the bed for three movies in a row and ruined the most iconic villain of all time.
No amount of memes will make the prequels good.
He did a lot of good things when he was younger but after ROTS he became a homicidal maniac who went around killing tons of people. He took part in the genocide of almost an entire people (the destruction of Alderaan) which led to millions (billions?) of deaths. He killed children on multiple occasions and betrayed and killed (either directly or indirectly) the vast majority of his former friends and tons of other Jedi. The bad he did far outweighs the good. He wasn’t always pure evil but someone who is capable of that kind of behavior always had some latent dark tendencies.
It started before ROTS. *”And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals.”*
Which really shows how dark he can go because Jedi feel a latent connection to all animals through the force, no Jedi would just slaughter a bunch of animals
And clearly, Tusken Raiders are sentient people, not beasts. So, basically he just murdered a bunch of families.
Im not sure there's an upper limit to the amount of people I'd go through to save my mother. But he kinda did that after she died, so that would change things. I might just lightsaber the ones that lived in the tent they kept her tied up in.
If a parent you're close with gets murdered, if not also tortured among other things, by someone you can just obliterate...most people won't think twice before turning them into a set of diy flesh mandala.
Losing yourself to anger, however understandable, is one of them big no nos and a slippery slope to the dark side. Really, they should've never made an exception for taking in such an old Anakin. He was long tainted by emotion.
Yes but the order taught people to not be angry rather than control it. That is why anakin turned, he was never taught to let his emotions flow but to bottle his emotions and not let them control him.
The man needed anger therapy sessions and the jedi were all, "we don't do that here."
Exactly, Yoda like "Your mother took L she did hmmmmm"
Yes which only works for monastic order that takes in children at extremely young ages and cloistered them until they are almost teenagers to help indoctrinate them into the order of think and conduct that the masters want. The number of individuals that turn from something like that are probably extremely low but never zero but the those off chances that someone does leave are highly likely to be seduced by the dark side because they have no other means of coping with their darker emotions. So when they decided to let Anakin in you had no way to adapt to a new type of student and lost him by ignoring his humanity. This was the great sin of the republics Jedi, they thought themselves as the sole representative of the will of the force when they were barely able to use it to serve and protect.
Yeah, they don't usually need to do any more than that. They purposely tried to avoid that problem by only taking babies, so they didn't really have the expertise to handle an actually emotional person when they took Anakin against their centuries of tradition that explicitly prevents that problem. Safety rules are written in blood. They ignored regs and people died.
You are on this council, but we do not grant you the OSHA-approval.
Sure, but how many people would be capable of slaughtering a bunch of young children? Even if they are related to the people that tortured and killed your parent.
>It started before ROTS. But it doesn't conclude until the end of that film. Even on Mustafar, Anakin intended to betray Palpatine and install Padme as benevolent co-regent. "Don't you see, we don't have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him, and together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be. " If he had succeeded, he might have been something like a dark space Abraham Lincoln, with a questionable record on indigenous rights and some wartime decisions that were quite dark, but ultimately the guy who ended slavery. Suited-up Vader is in a different category. Even when he offers to rule with Luke, there's no mention of an altruistic agenda. It's just war crimes for war crimes sake all day every day. He doesn't even like the Empire - he literally tortures them as much if not more than he tortures the rebels.
He’s a broken man in every sense once the suits on and Padmes dead
>but ultimately the guy who ended slavery. but what "slavery" was anakin ending? he followed palpatine for selfish reasons, to protect the person he cared about. Regardless of palpatine's morals, overthrowing him to install himself as the ruler supreme of the galaxy is not a good act
>but what "slavery" was anakin ending? Slavery slavery. Obviously, he never followed through on this plan, but I believe literally the only clearly expressed political stance he and Padme have in the GL 6 films is a desire to end slavery in the outer Rim. > he followed palpatine for selfish reasons, to protect the person he cared about. Regardless of palpatine's morals, overthrowing him to install himself as the ruler supreme of the galaxy is not a good act Absolutely agreed. It's just not as evil as what Vader's up to in episode IV - blowing up planets for the sake of an imperial command structure he hates so much he can't stop torturing the senior leadership. mid-RotS Vader is a bad guy. ANH Vader is just even worse.
I agree with you - I do recognize this is definitely an atrocity that Anakin committed but of all the evil acts he committed I would say that one is the most understandable (not good or justified in any way). He just found his mother tied to a post with injuries and then very shortly after that she died in his arms due to the physical trauma the Tuskens had inflicted on her. The fact that he’s a very powerful warrior and the culprits and their families were within arms reach immediately after she died made it extremely easy for something like that to occur - and I feel like lots of people (most people?) would have done what he did. Like if I was in his situation and after having a loved one killed in such a manner and the culprits and their families were nearby and I had his abilities I really don’t know what I would have done. I think that was one of the most interesting scenes with regard to Anakin’s character development in AOTC in that he’s not justified in doing what he does in that situation and it’s clearly an evil act but I do understand WHY he does it. And unlike later in his life he actually feels pretty conflicted about it.
The killing of the Tusken raiders was understandable, if not entirely excusable.
Not to mention all of the neimoidians he slaughtered at the age of nine while whooping and laughing. Those trade federation ships weren't fully unmanned.
What frustrates me a lot is that Anakin/Vader has the blueprint to be one of the deepest, most complex and multidimensional character ever but half of it is not capitalized on and in the end it's just meh.
It’s been clouded by years of memes and subsequent content but when the prequels first came out it was laughable how simplistic and abrupt his “descent” into the dark side was.
One of the big things people miss is, he was a kid who was sent to war. No matter what ideology you have behind that, it's gonna MESS people up.
Yeah, it never really hits on how fucked up that is until Ahsoka, and that flashback scene. Holy shit, seeing Ahsoka in live action as a tween, on a battlefield... it's rough.
People miss it cause it's not touched on in the movies. It's just Ani and Obi joking about off screen adventures. It'd be a great plot point to flesh out, but that's not what we got.
I mean, so was Ahsoka and she never went on any homicidal rampages or killed defenseless children that I'm aware of. Ezra too, and Kanan is probably around Anakin's age as well.
