How The Jedi Failed Anakin Skywalker (& Created Darth Vader)
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- Опубліковано 26 чер 2024
- I'm here to once again remind you that the Jedi sucked and ruined Anakin's life.
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Yes, I know it is cliche now that people of my generation have retroactively tried to turn the prequels into art, and while I wouldn't go that far-with the absolute mess that was the handling of the structure of the sequel series we at least get a W for being able to at least string together a cohesive story for three installments. Not to mention Padmé is tragically one of the most well-developed women in the Star Wars main canon-no, I will not be taking questions at this time. And for all the issues with Hayden Hayden Christensen's performance as Anakin in the films, the character struggle of Anakin and his arc from a young boy to Darth Daddy Vader is interesting. To me, the tragedy of Anakin can be seen in my favorite line from The Phantom Menace:
“I’m a person, and my name is Anakin.”
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Thank you to Joey for the credits
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Keywords: star wars, star wars celebration, Anakin Skywalker, Padmé, the last jedi, the phantom menace, attack of the clones, the clone wars, return of the jedi, revenge of the sith, the force awakens, star wars legends, rise of skywalker, George Lucas, Disney, Lucasfilm, - Фільми й анімація
“It’s okay to be the chosen one and just wanna be with your mom” is my favorite line out of many many amazing lines.
I'm writing a book where that's the main theme, so to hear it get put in such a funny way had me floored. Mommy, sorry, mommy sorry, mo
Seriously I had to pause it when she said it to see if anyone had commented about it it just hit me right in the solar plexus
That one almost made me cry
Absolutely perfect line
no
Jedi would literally prefer to engage in slave trade than to just threaten slave owner to free slaves or face hot end of lightsaber. This is the peace they supposedly guard
Didn't they also fight a whole war as leaders of a slave army?
1) the slaves have a chip in their heads. If they ever went in swords ablazing the slaveholders and hutts could just activate the chips and blow the slaves up along with. Anyone in their proximity
2) the Jedi have been maintaining the republic that of which succeeded to prevent slavery on all systems it encompasses. Tatooine just happened to have fallen off the chart at the moment. If the separatists didn’t take their toll for ten years the senate probably could have taken tattooine under its wing and eventually outlawed slavery and deactivated all those chips
@@KRobinson-ko1ne Than it sounds like they should dispose of slavers silently before they are able to react
I mean why don't the Jesuits go down to Mexico and do something about these cartel fellars?
I think that Ahsoka can add to this reading. They essentially asked a person who had no stable upbringing nor a healthy way to process his emotions to parent a teenager. Anakin and Ahsoka's relationship was never a father daughter one. It was more like a brother and sister relationship where they acted more as friends and even teased each other and fought. That's why he could not successfully train her; he could not treat her as anything other than a friend.
Addendum: A lot of people have been mentioning it, so I should clarify. When I say Anakin did not successfully train Ahsoka, I meant he did not successfully guide her into becoming an official Jedi Knight of the order. They [the jedi] forced Anakin into a pseudo-parental role, hoping to he'd turn out like Obi-wan, who was also forced into a master position not long after his Knighthood. But he did not and developed a relationship with Ahsoka that resembles friendship or even that of siblings, and very often, he could not guide and discipline her in a way that would have made her into a proper knight of the republic era.
Idk she seems to have been trained fine for me.
@@Nitenshi she found success through her journey abandoning the Jedi name though-- up until she acquires her white sabers and walks her own path, her soul is in critical turmoil trying to save her friend as opposed to accepting the seasons of her life changing. Had she been taught by Yoda for example, she'd had known a glimpse of that peace sooner
@@nailinthefashion
And yet she still is one of the characters that comes the closest to the platonic ideal of a Jedi Knight in all of Star Wars outside of the High Republic era.
@@Carabas72 the upcoming Ahsoka show is gonna break me baby. Just you briefly describing the significance of her journey has me choked up lmao
I remember reading in one of those extended lore books that the reason Anakin was given a Padawan was to teach him to let go of people, since the Jedi thought Anakin would get too attached to his coworkers (based on him refusing to wipe his droids memory). They basically used a person as a prop to help with separation anxiety :/
One of the best arguments I've heard describing Anakin and Obiwan is "Anakin needed a father, but Obiwan was an older brother." It's something I never noticed with the Phantom Menace: "Duel of the Fates" wasnt about jedi vs sith, it's was about whether Quigon or Obiwan would raise Anakin.
Yep. It isn't about Jedi and Sith, it's who is the right influence on the "chosen one." Will he get the care and attention he needs, or will he lose a possible paternal-like mentor that knows how to form him into a skilled and compassionate man and Jedi? Qui-gon's death means his fate and the fate of the universe is sealed for failure. The Jedi are a failed order. We see they've lost compassion and that they refuse to fight corruption and war. They could have ended slavery, but refuse to, they work with the government slowly eroding rights and needs of all people. It's why the Sith can get a foothold. Star Wars is a vehicle for talking about imperialism, N*zism, and fighting fascism. It happens politically with corruption and ineffectual government -- like Jedi who refuse to fight against intolerance, hatred, and corruption.
@@StormIris You dropped this 👑
I disagree anakin needed to be left alone because he was never made to be a jedi..that's the ultimate lesson.
@@afrosamourai400 I see your point, but if Anakin was left alone what would stop the sith from taking him?
Yup, absolutely agreed. Like… imagine you just graduated college, you just found out your dad has adopted a much younger kid, and then someone stabs your dad in front of you and you end up having to promise to raise this kid. AND you have compulsory military service while there’s an enormous war brewing, and the kid has to come with you.
Obi-Wan did his best, but he was also set up for failure.
LOL I will forever defend Hayden Christensen's acting in the prequels because EVERYONE ELSE WAS JUST AS BAD (except maybe Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee who were serving nonstop). Most of them just had the benefit of established careers prior to Star Wars, so even if Ewan and Natalie were as full of dead air as he was, nobody threw shade because they were already known as good actors.
Absolutely it was 100% a Lucas issue
One thing Hayden did manage to absolutely nail was the looks and body language. He's a scary mofo during his fight on Mustafar. Those hellish eyes will always be in the back of my mind when I hear the name "Vader."
All of this is my fav reading of the character. The Clone Wars comics actually imply that Anakin was going to leave the order after the war to fulfill his promise about freeing the slaves. And Ahsoka was gonna go with him. I know their relationship is unhealthy or at least unequal, but I do love to imagine a galaxy where Anakin was a stay at home dad to the twins while Padme keeps working in politics and occasionally goes on slave freeing missions with Ahsokax
The Revenge of the Sith novel has Anakin on the track of “yeah fuck the Order, I’m gonna be with my wife and kid and free slaves” before things escalate hard.
Filoni even confirmed Ahsoka and Obi-wan breaking different sides of his helmet showed he was never beyond reach, he just needed a support network. Which Sidious made him feel entitled to, then deprived him of.
Kinda reminds me of what Revan became in his later years. He was technically part of the order. But really he was just off with his family and would do missions from time to time.
'what if we had this traumatized slave child join our paramilitary organization? Like what could go wrong?'
-Qui-Gon Jinn
*paramilitary cult
I always really liked how the prequels deconstructed the badass power fantasy of Vader and showed that actually this man was deeply broken, and what a bleak journey brought him there. I can't help but feel like some (certainly not all, but *some*) of the hostility to the prequels is from men who don't appreciate having that power fantasy undermined.
Especially if the Jedi can be read as the patriarchal institution itself. Teaching young boys to not have attachments and he, subsequently, has unhealthy relationships with the women around him and can only process his trauma through anger (because he wasn't taught a better way to do it other than don't feel anything)? And that being portrayed negatively? Yeah, it was bound to piss some of those people off, even if the acting/dialogue/directing was Oscar level.
And the power fantasy of the Jedi themselves. They're not these detached, logical superhuman wise machines who dispense justice and order with a lightsaber.
They're a hidebound organisation in love with their own power, deeply political and deeply untrusting of any power outside of their own.
