4. Anakin's Turn To Darth Vader
Anakins turn is an issue many fans and non-fans cant quite grasp. To their defence, its not the cleanest of turns when it comes to good guy turning bad, but I still feel it makes sense. The best way to cover it is the steps that led to the fall. Anakin was born a slave with no father. He was gifted but stuck as a slave. Qui-Gon finds him, tells him hes extremely gifted and potentially The Chosen One', whisking him off to space. However, the Jedi say hes dangerous and essentially tell him to leave. Qui-Gon, who is Anakins first real father figure, has a rebellious streak and tells the Jedi hell train him anyway, but thanks to Maul, Anakin is trained by the "barely a Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi," who Anakin is aware didnt even agree with Qui-Gons feeling on him in the first place. Anakin, now a Jedi, feels hes more powerful than those around him and continues to follow orders as he wants to be a good Jedi. Because he follows these orders, his mother dies on Tatooine, despite the fact he was having dreams of her in pain and feels he could have prevented it. He promises to become more powerful than any Jedi and stop people from dying. Then he falls in love with Padme but Jedi cant fall in love, even though love is what they all claim to be about. Anakin begins to live a secret life with Padme and even marries her. Episode III Anakin is a much acclaimed Jedi in the Clone Wars. He has ideas about ending the war but the Jedi keep holding him back due to their unsupportive approach to the gifted Jedi. Padme informs Anakin that she is pregnant and the young lovers lives just got more complicated. Over the past decade or so Anakin has forged a strong relationship with Chancellor Palpatine, a man he has saved many times either directly or indirectly. This powerful man continually informs Anakin of how powerful the young Jedi is and how much more powerful he could be if the Jedi allowed him to be. Anakin is growing frustrated with the council and when they ask him to spy on Palpatine and use his friendship as a way in, the Jedi council begin to show some underhand tactics in the eyes of the young Skywalker. They even give him a seat on the council but Anakin feels that it is more for show and that he is still underappreciated. Okay, so this is where it gets rocky. Anakin is having dreams of Padme dying in child birth. Dreams that seem to change each time he has them (and we find out later that they play out even differently from that, which either means the future really is as uncertain as Yoda tells us or that Anakins responses to these dreams are changing the future at every turn. Anyway, Palpatine informs Anakin that only the Sith can create life or more importantly stop people from dying and later reveals himself as a Sith. He even outright promises Anakin he can help him save Padme from dying. Anakin makes a good decision and tells Mace Windu all about this but even then Mace Windu treats Anakin like he has something to prove before Mace really trusts him. Anakin now has a decision to make: let the Jedi arrest and/or kill Palpatine and see Padme die or step in and convince the Jedi to let him learn the dark side and, in turn, tell them all about his marriage and his dreams and then hope Yoda, who has never backed him up from the day they met says, yeah, help you we will." Anakin rushes in to plead his case but finds Mace and Palpatine mid battle. Palpatine is disfigured and potentially dying and Mace has made the decision to execute the dangerous Sith before him. Once again, Anakin tries to reason with Mace, telling him to take the case to the Senate. Mace knows full well Palpatine would get away and goes for the kill. Anakin stops him by cutting Maces arm off. Palpatine kills Mace (maybe, well see in the sequels I guess) and Anakin finds himself somewhere dark. So then, the question is, did Anakin do the only thing he thought he could do in the situation? I think the answer to that feeds into what I discussed in the first article. Yes, he did do the only thing he felt he could because he was fuelled by love. Now, I know, some fans cant quite accept this and dont like that answer because its all a bit wet, but honestly, we live in a movie world where pretty much everyone does everything for love. More often than not its for the greater good but in reality, people make a number of terrible decisions in life for the sake of love. If we knew something bad was going to happen to someone who was everything to us, we all romantise all the things we would do to save them. Take a bullet, step in front of a car all that stuff. With Anakin, his mother had died and he knew 100% he could have stopped it if hed trusted his instincts. The instincts the Jedi stopped him listening to time and time again. He was not going to let that happen again. This was the only way he could stay in control and stop Padme dying and it was only because he felt there was literally no other option. The Jedi would not have helped as he wanted them to. We know that. We know it because of Yoda and his teaching on the uncertain future in visions and Anakin had already lost a mother to this approach. Killing Palpatine would have left him tortured by the what ifs and in the heat of the moment when everything came to a head between Jedi and Sith all of Palpatines manipulation made Anakins choices for him. Yes, its the quick and easy route, we know that is the case with the dark side and thats how they get you but the Jedi had let down Anakin too many times by this point. The decision, right or wrong was made and "
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny and consume you, like as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice. Come on, this is totally what Yoda told us about in the original trilogy. Its all seduction and manipulation in Anakins turn (Ill go into this more in the next few sections, this one is already far too long).