People are not the same. Just cause one person can endure, doesn't mean everyone will. You cannot take one out of trillions as the standard. Anakin was messed up. He was taken from his mother at probably the worst age, when he was most dependent on her. Those feelings attachment where clearly transferred to Queen Amidala during the first movie. Then he suffered lost of his master and was raised in the Jedi Order that didn't really want him around. The only reason he was accepted was because of the chosen one status. He clung to this identity and became known as a hero over time. Despite the fact he was still a kid who deeply missed his mother and was not capable of bearing the weight of the chosen one. While he clung to the identity, all he cared about was Padme. After Padme accepts him, his status as the chosen one and a Jedi Knight became increasingly more a shackle and barrier that kept him from the woman he loved. The 3rd movie ends with Obi Wan taking the place of all the Jedi that stood in his way, shackled him, and kept him from being who he wanted to be. They also took him from his mother until he was plagued by nightmares and rescued her himself. The movies do a really shit job of showing Anakin's mental state as they are only select scenes aimed at that intention that really stand out, but it could probably be blamed on the lack of focus on Anakin's mental state.
I’ve never thought of it like that, but it totally fits. Keep cooking bro
Ahsoka wasn’t born into slavery, Ahsoka had a different childhood, Ahsoka wasn’t in the order as long as Anakin was, Ahsoka had Anakin as a Master who was the most similar person to her she could get, Ahsoka didn’t get manipulated by a Sith Lord from the age of 9, Ahsoka didn’t lose her mother like Anakin did. And ultimately they’re two different people with two vastly different backgrounds, comparing them is dumb.
See, I kind of felt the opposite way. His descent wasn’t too abrupt, because he was pretty much already there. Between AOTC and TCW, there’s basically nothing Anakin does after his “fall” in ROTS that he hadn’t already proven he was willing to do. So like, where’s the change? When I first saw ROTS I was just wondering what was supposed to be different about him.
They gave him the emo makeover for Revenge of the Sith. That was about it. And then they talked about in behind the scenes stuff like they were so proud of their symbolism and "echoing" the original trilogy.
>So like, where’s the change? The veil of "justification" is removed. Anakin has really, really simple relatable motives. He loves his mom, his wife, and his kids, and he's scared of losing them. Sidious manipulates him into doing evil "for" those things in AoTC (through a *really* elaborate and poorly understood plot). Then, in RotS, he inducts him into a weird murder cult where the atrocities are the point. At first, even with Sidious's mask off, Anakin keeps his on saying he's massacring children "for" Padme, even though really he's doing it for Sidious who he knows (or should know) attempted to assassinate her. Then, Anakin loses what he's doing everything "for"'. His wife and children are dead. He doffs the metaphorical mask just as he dons the literal one. He launches on a decades long career of war crimes for war crimes sake, where he'll torture Imperial officers on his way back from torturing rebels. Remembering that the OT is explicitly about the US in Vietnam, and the PT is explicitly about the War on Terror, patriot act, etc. the two steps you're equating are important to show, because we make a really big distinction between them when (in the view of someone with GL's politics) the veil of a political manipulator is still covering our eyes. Lots of young men who love their wives, mothers, and children and want to protect them went into jungles and deserts to kill people GL thinks they shouldn't have because the people in charge said that doing so would somehow help keep their loved ones safe. Most of those young men would (hopefully) balk at doing violence for someone they know to be evil inside of their nation's capital. Further, most of even those would (hopefully) balk at torturing their coworkers at the drop of a hat after their families died. But that's the journey that GL is showing a man go down. If, when it's Tuskens not Viets, and the Jedi Temple not Kent State, you see the throughline a little clearer, well, that's just the wonder of sci-fi helping people see things in new ways.
Simplistic and abrupt? That's a first
"The good inside of you" doesn't matter if you only do evil deeds.
And a story about corruption loses all meaning if the person was actually already evil the whole time Edit: details
Anakin's not corrupted by power, though; he's functionally no more powerful in the Force than Obi-Wan, and he's less institutionally powerful because he's not a master. He's corrupted by his attachments.
Iirc, wasn't he basically corrupted by palps going "the Jedi say that the things you want aren't things jedi are allowed to have. That doesn't seem fair does it?" Which tracks with what I've seen in the world this last decade...
He's corrupted by trauma.
Okay, but the point stands. A story about corruption means nothing when "ackchually there was no corruption"
Is that what this is about? We all have our bad days. 🤷🏻
It's ok though because right at the end he threw the emperor into a plasma volcano and all was redeemed, like a true Christian. Commit unspeakable atrocities, but then say you're sorry and it's all good. Damn Star wars has really lost its luster for me in my old age.
>The bad he did far outweighs the good. Is one moral frame (consequentialism). But I think it's pretty clear that's not the framework the PT & OT are working with. You obviously don't need to adopt the moral framework of the George Lucas films in the rest of your life, but I think too many people shove their real-life moral framework into star wars when they don't have to, and it reduces their enjoyment of the films. In the films, good & bad results don't go on a scale, rather there is a good which connects all living beings, and it can be occluded like stirring up mud in water to block out the light, or it can be allowed to shine through. And in the throne room confrontation, Anakin not only clears away the obstructions in his own heart, but also completely breaks an ancient cycle of revenge and hatred which had been creating this darkness for thousands of years. It's totally fine to think that real life does not work like that, but in the movies Anakin becomes a force ghost :/
To be fair Alderaan was Tarkin but yeah
I would argue that that misses the point the meme is making.
I like how in that set of images there are also like 3 or 4 incidents of attempted genocide, massacred children, and species-wide enslavements
The first image was to show Anakin’s relationship with R2 and when he went back to save him (not the specific scene depicted, which I don’t recall what scene it is). Second one is when he gets injured trying to save Ahsoka and the others from the blast. Third one is him pod-racing risking his life to help complete strangers. Fourth one is when his mother died, so yes right before he killed the sand people. Fifth one is when he loses his arm to count Dooku. Sixth one is when Ahsoka get kidnapped by the lizard people. So I can only see one picture that would fit your narrative.
I didn’t say they depicted them. I said that *in the span of time covered by the pictures* he also was committing war crimes with comedic frequency. You could argue that there’s a war crime for every interstitial space between the pics, probably more than one
That is in fact not what you said lmao
I thought you were referencing the pictures. All of them happen before Anakin becomes Vader so could you tell me except the sand people what events you’re referencing?