I deeply dislike the prequels because
1. They add unnecessary and convoluted story to the power fantasy/space fantasy/space opera of the OT while undermining the OT
2. Too much of Lucas own political views and biases
3. Lack of entertainment value
4. Replaces mystique of OT like characters such as Anakin and makes them basically a school shooter who I can't forgive by ROTJ just because he killed palpetine. He was secretary of state of an inter-planetary fascist government for 20-30 years and because Luke got some volts of magic lightening all is forgiven? Hell no. And now due to the Disney obi wan show when faced with a surviving victim of his school massacre, he kills the victim AGAIN. Its like the sandy hook shooter shooting a surviving victim with no remorse, even with pride but because they save their son from trump all is forgiven. Anakin is a school shooter turned Hillary Clinton or Henry Kissinger secretary of state of space Nazis and in rotj I'm supposed to forgive him and be happy he's basically in heaven???
@@grandempressvicky6387 I disagree. The acting/dialogue/directing is the main problem not the messaging. Conservatives love the prequels which retroactively make the end of rotj confirm even school shooting white boys can go to heaven to if they save their own kids from death. Anakin gets his happy ending, not the Jedi kids he massacred. He got to live most of his life in the dark side being secretary of state of space Nazi empire and is rewarded to space heaven. F that bull$hit
There are good and bad things in the prequels that add to and detract from the OT. I think everyone in this thread is mostly correct.
"It's okay to be the chosen one and just want to be with your mom" hit me like a ton of bricks, thank you so much for your work. I wish you had been there to treat that little boy better. All the love
That's the problem, he never was mature enough to be a jedi..being the one is nothing if you can't even be a jedi..
Awww your comment almost made me cry
In some ways Anakin's arc reminds me of countless real-life instances of music prodigies, child actors, and other people who became famous for their talents early in life. They would get shoved into the spotlight and exploited by numerous people and when they started showing some understandable human responses to that unusual environment, the outside perception would be one of "oh, they're acting out because they're ungrateful/entitled/arrogant." Basically, they're under way too much scrutiny by the public, their mentors, their guardians, and any companies invested in their work.
Under Watto's exploitation, Anakin had learned to be quite competitive, then he's thrust into the Jedi world where everyone is holding him to a high standard due to some vague promises that he's going to be an incredibly important person. So you can hardly blame him that as he grows older he really wants to rise in rank and title among the Jedi to the top, it becomes one of his biggest dreams. He wants to be the very best, like no one ever was. But everybody of authority in his circle other than Padme is in some way using him to their own end.
Exactly! Thanks for the dose of empathy
EXCEPT did they kill packed Sunday schools and be 3rd in command of a space Nazi empire??? No. Being exploited as a child is no excuse for being a genocidal religious zealot for over half of ones life
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the song "Lucky" by Britney Spears is autobiographical. 😢
Agreed. Also Justin Bieber song. Sadly lots of people don't have empathy or understanding and context.
Gotta catch them all
While I don’t know exactly how to put it into words, I feel like Luke’s story is a perfect ending to Anakins’s tragedy. Luke continues to go against his masters in favor of trying to save the ones he loves. And in the end he succeeds. He believed he didn’t need to kill his father to save him, and he was right where obiwan and Yoda were wrong. Luke used his emotions, his love, to win. And the Jedi he was at the end of the original trilogy is wholly different from the Jedi of the prequels. I just wish that was explored more
Yeah we all know that you fight fascist imperialist space himmler with love right?
@@afrosamourai400 after beating him into submission
Still weird tho
@@afrosamourai400 Ideally, I'd rather have Hitler go to his grave regretting his actions and telling those that the ones with compassion were right and he was wrong. I'm not sure why anybody wouldn't want that.
@@krschu00 nah that's some crap i just want him dead..i don't care about his feelings just like he didn't care about the feelings of the people he killed!!!
@@krschu00 Yeah, but if you were being electrocuted to death you'd let Space Himmler sacrifice himself to save you too.
My thoughts on Anakin are very similar - The council is to blame for allowing Obi-Wan to train Anakin. They, as a council of masters - the supposed best of the order - should have taken on this prophecied child as a collective padawan and a challenge of their skill.
'A child who is abandoned by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth'
It's more qi gon fault here..anakin was too old and imature to be accepted as a padawan.
Ah what could have been….. that’s what makes Anakins fall so tragic.
And the Jedi survivors close to him: Yoda, Obi-Wan, Windu(?)
They all knew they failed him, and they knew they were to blame.
Hell, even Anakin knew he was to blame.
He HATED being Darth Vader. He HATED becoming Darth Vader. He HATED himself for being Darth Vader. But you know what? The Dark Side LOVED that about him, and it gave him more power. It also gave him a tinge of euphoria and power every time he made someone suffer or killed someone.
Vader was a murderous sociopathic piece of shit, but being that piece of shit was the only way the dark side would give him his fix of euphoria and power.
And that was the only way to stop feeling awful.
Everything about Anakin. Everything is summed up in one sentence, ONE. Fucking. Sentence : “That’s a damn shame…”
@@afrosamourai400 And have the potential Chosen One be let loose to fall to the Dark Side or, even worse, be taken in and raised by the Sith?
That's just asking for disaster.
@@afrosamourai400 "Too old and immature"? A six year old isn't going to be more mature than a nine year old and it's unreasonable to think that either is going to be mature. The reason Anakin was deemed too old is because he was old enough to have memories of and attachment to his mother. But let's look at it from another angle... at the end of the day, what the Jedi did was take children away from their families to raise them with their own dogmatic values. Some would call that a cult.
@@lunatickoala Bingo! Indoctrinating children from birth is the foundation of religion, and the Jedi take it to cult status by removing those children from any non-Jedi contact.
I've watched the prequels recently, and my feelings and conclusions are so pretty the same. It's painful to watch how we got from Anakin to Lord Vader, and it's clear that the Jedi were complicit in that. Thank you for this material!
Shut up
You know. I'm not a fan of the prequel series, but I will say in Hayden Christensen's defense, a lot of what people think is subpar acting on his part is actually the result George Lucas' over-editing his films to the point where they dive into the uncanny valley. There are lines of dialogue and scenes that were never actually filmed, they were spliced together in post-production.
I will always defend Hayden in the prequels. Hardly anyone is giving good performances in the prequels. Even otherwise fantastic actors. And it’s not like I think of the OG trilogy as having award winning acting either. But that’s okay.
Except Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. That guy is clearly having the time of his life every time he plays the character lol
Even awful editing and bad directing can’t stop that guy lol
You know I thought this for a long time too but seeing him in other films still be bad at acting is hard to defend
George did star wars better than anyone currently Id prefer that over this nee disney shit
@@thiquepineappletv4510 Looks like somebody's a Jar Jar Binks fan.
@@thiquepineappletv4510 But in seriousness, early Star Wars was a collaborative effort. And the quality took a downward turn once he decided he didn't need to listen to anyone else.
I love that the Prequel trilogy has been salvaged from being just terrible written movies into some real -unintentional- narrative on how the Jedi failed Anakin in almost every possible way. Anakin has become a tragic character not for the moment of his fall, but for how he was pushed to the edge of the precipice.
I watched a psychiatrist reacting to ROTS, and he said something that made a lot of sense: losing a child is incredibly painful, so when Obi Wan calls him a brother, and not a son, he is distancing himself from that pain.
LOVED your video ❤
In the obi Wan series, he mentioned vaguely remembering having a brother, which might explain furthermore, awaking wanted a daddy, obi wanted a brother, both projecting their lack onto each other.
Anakin is a character that I think about all the time, especially his relationship to Obi-Wan and other Jedi. to me his relationship with Obi-Wan is so painful because it’s clear that Obi-wan loves and cares about him, and wanted to be able to guide Anakin, but is so fundamentally warped by the Jedi kool-aid that he couldn’t see what Anakin truly needed. It’s that gaping void between them and how the Jedi order kept them from crossing it that leaves me very hollow inside. Anakin was only 22 when he fell and that fact is haunting. He was just a kid who wanted love, and possessed this power that he didn’t know how to control, and all the Jedi did for him was turn him into a ticking time bomb.
