*** Official STAR WARS Saga (episodes I to VI) Discussion Thread: Part 4 - Page 10

Chris, I'm not going to rehash my post (#260 above), but yes I have seen AOTC and I still think that the turn is quick.

It takes more than a line saying he won't let something happen again. As I said in my earlier post, the death of his mother is the only bad thing we see happen to him (granted it is bad, but bad enough to go from a Jedi to a Sith in a very quick turn of events in RoTS?). Lucas fails to really explain why he's so bitter, arrogant, disrespectful, unmindful of his elders and whiny (most of which are shown before the death of his mother). What's worse is that Lucas in the Entertainment Weekly article I have in my hands says he wanted no sign of the dark side in Anakin until RoTS, but very clearly those signs I just pointed to exist back to the beginning of Ep2 (and even to a degree in Ep1 when he is giving attitude to the council when they're testing him).

A slower turning, with more suffering shown for Anakin to endure and overcome would have made the fall all the more tragic.

As you say in your post, it goes from that one moment in AOTC and flash forward to the Palpatine office scene...you just summed up the turn in two sentences. That's pretty quick.

Well, he is a teenager.

Yes he's a teenager...who has undergone 10 years of Jedi training. And he's still like that?

Look, I'm not saying it couldn't happen, it's just that nothing shown onscreen indicates why he would act that way, especially given that he's been through Jedi training, where I'm sure discipline, respect and self-control are taught. Sure you and I could sit here all day and rationalize it, but a good storyteller/screenwriter/director finds a way to convey it onscreen.

It could be better no argument. But I know what Lucaus was going for. The whole point of Anakin's behavior is that he's not a typical Jedi. Probably a combination of starting training significantly late and the ego that's going to develop through years of people telling you that you are the Chosen One and have the potential to be the most powerful Jedi ever.

As to his behavior at the beginning of Clones, I think its entirely rational for another reason: he's trying to impress Padme. He's trying to show off and take command right from their first scene and Obi-Wan quickly puts him in his place and of course Anakin doesn't like to look the fool in front of the girl he's had a crush on for a decade.

I've always been an advocate of an Episode 1.5: Obi-Wan and Anakin on an adventure together just prior to the beginning of Clones where we can see the bond between them *without* Padme being added to the mix so we can see the contrast.

As it is, Lucas puts enough across that I can press the "I believe" button and move on. I do think its all there on screen but unfortunately it doesn't mesh in a cohesive whole as well as it should.

He's also defeated by Dooku, losing his arm in the process. He also gets dressed down by his master for wanting to save Padme on Geonosis. And all this when he's supposed to be the most powerful Jedi that ever lived.

It's Palpatine that truly wants to unleash the power inside Anakin, and give him the ability to save those he cares about. That makes the turn very believable.

i would say it makes it substantiated, not believable.
there's a difference.

the way he gets from point A (he's a sith lord, let me help you take him down!" to Point Z ("whatever you want my Lord)
is just weakly executed and , for me, laughable.
as in 'worthy of ridicule'

To paraphrase my response to you in the ROTS thread Paul, Anakin is deeply conflicted by what he thinks he must do to save Padme, and that's what makes his turn absolutely believable to me. Anakin was willing to do the right thing and rat Palpatine out as a Sith so the Jedi can take him into custody, but his hand is forced when Mace is about to kill him. Once he participates in Mace's death, there's no way out for Anakin. His fate is sealed, and he has no choice but to follow Sideous.

Richard:

Choosing to help Palpatine was also a choice to become his apprentice. Anakin was conflicted, but he knew the consequence of intervening on Palpatine's behalf (this was portrayed very admirably in the rumination scene right beforehand).

I definitely agree with Chris and Richard regarding Anakin's choice. The Jedi council hadn't shown Anakin much trust, so I don't think there was anyway he would he able to explain his actions. Maybe OBW or Yoda would have sided with him, but the status quo was completely rattled at the point when he severed Mace Windu's arm.

we are just arguing our subjective reactions to the material.
it works for a lot of you. it doesn't for me.

its not that i don't understand what Lucas is trying to do here.
on paper, i actually like some of the thrust of the prequels.
i don't mind examining the political structure of this universe- i don't mind trying to bring in some geo political Macguffins.
i don't mind some of the psychological conceits behind Anakin.
Padme's 'fate', on the other hand, is just something that even on paper i find to be a howler.

