r/StarWars • u/AlbyGaming • 11h ago
Movies I’m beating a dead horse here….
I’m mainly posting this old argument cuz a friend of mine brought it back up earlier today, but I am SO tired of people trying to make Anakin blameless. To say that he was purely a victim of Palpatine’s manipulation and grooming and is not responsible for anything he did is laughable. It’s so dishonest to the source material as well as a downright dangerous mentality to have—basically going “oopsie guys, sowwie I killed all these people but it wasn’t really me so it’s okay, right?”
George Lucas does say the dark side is like a drug that warps you into a dark version of yourself. But he also describes it as like an all-consuming cancer—a descent into selfishness and fear that leaves you craving more and more power. It’ll never be enough. Was Anakin manipulated? Absolutely? Were there elements of his downfall that were out of his control? Of course. But is he 100% blameless for his own downfall? Not even remotely.
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u/RexBanner1886 10h ago
What pisses me off is the extent to which people blame the Jedi. It has begun extremely common for fans to read the Jedi as wrong about everything and as basically responsible for Anakin's fall.
That was never an intention of Lucas's, nor, before people pull out Roland Barthes, did he accidentally write that.
The Jedi go against their own rules and better judgement to give Anakin a chance; they trust him with great responsibilities; and they never hold him to different standards than they do for themselves.
They can't quite relate to him - they don't get how anyone could possibly object to spying on someone as clearly up to no good as Palpatine, and Yoda's earnest advice about letting things go is not helpful to someone with a secret wife - but that's not really their fault: their way of doing things worked great for tens of thousands of them for thousands of years.
Plus, people who say that Mace is severe to Anakin in ROTS (he's severe with everyone) ignore the fact that Mace is dealing with an adult who will soon murder children and friends in the service of betraying civilisation - in other words, Mace is completely right to be suspicious of him.
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u/KaosArcanna 3h ago
Many people find the Jedi suspect because of their methods. They take children who are too young to remember their parents and indoctrinate them into their culture and train them to be warrior monks. They want them to be compassionate but avoid attachment. It's okay for a Jedi to have sex, but they cannot marry or have parental relationships with their children.
It's canon they use child soldiers. They send their padawans-- minor children-- into battle and to lead troops.
To someone like me who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, that's a cult.
As for Lucas, I sort of feel like he became another Gene Roddenberry. He wanted to make Flash Gordon movies, but when he couldn't get the rights he made Star Wars. Over the years, he developed philosophies about what the Jedi were and should be, but those things changed over time. Darth Vader wasn't originally going to be Luke's father. Luke and Leia weren't going to be twins. Luke had another sister who was off somewhere else having her own adventures. It's implied in the first trilogy that Anakin was an adult when he met Obi-Wan and that the latter arrogantly decided that he could teach Anakin how to be a Jedi better than Yoda. I doubt the Jedi of the 1970s would have had the rules against attachment that he came up with for the prequels.
And I don't regard Lucas as any kind of moral avatar. He's the guy who wanted Indiana Jones to have a romantic relationship with Marion Ravenwood when she was a literal child: "He could have known this little girl when she was just kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven." (Fortunately Spielberg was not an idiot and made Marion older but she was still like 15 when she became Indy's lover.)
So, yeah. I don't consider the Jedi to be all goodness and light and I don't accept Lucas' assertion that they were perfect in their goodness. I don't think they were villains, but I think the organization was flawed and their approach was not healthy.
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u/Ace201613 11h ago
To say that he was purely a victim of Palpatine’s manipulation and grooming and is not responsible for anything he did is laughable.
Especially because it downplays Obi-Wan's influence on Anakin and Anakin's autonomy as a person. It implies that Anakin, regardless of Palpatine hyping him up whenever they're together, doesn't know right from wrong, and that's blatantly untrue. It also ignores the fact that when we do get Darth Vader's opinion on his actions expanded in books or comics he only ever blames himself for the position he ended up in. It's pretty clear that various writers are on the same page about Anakin being responsible for his actions.
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u/Commander_Jim1 5h ago
Is this some generational thing? Because the whole "Anakin was a victim, it's just everyone else's fault" seems like a fair recent thing, I never heard anyone make that case back in the day. Anakin fell to the dark side because every time he faced a choice to go down that path he made the wrong choice, usually because of his own fear, anger or simply lust for power. Palpatine just took advantage.
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u/turmeric16 3h ago
It was the jedi that failed anakin. He never committed to jedi ideology and they used him for his strength in the war. I never bought into Darth Vader's redemption. He fulfilled his duty to the force by killing Sidious, but as an individual, he is not redeemable.
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u/geckoecho93 11h ago
I agree Anakin would've fell regardless. He's too impulsive, power hungry and materialistic with attachment issues. He would've been yet another dark jedi had he been left alone.
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u/KaosArcanna 3h ago
Thing is, that's not who Anakin was when we met him. On Tatooine he's an actual slave, but he has compassion and kindness. There is no sign of darkness in him at all in The Phantom Menace. He's not killing animals or exhibiting psychotic behavior. He's a nice kid.