It's giving me orthodox religious parents knowing their child is lgbt but being like you'll grow out of it just focus on your studies etcetc
I've always really felt Anakin-y without the dark urges it's like no let's not run from our feelings I bet there's a lot of power somewhere in there
this comment was so good!!!! bravo!! i literally screenshot to send to someone lol
@@nailinthefashion falling in love in a way his religious institution doesn't allow, and hiding that secret relationship for years while still desperately trying to prove himself worthy to the same institution denying him such happiness? yea it's an M/F couple but damn if their story can't resonate
@@CelestiaLily no they're my Romeo and Juliet, my Edward and Bella. It's like, one of my most favourite stories ever told. Perhaps because it is so tragic, so horrific and dense that I, we eat it up so easily? Like yes it's a chocolate cake. But like Bruce in Matilda, we just go for it since the entire confection is so good. Critically moist, we pat our bellies with glee. Or at least I do.
He did it to himself tho..the jedi didn't make him become a monster..it was his own responsibility.
Also, the original meaning of “non-attachment” in Buddhism does not mean “don’t love anyone” but rather “don’t try to control everything”.
One of many failings of the sequel trilogy, is Rey's loneliness and longing for a family not being explored. Could've really tied the series together if her strength came from the people she was around. Even do a cliche forging a weapon from things given to her by her friends.
Or even have Finn become a Jedi alongside her. Because their stories have a parallel. They both serve as a perfect counter to Kylo. He had a family, lived in luxury, had famous family members and threw it away for glory. Meanwhile Finn and Rey don't even know their planet of origin. They were forced into a cold, unfeeling life and just want to find the space where they belong. But they didn't harp on this dynamic for some reason.
She was longing for identity, not necessarily a family, but otherwise I agree.
The limitations from having writers with different visions, the only thing I didn't like was reylo as a ship. With more material, the last movie could be Rey's run in the darkness, with a new story embarking on her realizing that knowing her name isn't what gives her identity, and that she longed for it bc she didn't have a family.
Kylo represents the ills of tradition while Finn represents the possibility of change. Especially if they do more with his character.
@@SLYKM The desire for identity came about with TLJ not TFA. In TFA, she kept telling BB8, Finn, and Han that she can't stay away from Jakku long so she won't miss her parents coming back to find her. She cried when she was told that they weren't coming back. Her obsession of her parents' identity was not an issue in TFA - she just wanted them back. TLJ was a meta commentary about fan discussions and expectations of who her parents were. Then ROS backtracked while adding to that. At no point did Rey care about WHO here parents were until literally the Throne Room scene. She just wanted them to come back. If anything, it either exemplifies how disjointed this trilogy was or how spiteful Rian Johnson is as a SW director. Only the fans cared about what her parentage could mean.
@@grandempressvicky6387 She’s looking for belonging less identity itself, she wants a place of belonging. Her parents being nobodies who left her for no reason makes her feel more lost and alone until the end when she lets go of having her past define what she is. Rian too JJ’s basic plot and told a interested journey that could have furthered into her finding peace in her friends and herself
-and then Poe and Finn kiss~
It's ironic because the Jedi Order preached about the "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering spiel" but that's basically what they did. They established those no attachment rules and the child-snatching rules out of fear that there would be more turning over to the dark side. They were afraid of Anakin the whole time because he was the ultimate example of their fears and in a Greek tragedy-worthy twist, that led to his turn to the darkside. If they were caring for Anakin and (he got help for his obvious attachment issues), it would have probably had a more positive outcome. Hell, Anakin was just a cry for help literally the entire prequels, like him murdering an entire village of sandpeople in response to his mother's death at their hands is a sign that he is not okay.
It makes the OG trilogy so great because Luke shows they were wrong. He has attachments to Leia, Han, and Chewie and eventually his father, but they aren't a bad thing. Empire Strikes Back is a lesson in healthy attachments, as Luke isn't wrong for worrying about his friends and wanting to help them but when he goes to try to save them against Yoda's warnings, he ends up making things worse. I think that was a lesson in needing to trust those you love (especially when they are all very capable of handling themselves) and not going into a savior complex. Then in Return of the Jedi, Luke's attachments give him strength and give him the strength to take chances like giving Vader the chance to be good (even after all the bad he's done) and trusting that Leia can handle herself when they try to use her against him. He finally "frees" Anakin once and for all in the end through his love and care without major ulterior motives.
Anakin sudden turn against the emperor, just after Luke say "like my father before me" is also a lot more powerful knowing that anakin was desperately looking for a father figure, and also how he desperately tried to make his son by his side, hearing his son be proud he was like I don't need crappy sith daddy anymore and toss it into the explosive bin.
Yall are really babysitting a murderous monster? Lmfao murdering women and kids is not a sign you are not okay it's a sign you are evil!!! Anakin was lying and living a secret life, arrogant, controling and jealous with padme, obsessed with becoming a master..he was evil.
@@afrosamourai400 monster beget monster is the point, jedi see slave, dies nothing, complain slave rebelled after his enslaved mother died.
@@NeoShameMan you call killing women and children rebellion? Lmfao he was a monster.
@@afrosamourai400 rebellion is neither good or bad, that didn't absolve him, just pointing the systemic issue here.
It’s so frustrating to me that neither Qui-gon nor the Jedi could see what they were doing was a no go from the start. It wasn’t come be liberated and live on coruscant or even hey here’s liberation and the financial means for you and your mom to decide your own path. He went from one rigid path to another without the chance to explore on his own. He adopted Qui-gon’s aspirations and wishes because what else was modeled to him?
How about just "buying" his mother and freeing her? Even if Anakin wasn't allowed to see her, at least he'd know she was safe.
This gives me war flashbacks to tumblr prequel fandom discourse circa 2015-2019 but I am here for it because all the people who dismiss Anakin out of hand as an entitled asshole missed a lot of the textual evidence that the Jedi did a Bad Job at raising him.
Good lord, I think war never changes then. I joined the tumblr discourse at the start of COVID & for the past 3 years it's uh. still radioactive :|
After my own personal "I blocked all of them. But not just the men, the women and children too" spree I've carved out my own peace with it lmao
@@CelestiaLily yup I’ll bet it is the same… I just stopped being active in Star Wars fandom on tumblr around 2018, after getting way too invested during the ST years.
Not too dissimilar from RiffTrax utterly roasting him Attack of the Clones onwards.
So what if the Jedi were bad caregivers? Doesn't excuse him basically mass killing a church school/Sunday school filled with children and being secretary of state of an evil empire for nearly 20-30 years. Lots of us have not had great upbringings, many children have been raised as child slaves, and don't do the horribleness Anakin did
He was still an entitled asshole..for sure.
Thank you, Princess Weekes! You are preaching what I've been saying for ages about SW and primarily why I've been pulling away from it.
1. Anakin should have been trained by Qui-Gon. I personally think that Qui-gon has the right rebel energy to bend and flex with Anakin and honestly don't think he would have gone dark side with him as his Jedi teacher. But I also acknowledge that the tragedy of Anakin wouldn't exist without the death of Qui-Gon either. Anyone who watches the prequals and thinks the Jedi aren't sorely misguided and full of hubris is sorely misguided themselves.
2. That we have to read/watch all the supplemental material in a given media IP to understand the full picture. I'm so done and exhausted with this. I so agree. I should be able to watch a movie and get a full story. And any prequals or sequels should connect, but also be their own stories I don't have to read or watch other things to get. It's not just SW; this motif is bleeding into other media IPs. So annoying. It makes me not want to get into anything but anime or animated TV shows that have no outside extras.
3. You ending add-on about Vander being presented as a badass, VS Anakin being sad, vulnerable, and and a tragedy. It took me a long time to realize that the reason so many people, especially men who grew up with SW, hated Anakin and were so hard on his character in the prequals is because they loved Vader and saw him as a badass. And to them, men-men, badasses don't cry, they don't throw emotional fits or temper tantrums. And so seeing that in Vader in the prequals really upset them; because they probably viewed that as weakness. One could argue it's some real bad toxic masculinity possibly bordering on sexism. For me, excluding the piss poor writing of Kylo in the newer movies, it's the reason people call Kylo a whiney bitch. He's a product of his environment and treatment in that environment. He thought Luke was going to kill him, so he saw that as an ultimate betrayal. He was hurt by it. That doesn't make him a whiney bitch; that makes him human.
Boys are allowed to have and express feelings.
This reminds me of that video Pop Culture Detective did about how the teachings of the jedi order are pretty toxic masculinity about men needing to bottle their feelings and how Luke, defying Yoda and Obi-Wan to aid his friends in Empire Strikes Back, is being healthy instead of reckless.
