The Jedi are so needlessly neglectful towards Anakin in their attempt to try to teach him to be emotionally detached, and then they wonder why he became loyal to the only guy who would actually listen to him (even if it was just to use him).
The Jedi: Emotionally neglect Anakin for years
Anakin turns on them
The Jedi: ...
That is why Anikin was too old to be trained as a Jedi. Not because he was too old to learn how to fight, but because he was too old to be brainwashed to be a warrior monk. He had ties to the outside world. If they had started his training at birth, he would have no worldly ties to hold him back.
And before anyone calls me out on it, I have not consumed any Star Wars media other than the first 6 movies. I am well aware that I am pulling lore out of my butt.
I've consumed plenty of star wars. You're spot on.
The jedi are so colossally ignorant it's sometimes funny. They, in the height of their power during the new republic, sought to fulfill a prophecy that would bring balance to the force. My dudes, the scale is so heavily tipped in your favor what the fuck do you think is going to happen?
Actually the council decided not to, but qui-gon, the grayest motherfucker there, decided to do it anyway. Maybe there was some intent there?
Quigon trusted the force. There were 2 paths, and he hoped for the one that didn't come to pass. And then he trusted that Obiwan would be able to stand in for him if he needed to.
The most damning thing he ever said was 'you were my brother Anakin. I loved you.' Because a brother was not what Anakin needed.
But, you know what, I blame the whole thing on Yoda. One kind word from Yoda. One reassurance from this being who had lived so long in the world he literally had no right to not have god like wisdom, and it all would have been averted. So many possible off ramps and they failed anakin at every turn. It's the most tragic story ever.
This and crucially he is beyond the age at which he can have his understanding of (and fear of) death moulded (brainwashed) to the weird Jedi dogma.
You can make people do some really fucked up shit if you can disassociate their emotions from the deaths of those around them.
Centuries of training padawans and no one thought about reading some child development theory.
Because the jedi aren't the good guys. I've said it for years they're designed as the righteous side of the same coin of the Sith. Always rambling about balance and such then willingly submitting as the lapdog police force of the bloated and corrupt Republic, only taking action when their masters need a war. It's thousands of years of moral objectivity gone wrong through the eyes of dogma fanatics who've lost their way.
Even Luke's revival (fuck off Disney) is bound to fail.
Wasn't this like the sort-of theme of the third trilogy? The Jedi tried to eschew attachments to prevent strong emotions like anger, jealousy, fear, and hatred. But Luke realizes that the Jedi were wrong. Being connected to other people is what the Force is all about.
At least, I think that's what they were going for when the franchise sat on its own collective balls.
Third trilogy? I didn’t think the made the Thrawn books.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Threepio stiffen. "I hope I didn't offend you, sir," the droid said anxiously. "That was certainly not my intent."
"You didn't offend me," Luke assured him. "As a matter of fact, you might have just delivered Ben's last lesson to me."
"I beg your pardon?"
Luke sipped at his drink. "Governments and entire planets are important, Threepio. But when you sift everything down, they're all just made up of people."
There was a brief pause. "Oh," Threepio said.
"In other words," Luke amplified, "a Jedi can't get so caught up in matters of galactic importance that it interferes with his concern for individual people." He looked at Threepio and smiled. "Or for individual droids."
"Oh. I see, sir." Threepio cocked his head toward Luke's cup. "Forgive me, sir... but may I ask what that is that you're drinking?"
They should have done.
To say that was the theme of the trilogy is a little generous. It was the theme of a single plotline of a movie that was also part terrible.
Ok, but the Padme deal was dope
I liked the prequel because of the mirror between Luke and Anakin. Luke had friends, a caring loving family, was born into royalty but grew up in the slums, his teachings were to be his most self and he had agency in how he wanted his destiny to turn out, not being pressed into a box of expectations and limitations. The list goes on but I always loved the idea George Lucas had, felt like he just needed to solidify his ideas a bit more
Lucas was excellent at big picture things, but should have been kept out of the details. Particularly dialogue
Way I heard it, he was well aware of that and actually tried to get people who would slap him down as necessary, but didn't manage it.
It was also the result of inexperienced actors.
In the OT the actors would regularly be like "I don't think this line sounds good let's with this instead"
But in the PT everyone just went along with everything due to lack of experience and not wanting to be hard to work with/think they're better than the director
That's just about the opposite of the relative experience of the actors involved in both trilogies.
The original trilogy was filled with almost completely inexperienced actors. The prequels were mostly cast with experienced performers, excepting the child actors of course.
The real difference is that Lucas didn't actually direct most of the original trilogy in the first place.
But Vader was never dictator, he was figurehead. It's like one of the main plots of the movies, ie sith always have a shadow leader and a public figurehead that actually does work.
