Revenge of the Sith: Awful message — Page 3

Tiptup said:

Thirdly, to the degree you can argue about who was right in Empire's plot line. Luke was the hero and more portrayed as "right" by the movie than Yoda was. In the end helped his friends and got away with his life. Yoda was only portrayed as right to the degree that Luke may have been taking too big of a risk.

But Luke didn't save anyone. He only got away with his life because Leia was wiling to put herself in greater danger after already escaping to rescue him.

C3PX said:

TheBoost said:

Anakin doesn't go bad for love. He doesn't even go bad to save Padme's life in any clear way (it's not like a special medicine is being kept from him in the Jedi Temple). He goes bad in order to achieve power to alter the natural order of things because he's unwilling to let go of his attachments. His hubris is what leads to his evil actions.

 

Hmm, interesting perspective. For my part, I don't think Anakin had anything like hubris. Sure he is portrayed in the films as over confident and cocky, but more often than not, I think we see Anakin questioning himself and being uncertian of things. I think his overconfidence was compensation for his self doubt. In his character I didn't see a man who wanted more than anything to be able to have great power and be able to stop people from dying for the sake of having great power, he wanted this power to protect the thing he loved so much he didn't think he could live without it. Anakin was scared of loosing the thing he held so dearly. Which is why the movie makes no sense at all. 

It was his desire for power 'that some would call unnatural,' not his pride in reaching for it, that was his undoing. Perhaps hubris was a impresisely chosen word.

 I dug your scenario by the way.

TheBoost said:

Tiptup said:

TheBoost said:

Do you turn on "Cops" and see some wife-beater and say "Love leads to wifebeating, what a screwed up message."

Cops doesn't have a clear authority figure like Yoda telling kids that loving attachment is bad. If George had Yoda teach that because he wanted to show that the Jedi were corrupt, then that's okay, but it confuses his moral message to have the top good guy saying something like that.

Yoda never said that Anakin needed to stop loving anyone. He said he needed to be willing to let go. Attachment, possesion, these things are forbidden.

You don't have love without being attached to people. Saying Anakin shouldn't have attachment is saying he shouldn't love. And Yoda basically tells him not to care if Padme dies, which he couldn't do if he loved her. So Yoda is telling him not to love.

Anakin doesn't go bad for love. He doesn't even go bad to save Padme's life in any clear way (it's not like a special medicine is being kept from him in the Jedi Temple). He goes bad in order to achieve power to alter the natural order of things because he's unwilling to let go of his attachments. His hubris is what leads to his evil actions.

Anakin turns to the dark side because he thinks the dark side has the secret to saving Padme. So yeah he does go bad for love.

Yoda was right. Anakin needed to be willing to let go. Yoda is so right that Anakin is even the one who caused her to die. Yoda was right when he told Luke not to go to Cloud City, but Luke did it because he was afraid to lose the people he loved.

Yoda wanted Anakin to not give a damn whether Padme died or not. I hardly think that's right. As much as Yoda is shown to be right by the story that's because the story is trying to push the same message Yoda is. The story is set up to agree with Yoda.

On the Death Star in ROTJ, Luke also wanted to protect the people he loved, but he was unwilling to give into hate and anger in order to achieve the power to do it. It was Luke's compassion and surrender of power that lead to Vader's redemption.

In ROTJ Luke refused to kill his father, out of love, and that led to Vader's redmption and the emperor's death. That's a pro-love message and as such is at odds with ROTS which has an anti-love message. This is just one of many examples of how the two trilogies are at odds with each other.

Love wasn't the problem. Luke loved and he was okay. It was Anakin's fear and obsessive attachment that lead to a need for power and control.

Luke was in a different trilogy that had a different attitude. And I don't see anything unreasonable in wanting to prevent the death of somebody you love and it's that that led Anakin to the dark side.

Anakin's fear of Padme dying was reasonable and natural and a product of love. His wish to have a way to stop that death was likewise. Yoda basically wanted him to stop caring, which was damn cold.

TheBoost said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

As for the Sith, logically if there's only 2 Sith and many Jedi and the Jedi are sitting pretty as the guardians of the republic and the Sith have to work in secret, then the imbalance is that the Jedi are too powerful. But I don't think that's what George meant by imbalance. 

The Dark Side itself is the imbalance. Jedi and Sith aren't two equally valid viewpoints. The Dark Side is intrinsically bad. The imbalance was that the Sith existed and had been growing in power and influence for 1000 years.

If that's Lucas's intention that's dumb. The traditional view of balance (re good and evil) in fiction is that good and evil are both part of the natural order and both have a place. To talk about balance in the films while favoring a view of only-the-good-side-is-allowed is idiotic. If he wants to knock out the dark side entirely he shouldn't put in talk about balance. Balance is when you balance between opposing things, not when you have only one thing and eradicate the other. George, if you're not interested in balance don't talk about balance.

And there's identifying passion with the dark side. Passion is what makes us human. It's an essential part of life and human nature. To identify passion with the dark side while portraying the Jedi ideal as basically not feeling is pretty awful. That's a message that feeling is evil and that we shouldn't feel. Horrible message.

So balance is when the side that's associated with feeling is gotten rid of? That's a bent message.

Vaderisnothayden said:

 

If that's Lucas's intention that's dumb. The traditional view of balance (re good and evil) in fiction is that good and evil are both part of the natural order and both have a place. To talk about balance in the films while favoring a view of only-the-good-side-is-allowed is idiotic. If he wants to knock out the dark side entirely he shouldn't put in talk about balance. Balance is when you balance between opposing things, not when you have only one thing and eradicate the other. George, if you're not interested in balance don't talk about balance.

And there's identifying passion with the dark side. Passion is what makes us human. It's an essential part of life and human nature. To identify passion with the dark side while portraying the Jedi ideal as basically not feeling is pretty awful. That's a message that feeling is evil and that we shouldn't feel. Horrible message.

So balance is when the side that's associated with feeling is gotten rid of? That's a bent message. 

In the Star Wars universe,  the force IS the force. It is the balance, the energy field created by all life. It includes all things. It needs nothing outside of it to balance it. It's not just some standard of 'good,' it's the way the universe should be.

The pursuit of unnatural levels of control (preventing death, blowing up planets, "UNLIMITED POWER!") is inherently wrong. The dark side is an intrinsically UNbalanced thing that addcits, manipulated, and twists things. It's like a cancer.

To arbitrarily apply some outside standard that "good and evil" are two equally valid and important viewpoints (which I'm not sure where you're getting) to "Star Wars" seems invalid because that standard is not in the saga.

I don't think my wife is going to come up to me tommorrow and say, "I love you so much I'd be willing to kill a bunch of innocent children and perform other heinous and evil acts so that I'd never lose you." That kind of stuff is not the natural consequence of love. That's some twisted stuff.

But if she did, I would not respond with "Well, that seems pretty evil, but I guess I should be okay with it, since evil is a natural balancing factor of life and we need to balance things out for all the happy people."