Yep, I was thinking the same thing. That video plus this one is a great case against Jedi ideology. It’s a load of neoliberal horseshit.
I don't think it's toxic masculinity it's just discipline and stoicism which are not toxic per se..the problem is anakin was too old to be educated as a good jedi..he never was mature enough to be a jedi..
@@afrosamourai400 what part of stoicism is denial of feelings? Stop this bullshit podcast bro appropriation of stoicism.
@@anonymous99632 for what i know stoicism is about reaching ataraxia in other words peaceful mind, emotional resilience in face of misfortune, self control, being free of passion as opposed to reason..no fear no distress no lust..jedis never denied emotions they learn how to dominate their emotions since childhood with an extreme discipline because as anakin showed it extreme emotions lead to extreme evil..even in history, english developped a phlegmatic education opposed to french emotional drived attitude.
@@afrosamourai400 They took Anakin in when he was 9 though. Its almost entirely the jedi orders fault that Anakin wasnt mature enough for their bs beliefs
What gets me is that The Last Jedi was so close to doubling down on this point - Luke came to basically the same conclusion you did, which is why he wanted the Jedi Order to end - the galaxy needs a balance. Then TRoS came along and robbed us of anything approaching interesting.
Abrams is such a hack and I'm really hoping we don't get any more of his writing cause ugh
Clone Wars Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme are very polarizing. Also totally agree that it is frustrating that with Star Wars it is like want to know more well watch, or read so and so. Yeah Anakin having a padawan was weird, but I love Ahsoka and my god it was refreshing to see a well consistently written female character.
Damn I hadn’t thought much about the Anakin/Obi “attachment misalignment” but that’s really on point! That’s a huge point of tension that I wish they’d teased out more in the films.
Anakin story breaks my heart. He was such a sweet boy, and what he becomes... How he becomes that, it is SO FRUSTRATING. Jedi's were so careless, basically throwing him into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Agreed. They were so reckless with him, especially Yoda. Anakin reached out for help and he was clearly displaying signs of trauma and depression. They should’ve helped him and given him more options. I think the Chosen One is worth the effort and worth bending the rules for.
@@jonnie7891 it's hard not to "go to the dark side" when you have no guidance whatsoever because you're already perceived as broken. And then when you "turn out" to be evil, they will be like: see? I knew it!
@@besupaaa This got me mad all over again thinking about when Anakin was first presented to the council. It’s almost like he never had a chance. They didn’t want him to succeed.
@@jonnie7891 hey kid who was a slave your whole life and was taken away from your mom and feels lonely and she is still a slave - HAVE NO FEELINGS PLEASE.
@@besupaaa The comics make it even worse because none of the kids wanted to befriend him. Obi-wan was literally his only friend and it's clear that until the Clone Wars are declared, he wanted nothing to do with him. No wonder he got so attached to Padme, she was the only one who treated him with respect.
This video is criminally underviewed
There's a recurring theme in the video game Knights of the Old Republic that I think ties into this as well; the jedi as an institution produce Sith as a social group through the adherence to their practices, then disavow and inadvertently organize their failures as sith.
It’s technically Legends canon now but this explanation makes the most sense for me: the Sith didn’t actually create Anakin. The Force retaliated against Darth Plagueis’ attempts to create life with the midichlorians and conceived Anakin as a being destined to destroy them - the Chosen One. And if anyone hasn’t read the Darth Plagueis novel, I highly recommend doing so. It may have only just missed out on being Disney canon due to timing but it is a fantastic book and gives both Plagueis and Sidious amazing backstory and character development.
He wasn't creating life but performing a ritual with Palpatine to alter the flow of the force itself in their favour and bind it onto the course, which was too much for the force so it created Anakin to get rid of them and their manipulation.
I have realized that I love the idea of Star Wars significantly more than the finished products themselves, especially in recent years. What hurts more is all the wasted potential we see, especially within some of the good ideas and bright spots of the Disney+ shows and the Disney-led Star Wars films. The Mandalorian in particular was the closest I felt to finally getting to love Star Wars again, only to see the main character dynamic take a backseat to an ongoing narrative transferred from the Star Wars animated shows.
The Anakin storyline from the prequel trilogy had so so SO much potential and opened the door to many intriguing conversations, it was just mismanaged by poor direction, over-reliance on certain visual effects, and too much George Lucas. One of my favorite what-ifs is what if Spielberg had been the director for Episode II or III, considering the close friendship he has with George Lucas himself.
This is absolutely one of the most astute video essays I've ever seen about Anakin, and star wars in general. You perfectly point out all of his character flaws and his motivations and tribulations, especially focusing on his slavery as a child and how that impacted his entire character arc. Subbed, I really enjoyed it, and I wish others understood him as well as you. And I agree completely on feeling that star wars is lost now. :*(
Man, Anakin had so much potential to be such a dynamic and fascinating character if he wasnt bogged down by everything wrong with the production of the prequels
Thats why i thank god for his portrayal in The Clone Wars series where they got to do so much more with him
I'm not a star wars fan personally, but I have to say, I always liked Anakin as a character in the prequel movies, he was relatable (or, understandable?) to me because he has a lot of traits of borderline personality disorder and it's kinda rare to see people with a personality like that who are actually developed characters in a lot of media, usually they're pretty one dimensional but Anakin's arc (while probably not intentionally doing this) really does show what looks so similar to the struggles I and many others had growing up with BPD too.
In reality, BPD is often caused as the result of being raised manipulatively, especially with regards to love and attachment, which Anakin absolutely was by the Jedi, and his attachment issues and extreme fear of loss that drive him to the point of giving up his own humanity is another facet of having BPD that is very relatable to me, I have done horrible things for this same reason, hurt myself, hurt others, gone to the highest extremes to keep the loved ones I had when really there was no tangible danger, I ended up creating the danger from that fear, like Anakin did to Padme.
I am a lot better for it since I knew what was wrong with me, and it's not a history I'm proud of, but it's not something I can ignore and pretend didn't happen either.
I live with and accept the consequences of my actions and while learning from them. While being the result of untreated mental illness doesn't excuse them in any way, it does at least humanise the mistakes I've made and lets me try to move on and be a better person for those that I love in the future.
Seeing media that shows that the mistakes a lot of people with BPD are very aware they made in their lives not just as a one-dimensional evil was really refreshing and also kind of heartbreaking at the same time.
It might be something I'm not proud of, but it doesn't have to be something I'm ashamed of either, I can at least try my best to be as good a person as I can be and that's really the most anyone who perpetuated the cycle of abuse in their childhood can do to find personal atonement and growth.
I like Anakin because he reminds me of a younger version of myself, it's a painful reminder but it also humanises my mistakes to me in a way I could never accept directly, I used to believe I was just an irredeemably evil person that could never be loved, and it also shows me how far I actually have come from then, that maybe i'm not irredeemable or hopeless, maybe I can put more good than bad into the little slice of the world I inhabit, and even if I can't in the end I can and will keep trying to.
I recently revisited Episode I, and right off the bat, Qui Gon refusing to free slaves pretty much solidified the Jedi as a bunch of self-important hypocrites. If that was Lucas' intention, it worked on me.
HE didn't refuse to free Shmi. Quite the opposite, Qui Gon was adamant about Anakin AND Shmi being freed when talking to Watto after the Pod Race scene
But it wasn't. Qui Gon despite being self righteous is rewarded with space heaven. Even disregarding the obi wan show made by Disney, he still gets a heroic mentor death and mourned over by obi wan. Lucas doesn't paint Jedi as morally grey or villian to their own cult and behavior but heroes in the end. Rian Johnson and Disney surprisingly with the Last Jedi are the only ones to depict the Jedi as villains among the sith, also villians with old man Luke. And fans, a lot of them hated that critique. Clone wars which I haven't seen I do think explores Jedi council as morally grey using torture as a method of intelligence gathering.
@@TheDCbiz how can you say jedis are villains when there are litteral imperialistic racist fascist mass murderers and child killers called siths!! Jedis are far from being villains.
@@afrosamourai400 obviously the Sith are worse
Qui-Gon had other priorities (raising the Chosen One, rescuing Naboo from the Trade Federation). He wasn't against the idea of freeing slaves, and did try to free Shmi.
