I agree with you that Anakin could have quit at any time, but I’m talking about the perception people have about the movies. The standard reading now is that the Jedi are a creepy cult that kidnaps children and brainwashes them to not have emotion. I know that that’s blatantly incorrect on every level. However, the Jedi do look really dumb due to their inability to figure out obvious details happening right in front of them with regard to the clone plot, Republic corruption, Palpatine, and Anakin/Padme, so it gives the impression that they have to be doing something wrong to make them act that way and/or deserve it when it comes crashing down. People fill in the blanks and put it up to something to do with emotions, suppressed emotions, attachment, “too much light side”, etc.
Well, some may. But I think that’s not in the movies like that.
I disagree about the clone plot and Palpatine and think they have nothing to lead them to Palpatine on that really and the clone. Suspicion about how they were made yes, but the movie kinda keeps the Jedi from getting specific information. Republic corrupt and Anakin/Padme, sure, but the republic thing I think isn’t connected to the jedi’s other things really to me. Anakin/Padme, to me, isn’t much of an issue.
The Balance in the Force thing is vague and the Chosen One prophecy is vague, and they tell you straight up in ROTS that the prophecy could have been misread. To most people this means you can interpret it however you want, even though there are token references to it being about destroying the Sith. Yes ultimately it swings back around and winds up being true when Vader does take out the Emperor, but people also insert a step where it means he had to exterminate the Jedi or reduce them to 2 because there were too many.
Obi says it in the movies what it is. Yeah, they say it could be misread, but we see it play out in the movies that Anakin kills the sith. It’s also been developed in every mainstream thing after ROTS that there are surviving Jedi, so Anakin didn’t kill most of them and that’s never developed in the movies to be the thing, because the clones as well wipe the majority of them that we see, not Anakin. I don’t think Anakin was needed for that. To me, this is more of a lack of exploration thing from the movies though, I admit. It could’ve been delved into more. A flaw I have with some things in these movies is that not enough time, to me, is spent on them.
By contradictory I was talking about the other post I was quoting, where the other poster was trying to reconcile the movies and their messaging. I said it seems contradictory because people are trying to read something into it that wasn’t there previously.
My full sentence was
“It doesn’t contradict the OT, it (according to a fan interpretation) retroactively adds an unnecessary part to it that gets tied in with something unrelated.”For example when a story does the “it was all a dream” trope, it doesn’t technically contradict anything that happens in the story itself, or break continuity, because anything can happen in a dream. But everyone hates it because it changes the perspective on the story to make it a lot less interesting and impactful. That’s what reducing everything to attachments/no attachments does for me, even though you can technically shoehorn Yoda and Obi Wan’s comments into that framework.
But I don’t think it does, as I think it’s not doing anything against it. It aligns, to me, with their view in that movie, not just their advice to Luke in that scene. Yoda’s whole thing about being about knowing when he’s calm and passive. Different ways of saying it or approaching it, maybe, but I don’t think it effects it. Especially considering, I think of relationships and attachments as 2 different things, so it doesn’t do much of anything for me in the PT. I think if we’re approaching the idea that Vader changed only because he cared about his son enough to rescue him over being imperial, doesn’t make it so Vader learns from his mistakes in joining the empire and what led him to being Vader, in that view of doing things. Adding to Vader’s motivation being someone who grew so attached that he was unwilling to allow them to die at the detriment of pursuing the right thing to do, I think brings more weight to what Luke does in ROTJ and what Vader does after seeing what Luke chooses. In that Vader learns from his son’s choices and refusal to compromise, to me. Loving his son, yes, but not just for himself and keeping his son.