The “dark side” as a blatantly degradative drug is just kind of a boring read IMO. If The Force is to supposed to be “everything” then the nuances of the human experience should be given room to work inside the framework. Agency and choice is a far more compelling engine to drive a story than mythological convention. It’s part of what makes ROTJ work for me; it wasn’t “too late.” It denies this idea weight.
Addiction is still based on choices, as someone prone to it due to my ADHD.
House MD is an excellent show with a nuanced and compelling portrayal of addiction and how one should deal with chronic pain, physically and mentally. House has his leg pain, but chooses to overdose on Vicodin, chooses to push people away, even when given alternatives.
It’s Vader’s choice to be evil and use the dark side, as it’s his choice to redeem himself. He’s not being mind-controlled, he has agency. I dislike interpretations that say otherwise. The overuse of victimizing the Sith is annoying to me.
Whether or not it accidentally stumbles into it, the prequels do enough to portray that rigid understanding of the Force as flawed pedagogy too - more than truth about nature. For all the convoluted vagueness about the galactic polity and what it’s meant to analogize, the denial of anything innocuous possibly leading to “the dark” (for a child) works too well in a decade not far removed from satanic panic and at the height of Catholic church scandal. I know not everyone agrees, but I do think that stuff is interesting. The Wire is a good show, and better than Lord of the Rings.
The prequels get so close to finding a good synthesis, but ultimately fail by retreating into Anakin’s wacky yellow-eyes corruption in ROTS’ third act. It just doesn’t leave much genuine room for feelings of remorse or guilt in The Force, and make Anakin/Vader feel less real.
“The Jedi made Anakin repress his emotions until he exploded”, is an interpretation I disagree with, as I see it as victimizing Vader too much. In the OT, we’re told that he was seduced by the dark side. He made a choice. Vader is a commanding presence who boasts his power in every other scene. He’s a tyrannical egomaniac who revels in control, his cold hardened personality forged to hide the soft, sentimental man deeply repressed within (as we see in his death scene).
A backstory fitting for Vader is one like Walter White or Michael Corleone, men who dipped into the criminal world for sympathetic and understandable reasons, only to turn into monsters, their initial motivations lined with pride and a need for control.
I very recently rewatched The Godfather Parts 1&2, and it’s obvious inspiration was drawn from them for the PT, even down to major plot points, so it’s not unfair to compare Anakin/Vader to Michael.
The Naboo romance parallels Sicily from Part 1, the slaughter of the separatists leaders parallels the Baptism sequence. The PT misses a lot of the nuance of what makes Michael work. They shouldn’t be exactly alike, but there’s lessons to be learned.
Such as the valid point you made: Anakin shows too little internal struggle with his dark deeds. We see this beautifully with Michael, his dipping in Satan’s works draining his soul to the point where he just goes cold. We see him nervous in the bathroom looking for the planted gun, his contemplative face before he kills Sollozzo and McClusky.
Making the Jedi corrupt means there’s no good role model. That’s the role Obi-Wan and Yoda have in the OT; they’re the good mentors leading Luke to the enlightened path. You need that in a story that, while for everyone, children should be able to follow, unlike The Godfather, clearly for adults.