That’s the summary of Anakin Skywalker right there–he started out as a nice kid, he was kind and sweet and lovely, but then he was trained as a Jedi and Jedi can’t be selfish. They can love, but they can’t love people to the point of possession. It’s fear that takes you to the dark side and Anakin’s fear was of losing his wife, he became greedy and possessive of her.
That is the narrative arc of Anakin Skywalker and it’s not the first time George Lucas has laid it out like that, that the problem wasn’t that he loved her, the problem wasn’t that he was a Jedi, the problem was that he loved her in a greedy, possessive way and so he made a deal with the devil to keep her.
It’s one of the things that most breaks my heart about Anakin, that his childhood was as a slave, that the arc of him in that first movie was how he became free, how he wasn’t a thing to possess or keep, but his own person with his own wants.
And, by the end of Revenge of the Sith, he had come around to the negative image of that–he didn’t care what Padme wanted, he didn’t care that she was horrified by what he’d done, he wanted to keep her. He couldn’t let go of her, he wanted to possess her, it wasn’t about her, it was about how much he loved her and wanted to have her, how he couldn’t let go of her.
He had become the very thing he swore to destroy.
“You can’t really possess somebody, because people are free.” and that was the problem with Anakin’s love for her, that it crossed the line because of his fears, from something that started out so very sweet, to greed and possession. And Padme felt it, “You’re not the person I married. You’re a greedy person.” / “I don’t know you any more. You’re breaking my heart. You’re going down a path I can’t follow.”
And that arc, that echo and rhyme is beautifully told. That’s why it’s so important that the prequels and the originals echo each other, that’s why it’s so important that Luke have a chance to do the same thing, because mirror images and negative images in the story, the sense of something coming full circle so it can go in the opposite way, are one of the fundamental building blocks of Star Wars.
“He’s very aloof, very self-contained, obviously completely fearless. He is extremely intelligent, perhaps more so than almost anyone else. He’s obviously a man of immense power. I don’t suppose that the question of moral values enter into his head. He’s not immoral – he’s amoral.”
– Christopher Lee on the character of Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus
“Obviously, there are people that just do the easy thing, and the easy thing is to be angry, which turns to hate. It’s not an active thing; it’s a passive thing. Being angry with somebody is a passive thing. You have to work not to be angry, and if you don’t work at it, you’ll just be angry for the rest of your life. Bitter, angry, and of course that leads to suffering – it’s the bad side.”
