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ANAKIN SKYWALKER, ATTACHMENT, GREED, AND THE DARK SIDE:
The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, page 213:
“No human can let go,” Lucas would say of [the Yoda-Anakin scene]. “It’s very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it’s inevitable; you do die and you do lose your loved ones. But while you’re alive, you can’t be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, ‘You must learn to let go of everything you’re afraid to let go of.’ Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that’s what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more.”
“The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth,” he continues, “They’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.”
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:
“The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.
“But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he’s been prepping for this, but that’s the one where he’s sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate.“
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:
“The scene in the garage here, we begin to see that what he’s really upset about is the fact that he’s not powerful enough. That if he had more power, he could’ve kept his mother. He could’ve saved her and she could’ve been in his life. That relationship could’ve stayed there if he’d have been just powerful enough. He’s greedy in that he wants to keep his mother around, he’s greedy in that he wants to become more powerful in order to control things in order to keep the things around that he wants. There’s a lot of connections here with the beginning of him sliding into the Dark Side.
“And it also shows his jealousy and anger at Obi-Wan and blaming everyone else for his inability to be as powerful as he wants to be, which he hears that he will be, so here he sort of lays out his ambition and you’ll see later on his ambition and his dialogue here is the same as Dooku’s. He says “I will become more powerful than every Jedi.” And you’ll hear later on Dooku will say “I have become more powerful than any Jedi.” So you’re going start to see everybody saying the same thing. And Dooku is kind of the fallen Jedi who was converted to the Dark Side because the other Sith Lord didn’t have time to start from scratch, and so we can see that that’s where this is going to lead which is that it is possible for a Jedi to be converted. It is possible for a Jedi to want to become more powerful, and control things. Because of that, and because he was unwilling to let go of his mother, because he was so attached to her, he committed this terrible revenge on the Tusken Raiders.“
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:
“The key part of this scene ultimately is Anakin saying “I’m not going to let this happen again.” We’re cementing his determination to become the most powerful Jedi. The only way you can really do that is to go to the Dark Side because the Dark Side is more powerful. If you want the ultimate power you really have to go to the stronger side which is the Dark Side, but ultimately it would be your undoing. But it’s that need for power and the need for power in order to satisfy your greed to keep things and to not let go of things and to allow the natural course of life to go on, which is that things come and go, and to be able to accept the changes that happen around you and not want to keep moments forever frozen in time.“
Interview with George Lucas, BBC News 2002:
“Jedi Knights aren’t celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships.”
Interview with George Lucas, Time Magazine 2002:
“He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can’t let go of his mother; he can’t let go of his girlfriend. He can’t let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when you’re greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you’re going to lose things, that you’re not going to have the power you need.”
This is a collection of quotes from George Lucas to further clarify what the dark side and attachment mean within this specific universe. It’s often too easy to conflate attachment with any kind of love, but George Lucas directly states many times over that that’s not what attachment is–instead, it’s linked to possessive behaviors, which is where Anakin’s problem comes in, that he rejects distinguishing the two.
The narrative intention is that, yes, avoiding attachments for a Jedi is a good thing, because Anakin’s attachments are what cause him to become Darth Vader. George Lucas says this many times, it’s never about how, oh, the Jedi’s teachings are bad, oh, the Jedi are toxic or they reject love or whatever. Rather the opposite is explicitly stated! No, it’s not about anything other than how it’s straight to the point–Anakin’s inability to accept the difference between compassionate love and possessive love, his refusal to let go of his attachments, is what causes him to be Darth Vader.
It’s never about how the Jedi adhere to the light side–which George Lucas also says is a good thing, the entirety of his explanation about what the light side and dark side are, how the light side leads to true joy, while the dark side leads to unhappiness, are how he fundamentally set up this world. That the movies are centered around the themes of good vs evil, about selflessness vs greed, and that “the world works better if you’re on the good side”. The light side is fundamentally the good side, that’s just how the Star Wars universe works.
George further states: “If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.”
If he’d been trained earlier, he would have been fine.