Vader wasn't a figurehead. He was more or less the third most powerful person in the galaxy, right behind Grand Moff Tarkin, up until he died. He basically operated as the head of the Imperial military in their war with the Rebel Alliance. But he never gave rousing speeches or acted as a political figure. He was just the guy who told you what to do and if you fucked up, he would choke you to death with his creepy magic powers. Also, Palpatine was literally the Emperor of the galaxy. People knew who he was: he was the last Chancellor of the Old Republic who'd been granted greater and greater emergency powers during the Clone Wars, up until the point he could effectively stage a coup and seize total power for himself. Nobody knew who Vader was, because, publicly, all the Jedi had been killed, Anakin included.
Wow I never really thought about how Vadar is basically unknown outside of the inner circles of the empire.
Now I am kind of wishing for a suspense horror movie of some grunts who are being hunted by Vadar, only they don't really know who or what he is. He's just a myth or a dark scary rumor. Yet they know something is hunting them.
They kind of do this at the beginning of one season of Star Wars: Rebels. The protagonist brings down a TIE fighter on top of Vader and he basically just shrugs it off. They were like...."Uh, who the fuck is this guy?!"
So he got fucked in that regard too.
In the Thrawn trilogy you get to read Thrawn's opinion of Vader. It wasn't flattering.
I didn't read the books, care to summarize or paste it here?
In Heir to the Empire Thrawn makes it clear that he found Vader to be a weak, shortsighted, cruel, unthinking, and narcissistic. Just an attack dog that was too preoccupied with himself to think anything through. Thrawn also wasn't too happy with the emperor. Apparently Palpatine es very racist and only raised humans to the top ranks, which Thrawn found shortsighted and illogical. Thrawn was an exception to the emperor's bias because of how skill and effectiveness.
It's been a long time so it would take me too long to find the passages and paste it here.
EDIT: Heir to the Empire was the introduction of Thrawn so even though it got retconned into "Legends", I have decided to keep his attitude and mindset regarding Vader, Palpatine and the Sith as head cannon.
I was interested too so I tried to search it up The only relevant entry I found was on the Star wars rebels wiki, which doesn't seem to support the claim but with how often this stuff gets retconed this could easily be out of date.
Thrawn and Vader first met during the Clone Wars on a Mission to Batuu, where they pursued the Separatists for their own reasons. Thrawn fought alongside Jedi General Anakin Skywalker, which left Skywalker impressed with Thrawn and Thrawn impressed with Skywalker. They later met again, but this time as Darth Vader. Due to Thrawn's meeting with Skywalker in the Clone Wars, Thrawn was able to figure out that Skywalker and Vader are the same person after witnessing similarities that they share. Thrawn was one of if not the only Imperial who wasn't afraid of Vader and was one of the few officers who actually respected Vader for his commitment and loyalty to the Empire. Vader in turn held great respect for the Grand Admiral's intelligence and strategic influence. Although, Vader's respect was somewhat tarnish for the Grand Admiral after his failure to capture the rebels on Atollon, Vader still respected and trusted the Grand Admiral during their second mission to Batuu to investigate a disturbance in the Force. Although Vader was fed up with Thrawn consistent trolling efforts to deduce that Darth Vader was in fact the Jedi General Anakin Skywalker he fought alongside so many years ago. When Thrawn started making the TIE Defender project, Vader was one of the officers who supported Thrawn's project and told Thrawn to make some modifications on it, which lead to the TIE Defender Elite.
The Thrawn Trilogy is part of what is now called "Legends", so it seems that it indeed got retconned. The original Thrawn trilogy predates Episodes 1-3, so it was retconned later.
I mean Vader was glorified muscle
Not blowing any of the extended lore and based on the prequels it seems more like ani just forgot about his mom till he went to visit that one time
It is okay, Darth Vader is the lead protagonist in the Star Wars universe. Without him, the Emperor would never have been defeated.
He is the one that goes through the hero's arc.
Luke Skywalker was a complete failure in every way possible. The only thing he succeeded at was being so worthless that Vader finally had to act and save both his son and the universe.
yeah anakin/Vadsr had a complete arc, but then, somehow Palpatine returned.
There is great video on how the Jedi teachings of no emotion and complete detachement are awful for anyone who would attempt them and directly lead to his turn to the dark side.
Anakin really needed to be aged up in the prequels. The story is much more interesting if he's just a little younger than Obi-Wan
Why does that make any difference?
Because Obi Wan was a brother to Anakin when he needed a father. That's what makes Qui Gons death so much more devestating, as it sealed the ultimate downfall of the Jedi and the Republic as a whole
Well said.
In fact, while it would have been more difficult to make it a neat and tidy film, it would have been great to have a bit of development time and a flash forward for at least a few months (though a year or two would've been better) to show Qui-gon with his two apprentices, to the consternation of the Council, and having things going great for the three of them, bonding like a sort of family as it were.
Then Qui-gon is killed, Obi-wan is driven by his attachment to both Qui-gon and Anakin to step into the mentor role before he's ready, to preserve what's left of this attachment dynamic, and things go downhill from there.
The old republic really was a comedy of unforced errors, wasn’t it?
