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Psycho Analysis: Darth Vader

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Here he is. The big one. The world’s most famous villain of all time, and this is no exaggeration; even people with only a fleeting knowledge of Star Wars, even people who have never seen it before in their lives, probably know who Darth Vader is. The dedicated an entire trilogy to showing how he ended up this way, and an entire trilogy to defeating him, and even after he’s dead his shadow looms over the new trilogy.

It’s really not hard to see why, either; everything about him just screams cool. He’s an intergalactic dictator wizard monk cyborg with a laser sword who has a castle on a lava planet and a space station the size of the moon that blows up planets, and that’s not even getting into the fact that he has the voice of Mufasa. Darth Vader is an icon, plain and simple, and if you think his status is all surface-level, well, this will hopefully show you there’s more to him.

Actor: There are a lot of people who put in the time to bring Vader to life, but let’s just go over the most notable actors. A lot must be said of David Prowse, the man in the suit during the original trilogy; while James Earl Jones’ voice certainly did a lot of work towards making Vader as intimidating and cool as he is, Prowse’s physical presence should absolutely not be understated. He’s the one who does the movements, who walks into the scenes, he was the one physically there, and it really cannot be said enough that he is a key aspect of why the original Vader worked, even if his voice was nowhere near intimidating enough.

Jones, of course, had a voice that was intimidating enough, and while Prowse brought the physical intimidation, Jones brought the vocal brilliance. Vader’s voice is so oft-arodied and iconic, and it’s all thanks to James Earl Jones’ stellar performance. IT’s just absolutely legendary no matter which way you cut it, to the point where even when he’s portraying a freshly-christened Vader who is still in the mindset of a whiny Anakin and screaming a massive NO to the heavens, he’s still awesome.

Of course, that does bring us to Anakin Skywalker, portrayed by Hayden Christensen, and who is the most divisive actor who played Vader, albeit in his pre-cyborg form. I think a lot of the problems Christensen was criticized for while portraying Vader in the prequels was due to Lucas and his poor direction, and not due to any inherent fault on his part, as Christensen is a good actor otherwise. Case in point: any scene in Revenge of the Sith where Christensen does not have to speak and instead has to rely on giving evil glares or just looking intimidating works. I think he does a great job in Revenge of the Sith overall, and his portrayal of Anakin definitely works best in that prequel due to him really selling the frustration of his superiors not taking him seriously or trusting him, which makes his eventual slide into villainy after putting his trust in Palpatine a lot easier to swallow.

Motivation/Goals: Vader’s motivations and goals are not exactly where he shines, as it is pretty standard evil overlord stuff: he wants to crush the rebels, serve his master, and do whatever needs to be done to ensure that the power he has does not get taken away. It’s standard stuff, and even at the time it likely wasn’t a wholly original idea, but part of the reason it probably feels so generic nowadays is that so many people in every art form imaginable – books, TV, video games, and other movies – have ripped Vader off to the point where he almost appears to be a generic doomsday villain if you only look at a summary of his goals. