It's so interesting to me, to think about Anakin's downfall because
In the movies, Anakin is clearly not okay, he is unbalanced, traumatised, unable to cope and, despite trying his best, he struggles to care for anyone but those closest to him
Although he does become more balanced between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, it is not enough, he is still willing to do anything, no matter how morally bad, for his end goal, he just now has the forethought to consider his actions and the best way to achieve his goal
It is believable that he would kill the younglings because of course he is willing to sacrifice them for Padme, the only person he can rely on
His downfall is caused by his willingness to sacrifice everything to keep the one person keeping him afloat alive
And yes, a lot of that is the Jedi's truly terrible techniques in raising him, but it is unclear whether him having faith in the Jedi would have changed the outcome
He still would have been traumatised by them so would not knowing who traumatise him, would not losing faith in them stop him from sacrificing the Jedi to keep Padme alive or would it have just made him hesitate slightly before going through with becoming a sith
And that is the crux of Anakin's character, his trauma and truly messed up mental state and moral code are what makes him fall, not anything else, the external situation by his fall, doesn't actually matter to his fall
But, in making him a more well rounded character, Clone Wars makes his downfall less plausible
Anakin from the show is a lot more balanced, he is more capable of dealing with the situations he is put in, he almost comes across as having a good mental health at the start of the show and it is only as the show goes on that he becomes more unbalanced, likely cause they realise he couldn't fall as the character he was at the start, so they skipped to him being unbalanced without really showing why
It is the opposite character trajectory to the movies, he becomes more unstable and desperate as movie Anakin becomes more stable
But also, and this is important, Anakin is more compassionate in the show, possibly the most compassionate Jedi we see, drawing a tie with Plo Koon, if Plo even comes close
The rest of the Jedi are, accidentally, portrayed as apathetic and people I definitely wouldn't want in charge of protecting the lives of others, they say they care and sometimes it appears they might but their actions still speak of people willing to sacrifice a lot more than they should to get the outcome they want, they're like movie Anakin but with less desperation, they're literally what Field Marshal Haig was accused of being in ww1, a butcher willing to send people to their deaths for very literal reason, cause they don't care about the clones, their soldiers
But Anakin does care
To the point where he risks life and limb for random strangers, people he has never met, people he knows won't realise what he is sacrificing, because he doesn't care about his actions being known or him being celebrated as a hero, he cares about making sure everyone lives
Sure he can be callous and ruthless to the enemies but he does it in service of protecting the galaxy, not to win the war alone
He is shown to care not just for Padme, Obi Wan and Ashoka but for the clones everyone else is willing to sacrifice, the random inhabitants of a planet the Jedi forget to properly consider
The only difference between him protecting Padme and random citizens is his lack of balance and solution finding, he is more desperate but still going to the same lengths he would for random citizens, his emotions are just more involved but that's it, his actions are the same
This is not the Anakin who would kill Tusken Raiders for being connected to his mum's death, this is the Anakin who would seriously consider it, maybe even draw his sabre and bare it to their throats but ultimately choose not to
He could never kill innocent civilians no matter how badly he wanted to because he cares too much, his compassion and his desire to protect others is what gets him in trouble not his unbalanced traumatised personality
And that's the key difference between movie and TV Anakin, movie Anakin fell because he was desperate to save Padme no matter the cost and he didn't care who he had to kill to do it, Clone Wars Anakin fell because he lost faith in the Jedi and it is still not entirely convincing because I still struggle to believe he would kill innocents to end the Jedi
I still struggle to believe that he wouldn't take the younglings for his new order, rescue them from the institution that had proved so harmful to him rather than murdering them in an uncharacteristically cruel move for the compassionate Jedi
It's only possible because Palpatine corrupted him
Clone Wars Anakin fell due to the corruption from outside forces
Prequels Anakin fell because his very being had already been wrecked and he was desperate to keep his lifeline, the outside forces, at this point, were just the final nail in the coffin rather than the match that created the fire
Clone Wars Anakin looked at his trauma and went I never want anyone to experience that, Movie Anakin looked at his trauma and went I will do whatever it takes to make sure I never go through that again, no matter who I have to sacrifice
They are two sides of the same coin, two possible outcomes from similar life experiences, but ultimately different characters with little overlap in their motivations, aside from the few folks movie Anakin cares for being in the large group of folks Clone Wars Anakin cares for
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I once got corrected by someone on a post where I said the Jedi kidnap children to join their temple and the person corrected me saying the parents willingly handed the child over and it just lives in my mind
The sheer ludicrounsness of that
That the parents willingly hand their child over
Don't get me wrong, I am sure some parents do
But all??
And it is supposed to be all
The Jedi are shown to now the location of every force sensitive child in the galaxy and the only ones they haven't recruited yet are literal babies, maybe a few months old
In the middle of a war, they probably haven't got to them yet but yeah somehow they successfully get all of them
I mean in Umbrella Academy wasn't that old guy offering money to the parents of these spontaneous children and he only got 7 out of 42
That's pretty high but makes sense considering the pregnancies were entirely spontaneous
And you expect me to believe in a world where these parents, plenty of whom would have planned to have kids, some of whom would have struggled really hard to have these children, the parents, willingly handed their kids over, every single time
It would be like if someone showed up at my house just after I was born and told my parents, hey I know they're your kid but they have Dyslexia (because let's be real all being force sensitive is, is being neurodivergent) so we think it's best if we take the child into our cult, raise them in a temple and you never see them again
My parents would be pissed, they would probably slam the door in their face
And that is the reaction I would expect from most parents
I don't care how famous your temple is, I don't care how good your life looks from the outside, there is never gonna be a majority of parents who hand their child over, most parents are either too loving or too possessing to do that
And the fact that Star Wars expects me to believe that would be the case really goes to show how little thought they put into the world building of the Jedi and how little they realised that the Jedi Order they were creating was just straight up flawed, through its entire thing
It may be portrayed as the good guy but the more you think about it the more holes you find and the easier it is to see the cracks in the Jedi's portrayal as anything but flawed
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