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The only problem I have with a major force-user heel turn is that I assumed the whole point of the six movies was to demonstrate how the Force is a self-correcting entity. For someone like Luke to go Sith Emperor and plunge the galaxy into darkness would seem to say, "Everything we did with the whole Anakin prophecy, bringing balance to the force, and the millions of lives we expended to get there? Fuck it."

zman wrote:

Galvatron wrote:So it looks like Lawrence Kasdan is on board to script Episodes VIII and IX.

i'm calling it now. I bet in Episode 8 either Han, Luke or Leia will die giving a strong emotional weight like Empire.

come to think of it. I think Leia will die which will push Luke to the darkside and he will become a villian in Episode 9

Now why would he do any such thing? He has shown himself to be able to handle death like any other normal person can, and surely didn't rush off to join the dark side thereafter. If we're talking about Anakin, then yes. That was a huge implement in his fall to the dark side. Luke, though? Just no way....

But Vader threatening Leia caused him to lose control in Return of the Jedi. However, he ultimately chose not to kill Vader, which is probably the decision that most defines Luke. Undermining that without very good reason would be horrible.

Anakin didn't just turn because people died. He turned because of the circumstances of one death (his mother and was 100% preventable) and the assumed death of Padme. Luke was confronted with something similar but he moved passed it. The death of Leia or anyone else close to Luke causing him to turn to the Dark Side would be akin to people close to Yoda dying and causing him to turn to the Dark Side. Not gonna happen.

In fact, and as much as I hate to say it, Dark Empire presents the only plausible path for Luke to eventually turn and that is to explore the Dark Side to learn about it and destroy anyone who may be using it, similar to the path Dooku took to his fall. That was actually the logic behind Anakin's fall as well in his own mind. He wanted to learn the Dark Side so that he could save Padme and anyone else he cared about by mastering all aspects of the Force.

He also turned because he was, essentially, a human being, and a child/teenager who was thrust into a position he didn't want (the chosen one) and then also hemmed in with rules and regulations that stifled him, because the Jedi of that era were fundamentlaly dogmatic. It was quite obvious Anakin needed a 'special touch' to turn out well, and only Qui-Gon would have been able to do that (Obi-Wan tried, but he was 'the man to train the Chosen one' and that was a burden all its own.)

Put under the pressures and responsibilities he had with little or no control over his life and unable to find answers in the dogma the Jedi gave him, its not terribly surprising that he turned to alternatives.

(bear in mind I still have things I dislike about the actual presentation of Anakin's fall as far as the movies went. It still felt far too clumsy and abrupt for me, and the quick turns of mind Anakin had over things lead me to think he was either immature (at best) or deranged (at worst.)

I don't buy much of that. I think that it was his mother's death, the fact that the Jedi prevented him from saving her and that he allowed them to do so and the accompanying guilt coupled with and compounded by the worry that the same thing would befall Padme if he did not act again. Anakin rebelling against the Jedi rules was nothing knew or special as we know from Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan doing the same on multiple occasions.

Keep in mind that Anakin was constantly doing the right thing and was distressed and guilt-ridden when asked to do things he knew were not correct. Even more so when he did them of his own volition. Ultimately his failing was that he loved his friends and family too much and was more concerned with letting them down than wreaking havoc on the galaxy.

I also disagree with the last bit and felt his fall was shown well throughout the three movies.

Was there ever a different Jedi Master mentioned or shown who would have been better suited to train Anakin besides Obi-Wan? Surely Qui-Gon wasn't the only "reasonable" master when it came to flexibility in thought.

NeoGoomba wrote:Was there ever a different Jedi Master mentioned or shown who would have been better suited to train Anakin besides Obi-Wan? Surely Qui-Gon wasn't the only "reasonable" master when it came to flexibility in thought.

That adds yet an other reason why the Jedi are utter fools. Now that you bring it up, I find myself wondering where the Jedi Council saw the logic in pairing Obi-Wan with Anakin in the first place. What were those masters thinking? One would think that they would have set him up with an experienced master that has dealt with this ilk of pupil before. And they knew or at least suspected that he may be the Chosen One! Worse yet they had misgivings about the boy's past and future. It just makes no sense leaving him to an inexperienced Knight like Obi-Wan. And it's just an other reason why Obi-Wan should have been made older and wiser in TPM.