but the majority of derision i feel with the material springs from lousy execution.

hey, i would love to see Anakin and his lover sharing a doomed forbidden love that sets a chain of events in motion that culminate in the extinction of the Jedi and the loss of his humanity.
but when i have to get there thru scenes that display a distinct lack of chemistry between the participants compounded by some of the most insipid 'romantic' dialogue ever uttered, and just a general cardboard demeanor- than all the good conceptual intentions are for naught.

i'm even cutting the material a little slack (in the case for Anakins neurosis), because i think it is generally not very realistic that someone uprooted from one lifestyle at a young age and put in another for 10 yrs or more, would not acclimate themselves to that new lifestyle and find their bonds to the old one get thinner and thinner.
and this is especially when you are young.
i can buy him being sad and angry at his mothers death, but i can't buy the overreaction because this is just a person who has not been there day after day in his life for something like 10 years.
yes you would still have affection for that person, but so long an absence (and an absence filled with one new life challenging experience after another) is going to blunt emotion.
its natural.

to think that just because its his mother and that alone justifies his reaction, speaks to a willingness to be carried away by the (easy, cheap) sentimentality of it.

if he was living with his mother up to the day she was kidnapped, than yes i would say the guy is needy and her death would be extremely devastating for him.
but that is clearly not the case.

"i can buy him being sad and angry at his mothers death, but I can't buy the overreaction because this is just a person who has not been there day after day in his life for something like 10 years.
yes you would still have affection for that person, but so long an absence (and an absence filled with one new life challenging experience after another) is going to blunt emotion."

Well I dont think its that easy. It also depends of HOW that person was taken away from you and what they meant to you.Some can accept and move on, other cant. Some will destroy themselves over the loss of that person, other wont. Some become withdrawn and unstable. Some with take their fustrations out on everyone and thing around them(these are especially common in parents loosing a child). Others wont.And I can say from experience that yes you do learn to live with it, but you never really get over it.Its just that you cant move on without some sort of acceptance.

Its natural to have to see your parents die.But,Im sure having a parent(or anyone you care about)die in a violent death is very different than having them die peacfully in their sleep.

Especially if the person responsible is righ in front of you(and its not accidental)who wouldnt have done what he did.Which is why its important to train Jedi as children,before the emotional attachments.Anakin has alot of responsibility put on him at his age.

I dont have a problem at all with wht Anakin did.I do with Padmes resonse to him admitting what he did. Hes obviously very powerful and capable of doing alot of harm - IMHO she should have been more shocked, and afraid of him instead of just walking over and hugging him.

One of the things that bothers me a lot about what Lucas did with Padme was how he turned her into such a weak, dull, simpering character. I remember how appealing Leia was for being so smart and strong willed. Padme was like that in TPM. In AOTC, she was also shown as strong and at least mostly smart (except for her unfathomable attraction to a psycho-killer), but in ROTS she does little more than emote in response to Anakin's bad dreams and have the babies. It's as if Lucas decided "ok, once she has the kids, I have zero interest in her as a person, let me just kill her off and be done with it". she should have been treated better than that.

Padme's trapped in Ep3.

She's hiding her pregnancy, she's hiding her marriage, she's alone for a long time going into the film timeline, and the only person she can truly talk to is a wreck.

I don't mind the portrayal at all - she's also enables Anakin on so many things, she doesn't say "Don't do these things" until it's too late, and "I don't know you anymore" is the moment of her personal failure.

Padme is a strong character, but like all the characters, this movie was about her failings.

I've always gotten the impression from the opening comments that Palpatine has been in constant contact with Anakin for the period between TPM and AOC. Given this, and the constant references to "use your emotions," etc., from Palpatine, I get the strong impression that Palpatine has purposely had Anakin's emotional levels on permanent overdrive. All of Anakin's actions are emotional over reactions: to Obi's directions and advice; to Padme (with the resulting total awkwardness); and later in RotS to the Jedi council's actions. Anakin never seems to relaxed and always seems to be on edge throughout that last two films.

By driving Anakin's emotions over 15? years between TPM and RotS, Palpatine has been setting Anakin up for consistently bad decisions driven by his emotions, and the eventual fall to the dark side.

jdg

She didn't have to die right after the babies were born (it doesn't ring true for a young mother to have no desire to live to take care of her children). She could have (and should have) been shown to have survived for a few years to take care of Leia, and to have some connection to the Rebellion. That's much more in keeping with the Leia character, and would have shown where she gets her strength (and avoided the conflict with the ROTJ scene). Instead, she's shown as nothing but a doting wife who's thrown away after she gives birth.

