Are Most Falls to the Dark Side Unbelievable According to Many?

I know that George Lucas got a lot of hate for his portrayal of Anakin's fall to the dark side in the Prequel Trilogy, but it seems to me that a lot of the criticism toward characters falling toward the dark side, say Palpatine, Count or Darth Bane in the old Legends continuity, or maybe even Kylo Ren's in the upcoming Disney canon, may seem to fast, too soon.

To defend this as I can, a lot of people who become evil in real life or do evil things usually have some character flaw in them for how that they were raised. Young children and teenagers get involved in gangs because they didn't have a family to raise them right or they got scarred by life. Sometimes the people that are on the right side, like cops, end up being unfairly demonized because of some mistake or some demand that people want from them that they can't give, even though they may be right in the end (the Jedi Counsel.)

Luke Skywalker was whinny, but he got closer to the light side and grew up. He is the opposite of Anakin in many ways. Could George have still had the script lines for Anakin, with the same themes but used a different actor and the fans would be pleased and not complain?

Now, am I saying that annoying, whinny characters are lovable? Probably not, but it happens in real life, I am pretty sure. I've said before that Benedict Arnold was a great example from history that he started on the side of the American Patriots, fantasized about having lots of power and prestige with the British Empire, got hurt by the American Revolutionists, had some immaturities in his character, and then fell away to evil.

Does anyone get what I am saying?

 

The Dark Side of the Force is a corrupting, consuming influence. Once somebody is seduced by its tempting power, they're toast.

Kor

 

I don't blame Hayden Christensen for the bad character that Lucas wrote and directed

 

We live in an entropic universe. Left to their own devices, all things decay or break down. Giving in to that deterioration is easier than making the effort to resist or counteract it. Staying in physical shape and good health takes hard work. Knowing the right answers takes studying, thinking, and paying attention. And it's always easier to give into greed, anger, and self-interest than it is to be moral, just, and considerate of others. Good takes more hard work and self-discipline than evil.

So naturally falling to the Dark Side is the easier path, just as it is in real life. Star Wars is based in ancient mythic archetypes, after all, so it's got a pretty basic and familiar approach to how good and evil work.

If there's a difference between Anakin and Luke, maybe it's that Palpatine was working on Anakin subtly and continuously for years, nudging him toward embracing his darker urges, whereas he only spent one conversation trying to push Luke to the Dark Side and did it in a much more heavy-handed manner that was easy to see through (perhaps age had made him impatient). Also, Anakin saw Palpatine as a trusted ally and father figure, while Luke saw him as a rival for his own father's allegiance.

Though of course, Anakin had a darker upbringing, raised in slavery, and he ended up doing much worse things than Luke ever did even before his fall, like slaughtering the Tusken Raiders. So maybe the galaxy owes Owen and Beru Lars a debt for giving their ward a more positive upbringing. And Obi-Wan for recognizing that they could do so.

 

The problem with Anakin's fall, as I see it, is that we didn't get any insight into his mental and emotional progression. He goes from being reasonably frustrated by authority, impulsive, and fearful, to straight up murdering children on the order of the person he has been fighting a war against for the better part of his young adulthood, someone 5 minutes earlier he was demanding face lawful justice. That just doesn't square with me. It is like a switch flipped and he just decided "I guess I'm evil now."

 

"Not from a Jedi."

 

It's true that it could've been done better, but I think the groundwork was laid -- Anakin had reason to resent the Jedi's rules for keeping him from being with Padme, he felt betrayed by them, and Palpatine convinced him that the Jedi were the real threat to peace in the galaxy and to Padme's salvation.

As with most things, The Clone Wars improved on how the movies handled this, showing us a number of times how Anakin chafed against the Jedi's rules and was willing to use more extreme and cruel measures. And his faith in the Jedi was shaken by what happened to Ahsoka.

 

Yes, and probably the Empire outlawed slavery outside the government's personal grip.

Don't you see that problem with Count Dooku, Darth Sidious, or Darth Bane??? That's the base question that I am asking....

 

In the Force Awakens, Kylo Ren says he's being "tempted" by the "light side." and he says something about being "seduced" by the light. Is anyone else as perplexed as I am by these statements? It's very bizarre.

The other six films talk about The Force, The Jedi way, and the dark side of the force. The dark side IS the seductive, easy way. Just like in real life. The "light" as Kylo calls it, is the hard, difficult road. "The narrow path," if you will. It is neither tempting nor seductive. It takes discipline, diligence, and long-suffering/patience.

It was a challenge for Luke not to fall into temptation. For Anakin, he had already given into temptation in many ways. Then, he was brought to brink and was forced to make a decision of which there was no turning back. He definitely knew he was wrong, but it was too late. He became a slave. As Vader, he spent the rest of his life self-loathing.

