#ive been watching clone wars and the later arcs especially do a good job fleshing things out | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oopsalljacob · 6 years

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star wars had the potential to be one of the greatest stories ever told, in one of the richest universes ever created, if it hadn't been told so damn badly

i feel like most stories that achieve the success star wars has are valued for not only the story but the way it’s told. the ancient ones are epic poems, probably passed down orally. shakespeare stole all his plots and made them great by how he told them

even modern examples—Harry Potter, LoTR, Game of the Thrones—while people have qualms with Tolkein’s verbosity or Rowling’s writing style, they’re still well told, overall

and yet star wars, with some notable exceptions, feels so often so poorly told, without pathos, without care

Anakin’s fall to the dark side is a tragedy. Like a greek, shakespearean, classic tragedy. The fall of a good man, hamartia, all that. Or at least it could’ve been. Instead it just seems inevitable that this angry, unstable teenager would become an angry, unstable man.

In most tragedies you know the outcome already, and it’s so much more painful as you hope it won’t happen. We know Anakin is going to become Vader, but we should believe maybe we won’t be, this time. Maybe there’s hope.

But we don’t really see hope for Anakin. We don’t get much of a chance to sympathize with him, he seems so obviously angry and misguided from the outset (I’m talking episode II here, he’s a perfectly bland kid in Phantom Menace).

And so the entire prequel trilogy just seems like a shooty shooty politics mess, with a forced romance and then op Ani’s evil now.

It speaks to how compelling the original trilogy was, and how rich the universe is, that it has remained as successful as it has

Imagine if Anakin had been our POV, with whom we saw the complex and corrupt world of the Senate, the stagnated and blind Jedi Order, unable to help so many of the people it was supposed to protect.

We got angry *with* him at the destruction wrought by not only the Separatists, but also by the injustice that the Jedi ignore (i.e., the slave trade in the Hutt empire, the sand people, etc.). It’s a justified anger, a righteous anger.

I’m not saying his anger at the sand people wasn’t justified—they enslaved and killed his mother—but we never got to feel that anger with him. Compare to when Luke sees his aunt and uncle killed.

We could’ve seen Anakin striving to find ways to do right and do good, hindered by a detached Jedi Order and a bloated senate, struggling to understand how denying his feelings—of love to Padme and anger at injustice—could be useful

Feeling helpless and frustrated not because he felt he couldn’t save Padme from fucking childbirth but rather from the CONSTANT STREAM OF ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS SHE ENDURED during the Clone Wars

Also, with the extended Canon, we see so many examples of Jedi disillusioned with the Order, able to see its flaws, rebellious Jedi, etc. It starts to make Anakin look really bland. Why is he special? As a character.

I know he’s the Chosen one, but…what makes him the one to turn so deeply to the dark side? And what makes him sympathetic? Why do we understand him, why is HE the fulcrum of these stories?

I don’t feel there is a satisfactory answer ever given in all of star wars canon, and it fails itself so deeply in not doing so.

I have a lot of feelings about star wars but this is the biggest thing I mourn in the series. It has all the trappings of a beautiful story told in such a captivating universe, and it gives us the most ham-fisted, clumsy, stupid version.

Star Wars has never been big on grey areas, and plenty of excellent comic books and superheros deal with anti-heros, good guys who do questionable things, bad guys who have good and understandable reasons, etc. This is not that. It doesn’t have to be.

What Anakin becomes is clearly evil. What he does is clearly evil. There’s a dark and light side of the force, for fuck’s sake. But his fall should still be painful for us to watch. Just like Othello’s is, just like Macbeth’s is. I mean no one does it like Shakespeare, but

Instead we get a slightly tamer version of Kylo Ren. An angry man child who is brash and arrogant. Made worse by the jedi council not trusting him—for good reason!!! It’s obvious to everyone watching he’s not doing so hot, temperament-wise!

Don’t even get me started on Padme, savvy, idealistic politician, who would see the warning signs 17 parsecs away. Forbidden love, unearned mistrust, these would’ve also been enriched by input by minorities who undergo that shit all the time but that’s another topic

The point is, Anakin is poorly thought out, poorly written, and poorly placed.

i have a lot of feelings but i need to go to bed. goodnight, take me to the timeline where star wars is as good as it deserves to be

#star wars #anakin #tragedy #its a trap #mine #ive been watching clone wars and the later arcs especially do a good job fleshing things out #making the story look like it should #giving characters more depth #but damn #there is so much missed

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