Yea that was a shitty decision. Would have made more sense for her to die from the Force Choke damage or complications during childbirth resulting from the choke.It would be Anakins fault then.

I also didnt like her naming them as soon as they pop out.I would have preferred them being named later. Then someone seeing it for the first time would "guess" Leia being the other twin but wouldnt really be sure until Jedi.

I'm not really sure what to do with her death, probably have Anakin kill her straight out would have been better. edit: 100% agree with Jon

I feel like Lucas tried to short circuit complaints like "come on, they can clone people but they can't save her!" and that approach is pretty lame. Probably could have let her give birth and die on the Tantiv.

I thinnk there's a line in there that pretty much accomplishes that. Palpy says something about "the events that transpired here" and I think that's the purpose of the dialogue. I can't remember the exact line. Maybe it's not easy to catch, but I'm pretty sure what you said is the function of it.

Why is Anakin whiny? Why is Luke whiny? Star Wars from the get-go hasn't gone to great lengths to say WHY a character is who they are. They just ARE. You could say Luke is whiny because he wants MORE from his life. Guess what? So does Anakin. He always wants MORE. Even from TPM. I want to be a Jedi!! Oh, now I want my mommy AND I want to be a Jedi!! Whaaaa!! Luke wanted adventure. Anakin always wanted more POWER to protect what he cared about most. One thing about the prequels and the characters is everything and everyone is more personal than the OT.

ROTS dealt with everything in the same style as the OT. Why did Anakin turn like that? Why wasn't it this way or that way? Well, WHY is it Luke and Leia can get over their families and planets being destroyed in a matter of minutes and just get on with life? Think how fast Luke made the decision to become a Jedi. Compare that to Anakin becoming a Sith. Anakin's journey is a dark mirror of his children's. He CAN'T let go. His children can and do for the greater good of the galaxy.

I had no problem with Anakin not outright killing Padme. He was still responsible for her death. Why didn't he kill the Emperor? Why would he? He doesn't consider Palpy responsible? At that point the person he hates is HIMSELF, or possibly the weak Anakin Skywalker he was, and the one person he did care about is dead. He couldn't live without Padme he said. Well, that self-hatred combined with her death is what finally KILLED Anakin Skywalker and made the transformation to Darth Vader as a separate person complete. Palpy knew what he was doing. Anakin has no more reason to live, true. But, he's gone now and Darth Vader, kept alive by the dark forces of hatred and lust for power, combined with technology, the Sith apprentice lives. As does that lust for power. What's Vader's goal? To gain power and use it for CONTROL. Not to stop people he loves from dying (still a form of control, but a noble purpose), but to CONTROL the universe. He becomes the comic book absolute evil villain we see board the Tantive IV in Star Wars. It isn't until 20-some years later that traces of Anakin Skywalker re-emerge.

Yes, things could have been done differently or more realistically, but that wouldn't be the style of the universe we've seen in all the other films. Everything's supposed to be a bit melodramatic. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! That's not true! That's impossible!! NOOOOOO! NOOOOO!" The same could be said of some of the greatest works of literature.

It's Star Wars, and I'm happy with that. If ROTS went much farther it wouldn't resemble a Star Wars film at all. It's already pretty far from the kind of film the OT films were.

I think some of you are not perceiving the turn as meant to be.

You wanted a believable slow turn to the dark side like how a child would end up being a serial killer in real life. If it takes that long for someone to turn, it's believable but how's that turning to the dark side of the force, it's simply a person going from innocent, good to bad.

What's so unique about the situation in Star Wars is that only a jedi can turn and the turn is sudden. It's mystical. If it's too believeable, I wouldn't believe it if that make any sense at all. I would ask, "so turning to the dark side is no more than a person choosing a wrong path in life."

I like to think of it as like Banner turning to the hulk. When he's most angry/hurt, he'll reach that point of no return. It's a point.

Wise words, Paul, and maybe it's best to leave it at that.

Clearly what Lucas has shown onscreen is enough for some and not enough for others. The fact that there's so much debate over it shows, to me, that there was room for improvement in storytelling.