Excellent video, and I 100% feel you on being so put off by the overall behaviour of the Star Wars fandom yet still having Thoughts & Feelings about Star Wars 💀
And this is why I'm Sith in SWTOR. Because you get to throw their own teachings back in their face, expose their hypocrisy, and in some cases, you can prove to be even better than them at their own job.
We are of the same thoughts. Swtor and especially kotor 1 & 2 really breeches the point about the Jedi order in that: it sucks and it loves to say that they’re the heroes of the galaxy yet sits on their hands when real injustice is done.
And sometimes the Jedi you encounter are just assholes for no reason. I understand why they are antagonistic towards the Sith/Imps but when I am being nothing but polite (we aren't barbarians here) or even saving their lives, they still continue this "I know you're evil deep down" shtick. Like shut up.
Yeah no thanks. I'd want to be Sith about as much as I'd want to be Jedi.
This why I love being light side sith
You can't analyze Anakin without watching the amazing Clone Wars animated series (how the prequel films should have been), & understanding his relationship with Ahsoka. Anakin has a hard time with the women in his life, his mother, his lover/mother of their children, & Ahsoka his little sister (in all but blood).
Pretty sure she made a point about this and how you shouldn't have to in this video.
As for Clone Wars, I'm good ignoring it.
That first line hit me hard. I remember when Star Wars was fun. I was pretty much burnt out on it after the prequels and never bothered with the new stuff.
I really appreciate this examination because I don't know of anybody who's done a deep dive into this very weird portrayal of who were supposed to be the Good Guys in the story.
I believe Pop Culture Detective did a great video about this subject as well, but I agree that you don’t see it as much on UA-cam as other topics
Give the Mandalorian a chance. It's genuinely really good. (Only watch the Book of Boba Fett for the parts directly related to the Mandalorian.) And I hope Ahsoka is at least as good, as well.
Don't bother with the Sequel trilogy. It's a mess.
I think jedis are good flawed but good..and i blame qi gong for making the counsel train that emotionally imature impulsive kid..based solely on his aptitudes not his character.
@@afrosamourai400 If a system believes that a kid who thinks "free all the slaves" and "abolish slavery" is immature, then that system and person has so many problems it's not even funny. The Jedi and their apologists have yet to give valid reason for why freeing the slaves is bad or why a traumatized kid who lived as a slave is "immature"
What you consider to be immature is really "they're not meek and obedient enough for my tastes" (AKA the slavery didn't turn him into a "proper beaten down slave")
@@jimmyrrpage I kind of liked Andor, tbh
Bad Batch might be cool if you’re a fan of the Clone Wars. Haven’t seen it yet but I’ve heard positive things. So I remain optimistic
But I otherwise agree.
I am so glad you brought up how jarring Obi-wan and Anakin's dynamic is between Episodes II and III. Like I get that by revenge of the sith, Anakin and Obi-wan's bond would be strengthened because of the war, a brothers-in-arms sort of narrative. (Which might make the line at the end when he chops off anakin's legs make slightly more sense.) But at the same time, it's so staggering to watch episode II and see him be probably the worst person for anakin to turn to for emotional support. It basically plays out like, "oh you're having nightmares about your mom that we separated from you dying alone? get over it. Oh but you're having dreams about padme? keep it in your pants bro, we're jedi." And as much as I love that they humanized obi-wan a lot more in the Clone Wars series with him re-encountering Maul and introducing his mandalorian ex-girlfriend, I'm also very aware that they frame Anakin forming his own attachments as a personal weakness that turns him into Vader a ton on that show. Like come on! Obi-wan's allowed to be angry at maul, to grieve and lament his love, but because at the end of the day he suppresses his feelings for the sake of maintaining the virtues of a jedi he's narratively good? Anakin having friends and being in love isn't what made him evil, it's the fact that the jedi offered him no support for the trauma they inadvertently inflicted on him.
The narrative purpose 1st & foremost is to show his fall to Vader that can't ever be ignored.
Obi-wan is limited as he is WHAT a Jedi SHOULD be which we all know is Faulty is because of the Human Experience. Its why Luke is the best of them all within the context of the star wars mythos because the Jedi dogma DOESN'T WORK. Luke fully embraces his feelings along with Love which saves Anakin from his own Darkness.
@@chazcmeekins83 luke was great but naive as hell..imagine believing you can turn eichman or himler into a good person just by showing him "compassion" and what about his crimes, his mass murders?
The point about the difference in characterization between the films and ancillary materials is something I think about a lot with sprawling franchise works- I don't think that the Obi Wan of the cartoon was ever in the mind of anyone writing the prequels but emerged from a different place ten years later. I really love how focused this was because while you touched on some of those larger possibilities and lore offshoots you kept things on the prequels as they existed in their own right. I think there's always a temptation to read works in the context of larger lore or story systems as if everything sprang forth at the same time from the same thought when that isn't true and once upon a time these works were meant to stand alone and are worth discussing as that. Anyway, fantastic breakdown of Anakin's arc through the films with a lot of great insight into his human tragedy. Great work as always, thank you for the video!
Lmaoooo I remember as a kid my brain was like “Hell yeah Jedi good, Sith evil” and as I got older I was like “HOLD UP” 🤣🤣🤣
For all intents and purposes, kinda. Like the Jedi have a lot of issues. But unlike the Sith, a tendency to build fascist slave empires isn't one of them.
Many individual Jedi aren’t evil; but the organization is flawed.
While it does suck that you have to read and watch *everything* for the story to make sense, I do like the little touches that the “bonus material” added that I did consume. Padme and her main handmaiden Sabe being the ones to advocate for the freedom of the slaves on Tatooine in the books by EK Johnston further highlights how Padme cares for Anakin in a way others don’t. And a part of that story is before their reunion in AOTC and things turn romantic!
MARA JADE OMG.... flashback, the first fic i ever read was a mara jade/luke fic on old Star wars forums. love a call back, i had forgotten a lot of that stuff but i used to eat the books up
i love that more people are realising that the jedi are awful in the prequels. i have an old medium article that makes an argument about this but in a different way.
This is older than that. I'm OT. The Jedi wanted Luke to kill his own father. Sure... that sounds healthy. They couldn't even explain it so that Luke would understand what they were asking of him. Instead, he gets to have the trauma of finding out who his daddy is in a very emotionally unhealthy way.
I’ve come to really love Knights of the Old Republic, definitely not canon anymore but it’s some of the most compelling storytelling to ever come from Star Wars, dealing with themes of nihilism and existentialism. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
Padme was a badass! Like daughter, like mother! Yes, I meant it in that order!
My option/head cannon of the problem obi-wan and Anakin relationship is summed up in maybe.. giving a traumatized child of 9 that was a former slave to a young adult who is probably just gradating high school maybee college, whom has just basically watched their only parental figure be murdered is NOT THE BEST IDEA.
For me, the culmination of the Skywalker story was the Jedi tree burning in TLJ due to this reason. Rey takes the texts which provides the wisdom and knowledge of the past, but the faulty and rotting structure that housed that knowledge is destroyed and turned into ash that can make something new and fresh come to life. It's also why I think Yoda's statement about how the true burden of masters is how their apprentices grow up after their time has past is the best quote in the whole franchise. The master's true legacy and how they live on depends on how the generation they oversaw grows up. Such a great way to tie what the prequels and originals were saying, only to throw it all in the trash with Rise of Skywalker...
8:20 Qui Gon Jinn was meant to mentor Anakin and Ahsoka's Master was supposed to be Kenobi
Frankly I think the main issue was that Lucas at a certain point decided that Anakin was to be a small child in the first movie instead of a teenager, that basically forced him to put too much stuff in the two sequels which ended up making the arc feel rushed.
Also Lucas being crap at directing actors really makes it difficult to see the good side of Christensen's Anakin, I'm Italian so I saw the movies in Italian until I got the DVDs much later and watching them in English was a tad traumatic because Italian Anakin doesn't come off as stiff or robotic at all.
If you watch the casting roles for young Anakin, there was one kid who was able to stand out. He gave this ominous kind of vibe which you could see them being Vader in the future. But I assume that Lucas wanted a more innocent Anakin to emphasise this tragedy was avoidable. A teenage anakin wouldn't be able to sell it that well.
@@grandempressvicky6387 do you have a link?
@@grandempressvicky6387 I think you could have had a starry-eyed teen or young adult and achieve the same result. Lucas said he switched to a younger kid because he was convinced the death of his mother wouldn't have hit him as hard if he was older which is frankly bunk in my experience.