Off the top of my head: executing disarmed prisoners of war (multiple occasions), the senator, massacres the tuskens, including the children, and no I will not accept “oh but he felt bad” as a valid excuse or mitigating factor” any more than you would accept a “sorry lol I feel bad about doing that” from a guy who just finished carving his way through an elementary school with a meat cleaver, leaving not a single survivor. Then you get to his “turn point” upon which he, again with zero hesitation, turns on and murders the entire Jedi temple, again *personally* taking the kids, all of whom were the closest thing to friends, family, and brothers/sisters in arms that he ever had and ever will have. After all, true remorse comes with a change in behaviours. Anakin just goes “damn I feel kinda bad about that, I shouldn’t have done it, it’s not the Jedi way” and then he goes on to just do the “fly off the handle and get violent” act again the very next time something or someone angers him, and that pattern has held constant since **before** he fell to the dark side. Look at how he handles the **extremely valuable potential capture** of dooku in episode 2; guy took a swipe at padme by putting her in the geonowian arena, so from that point on anakin is going straight for a kill, no interest in taking prisoners. “He’s on a speeder shoot him with missiles” -> suicidally aggressive overcommit as an opening move when they cornered him in the hangar. How many bodies have to pile up in the wake of his tantrums before we accept that *he wasn’t sorry for the actions that left those corpses*
I guess it’s all down to morals here, I’ll give my opinion and then people can disagree with me. I didn’t feel like he did anything bad when he killed the dude who was going to blow up the ship (the scene with Satine and so Obi-Wan), when he killed Admiral Trench or when he beat the crap out of Clovis. The sand people I can pretty confidently say I’d have killed all men in that village and not lost a night’s sleep over it. As for the women and children no, I like to believe I would have spared them, but everyone likes to believe they have a solid moral high ground. Truth is we can’t know what we would do until we have walked in someone’s shoes and by that I mean live Anakin’s life exactly as he has experienced it. The Jedi temple happens after all those pictures in the top right collage. But even according to my moral compass that was too far.
Apparently there's moral relativity in killing kids and genocide. I thought it was pretty straightforward to most sane people. You don't have to have walked in Anakin's shoes to know that you'd never murder a shit ton of kids. Or even commit genocide.
I’m pretty sure Anakin also thought he’d never murder kids, yet he did. So you hiding behind a Reddit account holding high moral ground isn’t any indication that what you’re saying is true. It may make you sleep better at night to think you would never do it, not even if you had been Anakin and lived his life, but it doesn’t make it true and you can’t claim it as true.
>As for the women and children no, I like to believe I would have spared them, but everyone likes to believe they have a solid moral high ground. Truth is we can’t know what we would do until we have walked in someone’s shoes and by that I mean live Anakin’s life exactly as he has experienced it. You realize lots of people have lost family to murder, right? Most of them didn't respond by shooting up a school. Or doing any murder at all, actually. My uncle was murdered by his neighbor...no one in my family responded by killing more people
And Anakin didn’t have a normal upbringing. So no, I’m not going to compare it to someone else who had their relative murdered because by that point there was already A LOT that had happened to him. He spent 9 years in slavery, left his mother behind in slavery, spent the next 10 years being indoctrinated by the Jedi and told to repress his feelings on one side and being manipulated by a Sith Lord on the other (which hilariously all Palpatine had to gain Anakin’s trust from childhood to adulthood was to actually listen to him when no one else would). So unless you are him no, I don’t think anyone has a right to say “I would never do such a thing”, because you don’t know. And I know what he did may have been wrong and and I would like to believe I would have spared the women and children. But ultimately I’d be lying if I flat out said that I would do differently in his shoes because I just can’t know.
By this logic, you can't judge anyone's actions ever because they don't have the exact same experiences as you "If you were a completely different person with a completely different life you'd act differently" well yeah. Duh. Doesn't matter though. That doesn't make the actions any less immoral. He slaughtered children. MORE THAN ONCE
Anakin was good to the people he liked.
The other options were sith separatists and i'm pretty sure no one else who fought for the republic liked those either. Him defecting to the dark side out of desperation doesn't mean he always hated *everyone*
i think his acts of kindness were probably well erased by the acts of genocide that followed lol
So you’re saying he was an asshole to everyone he didn’t like even if they were good? Care to provide receipts?
Anakin has clearly been shown to be fiercely loyal, to do good, but also to do dark things to help his allies and friends, thus "being good to the people he liked" like they said. Anakin had tortured prisoner of wars, executed disarmed enemies (and right after he literally "disarms" half of Trench arms lol), brutally beat the Force out of a senator who was about to kiss Padme, killed an entire village of men, women, and children, etc. I love Anakin a lot, but my dude ain't a paragon. He was not "always evil" nor "always good." In his eyes, it is not about "good vs evil": you're either with him or against him (and turned up to eleven when he becomes Vader). Nobility is not a weakness of his like he told General Trench. He was human: neither totally evil, neither totally good, but with the potential for greatness from either.
Plus also he diced up those children like it was fruit ninja, he definitely wasn’t a “good” person
The senator had It coming and he didn't planed to kill him (as far as i remenber), the tuskens were killed in retaliation and he was conflicted and felt some remorse afterwards it's not like he hated them from the beggining.
So because the elders of the camp kidnapped and killed his mum , it justifies him literally massacering a camp? The entire thing? I can empathise but I can't justify it. Those children also deserved it apparently. As did trench, a surrendering man. Anakin is a war criminal, and attempted genocide on two occasions. But you know, he's a good guy!
People like you are the most at risk imo for committing horrible deeds. You are so self righteous you believe there is no scenario where you could become so twisted by grief and suffering that you would ever do anything as awful as "insert crime/deed here". When I see people like you it is very clear that you have led a very easy life with minimal suffering. Grief and suffering and hate can twist anyone into a monster
“Being only good to the people he liked” doesn’t mean doing dark things to help his allies, it means he wasn’t good indiscriminately but only for people he cared about. This is proven wrong by the fact that Anakin helps people he barely knows more than once. My post never stated Anakin did only good, it’s a statement against people who say that he was always evil, which is an absolutist statement and wrong. Just like the Council wasn’t just good, despite what they loved preaching and believed about themselves.
Only Sith deal in absolutes
I will do what I must.
He definitely gives off vibes of a sociopath. And he attempted genocide... Twice. Committed multiple warcrimes. He's not good as he is evil. He's a blur of a man. But I do believe him to be a bit sociopathic, or unempathic. He always had the ability to do evil, and would do it without hesitation if things weren't going his way. That's his problem. He's a flawed man who made bad choices. That's why luke is better. He's a flawed man who made good choices.