Most telling is that in the first cut of ROTS, the people at Skywalker Ranch actually told GL that they didn't understand why Anakin turned, at which point he re-cut that film and "really locked in the story" according to the EW article and interview w/ Lucas. Apparently the first try wasn't enough to convince most at Skywalker Ranch, and it's clearly arguable that the second attempt (though most likely better than the first) still isn't convincing to some people.

Anakin's turn is clearly a point of weakness/contention that pre-dates our viewing of the final cut.

I think I would have liked the Tusken Raider camp scene in AOTC better if Anakin lead a group of men from his Tatooine village to "heroically" go fight the Tusken Raiders (who seem to be quite a menace), but being unsupervised, he unleashes the full brunt of the Force and in the process loses control of himself and kills more people than he should have ... but at the same time he feels a rush at having unleashed his full prowess like that.

I like the idea of Anakin being so powerful that he loses control of himself, just for a few moments, during some "idealistic crusade" to save his mother.

That explanation makes no sense to me. What you’re doing is divorcing Jedi actions from any relationship with human motivations. “Jedi don’t turn because of anger or hate or fear or a flaw in their psychology. It’s mystical and unexplainable”. Why bother attempting ANY depiction of human drama, emotion, or thought in the story if that’s the case?

It doesn’t make any sense at all. You don’t want characters to be believable? Believability is unbelievable?

That’s exactly what it is. Whatever sci-fi/fantasy trappings that add to what happens to the characters, fundamentally we’re supposed to be connecting with them as PEOPLE and their choices and actions. It makes no sense to say “I want a story that has nothing to do with a person’s choices and actions”.

There were a couple points raised that I forgot to comment on in my last post. (Boy, this is fun.)

Paul, you're right that any rational person would want some proof that Sidious could deliver on the powers Anakin sought. But, we know Anakin isn't always rational. And in this case, he's downright desperate. He already when to Yoda for help and didn't get any. Or at least he didn't get the answers he wanted to hear. Yoda pretty much said "Let them die" which didn't make Anakin too happy. So where else to turn but a friend who'd always been there. Palpy had been sucking up to Anakin his whole life. Stroking his ego all the while. Anakin believed all the positive things he told him about his future as a Jedi, conditioning him to believe anything else he told him. When we see Palpy kissing Anakin's butt in AOTC, it may lend a clue as to why Anakin's as arrogant as he is. Palpy's been working on making him a cocky brack since childhood.

I'm glad Obi-Wan didn't turn-in Anakin regarding the Padme relationship. That would have been sucked. I don't think Lucas wanted Obi-Wan to betray his friend, and I as an audience-member certainly didn't want to see that. In fact, it seems Lucas intended just the opposite--to focus on how strong the friendship was with that deleted scene that suggested Obi-Wan KNEW of the relationship and looked the other way. That makes me like Obi-Wan a hell of a lot more than if he turned on his friend. Had he done that, I'd have been rooting for Anakin in the final duel. I don't think Lucas wanted to say "sometimes becoming evil is justified, like when people screw you over.". It's much more tragic to have Anakin turn on a friend who WAS there for him and would have protected him rather than someone who would stab him in the back. At this point, we don't need the Jedi to be any more unlikeable. I can still imagine a time when to be a Jedi was a truly noble aspiration though. The story we've seen just happened to be when their stagnation had caught up with them. Obi-Wan's speech in ANH always made me imagine o a time long before his lifetime anyway. It's kind of nice that we can still imagine that fairy-tale universe.

And, man, do some of you think differently from me! Padme wasn't fat enough?! My complaint was that if they were going to give her a big belly they should have given her big boobs to match. It's an movie trying to re-capture the spiorit of the golden age of cinema. Of course Padme's going to be glamorous when she's carrying twins, not waddling to the bathroom every ten minutes! And maybe she didn't have much to do in this movie, but that probably helped the movie more than anything. Just give Portman a few scenes to try to act in. At least she was pretty good for a big percentage of it. The "you're breaking my heart" was sort of okay, but her "you're going down a path I can not follow" was as bad as the worst AOTC stuff. I think that line could have been delivered, but she did it more like she was addressing the Senate or trying to be cold and repel Anakin's attraction. It could have had a lot of emotion. It can still be taken the right way, but it's far from ideal. I was pretty proud of her performance until that scene.