 

I don't see the issue there. Kylo has chosen to see the Dark Side/Sith as the correct path, or has been convinced by Snoke to see it that way. So his moral perspective is inverted compared to a Light Sider. He still has a trace of love and compassion in him, but he doesn't see it as something that could redeem him; he sees it as a weakness he must conquer in order to be true to his chosen path. That's why he thought he needed to kill Han -- because his love for his father was holding him back from committing fully to evil, so he had to sever that tie, to choose hate and violence over love, in order to become "purely" Dark.

Yes, but not everybody recognizes that. Not every character in a story is going to define things the same way, any more than every person in real life does. The things characters say merely represent their own personal beliefs and interpretations. It's not bizarre if characters on opposite sides of a moral divide define their terms in opposite ways; it would be more bizarre if they didn't.

And I disagree that the light side can't be tempting, because the light side is love and compassion. It's human nature to feel empathy for one another. That's our primary survival trait. We aren't as strong or fast or physically powerful as other species, but we evolved to have strength in numbers, to form communities and take care of one another. So caring comes naturally. Yes, it's easy to give into temptation and selfishness, but that natural impulse to care about others is usually a check on that selfishness, and it takes a lot of trauma and suffering to destroy that capacity for empathy completely, unless one is born without empathy as in the case of a psychopath or malignant narcissist.

But Kylo wasn't a psychopath by birth; he had to be lured and manipulated to embrace the Dark Side. Snoke had to seduce and brainwash him and train him to distrust and quash his compassionate side, and probably put him through hell in order to warp and harden his psyche. We've seen this with other cases of basically good or morally ambiguous people being lured to the Dark Side. Palpatine spent years manipulating Anakin, encouraging him to embrace his crueler side, and even after 20 years as the ruthless Vader, he still had enough love left in him to be redeemed. Similarly, as seen in the novel Dark Disciple, Asajj Ventress was traumatized by the hardships of her early life and was thus susceptible to being tempted to the Dark Side by Dooku, but when he rejected her, she left the Sith, became chaotic neutral (so to speak), and eventually found her way back to the Light and redemption. So, yes, as long as that innate human capacity to care is still inside a Dark Sider, it remains a "temptation" away from pure evil.

 

I only have the movies to go by as I stopped reading the EU years ago..

No. I can't have any problems with Dooku or Sidious because they were already Dark Side agents when they were first introduced.

Anakin would probably, at least for me, be more believable had he been an adult in Phantom Menace. In Ep I he's just a kid and hasn't even started training as a Jedi. He's already getting on my nerves because he's this incredibly lucky kid who just happens to always be able to hit the right target at the right moment by blind luck (which we know is really the Force). Plus he's this Messiah-like child who was conceived not by the normal means but by some mystical or divine virgin birth (in the sense that he was not created in a normal means with sperm and egg).

Attack of the Clones presents us with a whiny, almost bitchy young adult Anakin who acts more like an obstinate teen than any likable character. Typical teen complaining about the adults around him telling him what to do or not to do. We have the whole fumbling sand conversation and the roll in the hay with Padme in the field with the giant fleas and the dinner date that looked like some socially awkward kids fumbling around for the first time. We are, near the end, treated to the absolute horror of not only Anakin slaughtering an entire Tusken Raider village, including children, but Padme basically turning a blind eye to the entire event. "I just killed an entire village in cold blood and I want to marry you." To which Padme is like "OK, cool!"

So that's the Anakin we're presented with at the start of Revenge of the Sith. A whiny, petulant man that hasn't grown up yet, isn't sure of himself, lacks self-worth and doesn't know or respect his place in the jedi order. He's not some character that draws us to him. He's not my idea of a heroic figure. I don't care about him and I don't see much in the way of redeeming qualities about him - not enough to make me want to root for him, after all. His fall to the darkside is not tragic for me. It wasn't a blow. It was almost expected. It was a no brainer. To quote Vader; "all too easy."

Based on the trilogy alone Anakin is just not the fallen hero we were promised or expected.

The Clone Wars went a long way into making Anakin a mature, responsible Jedi that we can actually care about and root for. Had we seen that version of Anaikin in the movies, maybe his fall would be more believable and/or heart wrenching. Start EP 1 already in the Clone Wars with an adult Anakin (or young adult) being recruited by Obi Wan Kenobi. Have EP 2 show us a heroic Anakin who perhaps suffers a loss toward the end (following the pattern of the middle act being darker), and EP 3 give us the fall from grace and the embracing of the Dark Side.

 

The novelization of ROTS did a much better job of portraying the motivations and rationalizations for Anakin's fall to the dark side. The movies and Clone Wars series did a decent job showing moments that suggest his darker side and foreshadowing his eventual fall but the execution thereof was sort of clunky. It would have been nice to include a deleted scene from TPM where he was tangling with a Rodian (turned out to be Greedo) just to add another moment of foreshadowing.

