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Cnut the Great posted:Episode III was supposed to have gone into it a little more but Lucas decided there wasn't enough time and there were more important things to deal with. I don't think it really went unexplained, though. I think it's pretty obvious just from Episode II who he is: He's a former member of the Jedi Council who died under mysterious and unconfirmable circumstances about ten years ago. Unbeknownst to the Jedi, he was actually murdered by the Sith and his identity used to order a clone army from the Kaminoans. I do not agree that Anakin at any point, except when he was a slave boy, was a good person. He massacred a village of sandpeople, he broke jedi protocol (thus making him dishonorable)
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Sep 29, 2016 16:58
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Phi230 posted:I do not agree that Anakin at any point, except when he was a slave boy, was a good person. Separate from being a good person, do you think he was well-intentioned?
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Sep 29, 2016 16:59
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homullus posted:Separate from being a good person, do you think he was well-intentioned? I dont think you could massacre a village of people with good intentions, nor slice Mace's hand off
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Sep 29, 2016 17:00
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Phi230 posted:Ok this is a fair point, but then why is it that Obi Wan's statements of fondness for Anakin are taken at face value? If Obi Wan's credibility is so shot after we know he's lied why are we supposed to trust him at all? Hi Tezzor. You're not supposed to trust Obi-Wan anymore. ESB is supposed to make you rethink everything he said in ANH and realize that the old ghost man is not to be trusted.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:02
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Phi230 posted:Ok this is a fair point, but then why is it that Obi Wan's statements of fondness for Anakin are taken at face value? If Obi Wan's credibility is so shot after we know he's lied why are we supposed to trust him at all? Because he obviously isn't lying when he says it.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:03
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Lord Hydronium posted:Holy poo poo, really? I just thought so as a joke, Tezzor seemed to be trying a little harder. Serf posted:Hi Tezzor. You're not supposed to trust Obi-Wan anymore. ESB is supposed to make you rethink everything he said in ANH and realize that the old ghost man is not to be trusted. Im not Tezzor, who do I talk to to resolve this issue. And are we really supposed to reject OWK entirely? Doesn't this reinforce my argument that OWK really just didn't like anakin? And that abakin was always bad?
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Sep 29, 2016 17:05
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euphronius posted:Because he obviously isn't lying when he says it. When do we know that? Where do we draw the line on what is a lie and not?
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Sep 29, 2016 17:06
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Phi230 posted:When do we know that? Where do we draw the line on what is a lie and not? Normal Humans have the ability to judge credibility through context and body language. I'm sorry that you lack this ability and feel for you as society must seem a strange and frightful place full of blank faces.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:10
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Phi230 posted:Im not Tezzor, who do I talk to to resolve this issue. I got nothing for your first question Tezzor. I guess just accept that you're Tezzor. Obi-Wan loved Anakin. He says so himself. But as a Jedi, he wasn't capable of love as normal people know it, and as Anakin knew it. He is lying to himself about his relationship with Anakin, and then lying in turn to Luke, perhaps unconsciously, about his father. Obi-Wan spends 3 movies attempting to turn Luke into a laser-guided missile aimed at the man who he saw as a monster who wore the skin of his "brother" and never shows any remorse for his deception. The prequels are showing us why the Jedi had to be destroyed, because it produced people like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:11
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euphronius posted:Normal Humans have the ability to judge credibility through context and body language. I'm sorry that you lack this ability and feel for you as society must seem a strange and frightful place full of blank faces. He makes all these claims in the same scene! With the same speech and body language
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Sep 29, 2016 17:13
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Serf posted:I got nothing for your first question Tezzor. I guess just accept that you're Tezzor. You make good points and I agree with most I am defeated But isnt yoda supposed to be a role model? This is the point I was trying to make in the first place. Because of the misdelivery of the prequels characters who were moral compasses, traditional jungian archetypes etc are all destroyed. It undermines chars like Yoda etc and makes scenes, imo, like the x wing raising less impactful because we actually view these characters with a lower opinion Phi230 fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Sep 29, 2016 |
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Sep 29, 2016 17:14
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He raised the x wing in 1981. He fights Dooku in 2001. So no. Movies aren't time machines.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:26
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euphronius posted:He raised the x wing in 1981. He fights Dooku in 2001. But isnt the entire argument that the prequels are changing facts of the OT retroactively?
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Sep 29, 2016 17:27
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Phi230 posted:But isnt the entire argument that the prequels are changing facts of the OT retroactively? You were talking about impact of a scene or something. The impact of Yoda raising a Xwing in 1981 is not modified by the spooky action at a distance from a movie in 2001. Assuming your claim is true of course. Which it is not .
