Page 22 - Star Wars Insider #188

THE SKYWALKER SAGA
Count Dooku, Skywalker bests
the Sith, dismembering both his
hands. Encouraged by the captive
Palpatine, Skywalker decapitates
Dooku, then immediately regrets
it because it’s not the Jedi way.
Amid his persuasive reassurance
that Dooku was “too dangerous
to be kept alive,” the Chancellor
reveals to the audience that
Skywalker had confided in him
about the slaughter of the Tusken
Raiders after his mother’s death.
It is from this non-judgmental
position of surrogate father fi gure
that Sidious suggests to his future
apprentice that sometimes revenge
is acceptable.
In this moment, Skywalker is
embarking on a new adventure;
it is not as stark as the scene
where Shmi bids him farewell,
but the Jedi Knight’s descent into
moral decline, and ultimately to
becoming a Sith Lord, has begun.
As much as his love for Padmé
Amidala blinds Skywalker, so too
does his desire for a parental fi gure
obscure his ability to recognize
Palpatine’s true intentions.
Compounding the
manipulation, Palpatine offers
Skywalker truths throughout
the movie. The Jedi are afraid of
Anakin’s power. The Council is
planning to betray him. During
a key scene when they are
attending the opera, Palpatine
insidiously preys upon Skywalker’s
greatest fear: that he could lose
the person he loves and the Jedi
will do nothing to stop it. While
the movie doesn’t explicitly say
Palpatine knows about Anakin’s
secret marriage to Padmé, the
implication is that this too is
something confided between the
pair. As Palpatine plants the notion
that the Jedi and Sith aren’t so
different in Anakin’s mind, he
offers the seeds of hope that there
is a power to keep loved ones
from dying. This isn’t a power
that a Jedi would seek; their code
forbids attachments, after all. In
this moment, Anakin Skywalker’s
bridge to becoming Darth Vader
has been built. Now all the young
Jedi must do is walk across it, just
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like he did years ago when he took Revenge of the Sith
those fateful steps away from his
perfectly threads the
loving mother.
Brothers at War needle in Obi-Wan
The bonds forged by men who Kenobi’s characterization,
fight side-by-side in wars are
central to Hollywood’s rise to balancing his portrayal as
prominence in storytelling a heroic yet flawed man.
after the close of World War II.
Revenge of the Sith plays to the
audience’s cinematic and mythic
understanding of how war forges invasion in their starfi ghters.
fraternal bonds where they haven’t Visually, Skywalker, in his yellow
existed previously. In the tragedy starfighter, is set apart from Kenobi
of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan in his maroon starfi ghter, which
Kenobi, we observe the sundering matches the color of the rest of
of a brotherhood between two the Republic fleet. Yellow is ripe
men, built through a decade of with conflicting meaning. It
conjoined service as Jedi Knights can represent optimism, energy,
and strengthened over the course and loyalty, but it is sometimes
of long years of war. associated with cowardice and
Episode III begins as that war deceit, all of which Skywalker
ends, the two Jedi swooping embodies over the course of
through the chaos of a full-scale the movie.
05 Anakin’s vision 05
of Padmé
(Natalie
Portman) dying
in childbirth.
06 Young Anakin
(Jake Lloyd)
takes leave
of his mother
Shmi (Pernilla
August).
07 Obi-Wan
Kenobi and
Yoda make a
shattering
discovery.
08 His choice
made, Anakin
embraces the
dark side.
06