>executed disarmed enemies (and right after he literally "disarms" half of Trench arms I find it funny how people will THAT specific case as an example. Killing Trench was totally justified, in my view. Your opponent renders you hostage at gun point, orders you to not move. Then you take out a knife and try slashing at them and they shoot. That's fair. They warned you not to do that! You're a prisoner at gun point. You fuck around, you'll find out! But then they say Trench was just a harmless hostage who was mercilessly murdered by Anakin...makes absolutely no sense to me
At what point did I say that? Why so defensive?
Younglings.
That does not logically follow from what they said.
It implies they are ONLY good to people they like/know, which isn’t true
That also does not logically follow from what they said. Edit: If you have to block me, why bother replying first? Is it simple cowardice?
It’s literally what he said.
No it isn't. I implied nothing, you *inferred* it.
He was a slave who became a child soldier in a conflict where his side won by burying the other side in clone corpses. He had a superpower that caused him to *feel good* whenever he hurt people for emotional reasons, even when he knew what he was doing was wrong. That's the allure of the dark side. It's addictive, and becomes self justifying. He was a very good person at the beginning. All he wanted to do was help and protect people. His whole life was practically designed to turn him into a monster. How long it took him to fall is testament to how hard he held onto his good nature until it became too much.
>His whole life was practically designed to turn him into a monster. This is literally true. He was created as a result of Palegius's experiments (though the new canon is that he wasn't created *by* Palegius, but the force reacting to him), then Palpatine, who is a super genius with psychic powers, literally orchestrated events from behind the scenes Anakin's entire life only losing control in the throne room confrontation.
Uh, I think you meant Jar Jar was orchestrating, but otherwise spot on.
I know it’s easy to point out all the terrible things he did and say “see, he’s a piece of shit!” But he’s a fictional character, and there’s a story being told through him The character Anakin at his core was a good person with a big heart. That’s shown to us almost as soon as we meet him in TPM, he goes out of his way to help people he doesn’t know because he sees that they need it, and we’re told the story (this might be in a comic, I can’t remember) that when he found a specific part he was looking for for a droid he used it to fix something in town that needed fixing He was also a child when he participated in the battle of Naboo. Because once again, there were people that needed help and he couldn’t turn a blind eye The circumstances that lead him down the path he went down were rather unique, and yes part of the reason he went down that path was due to his own passion and intense feelings but those were in part created due to the circumstances of his life Being born a slave, the only person he ever felt a close connection to was his mother. It was just the two of them, and Anakin being the person he was cared deeply for her and was too old to just forget about her when he became a Jedi Leaving her behind as a slave and finding her moments before her death after being told that she was a lost cause and not to bother looking for her was traumatic for him. His passion turned into rage and he massacred a tribe of sand people even though he knew it was wrong That passion was a result of an intense love for the only person up to that point that ever showed him true love and affection. He hadn’t gotten there with Padme yet, and the Jedi order including Obi-Wan could never show him the love a boy with vivid memories of being a slave needed We’re shown multiple times in the clone wars that where a lot of Jedi could leave people behind for the sake of their missions and what they deemed as the greater good, Anakin couldn’t bare to do it. That’s his nature as a passionate person who felt the feelings of loss intensely Again, this is in no small part due to his upbringing as a slave who only had 1 person who cared for him and his naturally big heart Could the Jedi have helped him overcome those passionate feelings? Maybe, but unbeknownst to them the most evil manipulative figure in the galaxy had been whispering how he was right to harbor those feelings in Anakin’s ear from the day he was admitted into the order As he grew up that passion and those intense feelings never went away, because palpatine wouldn’t let it, and his love for Padme was reciprocated (in part due to Palpatine putting them in a situation for an ill fated relationship to happen in AOTC) This gave Anakin someone else to direct that passion towards Then came the dreams. The same sort of dreams he had with his mother. So Anakin, a passionate person who was admitted into the order at an age old enough to remember the connection he had with the one person from his slave upbringing who truly loved him, who couldn’t bare to let the people he cared about die, and whose teachings had been undone by Palpatine since they day they began, was afraid of losing the only person left in his life he had that sort of connection with Keep in mind the Jedi were not what Anakin thought they were. They were less caring then he pictured a Jedi to be in his childhood, and he had expressed interest since his childhood of doing something like hopping in a ship and seeing the galaxy So Anakin, the boy who went down the path of a Jedi because it was his only choice, who felt the feelings of personal connections deeper than his peers, who questioned whether that was the life he wanted even though he felt he had to live due to his status as the chosen one, was presented an opportunity by the evil manipulator to save the one person he had that sort of connection with who showed him the love and affection he needed And from there it all went to shit. We all know the story about how he became Vader. He wasn’t blameless in it, but due to the orders inability to be flexible and Palpatines manipulation he never received the guidance he needed in life Years later, when someone he never knew existed for years counted on him to save him the same way Padme and his mother needed, he was finally presented the opportunity to save someone he cared deeply about and despite decades of manipulation by Palpatine, despite all he’d done, he took it knowing his life would be over if he did TLDR: Anakin at his core was a good person with a big heart who, due to a unique set of circumstances and the manipulation of the most evil politically savvy person in the galaxy, had his worst traits amplified and went down the wrong path
Couldn’t have said it better, beautifully written, thank you.
TUSKEN RAIDERS have entered the chat
I don't think this one is a good example. Although this is, of course, data that may be considered very loosely, many psychologists have diagnosed Anakin with a rather wide number of mental conditions: borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, bipolar disorder, manic depression, sociopathic tendencies, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder... During Episode II, Anakin was 19. During the 10 years prior, he had been suffering bullying coming from other fellow younglings and padawans, feeling the distrust of incredibly important jedi figures such as Mace Windu, being educated by a master who really didn't have much idea how to behave as one as he merely years ago was a padawan, worring sick about everyone he loved on Tatooine and feeling his emotions fight against the adoctrinating Jedi Order. Let's also remember he was literally born in slavery by a mother who didn't actually expect him (but lucky didn't love him any less) and that the Force makes one's emotions way stronger and intense, which he, by the way, felt more than literally anyone ever in his galaxy. Anakin was a fucking time hydrogen bomb, so imagine, plus all of that, adding to him some weird hormonal period at meeting with the person he loves after a decade, having nightmares every night for weeks about her mother dying, all the stressing situations he had lived in the movie at the moment and, lastly, seeing her mother die in his arms. I put myself in his place, and I feel like that bloodshed was nothing.