Grant, that was an awesome post and I completely agree with you.

I still don't have a problem with the turn. Look at all the things starting in TPM that Anakin goes through that could very well have an impact on his life later.

*Living life as a slave.
*Being taken off of his home planet to become a Jedi, but leaving his mother behind in a life of slavery.
*One day I will free all the slaves.
*He may be the 1 of whom it said would bring balance to the force.
*The scene where he is told that he will not be trained as a Jedi.
*His exploits as a pilot gaining him fame and noterity at a young age.
*Trained this boy will be.
*We will be watching your career with great interest. (start the influence of Palpetine)
*An attachment that forms with Padme.

AOTC
*Terrible dreams about losing his mother.
*Seeing Padme again and reawakening all of his feelings.
*Continued influence of Palpetine. I foresee you becoming greatest of all the Jedi.
*As wise as Master Yoda and as powerful as Master Windu.
*Made the personal bodyguard to the senator, requiring that they spend a lot of time together which allows his feelings to grow.
*continued lack of trust from the Jedi (remember the scene as they're sending them off which who between Anakin and the Princess could cause the most trouble?)
*His mother dies in his presence, he was just a little too late to do anything to save her.
*He acts on his emotions and in rage kills all of the Tuskans in the village.
*The scene in the shed where he talks about fixing things, and wanting to keep people from dying.
*The scene at his mother's grave.
*The battle on Geonosis including the brief argument with Obi-Wan (feeding in to the notion that Obi-Wan is "holding me back") then the battle with Dooku where he is still shown to be impulsive and gets taken down as a result.
*The loss of his hand in the duel which plays in to his desire for revenge in ROTS.
*His secret and forbidden marriage to Padme.

ROTS
*Distance of time and space between him and the one he loves.
*Fighting and killing Dooku.
*Being reminded by Palpetine of his actions against the sand people.
*Being egged on by Palpetine to kill Dooku in the first place.
*Treated as a hero for saving his Master, killing Dooku and rescuing the Chanselor.
*The news that Padme is pregnant. (now not only is he attached to her, but to his unborn child. I don't think he liked this at first but he sure did warm up to it quickly)
*I am appointing you to be my personal representative on the Jedi Counsel.
*You are on this counsel but we do not grant you the rank of Master. (think about how in one scene he is praised for being a hero to the republic and in a scene not that much later they tell him that he's not ready to be a master.)
*We want you to spy on Palpetine. That's against the Jedi code.
*I think the Jedi are plotting against me. My trust has in the Jedi has been shaken. They asked you to do something you believe to be dishonest, they asked you to spy on me didn't they?
*There is a way to use the force to keep the ones you loved from dying. Can I learn this? Not from a Jedi.
*Being told by Palpetine that he should go and kill Grevious only to be told by the counsel that it would be Obi-Wan that would draw that assignment. Remember that Palpetine basically says that the Jedi would be foolish to pick anyone other than Anakin himself...feeding in to his ego.
*Finding out that Palpetine is a Sith Lord, taking this info to the Jedi Counsel and not be allowed to go and arrest him with them.
*This revelation to the Jedi counsel still not being enough to gain Mace's trust. (also remember that it was Mace that told Anakin he would not be trained as a Jedi at first)
*fear of losing Padme as a result of similar dreams he had about his mother. Crossed with promises from Palpetine that he knows how to keep the ones you love from dying.
*Walking in to see Mace standing over a man who looks old and weak and pleading for his life.
*Knowing that this man may be the only way to keep Padme from dying.
*making the choice to save Palpetine from death by slicing off Mace's hand.

So this is what you have in Anakin's life.
*The Jedi: some of whom trust him, some of whom don't and yet tell him that he is the one to fulfill the prophecy of bringing balance to the force. So at once they both inflate and deflate his ego.
*Chanselor Palpetine: initially a close friend, influincing his political thoughts, stroking his ego, building up his confidence and eventually promising him the power to keep his love ones from dying. He went from a sympathetic ear to a close friend to someone indispensable to Anakin.
*Obi-Wan: Separate from the Jedi (in that his relationship with Anakin is different than the relationship Anakin has with the Jedi as a whole) Anakin's master and closest friend. A man who has been his friend and master for years, but also a man whom Anakin has saved from death on more than a few occasions. Someone that Anakin perceives is holding him back based on what Anakin expects from himself.
*Anakin's Mother: separated from her at a young age, watching her die in his presence after first dreaming that it may happen. A person to whom he promises to never fail again.
*Padme: Person that would be the first to show Anakin any real compassion after he leaves Tatooine. Person that Anakin thinks about daily between TPM and AOTC, a person he is allowed to become quite attached to even if attachment is against the way of the Jedi. Eventually they marry and then he starts to dream of losing her and his unborn child.