The problem is not the Jedi’s teachings, the problem is that Anakin refused to take them to heart. The dark side is objectively bad in the Star Wars universe, you must face it and train yourself away from it, “[The] only way to overcome the dark side is through discipline. The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve. A great challenge. Must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures, and overcome fear which leads to hate.“ –George Lucas, The Clone Wars interview, 2010
And, in doing so, Anakin is defying the path he should have been walking. “It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed. Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it’s the greed for power, absolute power, over everything. With Anakin, really it’s the power to save the one he loves, but it’s basically going against the Fates and what is natural. “ –George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith commentary
I want to preface this first @ OP: I am reblogging this bc I don’t think I could get my thoughts out well in the tags and I think it might make for a decent discussion, but I also know how this fandom can be, so if anything I say makes you uncomfortable or unhappy, let me know and I’ll delete it! We’re all just here to love things and have fun and discuss theories, etc, and I don’t want to take that away from you. <3
Anyways, I think part of the problem is that what George says and what he shows can end up being different. I don’t think it’s done intentionally of course - even the medium of a movie can make things like this lost in translation, simply because they’re stuck on a time frame and the movies aren’t all about Anakin or discussions of the Dark Side, but it might explain why the Jedi Order is seen the way it is by many fans.
Parts of Anakin’s greed or need for power are shown pretty clearly - such as in the garage scene, or some moments with Padmé. But, simply put, it cannot be shown that way in regards to other things, such as his mother’s death and the visions for it.
The problem is that we’re shown a teenager who is having violent visions of his mother being tortured and dying. This is unarguably messed up, for anyone. And he tries to ignore it, as Obi-Wan suggested, but naturally it bothers him enough he needs to go see her. Then we find out she’s been kidnapped, so once again, kind of naturally, he goes to find her. When he does, she’s been tortured and dies in his arms, which is what causes him to go on a murder spree.
The problem with saying this is supposed to show greedy love is that it doesn’t, psychologically. We see someone having almost vivid visions of someone dying - and worse - which I cannot imagine for a moment anyone would cope super well with. Then we see him go through something undeniably traumatic, and his instant reaction to that trauma.
This doesn’t really show the audience that he’s unable to let go, it shows that he’s been through something terrible. All we see on screen is that the trauma happens, and he has an immediate reaction to it. I suppose we are meant to assume he should have ignored the visions until she undoubtedly did die in reality, then they would have gone away and, technically, nothing would have come from it. Or maybe he could have taken his mother back to the Lars farm right away, rather than, you know, murdering a bunch of people.
Unfortunately, none of this really makes sense psychologically or emotionally. It’s all well and good to say that he should be able to accept her (or Padmé) dying - and it’s something that is true, that we do need to mourn and eventually move on - but considering he’s plagued with horrifying visions, it’s not really something we can expect anyone to react calmly or objectively to. So his reactions don’t come across as an inability to let go or becoming greedy for power (at least, in the moments regarding his mother in AotC), just that he’s having his instant reactions to traumatic things.
The times that show Anakin’s inability to let go are when he decides to commit terrible things to prevent Padmé potentially dying in RotS, when he promises to become powerful enough to stop death and carries through with that promise, but not really in him having fear from having dreams of his wife dying in childbirth, while also not knowing if the child lives or not either.
Anyways, the point is that the moments George might hope to show greedy love and a need for power - at least, in some of the above commentary - is that they simply don’t. The audience isn’t going to look at those moments through a spiritual lens, but an emotional one, and because of that, I don’t think he gets the messages he makes here show in the movies as much as he wants. And because of that, the audience’s view of the Jedi aren’t the ones he exactly wants to see.
Yoda’s lines in response to Anakin coming to him are definitely true, but completely unhelpful because of why Anakin came to him. It’s not helpful to Anakin’s emotional state, and the audience sees this and also knows because they undoubtedly would find 0 comfort in it as well if they were in Anakin’s shoes. And the visions wouldn’t just bring about fear of losing someone, but are emotionally distressing in general. Thus, this scene doesn’t translate to greed or lust for power, just that when he reaches out, he doesn’t get the support he needs.
We do see the Dark Side corrupts, we do see Anakin losing all of what he is to it - the entirety of Mustafar shows how different Anakin is - but some of the times he points to above don’t read the way he says he wants them to. We cannot think for a moment that being raised a Jedi from birth would make his reaction to some of these things super different, bc people in general don’t work that way.
I don’t know if it’s because he kind of stuck himself in a bit of a corner, where the end goal was Darth Vader but still someone we could empathize with, someone who still is good, and also show the ways the Dark Side are obviously bad, that he ended up writing moments that don’t show that being too old for training or being unable to let go, just him going through some messed up things. Some moments he shows it very well, but some of the times he brings up don’t. Thus it doesn’t appear as Anakin’s problem of not taking Jedi teachings to heart.
Which is probably why the audience doesn’t see it as “Anakin was too old and because of being raised by his mom, he was doomed for failure as he couldn’t accept Jedi teachings,” more that, “Here’s a guy going through fucked up shit, and the Jedi’s ways and the Jedi themselves aren’t helping him cope with it.” We see Vader as the end result of not just an inability to let go or lust for the power to keep the people he loves, but also that there was no emotional or psychological support from the Jedi.
And we also know that looking at art through a Word of God lens isn’t always helpful (or just downright not recommended, like if we all decided to take JKR’s newest tweet as canon), so even what he says doesn’t really change that. ntm the general audience doesn’t read/watch interviews or commentaries very often.
tl;dr: What George says and what he shows aren’t always compatible, and this is part of why many people see the Jedi Order as a whole in a bad light. Pile this on with flaws of specific Jedi and the whole bit where the Council sat next to a Sith Lord and didn’t notice, it doesn’t make for the best case for the Jedi, when it comes to Anakin. The problem isn’t necessarily a lore-wise one, but that the writing and the medium don’t always get the image across the way it’s intended.
Anyways, the discussion here is whether or not the medium or the way parts or written/shown are why the Jedi Order are often viewed the way they are in the fandom, rather than the lore, etc.
I really appreciate the compassion and consideration you’ve shown in approaching this topic and I sincerely hope that I can return it, that if anything I say makes you uncomfortable, we can absolute drop the conversation, I don’t want to run roughshod over your boundaries, either–because this is a hugely complicated topic in the sense that we’re dealing with probably five or six separate issues that all get wrapped up in it! People’s individual boundaries, the way it’s a delicate line to walk when discussing other people’s fandom opinions without getting into passive aggressive, condescending territory and how often fandom fails at that, Word of God vs Death of the Author, just straight up different interpretations, and a really complicated issue of how much one person yelling on the internet about some stuff George Lucas said in an interview is even relevant to anyone else’s take on fandom. Just because Tumblr User Lumi Said A Thing About What George Lucas Said, that doesn’t mean anyone has to even read it, much less has to take it into account! (I think this post about Word of God vs Death of the Author and my feelings on it, does a better job of explaining where I’m coming from.)
And another problem is–are we discussing ONLY the stuff George Lucas was involved in (ie, the movies + TCW) or all of canon? Or even just only the movies? Are we focused on How Other People Could Interpret This Thing or are we focused on What George Lucas Did/Didn’t Show? Because those are all pretty different structures for this conversation! I’ll do my best to be coherent in my responses, too! XD (I’m mostly focusing on What George Lucas Did/Didn’t Show, for the record!)
I also want to say ahead of time, I’m going to have some Strong Opinions, but they aren’t meant to say that you absolutely must interpret things the way I do, because I get that your post was written to explain the interpretation of someone who is Jedi critical, rather than trying to state things as fact and I’m wrong if I disagree. I may well fail in weaving that same tone into my response, but I assure you it’s genuinely meant! I state things with a strong voice, but if you disagree, eh, one of my fundamental views of fandom is that we’re all watching a movie and coming away with different interpretations, we’re all watching our favorite show and drawing a picture on it afterwards, some people are going to use blue to color the house they’re drawing, some people are going to use green! That’s just how audience reactions work.
But, simply put, it cannot be shown that way in regards to other things, such as his mother’s death and the visions for it. The problem is that we’re shown a teenager who is having violent visions of his mother being tortured and dying.
I think this is a really interesting point of contention and quite possibly will be really relevant to the focus of our conversation–in the scene in AOTC where Anakin tells Obi-Wan about his dreams, he makes absolutely no mention or indication that they’re violent dreams. He only says that he’s dreaming of her and not sleeping well, then Obi-Wan reassures him that dreams pass in time (dreams are just dreams, your mind working stuff out, etc.) and Anakin immediately changes the subject. Later, in a deleted scene, on the ship he has a bad dream, but we don’t know the content of it. On Naboo, he has a nightmare that he wakes up from, but we don’t know the content there, either, only that Shmi is saying, “No!” When he wakes up and is meditation on the veranda, he says, "I saw my mother. She is suffering, Padme. I saw her as clearly as I see you now. She is in pain." But I don’t remember any point where he told any Jedi about this or even that they were violent dreams before that point.
