“Wait, Mace Windu, don’t kill Palpatine, it’s not the Jedi way!”
Literally 15 minutes later:
Anakin slaughters the Jedi, including defenseless toddlers
This is the biggest logic leap in the entire franchise, and it completely ruins the rest of the movie for me.
I unfortunately have to agree. The kid’s all over the place. It’s telling that the only way for the novelization to make this work was to spell out that Anakin was literally out of his mind and seemingly incapable of making rational decisions.
Isn’t that how the Dark Side works though? Prior to ROTS we saw Anakin loose it completely in AOTC when he slaughtered an entire village (incl. the children), and even Luke went kinda berserk in ROTJ after Vader threatened to turn Leia. That’s a pretty agressive and wild outburst for an otherwise fairly calm and rational character. ROTS even emphasises Anakin’s yellow eyes to illustrate that he has been completely consumed by the Dark Side.
Well sure, but the problem is he turns to the dark side forever on a dime.
In the two situations you referred to, big emotional moments spark them to lash out with the dark side, after which they both later repented/regretted. In ROTS, I guess we can say that Windu almost killing Palpatine is a big emotional moment, but is it really enough to push him past the point of no return and seemingly turn the dark side switch on and lock it there for the rest of his life?
Depends on how you see it. Palpatine was an important person to him, and he was the only person he believed could help him save Padme from death. Palpatine even points out (probably lies) that he has to kill in order to be strong enough in the Dark Side to help Padme. Not to mention that Anakin’s trust in the Jedi had been severely weakened within the last days. Or maybe even weeks? (I’ve never been able to tell how much time ROTS is supposed to cover.) At this point he genuinely sees them as a threat to democracy, peace, and his own warped ideas of how to maintain order. There’s a lot of stuff swirling around in his mind when the Windu/Palpatine fight happens, and Palpatine knows how to take advantage of it.
Plus, Anakin was never that stable a person to begin with. Seriously, watch the scene where he confesses to Padme after the death of his mother and destroying the Tusken village. He’s basically a rambling, emotionally unstable sociaopath with delusions of grandeur, very much in consistent with the stuff he does in the next film. And the closest he ever gets to any form of repentance or regret is simply “I know I’m better than this”, which can be interpreted in many ways. He talks about how Obi-Wan is holding him back, he talks about becoming all-powerful, saving everyone, cheating death, etc. And of course this all ties in with him in TPM, a slave with actual knowledge of what it means to be powerless, unlike other Jedi which were raised in comfort, and a relative degree of wealth and independence since they were infants. Even in that film he talks about Jedi being all-powerful. In AOTC he’s frustrating at not having achieved that goal, and in ROTS he gets the opportunity to actually accomplish it (in his mind anyway), and the potential death of another loved one is an extra push. And the people he’s blamed for the lack of this power essentially “proves” themselves (in his mind) to be against what he believes in. And of course Palpatine is manipulating, suggesting, motivating, all of these ideas and concepts.
(As aside note, I’d also like to point out that the only time in the PT when “adult” Anakin seems happy and somewhat stable is during the war. That’s hardly a good sign and something which the EU has since put great emphasis on.)
I’ll grant that these themes and schemes aren’t always that brilliantly communicated, but they are there, and they are generally quite consistent.
and the film tries to make it out that he’s doing this semi-rationally, as a means to save Padme (he even second guesses himself, saying “What have I done?”). But… no, he’s got no problem murdering his friends and colleagues minutes later.
There’s very little “rational” about anything Anakin ever does. He’s all emotion most of the time.
I think this quote from Yoda summarizes most of what happens in ROTS;
“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.”