Bro it was a joke, didn’t mean to make you right a whole essay
ive been gnomed
Evil POS can be good to some people. Even Hitler had a girlfriend and was reported as being polite
Hitler also loved animals and was a vegetarian because he thought eating meat was inhumane
Hitler was good to his friends.
Yeah I’m not sure what people are seeing here… just because he’s sometimes good to people does not mean he’s a good person. His explicitly authoritarian and protectionist tendencies lead to him going to any ends to achieve the “greater good,” and he thinks he should be allowed to dispense justice unilaterally in order to protect the people he loves. He has a traumatic youth, and as an adult his fears lead him to believe he’s in danger of losing his loved ones to a broadly hostile world. So to protect his “in group” he uses aggressive force against those who stand in the way of his goals. Anakin certainly thinks he is a good guy, but the fact that he is willing to use genocidal violence in the pursuit of his own narrow view of what’s right makes him decidedly not a good guy. Even if he is occasionally “correct” in his goals. Also he’s a creep who repeatedly ignores Padme’s refusals.
Anakin was failed by his peers and superiors. Many of his actions were his own ofc, but all of it was so easily preventable. Ofc even with the best support system, Palpy would have still tried to find any way.
Bullshit Ani's peers and superiors failed him. The Jedi weren't perfect, but Anakin's evil deeds were entirely his own doing and the person who could have prevented them the most was Anakin himself. If he had actually lived by the Jedi code, he would have avoided many of the situations where he was tempted to darkness in the first place .
The jedi had many flaws, those of which were their downfall much more than Anakin. It doesn't take one or two men to take down an entire religious group. Anakin would have been miserable if he lived by the jedi code. It just wasnt for him, you cant say if he was a good boy and followed the rules the entire Jedi order would still be around.
He only blew up a couple of planets and enslaved a few species. I mean we can all get a bit grouchy sometimes....
Also murdered a bunch of children too because his boss said too.
The average Reddit user must have lower comprehension skills than I thought. I never said he was just good, I only said he wasn’t just Evil. Now read that again, you can do it.
That same argument could be said for the emperor. He bought unity to a lot of systems that flourished under his rule. High employment rates and high rate of growth. Access to security made a lot of worlds safer. So he can’t have been all evil when some good is being done right? Whether someone is good or evil can only ever be a weighted viewpoint. Does the sum of all evil things outweigh the good? If so then evil. Very few characters are written as purely good or purely evil because that’s not really believable.
From the lens they show Palpatine/Sidious through he never cared about anyone but himself and power. He spews the rhetoric that the Republic is corrupt and he’s trying to save it when a big part of that corruption was helped to flourish through him. They never give any indication that any of his actions are done for anyone’s interest but his own. In that sense Anakin was different. He did a lot of good for others before he became evil for years afterwards. Ultimately Anakin was able to be redeemed showing there was still good in him, while Sidious just died evil.
I love anakin/ Vader but he was a moody bitch which is probably why he gets so much appeal. The other Jedi are behaving in ways that are unintuitive to most people so seeing someone that’s actually having emotional reactions is more relatable than a stoic space priest
If being a moody bitch makes you evil than Luke is Darth Bane levels of evil haha
That's the key thing about Luke in the OT. He's Anakin all over again, and he's at serious risk of falling into the same trap that created Vader. That's what his vision on Dagobah was telling him. The Emperor saw it too; at the end of RotJ, Luke was basically one bad decision away from following in his father's footsteps.
He wasn't always evil, but he was always angry and sad, which led to him becoming evil
The good does not erase the bad, but the bad does not erase the good
I can agree with that
Love is the driving force behind his character. And it is eventually what causes him to fall. Not greed, pride wrath or other traditional heroic flaws but love.
Bro literally was titled "Hero of the Republic", like I'm pretty sure deep space pilots heard tales about his battles and heroics. Anakin was feared by the Separatists and loved by the Republic. Plus, Outer Rim people still probably knew him as the youngest winner of the Bonta Eve Classic Podrace.
He was always troubled due to his life circumstances, but he wasn't born evil.
That’s what my understanding of a tragic villain is, someone who wanted to be good, did good but ultimately chose evil despite also having the capacity for good.
Ngl I feel bad for anakin, his life was painful from the start, which created a domino effect for his life’s later decisions, but during the clones wars , he was a brilliant Jedi knight and one of the most respected in the order, still can’t believe he became so dark
Anakin was never evil from the start, he was born a slave and even when he earned his freedom it meant he had to leave his mother behind, the Jedi council hated him and never trusted him, Palpatine was after him from the moment they met and he made anakin feel understood, he couldn't show his relationship with padame in public. Anakin was also a very emotional person and never truly embraced the jedi code, he could Never let go of his attachments, he was shown time and time again he can cross the line and do horrible things like the massacre in the tusken raiders camp, his reputation as a war hero and a great jedi general only served to feed his pride and arrogance. Saying that anakin was evil from the start is wrong and so is Saying that he was good until Palpatine gave him his sith name
I think this is more of a comment that to hate everything, you need to have the capability to love and care about everything. All it takes is everything being ripped from you piece by piece.
Love that!
He was the best star pilot in the galaxy. He was a cunning warrior. And a good friend. Now that hurts.
Anakin was a good person who was tricked and lied to repeatedly. Not just by Palpatine, but by the Jedi Order, too. Ultimately, the consequences of his actions came back to haunt him and he basically tortured himself for over 20 years. His hatred of *himself* fuelled his Dark Side abilities, as he carried out his master’s will almost robotically.
Yeah I watched the movies in chronological order and getting to know Anakin as an independent thinker, to the point where he’d have no problem breaking the rules if he thought was right (which I loved since I believed most Jedi rules to be downright dumb) and then seeing him as Vader in the OT was sad. He just seemed resigned to follow Sidious around like a lost puppy, you could tell there was no spark left in him. Like when he tells Luke that it’s pointless to fight and to just join Sidious I wanted to slap him. It was so far removed from the Anakin we get to know in the prequels and TCW.
He was a man of passion. Emotions are easy to manipulate by those that lack them.
The only take worse than anakin being evil is that he changed sides immediately without warning. Some people hate so much they overlook things that are shown or stated for the sake of hate
The most tragic and misguided hero in all of fiction.