The brother line would make so much more sense in the clone wars cartoon. Also that version of Anakin's fall would have been much more emotionally impactful. In the movie, Obi-Wan is more like Anakin's annoying boss.
Please, I'm begging you, Star Wars and Dune. I need that video. This is so goddamn good and the midichlorian vis a vis Bene Gesserit has me SCREAMING. I love it.
14:10 Padme did NOT have emotional intelligence. Anakin confessed to genociding a whole clan of Tuskens and she was just like, "oh honey, everyone gets mad sometimes," when she should have been chartering a starship out of there.
And people say the jedi are responsible for anakin evil nature? No he was already a monster...
This is why I think that scene in particular needs to be rewritten. Anakin should have come back, silently & when Padme prods him he only mentions his mother is dead *close up on his face as she hugs him & you can see the conflicted grief, rage, & disgust with himself*.
Because then otherwise I think it would show Padme as emotionally intelligent & like…less foolish when she pikachu face when Anakin kills children again in Revenge of the Sith.
honestly that whole thing was kind of...wild. like. that's so far out of the way off the deep end insanely evil, that it kind of immediately ruins his arc a little? lmao, like watching clone wars especially he's this dashing, slick talking, handsome hero man who always has a plan to save the day and who ashoka looks up to like a star in the sky, but in the background just there's just always that thing of "btw this dude committed genocide as a teenager including women and children".
i feel like his dark side-isms should have been more subtle than that. like using excessive force on minor offenders for breaking some personal moral taboo of his, or like how in the clone wars show he's generally far more willing to kill in combat rather than arrest. shit like that. make him a shady maverick cop, not a war criminal, and then when it's time to do the REAL fucked up shit in ep3, it's more both cleaner, and more of a proper shock.
My parents like doing syncs to movies sometimes (that’s when you take an album and play it over a muted movie), and they found that Attack of the Clones with The Wall was really good bc you got the interesting story (which is paralleled in the songs rly well), but without all the clunky dialogue.
(The Wall also works pretty well with The Empire Strikes Back, so if either sounds interesting I’d recommend it)
2:58 that clap was really well timed
Obe wan: you were my brother Anakin!
Anakin : I needed a father.
Rogue One and Kenobi trying to badass-wash Vader is the funniest thing to me. If you look at his actions in the OT, he is a coward. Vader never really made it past Fear.
4 - enters after his stormtroopers, chokes unarmed men, warily fights an old man, only shoots rebel pilots from behind
5 - again enters Echo base after his troopers, the moment Luke shows him up Vader starts throwing stuff and then hides to ambush Luke 🤣🤣🤣
6 - finally faces his fear and kills the Emperor for fear of losing Luke
i love listening to you talk about topics i know nothing about
I liked this video a lot, you brought up quite a few things that I didn’t think of before. One of things I liked the most is how you mentioned that Vader didn’t even choose his own name, I’ve been a Star Wars fan my whole life and I’ve never thought of that in connect with his identity as an enslaved person.
Yeah, the whole attachment thing was always such a bullshit to me, because it not only forbids them something as basic as human connection with others that isn't purely that of a stranger that "cares" about human life (until you are Anakin's mum who is a slave, and then they don't care because for some unfathomable reason they are forbidden to interfere, and for some reason Padme is also not able to help, because... nobody came up with the idea that she as a queen of Naboo could just send people to this planet and liberate Anakin's mom), but it also comes with the dangerous omission of teaching the kids in their care how to cope with emotions and heal from trauma as you said, which is ultimately why so many Jedi so easily fall to the Dark Side without any control and become mad, while average Dark Side Sith user (bless my girl Lana Beniko) will be more rational and pragmatic than they will ever manage and will not even necessarily be a mad serial killer (literally the only ones so far I saw were all fallen Jedi, seriously). And to use The Old Republic Era as an example once again, to further support what you said about no reason for lack of attachments, in SWTOR universe there is a planet called Correllia that has its own Jedi and its own Jedi Council. They detached from the main one on Tython, because they didn't believe in the bullshit idea of not being able to have family. They are called Green Jedi, and they are like pastors. They can have families and attachments, and they're Light Side still. They are protectors of the planet. It also is striking that Jedi spout such vile ideology, while Sith allow people to freely feel emotions. Yes, there is a propaganda that they should feel only hatred, anger etc. but the code of the Sith doesn't state that propaganda. From what I learned David Gaider wrote the Sith code for the sake of SWTOR game, and he based it on Mein Kampf and as a polish person I sit, read this code... and I have no idea how something so liberating that reads as a freedom manifesto of slaves is supposedly based on the book that denigrated all non-Aryans as subspecies. The book that blamed Jews for all that was wrong with Germany and spouted ideology that allowed for mass exterminations to occur. Anyway, "young boys should be allowed to feel emotions" is a literal crux of the issue with the Jedi. The toxicly masculine patriarchal system they have. And the funny thing is that Jedi DO ALLOW ATTACHMENTS SOMETIMES. Like that one Jedi in the Jedi Council chamber that is attending through holo? He got special permission to have wives, because his species was dying, and he needed to make a lot of goddamn babies to save it. The questioning of the system was why I liked Ahsoka so much, but then they made her into another Jedi who didn't understand that it was not Anakin who failed, but the Jedi toxic belief system that set him for failure.
I also love Anakin, and I wish he had a better life than he got :/
Pop Culture Detective does an amazing deconstruction of the Jedi order, indicting them for their blanket suppression of emotion and unwillingness to provide anything resembling therapy.
By contrast, Luke embraces love and connection. Luke becomes a great Jedi not because of Yoda and Obi-Wan, but DESPITE them.
ua-cam.com/video/tUPD1w78D5I/v-deo.html
“We should’ve gotten Jacen Solo anyway.”
Burrrrnnnnnnn!!!!
I miss the extended universe! A lot of the tensions in how the Jedi are portrayed and what they do were invisible to me until reading EU stories that openly grapple with those themes. As I grew up those other materials were central to my enjoyment of the franchise and it's characters.
I think the sequels could have been well done because while I know the last jedi is controversial Ryan Johnson was going somewhere, and tros didn't go anywhere. Like even if you didn't like the Luke stuff which I know a lot of people do not which is fine, it was a bold choice, but I think where Rey's story was going was so good, it was so nice seeing such an accurate depiction of coping with trauma and how that looks like but in a star wars movie. Idk i love tlj rey and i think about how bad she turned out in tros especially when you consider the fact that anakins dad is all but confirmed to be the emperor as well... yeah its best not to think about tros with much logic bc that's how you hurt your brain.
It's funny, because while I consider the Sequel trilogy to be terrible, and I actually think TLJ is the worst of them... I prefer Ryan Johnson as a director to JJ Abrams, and I would have *loved* to see Ryan Johnson's take on an entire sequel trilogy. I think if Ryan Johnson had had the reigns from the beginning to the end, we would have gotten a fascinating, complex, and arguably brilliant trilogy. I do genuinely dislike what he did with TLJ, but I believe it's because he essentially ignored TFA, resulting in a complete lack of cohesion with it, resulting in a sloppy, incoherent trilogy over-all.
I do think that if JJ Abrams had done all three, it would have been more coherent, but not as good as it would have been with Ryan Johnson helming all three.
Exactly how I feel.
As much as I think Last Jedi did a lot of things wrong, I do like that it tried to at least do something new with the franchise.
Like, after TFA came out everyone was speculating who Rey might be related to. Like her being Obi Wan’s daughter/granddaughter or something like that. But TLJ came out and revealed… she isn’t related to any original Star Wars characters. Her parents were just normal people who abandoned her.
And I really liked that idea! I’m glad they went there! You don’t need to be related to an established character to be special or be the main character. Rey learned that she can still be a great Jedi on her own terms, without some legacy character genes to back her up.
That is until ROS ruined everything…
It’s like Abrams had a panic attack and said “She has to be related to SOMEBODY!” and then put some names into a hat and pulled out Palpatine.
TLJ did do a lot of things I didn’t like, but I still like it a lot more then ROS. That film was a narrative mess.
@@jimmyrrpage Everything Rian does is answer the questions of TFA, you just didn’t like the answer. Snoke importance is to Kylo only, Rey is a nobody, Luke has to learn to become hope again
@@kylotom1375 Okay but you're missing it...