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Sep 29, 2016 17:29
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Phi230 posted:I dont think you could massacre a village of people with good intentions, nor slice Mace's hand off He slices Mace's hand off to prevent him from committing extrajudicial murder, from doing something completely contrary to the Jedi ideals and the laws of the senate. He does this instead of murdering him. Anakin is essentially one of the Republic's police, preventing a superior officer from summarily executing a suspected criminal. You do not see those as good intentions?
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Sep 29, 2016 17:30
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The only problem is Anakin knew he was a Sith Lord. Which is guess is more of a religious issue than a legal one.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:31
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homullus posted:He slices Mace's hand off to prevent him from committing extrajudicial murder, from doing something completely contrary to the Jedi ideals and the laws of the senate. He does this instead of murdering him. Anakin is essentially one of the Republic's police, preventing a superior officer from summarily executing a suspected criminal. You do not see those as good intentions? He is no longer a suspected criminal. He killed like 3-4 jedi right before. And tried to kill Mace. He then goes on to be an evil genocidal dictator. I think Mace would be justified
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Sep 29, 2016 17:33
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Palps was obviously acting in self defense from Anakins pov.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:34
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Yoda knows that wars do not make one great. He learned this the hard way. Although he has learned a lot in humility and exile, he still believes that the destruction of the Sith is the proper calling of a Jedi, instead of love. In the prequels, we see why and how these two errors are related. Obi-Wan sees Anakin and Vader as discontinuous and tries to cause Luke to see him the same way. This is not the correct way to understand the man, but Obi-Wan can't handle the truth and he also thinks Luke can't handle what he thinks is true. Both his habit of deception and the reason why he is inclined to believe the truth is too painful are elaborated on in the prequels.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:34
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Phi230 posted:You make good points and I agree with most You can look at it that way, I suppose. But to me, that is the point. When you go back and rewatch the OT with the PT's new information a clearer picture begins to emerge. Yoda attempted to assassinate Palpatine but the fight was already lost. If he wins, the Jedi Order is still decimated and now the Republic will fall apart. If he loses, then he dies, and with him one of the few pieces of hope for the future. So he does something very Jedi-like and retreats into isolation and contemplation. And he bides his time, never truly realizing why the Jedi Order fell, and when an opportunity comes along to fix his mistakes he reluctantly takes it. He never has much hope for Luke because Luke fails to grasp the Jedi teachings. But that failing is what allows him to succeed. The rejection of objectivity and passiveness for the love of his family is reciprocated by Vader and leads to the Emperor's downfall and the balancing of the Force. Yoda is only a role model until you understand his backstory. After that, he is a sad old hermit who keeps the beliefs of his cult alive in a backwater swamp and eventually dies having accomplished very little.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:37
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Yoda acts completely unlike a Jedi at the end of ROTs. Why would you think exile and contemplation is a Jedi trait after the three prequel movies ?
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Sep 29, 2016 17:39
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euphronius posted:Yoda acts completely unlike a Jedi at the end of ROTs. Why would you think exile and contemplation is a Jedi trait after the three prequel movies ? Because I watched the movies? They're always talking about contemplation, introspection, and thinking before acting. The fun part is that they say one thing and do another. I believe this is intentional.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:43
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Phi230 posted:He is no longer a suspected criminal. He killed like 3-4 jedi right before. And tried to kill Mace. Anakin has to choose between Known Good Guys tossing aside their code and the law for their convenience and literally attempting a coup and A Bad Guy who has actually obeyed the rules and has obtained power within the structure of the Republic (and has promised him the ability to save Padme). Whether Mace is justified isn't relevant; Mace has his own moral calculus for deciding what to do. Having a different sense of what a Sith lord is capable of, any of us might do as Mace did, and all of us would have to consider it. For a slave boy who more than anything wants 1) to protect those he loves by any means he can, lest he lose more, and 2) the respect of the wise and good Jedi order (his twin weaknesses of fear and anger), this choice is the perfect storm.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:44
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Phi230 posted:I do not agree that Anakin at any point, except when he was a slave boy, was a good person. That's something he did under what are among the most extreme of circumstances that could possibly be imagined, in a momentary loss of self-control which was exacerbated by the extreme power which he wielded. Afterwards, he was torn up inside by horror at what he had done and filled with regret and remorse. Why do you refuse to accept that a basically good person could do the things Anakin did, yet accept without question that a good person could do the things Darth Vader did, which were a thousand times worse and done with cold premeditation? Darth Vader aided and abetted in the destruction of an entire planet, supported an oppressive and dictatorial empire in its campaign to enslave the entire galaxy, and murdered countless people along the way for either immoral or trivial reasons--and revelled in these murders.Yet he was still able to come back from all this and be a good person again. The problem is that you hold a fundamentally different view of the world and of human goodness than the Star Wars movies do. One of the central theses of the Star Wars films is that the capacity to do evil lies within everyone, even the best of us, given the right set of circumstances. Anakin is a good person, but he, just like every other human being