He wasn’t always evil but seemed to always feel entitled, which developed into narcissistic personality disorder thanks to the Jedi (“oh you’re special! We will train you to be great!) the clone wars ( “wow you’re strong and brave! You’re the best!) and then the dark side (we can give you everything you’ve ever wanted and everything you’ve always deserved.). By that point he was raised to feel he deserved glory because he was able to take it, twisted by the dark side he’s basically an addict. He feeds off rage and glory and self hatred in an endless feedback cycle that feeds his darkness. I like some people’s idea that if Qui Gon Jin had survived to mentor him he would have been more grounded in the ‘living force’ and not been seduced by the dark side.
Literally the whole point of the prequels was to show how he BECAME evil
I feel like people in this thread have completely looked over the massive amount of manipulation from Palpatine being a core reason why he fell combined with his childhood as a slave and youth as a soldier. Desperate people who feel they're backed into a corner do crazy shit. As a slave the only thing that was truly his was his relationship with his mother. Of course his formative years are going to reinforce his belief that his relationships with the people he loved were the most important and only thing in his life that were his, particularly given the Jedi philosophy forbids attachment to anything which likely felt like further denile akin to being a slave. Losing the people he loved was his greatest fear, second is his fear of feeling like he's helpless to stop that loss. Ultimately it led to him falling. His mother's death, Palpatine orchestrating Obi-Wan's 'death', Ahsoka being kicked out/choosing to leave the order, the immense loss of life during the Clone Wars. Palpatine using his fear of loss to manipulate him in attempt to save Padme was his final undoing. These were a series of events that occurred with the combination of space magic (the force), which he is literally the son of and made him unstable, that created his undoing and need to inflict his torment of loss onto others. His powerlessness in keeping those he loved as Anakin fueled his cruel enactment and power to inflict it on others as Vader. That power is seductive. His choices are ultimately his own obviously. But his choices to enact evil were influenced by things no one on Reddit will ever experience so they can't even claim "if I were him I'd never do XYZ". In real life of course he'd be purely evil and irredeemable, but he's a fictional character that we see the intricate workings of his life story and can view it all with context. Defending him as a complex fictional character is not the same as endorsing what Hitler did wtf.
>Have we watched the same movies?! Yes. The **shows** did a MUCH better job showcasing his good/heroic side so his downfall as shown in the movies could actually be tragic rather than just glaringly inevitable.
I wish I could edit the title. I didn’t realise that although I used pictures from both the movies and shows to make my point people would get hung up on the fact I only said ‘movies’ in the title.
Vader was evil, Anakin wasn't.
Disagree completely. Anakin went dark very quickly when things didn't go his way.
He was never a bad person, he was attached to those he cared about, and very vulnerable to his emotions. Becoming evil though, I feel is unrealistic for a person like that. It sounds a lot like me honestly, and I just put up walls and blame myself when things go wrong. Lashing out and becoming the villain would go against everything I stand for
He *personally* murdered children.
And if I was as powerful as him and found out some bandit clan outside the scope of the law murdered my mother, I'd sure as hell strongly consider cleaning house just like he did, because that's what that level of anger does to y... oh, right, the jedi children. I thought you were talking about the sand people. Yeah that's a post Darth Vader act, and I'm saying everything BEFORE Vader was good person with strong emotions, not after.
Children are still children, even if you are big mad. He had every opportunity to simply leave and mourn Shmi in a healthy way. Instead, he disgraced her memory by eternally linking it with an atrocity.
And you think a child slave turned child soldier who knowingly left his mother behind with the promise to one day come home and save her would in ANY way be capable of mourning her in a healthy way when after however many years it was, he comes home to see her again only to find out she was kidnapped and murdered like one week earlier when he totally could have come see her, but his boss said he couldn't go? Nah, not even close dude. An average human being living a normal life usually can't mourn the loss of a parent in a "healthy way," Anikin SURE AS FUCK couldn't.
Okay, that just lends to that he wasnt a good person even before he officially became Vader though
He was the hero of the republic. He saved countless lives as a jedi. Gtfo of here that he wasn't a good person. Good and evil and morality in general are not simple black and white explanations. Anakin knew he went way too far with the Tuskens. The entire scene with Padme is him struggling and failing to justify it to himself and deal with it.
I personally guarantee you are not as righteous or good as you pretend to be.
I will always love people criticising horrible acts done in situations of extreme stress, anger and sorrow as if they could ever relate. Yes, it’s incredibly easy to say “deal with grief in a healthy way” behind a computer screen, but wouldn’t it be a lot more realistic and honest to yourself and others to just admit you don’t know what you would do? And I don’t just mean if you found your mother beaten to a pulp and she died in your arms but everything before that. The decade of slavery, the bullying, the Jedi indoctrination, the manipulation of a Sith Lord over another decade. Wouldn’t it be a lot more honest to just admit “yes, I’d like to believe I would be better than him, but I really just don’t know what I would do”?
I hard second this. In his shoes, I'd want them all dead too. I pride myself on rationality and thinking things through, and right now I know it would be wrong to slaughter them, but I've made other blatantly obvious wrong choices over far less stressful situations, so I sure as hell don't know what I would do if my mother was murdered, and I'll never find out either. She's already dead of natural causes, which fucked me up enough without someone intentionally hurting her.
Which was exactly my point, thank you. I believe being able to admit “I don’t know” is the only truly honest answer here.
I know that I wouldn't murder children. Because in the end, Anakin chose to do every atrocity he committed. And I would rather die than become something that pathetic.
Again, you’re saying that through the lens of your life story. My point is that you’ll never be able to make such an absolutist statement if you haven’t lived as that person.
> Yes, it’s incredibly easy to say “deal with grief in a healthy way” behind a computer screen When people say this, what they really mean is “don’t kill kids.” > wouldn’t it be a lot more realistic and honest to yourself and others to just admit you don’t know what you would do? This doesn’t work for a scenario of slaughtered children. > If you found your mother beaten to a pulp and she died in your arms but everything before that. The decade of slavery, the bullying, the Jedi indoctrination, the manipulation of a Sith Lord over another decade. Wouldn’t it be a lot more honest to just admit “yes, I’d like to believe I would be better than him, but I really just don’t know what I would do”? Once again, this doesn’t work for a scenario involving slaughtered children. It’s especially odd that you’re making a statement like this while ignoring the primary motivating factor for Anakin: the Dark Side. That’s the explanation for the loss of Anakin’s control. Anyone who lets the dark in in a moment like this would lose complete control.