It’s easy, with foreknowledge, to assume that Anakin’s dreams were violent in the beginning of the movie (and maybe they were! it would make sense, but we’re not actually shown it), so it doesn’t follow that the Jedi knew weren’t doing anything about it, because he doesn’t actually say anything, and when Obi-Wan tries to talk to him, Anakin is the one who turns away. Yes, Obi-Wan says that “dreams pass in time”, but that’s solid advice when we’re not given any other indication that Anakin’s dreams have been seen as prophetic or anything other than a young man growing up and getting ready to do things on his own without his guiding figure and being anxious about it. (We’re certainly shown that he gets anxious sometimes, like when he’s so nervous he’s sweating before meeting Padme, and Obi-Wan teases him into calming down.)
We’re also given indications that Anakin is kind of obsessive and unwilling to let go when it comes to Padme–he knew her for, like, a week when he was a kid, then dreamed about her for ten years. And that’s not a huge sign in and of itself! Especially when this is a fairy tale story and when it’s not like he’s gone off the deep end yet. But it is an indication, in-movie, that Anakin tends towards the obsessive and greedy, that he thought about a person he didn’t really know (couldn’t possibly know in that short of a time) for ten years and married her after only knowing her like a week as an adult.
Then we see him go through something undeniably traumatic, and his instant reaction to that trauma.This doesn’t really show the audience that he’s unable to let go, it shows that he’s been through something terrible.
His reaction to the trauma is beyond the pale, though! If he’d just destroyed a building or even just the Tuskens who directly hurt his mother, that would be one thing. But we know he murdered the children, too. It’s not at all reasonable for him to lash out and murder their women and children in his rage. This is an event horizon for his character, he crossed over the line and it’s no longer an understandable reaction to his trauma. And that entire conversation with Padme shows that he’s digging deeper into that mindset:
Padme: “You’re not all-powerful, Ani.”
Anakin: “Well, I should be! Someday I will be. I will be the most powerful Jedi ever! I promise you. I will even learn to stop people from dying.”
In and of itself, potentially not that big of a deal! (I mean, aside from that it’s paired up with a conversation where he’s talking about how he murdered the men, women, and children of a village, where he’s calling sentient beings animals, because he can’t deal with what he’s done.) He’s in a bad place, people say bad things when they’re in a bad place, but as part of a larger storyline, yeah, it does still show that he’s grasping onto the mindset that he cannot ever lose anyone again, that he’ll become obsessed with not letting them die. (Which is what his greediness is being defined as.)
If this was just saying something in the heat of a terrible moment, then okay. But it’s clearly not–he goes on to do that very thing, to become obsessed with his unwillingness to accept another death (and that is what Anakin’s greed is–not for material things, but for how he’s greedy for these people to be in his life no matter what, not even death will stop him from keeping them) during ROTS.
all well and good to say that he should be able to accept her (or Padmé) dying - and it’s something that is true, that we do need to mourn and eventually move on - but considering he’s plagued with horrifying visions, it’s not really something we can expect anyone to react calmly or objectively to.
I don’t think most people are saying that he should just instantly be okay with his mom dying or that he should just suck it up and pretend he’s not feeling anything, that’s not how feelings work and the Jedi have said pretty consistently that feelings are normal. What isn’t normal is, if he was having violent visions before this (and while it’s a fair assumption, it’s not a canon one, as far as I can remember, up to that point), he turns away from actually talking to people who would help him work through them. Anakin turns away from that conversation with Obi-Wan, rather than saying, “No, I’m really having trouble with this, I need help, I think something’s genuinely wrong and I can’t handle this.” This is understandable, I’ve been in that place, where it’s too hard to get the words out, I’m too scared to really look at something, etc. But that doesn’t mean it’s on the other people around me or that they weren’t willing to help.