So you have all of these things that are in Anakin's life...and they all seem to feed in to each other. Palpetine trusts him where the Jedi do not. Palpetine wants to nurture and praise his power and respects his power whereas the Jedi do not. Palpetine trusts Anakin and informs him of a great many things whereas the Jedi keep things from him. Palps has an interest in keeping Anakin's loved ones alive, where the Jedi are content to let them die. (at least that's what it is from Anakin's Point of View). He's a hero in the eyes of many that is still being held back by a select few in his eyes. He sees that the same thing could happen to Padme that happened to his mother, only this time he is presented with a way to prevent it.

So you've basically boiled Anakin's life down to 3 things.
1. The Occurances: This is all that Anakin himself experiences in life. The way he is treated by others, the things that happen to him in terms of major events, and all the things that he is told about himself by others.
2. The Influences: the People that have an impact on Anakin's life, and provide the bases for many of his occurances. These are the ones talking about his power, trusting him or not trusting him, feeding his ego...these are those who he loves, who love him, and who he loses and doesn't want to lose.
3. The Perceptions: How does Anakin look at the things he's being told by the people telling them to him? How does he view what is being said and by whom and wht conclusions does he reach as a result.

So you have Occurances, Influences and perceptions...and when you add all of those things together you get:

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

One element I felt could have be played up more in ROTS is the whole idea of *power*.

Yes its set up in the film, but as it could have related more to Anakin and made his turn a bit more natural I think.

Anakin by virtue of his power with the Force is being held back by the Jedi. Also maybe the Jedi don't like how Anakin takes on certain missions/tasks. He's too flashy, even though he is good. Obi-Wan though lets Anakin get away with that sort of stuff.

He's like a superstar player who is kept on the bench by a coach because he's too young.

This should burn Anakin a lot more than it does, and to join with Palpatine -- unleash his full power, even the power to save people from death, bring peace to the galaxy, in Palpatine's new "Empire" he goes from being just a regular ol' Jedi to being at least second in command (with of course the chance to eventually kill Palpatine and assume full power).

I did like Hayden's scene on the Mustafar platform, there I think we can see how crazed he has become and how he rationalizes the decision to himself. I felt like some of those elements started to come together.

Have to disagree. That's not all it is.


you are applying believability with real life situation. I'm applying in the context of the Star Wars universe. The sudden turn is believeable within the context of what has been said in the Star Wars universe even though it's unbelieveable in real life. If the story is about a good person turning bad, nothing mystical about the process, in other words, as is in real life, it's unbelieveable in the realm of the Star Wars based on what Yoda and other Jedi have said about going into the path of the dark side.

Clearly ROTS is not such a story. But, there are supernatural forces at work in addition to the human elements. It sounds like some of you don't want the dark side of the force to have any kind of power or influence over a person whatsoever. And what fun would that be? That could be any other movie. The other films have all drilled the seductive, consumpitve power of the dark side into us, and ROTS is the payoff to all the lip-service. If you don't believein the Force and you don't believe in the power of the dark side, then the movie will not work for you.

I think it balanced everything pretty well. Clearly, Anakin's fall has a lot do do with his actions and choices, but there's a point at which he loses control more than a normal person would due to the dark forces at work. Where a normal person not trying to control mystical forces could step back and stop, he cannot.

Light side of the Force: (exchange between Luke and OB1. "You mean it(the Force) controls your actions?"--"Partially, but it also obeys your commands."

Ahh, so a Jedi using the light side of the Force can maintain control of this mystical engergy field.

Dark side of the Force: (Yoda and Luke exchanges) "Is the dark side stronger?" -- "No, quicker, easier, more seductive."--"Anger, fear, agression, the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight, but once you start down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."