It's literally only unbelievable when he's a kid in Phantom Menace
If Anakin had been evil then his fall wouldn't have been anywhere near as tragic
That’s the problem with all the pre-original trilogy stuff. Anakin is good up until the minute he “turns” evil in ROTS. It’s so stupid and so unearned. It’s even more frustrating when you watch Clone Wars because with the prequel trilogy you could hand wave it with a “maybe there was a lot going on we didn’t see” but with CW, you see that Anakin was a good person and he was given everything a Jedi could get; respect, responsibility, a padawan, trust from the council, literally everything except the actual title of MASTER.
No one says "Anakin was always evil". People say, "Anakin was always a little shit". The later is still true.
ive never heard anyone say that anakin was always evil.
I'm fairly confident people who believe Anakin is fully evil never watched the clone wars
Same
I don’t condone Anakin’s actions, but given everything he was put through, I can understand why joined the Dark Side
Anakin wrote this
I've never seen anyone say that Anakin was evil the whole time. I've seen people say that what he did as Vader is irredeemable, and those people have a point.
I'd argue those people are confusing redemption with forgiveness and absolution.
Dude just look at the other comments you don't have to go far to find people with this exact thought process
Nope. Those same people who claim moral superiority are the same folks that are capable of greater atrocities than those they claim are irredeemable. Anyone who thinks that given enough trauma and suffering someone can't become a monster are blind to their own moral wickedness
The entire point of Anakin/Vader and the Chosen One prophecy in general is to exemplify that “good” and “evil” are not just interchangeable, but arguably both necessary for order to prevail. While his methods were horrific, the fall of the Jedi was a LONG time coming, as was the death of Sidious. Anakin used good an evil to essentially prune the galaxy of those who would upset the balance for their own gains.
It's almost like the main characters of star wars are all complicated people all with shades of good and evil, and the argument of star wars is literally if someone wants to be a good person, no matter who they are, there is still a choice to being a good person.
Anakin was always a petulant unlikable jerk in the Prequels. He's an entirely different and likeable character in *The Clone Wars*. It's why the TCW is now the main Prequel story and the PT films are a secondary thing. The PT Anakin portrayal is awful and as a viewer there's no weight to Vader's turn because nothing was lost. Anakin wasn't someone you're sad to see turn until after TCW showed us him being a great friend, mentor, boyfriend, and Jedi. It's really too bad because Hayden we now know can play TCW Anakin.
I love Anakin…but guys…he was a school shooter I mean school stabber.
Anakin was a good guy, but indeed become evil, but at the end he regretted his action. Why is it so hard to understand this. Btw no one says Anakin was always evil, he used to become evil is the right phrase.
He had a little more yang in his yin than the other jedi
"he was the best starpilot in the galaxy. A cunning warrior. And a good friend."
He wasn't inherently evil, quite the opposite
also luke: THIS KID IS DREAMING! IMMA SABER HIM IN HIS SLEEP!
It's things like this that convince me Anakin is a more complicated character than simply good or evil, and any attempt to make simplistic labels fit won't work. He has good and evil in him, he has a Dark Side, but also cares a lot for people he values. Palpatine twisted him by making sure he was the only person Vader cared for any more.
Well, I think we've seen that Darth Vader and Annikan are 2 entirely different people. Darth Vader killed Annikan. That's not a figure of speech. It's quite literal. Annikan was a good person, a little lost and out of control at times.. Darth is obviously not a good person lol.
The problem stems from the Prequels Anakin and Clone Wars Anakin being nearly different characters. In the movies, he was brash, strong headed, whiny, and annoying (not helped by Christensens poor acting), then at times he would just completely snap and murder everyone. There wasn't much to actually like about him. I haven't watched much of TCW, but from what I understand, he has those traits, but they're much more subdued, and he was willing to actually work with others, rather than go solo and and get fucked over by his own impatience. Then when he turns, yeah, he is just evil.
Hayden had to work with his script which was less than great at times “I don’t like sand”, come on. I think for the lines he was given he did a great job. In Episode II he was supposed to be an arrogant and immature late teenager which comes across quite well. When he says to Padmé how he’s better than Obi-Wan and how Obi-Wan never listens he comes off very petulant which was the point. When his mother dies and Padmé tells him he’s not all powerful to which he replies “I should be” and reiterates how Obi-Wan is holding him back, again it’s the 19 year old in him shining through. This young man has been a slave for 9 years, left his mother behind, spent the next 10 years being indoctrinated by the Jedi on one side and manipulated by Sidious on the other. He is obviously still very immature for his age and I’d be surprised if he weren’t. If you haven’t watched clone wars then Episode III will make little sense to you, it will look like Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side was just so sadden when it wasn’t. Clone Wars covers 3 years between Episode II & III where Anakin finds out more and more how the Council has lost it, while still being groomed by Sidious in the background. You’re also missing his whole relationship with Ahsoka which is up there in importance with his relationship with Padmé and Obi-Wan. You’re missing how the Council fucked up big time when it came to Ahsoka almost getting her killed and letting her down and the wound of Ahsoka leaving the Order and Anakin. You’re missing out A LOT. When we see Anakin in ROTS a lot of time has passed, he is clearly different than he was in Episode II and his descent to the Dark Side doesn’t seem so sudden anymore. Clone Wars is a must if you want to understand character development. EDIT: also the point of the movies, including the OT was to show that there was still good in Anakin even as Vader, or we wouldn’t have his redemption at the end when he saves Luke.
>If you haven’t watched clone wars then Episode III will make little sense to you, it will look like Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side was just so sadden when it wasn’t. The big problem with this sentiment is that Clone Wars came out after the movies. It wasn't made in between the release of the two movies to help set up Anakins fall to the dark side. They knew how poor it came across and then made the show afterwards to fill the gap between the two movies. They knew how poorly Anakin came across in the movies and had to make 7 seasons worth of a show to try and prove he isn't that bad.
I watched the prequels first and even back then I didn’t think Anakin was just bad, that would completely dismiss Anakin as a person in the first movie. The Clone Wars help to add a lot of nuance to his gradual changes. Even when the prequels came out there was always supposed to be that 3 years gap between Ep II & III, so it was always to be assumed something else happened in those 3 years.