1) Snoke clearly *wasn't* just important to Kylo. He was obviously being set up for a big reveal. I genuinely hated what Johnson did to him and I do consider it to have been him blatantly ignoring how Snoke was framed in TFA.
2) I *did* actually like that Rey was nobody. One of the few things about TLJ I actually liked. JJ should have had the courage to keep her that way. Making her a Palpatine, then having her "choose" to be a Skywalker, was beyond absurd.
3) I'm with Mark Hamill on Luke Skywalker in TLJ.... sorry. I think Mark was correct in his assessment of his character there.
@@jimmyrrpage
1. Nothing they’d tell us about Snoke would matter because he’s a Palpatine clone by definition. He could be Plaguies or a clone (which is dumb) doesn’t matter as a character he’s just Palpatine. Kylo is the actually interesting character with places to go
2. I respect Hamill’s feelings but Luke isn’t his character, he doesn’t have say on a character he hasn’t been in 30 years nor should his biased view on him determine what creatives do. Of course Mark wants Luke to be a great hero who fights on and is cool and awesome.
I think that something a lot of people miss with movie Kenobi is that he went straight from being a student to being a teacher. Teaching is hard, I say as a tutor who does one on one tutoring. You have to know who you are, how to break down the information you're trying to present, and you need to know how to connect with your students individually to make sure they absorb the information. It requires a mental flexibility to be a good teacher so you can adjust to each student you have, and you often fail on your first 1-5 tries. It also takes time living with your information to be comfortable enough with it that you can adequately convey it to someone else. I don't think Obi-Wan was ready to be a teacher, and he sucked at it because he was too young for it himself. On top of Anakin's attachment issues, he was doomed to failure.
"it's giving Bene Gesserit" lmao
Great video!
george lucas always said the prequels were something that he wrote for himself so even though its not good, I respect what they tried to do. plus, anakin's downfall is almost a perfect representation of BPD and the fear of abandonment. also since the prequels were about the politicking, war profiteering and allegories for american imperialism after ww2 (original sequels = vietnam, prequels = iraq) it just holds a lot of meaning for me.
I wrote an essay on Anakin for my AP English class, it was comparing Greek Tragedy to the story and fall of Anakin Skywalker and defending the prequels. Scored very well
I was really hoping Luke wasn't taking young kids for training, and that was one of my biggest disappointments of the Mandoverse.
Not only that but he fell right back into traditionalism, after defying everything about Jedi asceticism (???) Just so we could see him also fail in the sequel trilogy
Oooooooh, the passionate rant about films being the only canon in a film series... Very much en pointe! I love it. Expansive universe building across many mediums is a great way to scare newbs off. Just a bad move.
I really love these prequel over-analysis type essays, but the reason they never change my mind about the movies themselves is because I don’t think Lucas intended any of that, I don’t think Lucas is that clever of a writer. I genuinely think Lucas saw the Jedi as the good guys the entire time, did not realize the inconsistencies because he wanted some cool lightsaber action, and when Anakin yells “from my point of view the Jedi are evil!” that line is to show that anakin is truly lost (lol). I think Lucas saw Anakin being taken from Tattoine as a good thing and agrees with the Jedi that his attachment to his mother is bad.
A loving encouragement for all Star Wars fans who have not tried them, give Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO a try. They have AMAZING stories in the games themselves that deal with a lot of issues about the Force and how things work on light side or dark side or whatever side. They really give great perspectives. LucasFilm ditching them all into non-canon was really one of the first things that broke my heart about Gnu Star Wars.
Thank you for posting! I love your videos and I’m so happy you’re continuing to add your voice to the discourse.
Thanks for making this! As a very young Gen Xer/very old millennial (depending on who you ask), I like hearing from your generation about the prequels. I think those movies were made for you, not the people like me who were 25+ when Revenge of the Sith came out.
Yes, thank you. The prequels' fundamental issue is that they are a good story badly told, which colors the way we understand this. But Anakin becoming Vader is absolutely the fault of the Jedi, even though obviously Palpatine takes the lion shame of the blame. But, of course, the _reason_ Palpatine was able to corrupt Anakin so easily is precisely that he gave him what the Jedi could and did not.
The thing I tend to say about the whole “Anakin is the Chosen One” thing among the Jedi... If the so-called Chosen One of the Jedi is so much NOT what the Jedi say they’re supposed to be... Maybe this is a wake up call, a message that they’re doing things wrong.
Also one of the things that I think makes the Legends stories work as they do, especially over the Sequels, is that they were actively trying to advance the narratives, or, if they jumped back in the timeline, to explore the characters in other ways. Even when the narrative choices went in weird and unliked places, they still acknowledged those things and figured out ways to take them and find ways to settle them in the aftermath. Anything else revolved around new characters or secondary ones, so that they too could develop without stepping on the toes of the development of the main characters from the films.
And that’s another part of what makes modern Star Wars EU just kinda... *sigh*, because they both want to feature the familiar characters (TCW), or just avoid them despite how they SHOULD have a presence, or just... not DO anything subsequent (the lack of post-TROS content). There IS no continuing story. It has a starting point, an ending point, and then twenty different writers putting things into the gaps.
You know what I recommend? "Return of the Jedi Radio Drama - Nigel's Edit", a 2.5 hr edit of the 1996 radio drama.
I recommend it because some of the new lines are real bangers: namely the throne-room climax where Anakin retorts Palp's "I am your master!!" with *"Darth Vader's Master, but not Anakin Skywalker's"*
Also since the TPM script was already in the works in 1996, the throne-room scene also has a moment of Luke addressing his father: Palps cuts in with "He is my slave, not your father" which uh. Yeah that hammers home the point quite well :(
the constant bit that anakin's love for his mother was unhealthy, unnecessary, or wrong was always weird as hell
I think this is the first video of yours I've watched. Thanks for making me notice the parallels between how the Jedi "recruit" kids and the way that Tibetan Buddhism traditionally separates little boys who are identified as reincarnate lamas from their families and raises them in monastic communities, often with abusive parenting. Food for thought!
The power of a thousand pick up artists channeling the 7 Laws of Power... GOLD
Always excited when one of your videos pops up! Thank you!
Girl, I am so glad I found you. I've been a lifelong unapologetic fan (and preferer) of the prequels. I never understood growing up, why I got so much flak for that 🥴 I love video essays and I love Star Wars, and I love what you brought to this discussion. As a person who lives with CPTSD due to parental loss and subsequent abuse, I've always seen myself in Anakin. It feels good to see people being so eloquently and genuinely thoughtful on the subject of relationships, love, and personhood
They really should have hammered home the morale that Anakin's upbringing MADE him the Sith Lord he grows up to be.
I don't know about that. There are Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Extreme trauma. Extreme loss. Did they go to the dark side? No. Anakin's trauma can explain some of his issues but they don't excuse his actions.
Imagine if we put in a black boy and put the setting in say.. just prior to Civil War. I don't think we'd be sympathetic to a black boy who acts the way that Anakin does in the movies.. I can just hear the "tut tuts" if my black "anakin" murders the slave master and the women and the children too. Then, he goes on to betray his white friend and then, decides to go kill a bunch of white people and make his own fiefdom. You can understand but you cannot condone at some point.
Please note.. for me, the line would be somewhere after he betrays the white friend. I have long espoused the idea that we made a mistake in the US Civil War by allowing those savages to live. We should have just treated the confederates like they treated black people. Maybe take the little white children and let them be raised in black households. I mean, would it be that traumatic. When did white women ever take care of their children when they could resort to a black woman performing all the actions of a mother? It would probably explain why southern whites are the way they are. Their white mothers are pretty nasty cold hearted sociopaths. Bless their hearts.... (hey, I don't mean to offend. It's just...we tend to ignore the harm that white women have enabled. Bill Burr had it right. there were white women standing proudly next to white slave owners..)
@@jenniferhunter4074 One thing that you are completely missing is that in the examples you gave, those are oppressed minorities. As in, people who were pushed down and were told to never expect to be more than dirt at the bottom of their oppressor's shoe. They were not raised to think that they were at all important.
