Pissin' Poonani wrote:Best as I can rationalise it, maybe killing his wife, having his extremities lopped off, then having to spend the rest of his life on a ventilator may have made him think "Ah-maybe it's time for a change in the old attitude-really isn't working out for me the way it currently is". Maybe it was only through losing so much that he finally realised he had to change, or end up deaded.
It's silly, though. The whole point of the prequels was surely to show how he became Vader - not to faff about for eight hours and then end with a character that blatantly isn't yet Vader being crammed into a suit.
Would it have worked better if he'd been crippled in the first act of Ep III and spent the remainder of the film in the costume, becoming increasingly psycho badass?
Or somesuch.
I've written more "hero turns evil" angles than I care to think of (byproduct of plotting the AWF for about two and a half years) and even at my most half-hearted, I would have thrown out the script for Anakin's heel turn...
It's all about gradual shifts and believable factors. Not "he's good, he's tortured, he's confused.... aaaaand he's the most evil man in the galaxy... NOW!"
Say it happened this way around...
- The Jedi tell him he can't be a proper elder.
- He finds out Palpatine is Sidious. He decides to keep the secret, but only in the interim.
- He confides in Padme, who he then sees chatting with Obi-Wan
- He finds that the Jedi know about Palpatine, assumes Padme told them and in a fit of blind rage strikes her down
- He realises what he's done and angsts for a bit before rushing off to warn Palpatine that he's been rumbled
- He walks in on Samuel L Jedi kicking the crap out of Palpy and instinctively goes to his aid. At this point, he's already lost Padme and his trust of the Jedi. He goes all badass on Sammy and kills him himself. Palpy of course was in no danger, and wanted Anakin to do the job because he knew the effect it would have.
And, as if by magic, you have an Anakin who's already lost everything, has sided with Sidious because he's the only person left that he can trust, and has just established himself as a psycho badass by killing Mace Windu.
Which, to me, is far more believable than "OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE?!" "You've gone evil - go with it." "Mmmm... okay!"
Embracing the dark sid because there were no perceivable options left > doing it because Sidious told him to. All by shuffling the order of events.
Plus it gives another third of the film to show him building on that. And makes him a credible threat to Obi-Wan (as he's already killed Mace), rather than it just being somersaults on lava whilst you wait for Kenobe to give him the kicking that you know is gonna come.
Of course, personally I'd scrap the whole thing and come up with something better, but that's just me...
Grrr. Argh.