who has ever lived, possesses a Shadow which lives within him. If you fail to acknowledge and come to terms with that Shadow, it can be unleashed by extreme circumstances such as the ones Anakin was subjected to. One of the most important differences between us and Anakin is that he was possessed of such great powers. All Anakin has to do is have one momentary impulse to do something terrible in an effort to mollify his boundless rage and despair, and with barely any effort at all he can do it. The natural restrictions of power placed upon normal people that prevent them from making such transitory impulses a reality don't exist for him. All he has to do is lose control for a single moment and suddenly, he's massacring a village, and--lost within his own mind amidst the unimaginable horror and surreality of the situation, probably depersonalized to a great extent as a defense mechanism against both his grief and his own horrific actions--he doesn't know how to stop once he's started. It's only until after, standing among the bodies of all the dead men, women, and children he's killed, that he is truly in a state of mind to recognize the reality of what he's done, and that he's done it. Anakin is a good person with good intentions, but he is not a psychologically healthy person. I mean, clearly. He becomes Darth Vader.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:46
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Serf posted:You can look at it that way, I suppose. But to me, that is the point. When you go back and rewatch the OT with the PT's new information a clearer picture begins to emerge. Yoda attempted to assassinate Palpatine but the fight was already lost. If he wins, the Jedi Order is still decimated and now the Republic will fall apart. If he loses, then he dies, and with him one of the few pieces of hope for the future. So he does something very Jedi-like and retreats into isolation and contemplation. And he bides his time, never truly realizing why the Jedi Order fell, and when an opportunity comes along to fix his mistakes he reluctantly takes it. He never has much hope for Luke because Luke fails to grasp the Jedi teachings. But that failing is what allows him to succeed. The rejection of objectivity and passiveness for the love of his family is reciprocated by Vader and leads to the Emperor's downfall and the balancing of the Force. But see I think the route of highest quality approach is just taking the OT at face value. We find out poo poo as Luke does
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Sep 29, 2016 17:46
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Anakin hates evil and injustice, and that hate drives him to do evil deeds himself, though clearly he still has a conscience as he hates what he did and hates himself for doing it. He is aware that his desire to protect those he loves can drive him to evil and he is kind of scared of that fact. In the pivotal moment, he has a choice between the Jedi, who look as much like bullies as they ever have and recently have been dicks to him and want his wife to die, and the Sith, who he has recently learned are maybe more than they are cracked up to be and promise to save his wife. He knows and regrets that he always chooses possessive love over justice, and at that moment he makes the same choice again, and regrets it immediately. Also he is immediately aware that his choice has enslaved him again, though he retreats into his childish fantasies of finally getting to use his newfound power to overthrow his master. He's a complicated and tragic figure, who transmutes love to hate.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:46
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The petulant little fucker is a creepy emotionally abusive rear end in a top hat to pad me from the word go in ep2 onwards. She kind of bloops into love with him out of nowhere despite never having a shred of chemistry together and actively appearing creeper out by him at a number of points. Now that's either the usual horrible romance writing or anakin is a mind trick rapist, but I really struggle to find either option making for a compelling character in a pulpy space adventure whether he's a noble character who falls from grace or a massive poo poo from the beginning.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:47
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Phi230 posted:But see I think the route of highest quality approach is just taking the OT at face value. We find out poo poo as Luke does That's your opinion. To me, the story of the OT becomes so much more fascinating once you watch the PT and see how they influence each other.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:49
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But then since the prequels were changed to have Hayden be the ghost, doesn't mean that that was the last time he was good and it doesnt matter that he redeemed himself
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Sep 29, 2016 17:49
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homullus posted:Separate from being a good person, do you think he was well-intentioned? I don't think it really matters why you enslave someone so much as it does that you did.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:52
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Phi230 posted:You make good points and I agree with most In the Disney movie The Lion King, Simba (heir to the Lion Throne) runs from his responsibilities and travels into a swampy place where friendly short-statured minority characters teach him the 'problem-free philosophy' of Hakuna Matata. Simba spends a great deal of time there, studying the ways of the Hakuna Matata. Then at the end of the movie he realizes Hakuna Matata is bullshit, and Simba leads his dumb friends into battle with a new philosophy of 'murder the Emperor and supplant him to become an enlightened God-king'. That's Star Wars. The point of Star Wars has always been that being good and being ethical are not the same thing. Simba's merit as a king is dubious even at the end of the film, where the 'circle of life' implies that nothing has changed. More catastrophic events are on the horizon.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:57
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Padme's love for Anakin is based on pity and Anakin's love for Padme is based on surrogate motherhood. Neither of them are well-socialized. It's a hosed-up relationship from both sides, even before it has to be a secret from everyone, and that's a big part of why it ended poorly. It's not a storybook romance. Attack of the Clones, as a film, is dominated by an ominous mood, and that extends to the love scenes. Everything happening there is a ticking time bomb leading to disaster - the start of the war, the Jedi abandoning their principles, and the leading couple marrying. Any one of those three being prevented would have prevented the Empire.