Anakin was freed from slavery on the basis that he would one day become their version of the messiah. He is the one who will achieve cosmic balance and power. And yet, at every turn, he is not treated with respect. The jedi are antagonistic towards him at most and apathetic about him at the least. His master can't seem to stand him. He can only love his wife in secret because he will loose everything if their relationship is know. But at the same time, his wife is the only person who treats him with respect. Who listens to him when he is afraid and needs guidance. Look at the difference between Anakin telling Padme about his dreams and telling Obi-wan or Yoda. They dismiss his fear while Padme tries to help him process it. She even takes him to see his mother the same day to make sure. It's very likely that Anakin would never have known his mother died if Padme didn't come along.
The only other man who is nice to him is a being of pure evil and greed. He listens to his fears. He respected Anakin's wish to advance in the hierarchy because surely someone of great cosmic importance, who saved the life of the Republic's leader, and killed the latest Sith Lord (like Obi-wan did 👀) would be a master by now. Sidious didn't even have to do much. It was literally because the Jedi were not providing a better alternative and barely cared. They were even doubting that he was the chosen one despite ripping him away from his mother for it.
This is in no way condoning what Anakin did and became. Honestly, the comment you're replying to never even said that. They were literally just interpreting the obvious in that the Jedi were responsible for Anakin.
Even the examples you gave aren't good enough. A black man lashing out at the world is bad in that, yes, he is killing innocent people. Ignoring how improbable that is because there never has been a black mass shooter killing just white people, at what point does the system that perpetuated and facilitated his oppression and mental decline get blamed. The immediate and seen violence is the shooting, but what about the decades of violence that led up to that point. In the case of Jewish and black people, it is over a millenia/centuries of violence from progroms to slavery. Massacre after massacre. The immediate violence means shot when the background violence facilitates that. The Jedi were not immediately violent towards Anakin but that doesn't undermine the background violence they did towards him and others like him in the Order.
@@jenniferhunter4074 also the thing you said about the confederacy... very based can't lie
@@grandempressvicky6387 If Anakin's slave status wasn't relevant, why mention it? Black children were routinely separated from their mothers on the slave block. Entire families. Again... we see a rush to sympathize with Anakin that I don't think we would see if Anakin were different.
Umm... look up slave revolts. Stono Rebellion, 1739. German Coast Uprising, 1811.Nat Turner’s Rebellion, 1831. Look at how their contemporaries perceived it.. particularly their white contemporaries. See... they had no problem honoring the founding fathers who fought for liberty but they had a problem when it was black slaves fighting for liberty.
I grant that Anakin had a suboptimal childhood. That helps me understand why he does what he does (in the story obviously). It doesn't excuse it. (See, when we start going down the line of excuse making, we start going down the line that white mass shooters do. Woe is me. .I will kill them. That's not healthy. No wonder so many brats like Darth Vader.. he's violent and powerful with no conscience and they like his violence and power and lack of humanity.)
Again, I'm OT. For me, the Prequels.. I don't get it. I genuinely don't get it. It's a superior story structure in a sense but it's juvenile and badly constructed. I really really hated midichlorians. I hated "Now we're pod racing".. god that was so boring in the theater. I hated r2d2 flying. I hated the caricatures of the accents of the people of Naboo. bantha poodoo. You know what.. I'm going to stop because I recognize that other people do love these movies and they have a right to love what they love ...though I do internally question their sanity.
I draw a hard line because it's dangerous to get too close to excuse making. I get why Anakin went to Padme. He needed a mommy figure. I even get why he killed the women and the children..I mean, if you're going to do it right, you kill the little ones. He was just emo teenager with massive issues who needed a therapist.
I will always tell people "it's in a comic" or you need to watch rebels, clone wars or a short" for some piece of narrative context. It feels like a bigger and bigger problem with genre storytelling, especially with large entertainment properties this past generation. Because there's so many cross media opportunities, writers will put huge revelatory pieces of lore information in side content, that not everyone has access to.
Be it finance, reading issues or just being a busy human not everyone has the time to interact with 10 different formats of cross media content. I really want storytelling (especially Star Wars) to condense what information we can into the show or movie and not 5 different comic tie ins. Darth Vader's comic for example is SUPER good, and fills in so much about post ROTS Anakin's mental state, journey and even growing rift with Palps, but not everyone has time to read it.
YES!!! I have long felt that Anakin was this massive walking nuke/semi religious icon who just had this believe system stapled onto him. Its tragic that everyone ignored this except Palpatine
this goes along great with pop culture detective video "the case against the jedi" and cinema therapy video about anakin having borderline personality disorder
God I love your videos so much!!! I have never seen a single Star Wars property and yet I am HERE for this video and this energy because I just love how you explain things. Also, when you go off on that rant about how the supplementary materials are actually detrimental to Star Wars and your voice ramps up - GO OFF SIS!! I am CHEERING for you even though I don't go here because I feel that energy and understand that anger. Your videos always open my eyes to new things so even when I am not familiar with the source, I love watching whatever you produce. Thank you for being awesome, Ms Weekes!!
This fills the Lindsay Ellis shaped hole in my heart.
I ran. I always love your videos and commentary, because it's always entertaining to see things inspected on a deeper level while adding humorous commentary. All in all, I love your videos!
I really love the prequels and Clone Wars for having actual character complexity and moral complexity. Anakin's story is just so much more interesting than Luke's, because Anakin has such deep characterization. Also, Clone Wars Obi Wan is a treasure
I would LOVE for you to one day go more in depth about Padme. She really is one of the best female characters in SW and the ONLY great character in TPM.
And yes, that includes Qui-Gon Jinn. I hate his guts.
The same padme who did and said nothing when anakin told her he massacred a whole village?
@@afrosamourai400 That’s actually a good point not gonna lie.
Star Wars' story telling, or how it is told over books, movies, television shows, and comics, reminds me of the same growing issue with Dragon Age.
They began as games that began to quickly release DLC that were, in some ways, absolutely necessary in order to understand the driving forces of the antagonists in sequential titles, or, in the case of the third game, to see the completion of the core story. From there the DA franchise expanded into movies, comics, and now animated television shows. Due to information released in the books that, had I known, would have drastically changed my experience of the third title, I fear that I may need to take in all everything in order to properly understand the upcoming, fourth game.
tl;dr: The problem with the expanded universe is it creates issues of inaccessibility. Not everyone has the time, funds, or even physical capability to consume all of this media, and thus shouldn't be expected to in order to properly understand a narrative.
This is a good video. Everyone talks about it as a story about traumas but nobody talks enough about the Jedi Order as yet another institution for enabling these traumas.
It didn’t hit me until you mentioned it that Vader didn’t even choose his name. Man …
Honestly, a lot of things about the Jedi seem quite cult like: taking in only people who are too young to have made attachments and forbidding them from getting attached to non-members, scaring members that ideas or feelings they do not approve of lead to evil, convincing them that things that cannot be found in their archives do not exist, pseudo-scientific tests to measure how worthy you are, even making everyone wear the same stupid robes...
It's not cult like it's discipline just like the army, and they can leave, in cult they won't let you leave..
@@afrosamourai400 Some cults (e.g. Jehovah's witnesses) do let you leave, but then turn to shun you or forbid their members from interacting with you, similar to how the Jedi deal with those who abandoned their ways to turn to the 'dark side'.
@@theprofessionalfence-sitter yeah because the dark side is full of angels right? Please
"You don't need to see their midichlorean mining papers."
'We don't need to see their midichlorean mining papers.'
"These aren't the Bene Gesserit comparisons you're looking for."
'These aren't the Bene Gesserit comparisons we're looking for.'
"We can go about shipping the spice to the Unknown Regions."
'You can go about shipping the spice to the Unknown Regions.'
"Turn into a Sith-Worm."
'Jai-Maul-luud.'
"Are you an Angel" Has been my reaction to Natalie Portman since the movie Heat and Mars Attack. Legit my first celebrity Crush next to the pink Power Ranger and Topanga.
I can always sum up what happen with Anakin with;
Yoda was a bad leader of the council
Obi-wan was a man who isn't emotionally available.
Ashoka leaving left him feeling abandoned.
Guy just needed a friend and a hug, only person who gave him that was a manipulative politician.
Or as I always say, it takes a village....the village failed anakin, and catastrophe followed
In line at the DMV, "Now This is Pod Racing!!!" My Gawd your too awesome 😂💯🔥