Originally posted by: Tiptup
Well, it had to do with the final turn. One minute he was happy, nice, and loving, the next minute he was murdering innocent children over an inconsequential dream sequence. Therefore, if a person's fall to the dark side of the force must involve their power to choose their own fate, as the OT implied (and even the PT implied at many points), Anakin must have been psychotic to have made the final choices that he made. If the dark side of the force doesn't involve choices on the other hand, then it operates in contradictory and arbitrary manner. If anyone can be great one minute and pure evil the next simply because the force can illogically force someone to be so, then there is little or no human drama left in the Star Wars universe.
Well, it had to do with the final turn. One minute he was happy, nice, and loving, the next minute he was murdering innocent children over an inconsequential dream sequence. Therefore, if a person's fall to the dark side of the force must involve their power to choose their own fate, as the OT implied (and even the PT implied at many points), Anakin must have been psychotic to have made the final choices that he made. If the dark side of the force doesn't involve choices on the other hand, then it operates in contradictory and arbitrary manner. If anyone can be great one minute and pure evil the next simply because the force can illogically force someone to be so, then there is little or no human drama left in the Star Wars universe.
The reason it comes off so jarring is Lucas changed the context of the movie after shooting the original turn scene. If you listen to the ROTS commentary by Lucas, he is suprisingly candid about how he reconfigured the movie after the original shoot, and how his original vision got changed.
His original turn scene had Anakin turning right when Palpatine reveals himself, but Lucas felt it came off with no emotion. The original turn scene as it was first shot was Anakin turning for more power, and not solely for Padme dying, although that was a factor. Palpatine offers him everything, including this trick, and Anakin takes the bait and turns solely for more power and a HUGE reason is because he feels the jedi are the bad guys. So if you watch the second half of ROTS, that part was shot in the context of Anakin turning on the Jedi not for Padme, so of course the first thing he does is go to the temple and kill the younglings. Then check out the dialogue on Mustafar with Anakin/Obiwan: Anakin says, "I always knew the jedi were evil!!!" Kenobi says, "The Chancellor evil Anakin!!!" Anakin replies, "From my point of the view, the jedi are evil!!!" Kenobi replies, "Well then you are lost!!!" Does this have anything to do with Padme and saving her? No, because this whole Mustafar dialogue sequence was shot in the original context.
So now Lucas decides to change the turn so Anakin has more of an emotional moment when he turns, so Lucas decides to make it solely for Padme, and changes his turn now to when Mace is going to kill Palpatine. He then shoots a new scene where Anakin tells Mace about Palpatine being the Sith. He then films Anakin/Padme staring at each other in Coruscant as Anakin is in the jedi chamber by himself. He then shoots Anakin leaving and now walking in on Mace as he has Palpatine cornered.
The problem is the rest of the damn movie is shot with the old context!!!! So all of us here are essentially watching two different movies, the first movie was shot from when Anakin storms the temple all the way to Mustafar with the context of him doing it for power and feeling the jedi are the badguys. Then everything up to the Turn scene in Palpatines office is SOLELY for Padme and finding this trick for dying.
Opening night, I thought it was weird and couldn't put my finger on why ROTS never made sense to me, even though I thought it was the best of the PT movies, but after listening to the commentary, it makes sense now why it doesn't make sense. Zombie has talked about this before, he can elaborate if I missed anything.