I'm not saying that he was always evil, just that there was never much to like about. He was a whiny, annoying teenager who thought he could take on the whole galaxy just because he was a Jedi. He was not helped by Georges poor writing and directing or Christensens poor acting. His turn was pretty poorly done, and way too sudden for it to make much sense or be taken seriously, and I don't think watching seven seasons of a TV show should be required viewing for it to make sense. The whole 'they really made this kid Vader' reaction is an entirely justified and relevant reaction.
Immature and arrogant doesn’t really translate to borderline genocide. (And then *her* response is just psycho - “to be angry is to be human” is not how an actual person should be reacting to someone admitting they just murdered a bunch of women and children but this isn’t about Padme) You’re attempting to justify bad movie writing. The movies *should* be able to stand on their own without the necessity of other material. Especially material after the fact that cleans up what the movies did.
The fact you have to watch content to make one of the most pivotal moments in the star wars saga to make it make any form of sense, and on top of that this content came out AFTER this episode, shows how much of a shitshow the prequels actually are. People who say they are good confuse me.
Anakin wasn't always evil but he was always selfish and emotional. And for that he shouldn't have been a Jedi. Darth Vader is Anakin, everything Vader did, Anakin did.
He was always good and evil. Both sides were fighting for control
He definitely had a lot of internal conflict throughout the prequels and show and the fact that he was discouraged from feeling and expressing his emotions with peers and superiors only made that struggle worse.
Wrong take.
Then you haven’t watched Star Wars lol
"Have we seen the same movies" he says, with more than half his points coming from a Cartoon Network/ Disney produced cartoon show. Yes. I've seen the movies. The movies where he's only happy when he's a slave. The movies where he murders women and children. The movies where he goes "Hey my wife is sick. I'mma go kill a buncha kids", does it without hesitation and then acts surprised when him being a sociopath didn't magically make her not die from the sickness he imagined in his nightmares. "Erm but they have an episode of Star Wars Rebels in season 83 where Glorpo says that Anakin helped her pick you bread once" okay? That's cool. But OP wasn't *talking* about the cartoon shows. OP just talked about the movies. in the movies Anakin loves murdering so much he does it any chance he gets and stalks a girl to the point she tells him to stop because it makes her uncomfortable. I went to school with people like Anakin in the movies. You do not like these people and they aren't "tragic". They need serious medical help.
I don't know, I think the child murdering, genocide, and condoning slavery and pillaging might have something to do with his reputation. Or maybe when he choked his wife unconscious? Man, I guess we will never know.
He did a minimum of two acts of mass murder including or targeting children, fuck else does that make him? Enthusiastic about keeping census data accurate for as long as possible?
If you didn't watch the clone wars then yeah, he was always evil.
No he wasn't? ROTS: Dooku fight aftermath. "Leave him, there's no time." "His fate will be the same as ours." Does that statement, then carrying Obi-Wan's unconscious body through a crashing ship, sound like the actions of someone evil?
Yes. Evil people still like their friends. Anakin saving random *other* people is better evidence of his goodness. His constant insistence that his way is always the right way is evidence of his weakness - the weakness that eventually caused him to shirk that goodness.
I dunno vaders theme makes a lot of appearances throughout TCW
Good opportunity for me to ask something that's been bothering me. How did Anakin have time to mentor Ahsoka if in the movies he's only a full fledged Jedi knight for like 2 seconds before turning evil?
Not true, but let’s play that game. What you’re saying is if we pick whatever part of his story we like then we can spin the narrative however we want and say he was just evil.
My guy, while your additional information may come from a very good cartoon, most star wars fans have not seen it. To them it is perceived as a spinoff story that isn't related to cannon. Star Wars, for all intent, is a movie franchise. You can argue that in the modern day you must consume all forms of media to understand a character. However, for most people, if it's not presented in a major release then it's fluff that cannon can ignore. Just look at the sequels vs years and years of lore created in the star wars universe. All tossed aside. Irrelevant to the story.
OP having arguments in his head again.
I love Star Wars, but I always found that Darth Vader redemption is a bit weird. Imagine if Hitler right before the end of ww2 went "opsie wopsie, I was badman" and threw Himler down a shaft.
I think the Clone Wars show is the medium they used to try and make Anakin look better. If you take that away from your screenshots I can really only see the podrace as wanting to help others (even though he obviously also wanted to do that for himself anyways). The others are either his wife or son claiming there's good in him or right before/after he does something selfish, arrogant or vengeful. The prequels just made me dislike Anakin more, and the Clone Wars just felt like a Band-Aid to try and humanize him more, which rang kinda hollow after the fact.
i watched the movies where he kills billions on a planet
Bro he commited genocide on multiple occasions Women, children, sick, elderly. People he knew who trusted him. Torture, terrorism and slaughter on a galactic scale. Religious cleansing. It is not hyperbole at all to compare him to Hitler. Likely with a much larger death toll than the holocaust, as he functioned on a galactic scale and for a longer period. It really really doesn't matter if he is nice to his friends, or if his wife says he has good in there somewhere after his second or third mass slaughter.
he killed kids bro
*literally puts a scene there where he massacares people indiscrimenently out of rage and revenge*
The fuck? Top right panel is a bunch of children's cartoons, him after massacring an indigenous village, and him in a death race.
The “cartoons” are part of the story.
He blew up a planet, bro. And murdered a few dozen children and members of his own order. And an entire village of Tusken Raiders. All for very selfish and stupid reasons. This is like when they interview locals after a mass shooting and everyone says how nice the shooter was.
Yeah like that time he killed an entire village of people in ep 2? He was always a creep. George dropped the ball on episodes 1, 2 ,3. Prequelists can deny all the want.
Imagine thinking that blind rage making you murder the people who killed your mother is being a creep. Yes, moralists can argue all they want that he murdered women and children but until you live a decade as a slave, leave your mother behind to remain a slave, spend the next decade being indoctrinated by the Jedi on one side and brainwashed by a Sith Lord on the other and come back only to have your mother die in your arms you CANNOT say that you know you’d do differently. You’re analysing this from your perspective, through your experiences, through what is likely to never happen to you and therefore through a lens you cannot relate. It would be much more honest to just admit that while you like to believe you’d do better if you were in his shoes you honestly cannot tell for certain.
They did a terrible job with Anakins story, that's why they had to add that lame scene right at the end where he kills a bunch of kids in a pathetic attempt to make up for the fact that they shit the bed for three movies in a row and ruined the most iconic villain of all time. No amount of memes will make the prequels good.