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.
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.
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.
I never saw Anakin as a very powerful person, not someone who was overly proud of himself, but someone who was disappointed in how powerless he precieved himself to be. I don't think hubris can be attributed to that kind of a character. He seems more like a loser who never came to terms with the realities of life, and gets so pissed off at the fact that people close to him might die, he goes on a 20+ year killing spree.
I think a story of hubris leading Anakin to the Dark Side would have been a much more enjoyable story that could have actually stood up under its own weight. Imagine Anakin becoming one of the most powerful Jedi of the Order. A true selfless hero who everybody loved. As his power in the force goes stronger, he craves it more and more. He has long since excelled beyond anything the Jedi masters can teach him, and he starts dabling in the secrets of the Sith. He knows it is forbidden, but he is Anakin Skywalker after all, perhaps one of the most powerful Jedi the galaxy has ever known, lesser Jedi may succumb to the seduction of the Dark Side, but not him. He could control it, tame it, bend this evil aspect of the Force and use it for good. At first he finds he can control it so well, he drops his guard, its child's play. The Dark Side of the Force is no match for the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, it is slave to him. Slowly he starts to exhibit questionable bypassing of morals. Perhaps he captures a bad guy and uses the Dark Side to bring him within an ich of his life in order to get important information from him that will save lives, after all, what is a little use of questionable methods when lives are at stake? Eventually he uses this power to do something that causes the loss of many civilian lives, but it is a time of war, and they allied themselves on the wrong side, what are a few civilian casualties in exchanged for the success of major military victory? As time goes on, Anakin's morals begin to slip more and more, but he can never admit to himself that he is becoming a slave of the Dark Side. He still believes he is in complete control, and he has become too attatched to his new found power, suddenly the power he learned from the Jedi feels pithy and pathetic, the true power of the Force lies in its dark side. He cannot let it go, and why should he? He is still the one who possesses it, it does not possess him. The other Jedi start to notice Anakin's behavior change, the man who once would go through every effort to capture enemies unharmed rather than kill them, has grown cold, now showing little regard for the lives of his own men, willing to send them on sucide missions for the sake of victory. They confront him, he denies that he has lost control, he feels they are jelous of his power. The confrontation gets heated and he looses his temper, killing one of the Jedi. He runs away, surprised at his own actions, but feeling no guilt and even justifying himself. He is kicked out of the order, if the Jedi find him, they are to kill him. It could be at this time that his wife tells him it is over, and he discovers Palpatine, a general in the Republic Navy. Palpatine could approach him and reveal to him that he is the Sith Lord the Jedi have been hunting, and that he can teach Anakin how to control his newfound powers, and how to tap even deeper into the Dark Side of the Force. Anakin doesn't see Palpatine as a bad guy, he reasons the only reason the Jedi hunt down Sith are because they are afraid of that power, but being a Sith doesn't have to mean evil. He deludes himself again and again, justifying every evil thing he does as he begins secretly helping General Palpatine rise in power, both military power and political power (perhaps he eventually declares martial law after some tradgedy, made possible by Anakin, kills many of the political leaders of the Republic, angry, the people are all to happy to hand the government over to such an experienced war hero), as he begins killing Jedi after Jedi, at first in self defense, and then by hunting for them. Evetually his old master confronts him, but he doesn't come to kill his old friend, he comes to redeem him, to bring him back to the light side. The attempt ends in heartache as he is forced to fight his friend in self defense, as the battle progresses, Obi-Wan is forced to choose between his own life or the life of his friend, and watches as the man he considered his brother plunges to his death. Now we would have an interesting story of hubris leading a hero to his fall.
(Also with the above scenario, there would be less issues coming into episode 4. While the audience would clearly see that Obi-Wan is lying to Luke about Darth Vader killing his father, the audience could sympathize with Obi-Wan. He simply does not want the boy to know his father turned bad, and that he was forced to kill his best friend. Something he deeply regrets, and blames on the corrupting power of the dark side, so instead he tells Luke Anakin's successor as Palpatine's apprentice, Darth Vader, is the one who killed him. Of course, while Obi-Wan had thought Anakin dead, sometime before the end of the prequel trilogy he would have discovered the truth, that his friend was resurrected/survived with the help of artifical body parts and the power of the dark side.)
But alas, he turns bad to save her and by doing so kills her.
