@DavidBrin1 posted a link to his Twitter for May 4th linking to his well-known Salon article which is commonly held to diss Star Wars. I even retweeted someone else's May 4th posting of it with the preface "poo-pooher".
But then I gave it a re-read and whatever you may think about the rest, the man was spot-on here:
" But then, in “Return of the Jedi,” Lucas takes this basic wisdom and perverts it, saying — “If you get angry — even at injustice and murder — it will automatically and immediately transform you into an unalloyedly evil person! All of your opinions and political beliefs will suddenly and magically reverse. Every loyalty will be forsaken and your friends won’t be able to draw you back. You will instantly join your sworn enemy as his close pal or apprentice. All because you let yourself get angry at his crimes.”"
This rather reminds one of Episode III and its perplexingly sudden transformation of Anakin, doesn't it? He gets angry with the Council over their justified fears of Palpatine and goes off the reservation, becoming a confused wreck ripe for the final equally-insidious plot point where he turns evil because of love.
And this, may I say, is the primary reason the end of The Clone Wars series is so disappointing. Sure, it was getting a little bit too Star Trekkish with its gadgets, but the hope was that it it would find a way to better explain Anakin's transformation. There were hints in that direction but unfortunately we were left worse off in that regard, with Anakin the reasonably-wise teacher whose primary sin is caring too much. That only muddies the water further.
And, with apologies, I don't have any hope that JJ understands the human soul any better, based on his Trek to date.
2 comments:
Isn't it plausible that Anikin's anger and fear was what the future emperor needed to subtlety mind control him?
Can I ask you something? Can you write about scene in "TNG: Inheritance" when Enterprise D drilled through crusts and mantle of Atrea Four? I often hear that Warsies claim that in expanded universe single star destroyer could melt planetary crust, so imperial technology must be better than Federation technology. I personally think that drilling a hole through planet's crust and drilling through at least some portion of planetary mantle in approximately nineteen seconds is far more impressive than just melting planet's core in unspecified period of time. After all it was just single phaser beam, it was only active for nineteen seconds and it didn't melt planet crust it just drilled through it, vaporizing kilometers of solid rocks in less than half a minute.
What do you think?
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