[horatio]

Anakin is a Christological figure and Christ is about a rupture between man and God.
From Lucas' Buddhist, Pagan or whatever point of view he has to be evil as in the Pagan cosmos balance is very important. Day and night, summer and winter, these very basic experiences shaped us. Extremes are bad, if it is too dry you sacrifice a goat to soothe the fertility goddess.

In my opinion Lucas' basic story is a fake. Anakin stops to be this wicked Christological figure and becomes the great moderator, albeit indirectly via his son. Yet to be broken is human and after all the horrors that have happened nobody should "bring balance to the force".
A nice analogy might be marriage. The proper Pagan view is that in marriage you will become one with the other, male and female merge in harmony, yadda-yadda. The proper Christian view on proposing would be to be shaken by the total horror of daring to impose oneself on another for the rest of one's life. "That poor soul has to spend the rest of her life with me", that's true romanticism.

[kevin]

I think in terms of 'evil' that's how he and the Empire are shaded in the original trilogy. That simplicity features in most of these sorts of stories. But I think in the prequels Lucas is trying to grey things up a little.

He's evil..........but how did the Republic fall under him? What went wrong with a democratic system? How did he exploit the bureacracy that was stalling the system?

You can't do that and keep it all black and white. To tell the story of Vader and Anakin you have to tell how the Republic fell as well. The two are not (in the SW universe) completely exclusive.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

It may be grey in terms of the motivations of some of the Senators, who are mostly portraid as weak. But in terms of the Palpatine character, he's pure Evil from the very beginning.

[horatio]

Compared to the Jedi philosophy of moderation, balance and so on, basically again all this Pagan stuff, the Sith are quite appealing to me. If you yearn to do something significant in your short mortal life like Anakin does the Sith are the natural choice. It's what Freud called the death drive, it is on the one hand mortifying, a force of evil but on the other hand it is also this crazy, irrational, human drive (natural examples would be suicide bombers but also CEOs who unlike us ordinary guys do not work for the sake of consumption) to do something important.
That's how Anakin gets seduced and instead of pointing out the obvious wickedness of Sidious one should rather ask why the Jedi suffocate this force that would make him a great man and thus drive him into the arms of the Sith.

Or to view it from a slightly different angle, Anakin and Padme drive themselves into death just like Romeo and Juliet. The only difference is that nobody who sees or reads Romeo and Juliet would view their self-annihilating love as evil whereas from Lucas' Pagan / 'balance above all' point of view such a crazy love has to be evil.

[kevin]

I'm not sure any other directors could have worked better magic if Lucas wanted as much CGI as he went with. But then I think that's also why parts of the films suffer.

I don't have a problem with seeing Anakin as a kid but I suppose it does mean he had to take big time jumps along the way to accomodate it all. And while I don't defend Lucas' writing skills most of the time I do find the seduction scene between Anakin and Palpatine and Order 66 to be well done and directed. But I guess like them all, even Lucas can sometimes get things to work out even if they are just isolated parts of the whole.

Edit - that was in reference to a post that's now done a vanishing act. But I can't be bothered deleting mine now.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

Originally Posted by kevin

I'm not sure any other directors could have worked better magic if Lucas wanted as much CGI as he went with. But then I think that's also why parts of the films suffer.

I don't have a problem with seeing Anakin as a kid but I suppose it does mean he had to take big time jumps along the way to accomodate it all. And while I don't defend Lucas' writing skills most of the time I do find the seduction scene between Anakin and Palpatine and Order 66 to be well done and directed. But I guess like them all, even Lucas can sometimes get things to work out even if they are just isolated parts of the whole.

I did like the seduction scene, there was something very vampiric about the whole thing. Episode III is by far the best of the prequels, and it's actually a pretty strong film in a lot of ways IMO.

[samwiseb]

Deleted my last post after Circumstance just sort of (arbitrarily) decided there were two whole pages worth of posts that I had somehow missed reading, to the effect that I was (seemingly) just talking to myself as a result.

In a nutshell: Don't think Jar Jar Binks, as executed, contributes anything positive whatsoever to the story, and don't like Anikin's portrayal in general but especially in the first episode ("yippee!"). Wish Lucas could have accepted his limitations and hired better people to make his movies a la Empire.

Originally Posted by kevin

Edit - that was in reference to a post that's now done a vanishing act. But I can't be bothered deleting mine now.

Sorry about that. Was kinda hoping I could disappear like a ninja without having been seen.

[omegaman]

Everyone seems to be enjoying this thread. I thought you might.

[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by kevin

I'm not sure any other directors could have worked better magic if Lucas wanted as much CGI as he went with. But then I think that's also why parts of the films suffer.

I can see that. Although I've often wondered whether Spielberg would have taken the job. His directing would at least have been 'satisfactory' in most cases.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

When you guys find the time, you should check out these Star Wars reviews. They are long, and done in a very bizarre style, but they are pretty much on point across the board.

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/