In an ironic sort of way, Anakin's attachments to family actually saved the galaxy and redeemed him as, when faced between a choice between his son and Palpatine, he chose Luke in ROTJ- in contrast to choosing Palpatine over the Jedi Order- which he had come to distrust/dislike- in ROTS.

I know that it's no longer canon but they did a pretty good job showing Jacen's fall to the dark side in the LOTF series (though it seemed as though he was already starting to get corrupted in NJO).

 

The problem with him being an adult when the Jedi find him is that he would be less attached to his mother, leaving her, and then have her die in his arms. He is supposed to be contrasted with Luke, who had a good upbringing, except he didn't know his biological parents.

With Darth Tyrannus or Sidious already a part of the Dark Side, the canon movies haven't show their fall to the Dark Side. I am not saying that I didn't enjoy the Legends explanation of their origin, but it seemed like the same criticism of Anakin Skywalker falling ALMOST seemed just as too easy.

 

So you have some other tragedy be the trigger. Obviously it can't be Padme because she needs to be alive long enough to bear Luke and Leia.

 

The Darth Vader comic also does a good job of showing what it means to fall to the Dark Side and the mindset needed.

 

Is the dark side of the Force Yin, or Yang?

And is it that Kylo "feels bad" that he's become an evil guy? Maybe Snoke is brainwashing him with a sort of newspeak, where Evil is Good and vice versa. I still don't see what is seductive about the "narrow path."

Was Vader "seduced" by Luke in RotJ?

Yin/Yang is the philosophy of "two forces." There is also the philosophy of "three forces" or "Five forces." I'm not sure it fits with the dark side of the force. In Y/Y, the dark is passive, feminine, etc. Shade and light form a balance of nature. light is masculine, forceful, etc. In SW, the force is a balance of nature. The Dark side is a corruption of nature. I could see the dark side having a place in nature as the role of "the destroyer" which, like war, resets a civilisation every once in a while. The end of the cycle, if you will.

 

Yin is supposed to be the dark. (I'm not saying there is a one-to-one correspondence here, just using a fairly simplistic analogy.)

The dark side is a part of the Force, and you already said shade and light form a balance of nature. Similarly the balance of the Force is a balance between the light and dark sides.

"It is only here that I can control them. A family in balance. The light and the dark. Day with night. Destruction replaced by creation."

"Too much light or dark would be the undoing of life as you understand it."

- Father, TCW "Overlords"

 

Every single person has some kind of character flaw or flaws. Which means just about anyone is capable of giving in to evil or some particular reason. It just takes the right moment, the right situation or the right emotional button to be pushed for that person to give in to evil.

The problem I have with certain opinions about Anakin's character is that many seemed to harbor this opinion or push forth this idea that Anakin is one of those rare types who possess a character flaw or flaws that led him to become evil. Yes, Anakin has character flaws that led him to evil. But he was never alone. Just about most of the characters in the saga possessed flaws that led them to evil or made them capable of evil. And many fans of the saga (but not all) seem unwilling to consider this.

I don't consider the "Dark side" as some embodiment or symbol of evil or corruption. Darkness or black can just as easily represent something positive, just as light or white can easily represent something negative. And if both "shades" can represent either good or evil, what is the point in utilizing these terms? Personally, I wish Lucas had never invented the "Dark side of the Force" phrase in the first place. It has gotten so bad that many pop culture fans seemed more included to use terms like "dark" and "light", instead of "good" and "evil" as morality terms.

I've read the novelization. One, I didn't care for Matthew Stover's writing style. And two, I didn't need the novelization to understand Anakin's motive for giving in to evil.

 

Yes, of course. Good and evil are choices. They're not separate entities outside ourselves, they're our own decisions of whether to act constructively or destructively, selflessly or selfishly. We all have to choose between the conflicting drives within us, like the conflict between helping others and helping ourselves, or between acting out of compassion and acting out of anger. So we all have the potential to go either way. I doubt the Force intrinsically has a light and dark side per se; it's just an energy field binding living things together. I think it's made light or dark by the way sentient beings choose to use it. Those who use it to serve greed, aggression, rage, and raw abandon turn it into a destructive force. That's why people have to be seduced to the dark side -- they have to be convinced to make that choice, to give into those urges. And embracing the light side also entails being taught how to make more positive, selfless choices.

Force-wielding gives one great power, and so it amplifies the impact of one's choices, both positive and negative. It increases the amount of good or harm one can do, depending on one's choices. That's why Jedi training and discipline are so important for Force-wielders -- because without discipline, they'd be using that power recklessly or selfishly and that could be very destructive. Using that power for personal gain or out of rage and hate would be tempting, addictive, and would drag them in deeper. Hence the need to catch them early and train them to strive for the light.