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Post #895041

Author
RU.08
Parent topic
The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS **
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/895041/action/topic#895041
Date created
9-Jan-2016, 8:17 AM

John Doom said:

I’d take any time Anakin’s “death” over Han’s death, Anakin’s inner conflict over Ren’s one, even “Order 66” over the destruction of that Republic’s planet in TFA (what’s its name?).
With that said, it’s not like I think the PT is better than TFA: they’re all terribly flawed one way or another, with TFA not being an exception.

Anakin’s inner-conflict makes perfect sense. He disobeys Windu and goes to the chancellor’s chambers, but he doesn’t want to stop Windu until he makes it clear that he intends to murder the Chancellor in cold blood. He rightly tells Windu that he can’t kill him. What we see in that scene is an example of Palpatine manipulating the situation perfectly, so that Anakin can see the Jedi are not the selfless protectors of democracy that they claim to be, but are indeed power hungry and want to take over control of the Republic. This only works because Anakin is completely ignorant as to how politics works, as is made clear before this. It’s just an elaborate lie that only he would believe - of course if the chancellor dies the command of the republic returns to the Senate, and they can elect a new chancellor.

There a sophisticated complexity to it that Lucas did really well. Of course not everything in the PT was executed as well as that, but there are indeed examples of well thought through storytelling. I think Lucas should have used that, and only that, for Anakins turn to the dark side. When he sees for himself the Jedi try to attack and kill the chancellor - not all that nonsense about Padme dying in childbirth, which was much more poorly executed.

TFA has none of this sophistication. Ren’s “inner conflict” is really poorly executed, especially when compared to Anakin’s.