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Sep 29, 2016 17:58
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Phi230 posted:But then since the prequels were changed to have Hayden be the ghost, doesn't mean that that was the last time he was good and it doesnt matter that he redeemed himself Even in the original version Sebastian Shaw wasn't scarred and pale as a Force ghost. He looked like a more ideal version of himself, whereas Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't. As the only member of the Force ghost trio who wasn't indoctrinated into a weird cult, I'm gonna guess that Anakin chose to appear as the hottest version of himself.
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Sep 29, 2016 18:00
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ShineDog posted:The petulant little fucker is a creepy emotionally abusive rear end in a top hat to pad me from the word go in ep2 onwards. She kind of bloops into love with him out of nowhere despite never having a shred of chemistry together and actively appearing creeper out by him at a number of points. He's a twenty year old with absolutely no real world experience with romance who's been fixated on one woman since he was nine years old and now finally has the chance to confess his feelings to her. His courtship of Padme is much more palatable and plausible in a real world sense than Han Solo's courtship of Princess Leia, wherein Han Solo basically sexually harasses her until she finally gives into his advances--as opposed to Padme, who ultimately tells Anakin that it ain't gonna happen, after which point Anakin calmly agrees and backs off for the rest of the movie until Padme tells him she does love him. (Not that I have a problem with the Han Solo/Leia romance, because it's just a movie and not real life, but I do find it curious that some people insist on railing against the stylization of the drama in the prequels while implicitly accepting it in the originals.) Anyway, anyone who hates the way Anakin comes off in Episode II would probably really hate James Dean's performance in Rebel Without a Cause, because Hayden Christensen is strongly and pretty capably channeling it.
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Sep 29, 2016 18:04
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Phi230 posted:But see I think the route of highest quality approach is just taking the OT at face value. We find out poo poo as Luke does It's not the movies but the statements of the characters you are taking at face value. The movie is more than dialogue - Obi Wan is a bullshit artist in the OT, and Yoda is revealed to be misguided and wrong, in the OT. The prequels just contextualize Obi Wan's lack of respect for the truth, and Yoda's limited understanding of the Dark Side, sacrifice, and love.
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Sep 29, 2016 18:17
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Phi230 posted:But then since the prequels were changed to have Hayden be the ghost, doesn't mean that that was the last time he was good and it doesnt matter that he redeemed himself It's supposed to symbolize him going back to the man he was before he made his deal with the devil in the Chancellor's office in Episode III, which was the hard turning point for him where he signed away his soul. That's the man that's been locked away beneath the armor for 23 years. Anakin missed out on all those years of his life because of his selfishness. He never got to settle down with Padme or raise his children or experience all the things he should have experienced during those years. The fact that so many people seem to think Anakin's youthful appearance as a ghost is some kind of special reward above and beyond what Obi-Wan and Yoda got says more about their own philosophy than George Lucas's. Anakin's years as Vader were lost years, years where he gave his body fully over to his Shadow. They don't count, because they were years lived without a goddamn soul. The prequel trilogy is all about people who fail to achieve what they set out to achieve, and the original trilogy is about their children picking up where their parents left off and finishing what they abortively started. That's why it's significant that one of the final shots of the original saga is of a 23-year-old Luke staring out at a 23-year-old image of his father and recognizing himself in him. Luke has now, finally, become his father. And now, because of his father's sacrifice, he has the opportunity to go beyond where his father could. To me, it's a significantly more resonant, meaningful, and uplifting way to end the saga than the original version managed to be.
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Sep 29, 2016 18:29
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Cheesus posted:Would this help? Stuff like this is why I can't quit the Star Wars thread.
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Sep 29, 2016 18:42
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Yes but thats not how force ghosts work!!
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Sep 29, 2016 19:23
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Ghosts can do whatever they want, I bet.
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Sep 29, 2016 19:31
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Phi230 posted:But isnt yoda supposed to be a role model? In Return of the Jedi (which is part of the original trilogy) Luke actively disobey's Yoda wishes, and through this disobedience, defeats the Empire. Yoda is a poor role model. He is an excellent teacher in regards to the ways of the force, but his moral failings cause him to push Luke toward the wrong path. This is entirely within the context of the original films.
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