This is a consistent pattern with Anakin, too. Off the top of my head, he’s the one who turns away from the conversation in AOTC, he’s the one who refuses to truly engage with Yoda and is only there to hear what he wants, he’s the one who lashes out and pushes Obi-Wan away when he tries to talk to Anakin about the deep anger he’s feeling over Rush Clovis, he’s the one who refuses to talk to Ahsoka on Tatooine, he’s the one who never told her about his past. If you get further into stuff like the comics, Dark Lord of the Sith is basically a 25-issue comic about how Anakin Skywalker Cannot Let Go And Can’t Admit To Anything Even To Himself, as well as his obsession with not being able to let Padme go even after she’s dead.
Yoda’s lines in response to Anakin coming to him are definitely true, but completely unhelpful because of why Anakin came to him. It’s not helpful to Anakin’s emotional state, and the audience sees this and also knows because they undoubtedly would find 0 comfort in it as well if they were in Anakin’s shoes.
Here’s the conversation with Yoda:
Yoda: Premonitions? Premonitions. These visions you have-
Anakin: They’re of pain, suffering. Death.
Yoda: Yourself you speak of, or someone you know?
Anakin: Someone.
Yoda: Close to you?
Anakin: Yes.
Yoda: Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the dark side.
Anakin: I won’t let these visions come true, Master Yoda.
Yoda: Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is.
Anakin: What must I do, Master Yoda?
Yoda: Train yourself to let go… of everything you fear to lose.
The whole conversation is like pulling teeth with Anakin, trying to get him to actually talk about it, beyond these one-word unspecific answers. And Anakin is very much showing that he’s stuck on the idea of he won’t let this happen, no matter what and so I don’t see Yoda’s advice isn’t so much a, “Hey, you can never mourn for anyone.” but instead, “Whoa, let’s back up and look at the bigger picture here because we need to address that before we can address the other stuff.” Because Anakin here is showing that he won’t accept that sometimes loss happens, even when he tries to listen to Yoda about training himself out of that fear, the way he lowers his head and doesn’t really look up, shows that it’s not sinking into him, not really.
But also, look at this conversation from Yoda’s point of view–he has no idea that Anakin is talking about Padme and visions of her specific death scenario, and quite possibly thinks he’s talking about Obi-Wan. Yoda has no idea there are details to these visions, ones where he could say, “Maybe take her to a doctor, hmm?” It’s entirely possible Yoda thought Anakin was talking about another Jedi, someone who has a relationship with the Force, who will rejoin the Force when they die. But also that he’s picking up on Anakin’s unwillingness to accept that sometimes there isn’t something you can do–and we see examples in canon (like with Ahsoka’s visions of Padme, as well as in ROTS itself) where trying to prevent a vision is the very thing that makes it happen. Anakin going obsessive about Padme is precisely what leads to her death. Visions are not reliable (in the sense of “hey, here’s what’s going to happen, now you know how to prevent it!”), even if they are from the Force and not just bad dreams.
When I watch this scene, it is super clear to me that Anakin is there to find some way to prevent these visions from coming true, that’s what he’s tunnel-visioned on. Which isn’t the real problem, that he wants to save a person’s life, if he can. What is a problem is that his demeanor shows that he’s not really accepting what path he needs to take in a bigger picture way, that he eventually has to make peace with the idea that death happens, and it calls right back to AOTC–”Someday, I will learn to stop them from dying!” and is exactly why Palpatine can lure him in with that precise promise. Because Anakin has absolutely no intention of letting this go–because he’s greedy for having the people in his life that he wants, that the movies as a whole paints that picture very clearly.
We see Vader as the end result of not just an inability to let go or lust for the power to keep the people he loves, but also that there was no emotional or psychological support from the Jedi.
This is why I reblog this post a lot–because Jedi methods are in and of themselves analogous to a form of psychological support/therapy that would especially help people with anxiety and PTSD, which are the two most common armchair diagnoses for Anakin. Their methods absolutely could have helped Anakin, he was getting support just by virtue of being around these teachings, but he didn’t want to do things that way. He “isn’t willing to accept [them] emotionally” is a behavior we’ll see from him pretty consistently.
I think one of the things that gets wires crossed a lot is that then that has to mean, oh, well, Anakin’s bad, that I’m blaming him for his own trauma or that I think he was never a good person and he never did anything right. And I’m very much not! He absolutely has a lot of traumatic stuff happening to him, he had a lot of good in him, but he consistently chooses not to acknowledge that he had options that he didn’t really want, in his heart of hearts. Dark Lord of the Sith is twenty-five straight issues of Vader being shown he could have (and still could, at that point) taken a myriad of other paths and he rejects them all, says, “No, this is all there is.” (the path of the dark side/being Darth Vader). We see that he consistently doesn’t reach out to anyone even when they come to talk to him or sit down with and listen to him, he lashes out, he changes the subject, he gives one-word answers, he has zero indication of actually hearing them.