Back to the thread's topic, I can't see Luke falling victim to his father's fate. Just simply no.

NeoGoomba wrote:Was there ever a different Jedi Master mentioned or shown who would have been better suited to train Anakin besides Obi-Wan? Surely Qui-Gon wasn't the only "reasonable" master when it came to flexibility in thought.

I'm more curious about why no apparent action was taken during the time from Ep I to Ep II, where Anakin apparently became comfortable with questioning his master's instructions and being willful in his behavior overall. Surely some form of counseling would have/should have been given to address issues with his continued concerns over his mother and apparent emotional immaturity.

Dude, for real? Counseling?
I know this is sci-fi nerd land, but in real life every child questions their parents during their upbringing, whether it is a little or lot depends on the individual. If it doesn't happen, then maybe you have a problem.

He was fucking 19. There was no emotional immaturity. he was acting exactly how a 19 year old acts.

As I already said, we see both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan both outright tell the council to fuck off. It is not "OMG THE JEDI ARE FAILING!!!" because they did it or because Anakin did it as well. It is obviously something that happens and is dealt with on a routine basis.

As to why they stuck him with Obi-Wan, because he already knew him, he was Qui-Gon's student and Qui-Gon specifically wanted Obi-Wan to carry out his training.

Also, I don't know what the EU says about it, and I don't care, but it is an assumption that anyone besides the council and Obi-Wan know anything about Anakin possibly being the Chosen One until late in the Clone Wars.

I personally am not looking forward to the new trilogy. I mean, it has potential. No doubt about that. They could do a great many things with this new trilogy. However... I fear that they will go with the Clone Wars approach. Give them the exact same style of CGI, and utterly butcher the Star Wars canon. Star Wars has become the same as Star Trek and Pokemon. It's a cash cow franchise and people just refuse to let it die because it makes money.

Lord Falcon wrote:I personally am not looking forward to the new trilogy. I mean, it has potential. No doubt about that. They could do a great many things with this new trilogy. However... I fear that they will go with the Clone Wars approach. Give them the exact same style of CGI, and utterly butcher the Star Wars canon. Star Wars has become the same as Star Trek and Pokemon. It's a cash cow franchise and people just refuse to let it die because it makes money.

I'd say that if one bad story was actually capable of making a difference to a franchise, every media property in existence would have been discarded long ago. I'm happy that they're trying to provide me with an entertainment product I might be interested in paying for, but I don't really think it's worth giving a shit about the franchise's net social or economic value.

Even the worst Star Wars movie is better than the best EU to me. Only AOTC comes close to breaking that for me. Although, I would be hard pressed to pick which bit of EU would do it.

Havok wrote:Only AOTC comes close to breaking that for me. Although, I would be hard pressed to pick which bit of EU would do it.

Thrawn Trilogy? Wraith Squadron?

Havok wrote:I also disagree with the last bit and felt his fall was shown well throughout the three movies.

"Huh. Palpatine just pitched Master Windu out the 10,000th story window. Guess I'd better go murder a bunch of children now!"

Really, man?

If they'd played up the desperation angle better, (which they did do a bit in the film during Anakin's "anointment" scene, just not as well as they could've done) made it seem like he isn't fully embracing evil yet, just doing whatever Palpatine said just to save Padme, it might have come off a bit more believable.

Rogue 9 wrote:

Havok wrote:I also disagree with the last bit and felt his fall was shown well throughout the three movies.

"Huh. Palpatine just pitched Master Windu out the 10,000th story window. Guess I'd better go murder a bunch of children now!"

Really, man?

I guess you missed the part in the previous movie where he murders children.

Masked savages he grew up hearing scary stories about < Younglings in the temple with faces whom he might've even known personally.

You mean the children of the Sand People tribe that tortured his mother to death? The killing of whom still left him guilt-ridden?
'I'm a Jedi. I'm better than this'.
And then we have ROTS, where he goes from actually pleading Windu not to kill Palpy because that is not the Jedi way to basically 'Kill all the Younglings? Why not-there's nothing worthwhile on TV anyway' within a few minutes.
Yes, his fall was foreshadowed in the previous movie, as well as the earlier part of ROTS, but that scene turned it from a gradual fall into a Warp speed nosedive.