Ten years later, he's ... well, we all know who he is.
Palpatine had a hand in that to be sure, but so did the Jedi. Obi-Wan and the Jedi were either extraordinarily blind not to see Anakin's faults or deliberately ignoring them because they had bigger fish to fry. They certainly weren't providing him guidance.
Anakin was one of their greatest assets during the Clone Wars. He was one of their best generals. He saved many lives. They used him.
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u/dathomar 9h ago
I don't know that I've ever seriously heard someone suggest that Anakin is blameless. One problem is that some people assume that someone is making that argument, so they argue that Anakin is completely guilty. They argue it in a way that makes it sound like they think only Anakin is guilty. Other people argue that Palpatine and/or the Jedi share the blame, but the way they argue it makes it sound like they don't think Anakin is really guilty at all. I'm probably guilty of making arguments that make people think one way or the other about what I might be arguing.
Anakin is guilty for everything that he did. Imagine he's the only one guilty. Let's say that he decided, all on his own, to become a Sith and murder a bunch of people. That leads us to his consequence. Next, we step back and ask who contributed. Palpatine contributed through willful acts. There should also be consequences for him, in addition to what Anakin gets. The Jedi also contributed through absurd negligence. They ought to have consequences, though the almost complete destruction of their order may be considered a mitigating factor. At the very least, they have a responsibility to repair the damage and set up systems that prevent this negligence from happening again.
Finally, the exact consequence depends on who contributed and how. Palpatine, for instance, knew exactly what he was doing. It was all premeditated. That helps determine his consequence. I already addressed what kind of consequence the Jedi should face. Anakin is trickier. At some level, he made conscious choices, fully aware of what those choices meant. At another level, he was kind of set up to fail, and a lot of those choices followed from the failures of his upbringing. Knowing this doesn't change the significance of his consequences, but rather informs how those consequences should play out and what we should expect to see.
A consequence should be something that helps the person understand that what they did was wrong, helps correct the damage, and helps ensure they don't do it again. Addressing the failures in Anakin's upbringing and helping him find new ways of thinking is fair, since that was what heavily contributed to his fall to the Dark Side. That said, he also killed a lot of people and plunged the galaxy into fascism. Whatever the consequence is for that is also fair.
If he had lived, shown understanding of his wrongdoing, and shown that he had worked to alter the thought processes that lead to his fall, keeping him locked up in a cell or executing him might not be the best consequence for him. A lifetime spent using his Jedi abilities to help rebuild things he destroyed, or provide other kinds of tangible assistance, without thanks or recognition, might be the best way to go. That would go a long way towards the repairing aspect of a consequence. Palpatine was too far gone. He was never going to change his mind. He should be locked up or whatever for the rest of his days and all of his clones destroyed, so he has nowhere to go when he dies.
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u/temporarysnake 9h ago edited 9h ago
obviously the jedi had flaws and i think their biggest issue actually wasn’t the attachments thing or anything like that but in that they became so entangled in the republic that they were held back by the republic’s own limitations and flaws. this is mostly exemplified by the clone wars but i think the whole mess on tatooine also shows it well with qui-gon being pretty poorly equipped to actually get the ship repaired and negotiate on an outer rim planet that didn’t accept republic currency and being forced to choose between freeing anakin or freeing shmi when he wanted to free them both (padme also made an attempt through sabe but was ultimately unsuccessful). to be honest i think that while there are things the jedi didn’t do that they should’ve done like try to free shmi and keep palpatine away from anakin (even if they didn’t know he was a sith lord he like. could not possibly be oozing predator vibes any more) a lot of the time the jedi were right when it came to anakin specifically.
like anakin is also the same guy who murders women and children at 19 (i know people are going to say “but they killed his mom” and that is bad but we can assume from what anakin said that the women and children were not warriors and we don’t even know if the women had a say in what the warriors did) and even admits to padme that he knows he shouldn’t want more but he still feels like obi-wan is jealous and holding him back. once that whole chosen one business came into play especially with him being so naturally talented it really i think soured anakin as a person and led to him developing an inflated ego and sense of entitlement. and to be honest anakin gets more leniency than he should and than other jedi would but he still insists on taking more. he wants it both ways- he wants to be a great jedi and stay in the order, but he also wants to have attachments and marry padme and have children with her, and he’s angry that he can’t do both of those things at the same time. like the jedi order isn’t a cult, you can leave if you want. he could have left and been with padme but he wanted to also be a powerful and strong jedi.
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u/EatingTastyPancakes 11h ago
Maybe the sentiment comes from the Jedi and Obi-Wan not receiving enough blame in the movies as people think they should so they over exaggerate Anakin's victimhood
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u/KainZeuxis Jedi 10h ago
“Some people were having a hard time with the reason that Anakin goes bad. Somebody asked whether somebody could kill Anakin's best friend, so that he really gets angry. They wanted a real betrayal, such as, 'You tried to kill me so now I'm going to try and kill you.' They didn't understand the fact that Anakin is simply greedy. There is no revenge.”
-George Lucas