Because sometimes people don’t want to admit they need to change on any kind of real level. Because sometimes therapy doesn’t work, if you don’t want it to work or aren’t willing to apply it to your life. (I have a lot of personal experience with this, that’s why I keep bringing it up, because this does happen sometimes. That you can drive someone to therapy for years, you can drive them to meetings, you can offer to talk, you can be understanding and forgive the things they’ve done, and it’s not going to make a single bit of difference if they don’t really want to accept it or change themselves. This doesn’t have to be true for everyone, but it’s very much a thing that does happen with some.)
Ultimately, it’s a delicate line to walk about talking how other people interpret a canon and I try to walk it as carefully as I can, because I don’t want to make sweeping assumptions or wander into condescending territory (especially when this fandom is so, so terrible about it), but I do think one of the things that leads to a lot of critical interpretations is the assumption that organized religions are meant to be portrayed as bad and corrupt. We’ve been primed to! I genuinely can’t think of very many mainstream popular media that depicts organized religion in any positive way, other that maybe some Jewish portrayals or maybe some Muslim portrayals. (We’re talking positive representations only, in this instance, of course. Because there are a lot of terrible representations, too, but that’s a whole other conversation.) Especially one that people read a lot of Christian overtones into, rather than a mix of some of that, some of Buddhism, some of fairy tale religion stuff, etc.
Or like look at HOW MANY stories are about how unleashing your emotions are what make you powerful, that’s been a huge thing lately. So a story that goes in the opposite direction, no matter what they show in the canon, is fighting against the tide of established assumptions we’ve been primed to think about how the story is supposed to go, rather than seeing it purely, one hundred percent on its own merits. Or how we’re primed to think that romantic love is more important than duty, that duty cannot possibly be more fulfilling than romance, that if a character deliberately eschews it, they’re not fully relatable or “human” (yeah, I’m still mad about that article on how ROMANTIC love “humanized” Obi-Wan, like his love for his religion/culture and the people he cared about wasn’t enough, how those things are inherently lesser than romantic love), that anyone who says otherwise, is narratively in the wrong, that’s something we’re bombarded with, and so it’s easy to assume that’s what we’re supposed to go into the story with as a foundation.
There are also often a lot of assumptions being made about the Jedi–like, for example, with this post, that Anakin’s dreams were violent, when the movies don’t actually say that in any way the Jedi would have known about–and it’s easy to forget that they don’t know everything we, the audience know. Or that the Jedi live literally by the “Jedi Code” when the only uses in canon are the Jedi using it as a meditation mantra, not a literal code (as well as clearly stuff like “you can’t have two Padawans at the same time” are nowhere in it, so clearly that’s not the only thing they live by), that the Jedi teach you’re not allowed to have emotions despite that we see them having anger and happiness and all that all over the place, that the Jedi had the authority to do whatever they wanted despite canon showing us consistently that they were only advisers and were often ignored, etc. And when the vast, vast majority of fandom talks about it in those terms, it’s easy to get swept up in it–I say as someone who started out as exactly that, who was very Jedi-critical when I first got into fandom.
(Going back through some of my earliest posts is an absolute trip, because I was basing so much of my views on assumptions and what other people had said and how so many stories are structured in other mainstream titles! Hence why that’s one of the things I feel comfortable talking about as a motivation for Jedi-critical stuff, because I’m talking from a place of experience.)
Anyway, so, if we’re only going with the movies, we don’t actually see much of anything outside of the specific plots (like we don’t see much of Anakin’s apprenticeship when he was younger, so we can’t say what he was like then, only that he’s a whiny teenager now), we can only guess based on the handful of moments we see of this stuff and the consistent patterns of the overall movie, and there’s often an assumption that anyone who starts out sweet and then turns out terrible later must be because no one tried to help them in any significant way, when real life really, really does not work that way. And if we get into supplementary material we have stuff like this and this and this and this and this that show there was indeed emotional support and people trying to help Anakin and consider what he needed.
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