Hey a Movie

Return of the open movie discussion thread. Thought i'd pick up where i remember leaving off, wanted to jump back into the prequels, specifically the one part that made the least amount of sense. That one part is the conversion in episode three.




001. Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith

Last time we talked about how the emperor was actually vader's father and what that meant to the story, how it could possibly be seen as a story about a monster making his way back home, that from the beginning this character was always meant to be a villain. That's no good, if you accept that then it lets the writer off the hook. I think the biggest problem with this movie is that the whole story hangs on believing this conversion idea but it's not explained within the confines of the movie, its sprinkled over three movies.

So why did he pull a 180 and turn on his own people? To save his wife, i get that, the emperor was willing to help him save his wife, he had to make a choice and he picked his woman over his work family, understandable. It gets confusing when you jump a few scenes ahead and he has yellow eyes and he's calling the jedi evil. This i don't understand.

Alright, my thoughts on this are that Vader's turn to the dark side has more to do with his mom than his wife. Probably the most important scene in the prequels is the tent scene where his mom dies. The whole reason why he was so gung ho to join the jedi was so that he could return to the desert planet and free her. But what happens, you have qui gon, who could have easily freed her yet refused, you have this cult that tries to convince him to let go of all attachments, and you have obi wan as the task master, basically the main person keeping him from his goal. In episode 2 the very moment he's separated from kenobi what does he do but seek out attachments, the minute kenobi turns his back vader falls in love and then runs off to save his mom.

So possibly in this character's mind the jedi are to blame for her death just as much as the tuskens. Maybe that was the real revenge taking place in episode three. He choked his pregnant wife, the conversion had to be about more than her. You can almost explain a kind of rage against padme. I'm sure she played a part in sweetening the pot in convincing him to leave with the jedi in the first place. There's a scene after he kills the tuskens when he's trying to keep busy, he's trying to keep his mind off of what happened and he says" life is simpler when your'e fixing things". That's a very telling line, he's saying life was better when he was only fixing things, life was better before he was a jedi. At this point in the story he's living the dream, he's a jedi and the girl of his dreams wants him but he now prefers to go back to the workshop when it was just him and his mom. Yes i know he probably just wants to not think about anything, that's why he's fixing in the workshop, but i think my version is more interesting.

I think it would have been awesome if at the end when they're having it out over the lava, vader just spills his guts and asks why he didn't help save his mom from the slavers, that's really the deep rooted problem. He yells "i hate you", but you're not exactly sure why, the connection isn't so clear, you just see a wall of anger... but its because of his mom.

Ang lee's hulk movie had a scene similar to that, i thought it was the best part of the movie but the exhausted rage on both of the actors felt odd, off. You have to admit it was pretty awesome to see nolte bite that wire though.

There's another story that this reminded me of, the Perseus story from greek mythology. Perseus was a character that had a deep connection with his mother, she was the only person he knew for the majority of his life. Eventually she gets into a situation where she's about to be sold into slavery(married off to the town leader/concubine type thing) unless perseus can complete a challenge by destroying the gorgon medusa. The gods assist him with weapons and he saves the day. If vader were perseus the gods, perfectly capable of saving his mom, would have left her to die in slavery while sending perseus out to kill more monsters. You can almost justify him turning against them.

The guy misses his mom.