He's basically in desperation mode at that point in the film. He even says that he'll do whatever palpy asks if he just saves wife and kids. Maybe if they'd had him walk out of the room all stern-faced while Clone Troopers walk in and get to work with tears in his eyes it would've been believable, but for him to actually do it himself? It just doesn't feel like he's at the point in his fall where that would be acceptable to him.

Darksider wrote:He's basically in desperation mode at that point in the film. He even says that he'll do whatever palpy asks if he just saves wife and kids. Maybe if they'd had him walk out of the room all stern-faced while Clone Troopers walk in and get to work with tears in his eyes it would've been believable, but for him to actually do it himself? It just doesn't feel like he's at the point in his fall where that would be acceptable to him.

Maybe he heeded Palpatine's advice before he went in and gave himself fully over to the dark side. He looks entirely out of his element. I don't know, I think Anakin is just completely batshit insane by that point. Whatever sense that he might have had after Windu died was quickly warped.

I think the point most people are trying to make is that if the movies had done a better job of portraying Anakin's thought process, especially in the immediate aftermath of his "conversion," we wouldn't need to speculate about it or come up with theories to explain his actions.

The first comparison that springs immediately to mind for me is Michael Corleone. It's not really an exact comparison because he was the son who made good from a crime family and his fall was really more about revealing the man he already was, he simply needed the right situation to become it. The point is, Michael's arc felt authentic. We could follow his progression, understand the changes, and few people out there would say they weren't sold on what they saw. What happens with Fredo does not have people going "No, wait, that doesn't make any sense, totally out of character." No, people are buying into the tragedy. It feels real.

Now there are several ways to play it, maybe his fall was inevitable, maybe it feels like "If only things happened differently." Since there's still good in Vader, his turn to the dark side should have been out of a justification for the greater good. It wouldn't track if it's revealed Vader was always a bastard and we only now discovered it. That would undercut any chance at redemption. And you can still argue back and forth as to whether killing Palpatine was a true act of redemption or selfishness -- he never stopped Palpatine from killing anyone else, was party to plenty of murders himself, only intervened to save his own flesh and blood. Those are great questions that can still be asked.

Ultimately, I think the prequels got the pacing wrong, not enough time spent covering Vader's development and fall. It probably should have been Episode 1 everything is fine with hints of darkness, Episode 2 being the long slide to the Dark Side, then Episode 3 being the coming of the Empire. If any sort of mystery is supposed to be maintained in Episode 3, cybernetic Vader should not obviously be known as Anakin. (Yeah, as if anyone watching didn't know.) What this would argue for is a hidden struggle between the Jedi and Sith forces heading into the second Act with Anakin defeated and left for dead (with Kenobi stating "I did not see him die but he could not have possibly survived those injuries" only for a new figure to come on the scene, a Sith Lord acting openly in the name of the new Empire, leading the Jedi Purge.

Shoulda coulda woulda. The debates on how the prequels should have gone will continue down through the centuries.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Havok wrote:Only AOTC comes close to breaking that for me. Although, I would be hard pressed to pick which bit of EU would do it.

Thrawn Trilogy? Wraith Squadron?

The original Han Solo trilogy, the Lando Calrissian adventures... I know there are more, I just can't think of them.

Batman wrote:You mean the children of the Sand People tribe that tortured his mother to death? The killing of whom still left him guilt-ridden?
'I'm a Jedi. I'm better than this'.
And then we have ROTS, where he goes from actually pleading Windu not to kill Palpy because that is not the Jedi way to basically 'Kill all the Younglings? Why not-there's nothing worthwhile on TV anyway' within a few minutes.
Yes, his fall was foreshadowed in the previous movie, as well as the earlier part of ROTS, but that scene turned it from a gradual fall into a Warp speed nosedive.

I kind thought that was supposed to be the point established in the original movies. When you turn to the dark side, your old self is taken over by the dark side and raw emotion. Thus the 'Vader betrayed and murdered your father' bit. It’s not supposed to be a natural progression of I can be as evil as I choose to be evil. Its, go too far and you fall off the edge of a cliff from which you cannot come back.

Now admittedly, Vader saving Luke in the end throws a monkey wrench in this, but then it’s also the Sith way to kill your own master and replace him, and Anakin was supposed to be special to bring balance to the force. I agree anyway that the fall of Anakin could have been better overall, but I thought the final sudden turn made sense as establishing that the dark side is not just a concept, but a very real controlling thing.