Heck, the story was already written. From ANH we learned "Vader was SEDUCED by the dark side of the Force." It wasn't "Darth Vader had a rough life. His hard life drove him to be a thug who did bad things. And when the Emperor wanted to kill some Jedi, he was the badass dude to call." Rather, it's suggested that a Force-user was consumed by the dark side of the Force he sought to control just as he did the light side of the Force. The dark side is the quick and easy path you THINK you can control--"I don't fear the dark side, like the Jedi!!" says an obviously crazed Anakin/Darth Vader, but you CAN'T.

The Force heightens a person's abilities, but using a mystical energy field to heighten negative, potentially dangerous emotions is like supplying the Plutonium to a bomb. When you use those negative emotions instead of a calm, passive, peaceful mind, things spiral out of control for even the strongest Jedi.

I don't hear people complaining about the Ring of Power corrupting people in the LOTR films. And that happens just from being near the ring. At least the Force requires the user to actually try to tap into that dark side energy through the active use of their emotions. Though in the case of Anakin, you could say he's overtaken without trying to actively use the dark side due to the fact he ALLOWS his emotions to rule him from the beginning of the film when his fear of loss begins to rule him. Fear leads to anger, anger to hate, hate to the dark side and all. He may be able to hide it to a point around his fellow Jedi, but that fear is his strongest driving force. And he's angry he doesn't possess the power to stop death when he needs it soon. It builds and builds up to where Palpatine offs Mace. He's been trying to keep his emotions in check to a point, but the moment Palpatine offs Mace, Anakin's gets an extra dose of fear thrown at him, then anger and disgust with himself. Emotion, negative emotions overtake him, but his ultimate goal is still in sight at this point, the power to save Padme, and from his point of view there is but one path to that goal, embracing the power of the dark side. Plus he's been warped by Palpy and pissed on by the Jedi just enough to believe he may actually be doing the RIGHT thing in protecting the Chancellor and ending the war AT ANY COST, all the while stopping the Jedi from making their own power play. Fortune's fool he is. Twisted by the dark side and yes, lost. Doesn't see the forest through the trees, and just about every other cliche' you can throw.

It sucks that he believed the person who sucked up to him all his life more than he believed his teachers who often challenged him, but THAT is a very human response. There were rational reasons to turn, that alone, maybe wouldn't be enough in a straight real-world. But when you factor in the seductive nature of a dark mystical energy field that surrounds all living things....

I wholly understand the resistance though. I had problems with MacBeth. And I always thought Anakin's fall would be "MacBeth in space." And it pretty much is. Even with his wife being largely responsible for his fall. This time, not because she's at all evil, but because she was all he really cared about. You know what I didn't like about MacBeth? That's right? The supernatural element--the witches (an element some have suggested Shakespeare didn't even write.) Now, you don't see the dark side stirring cauldrons and laughing at Skywalker, but it's there. MacBeth could probably work better if you took out the witches (which I wanted to do) than ROTS would if you ignored the power of the dark side, but you're supposed to accept it. The dark side is those cackling witches in Anakin's head nudging him toward his fall.
Were there no darkside of the Force element I would whole-heartedly agree the turn doesn't work. But as it stands, ROTS is the one Star Wars film that really shows us the power of the dark side, not merely in physical abilities, but its far more powerful ability to twist a good person into a villain.

Keep in mind the Chosen One with allt hose midi's can likely communicate with the Force a lot easier than your average Jedi. That communication doesn't flow just one way. He can soak up what the dark side of the Force says to him a lot faster too. Once he opens that channel, deafening it must be. If you guess that Luke's midi count is maybe half of Anakin's, it might go a ways as to why it's somewhat easier for Luke to get a grip even without 10, 15 years of training. The dark side, or the Force in general, only yells at him half as loud as it does at Anakin.

I always figured in AOTC the reason Anakin was unpredictable and out of control at times was because he had access to so much power that control didn't come easily. It's like Anakin trying to round the curves in a constantly revving 600hp automobile. Someone like Obi-Wan on the other hand, with only 210hp can take that slalom course a great deal easier. He can keep gunning the engine, while Anakin has to worry about downshifting and applying the brakes.

Good post Grant. Coudn't say it any better.

Different subject:

Everybody gets on Obi-Wan's case about not telling Luke the truth about his father. However R2-D2 clearly should have known, and he's pretty much Luke's droid from ANH through ESB. You'd think somewhere along the line he should have said something to Luke! Threepio gets a pass since he got a memory wipe. But R2's the real duplicitous one!

I completely agree with that statement.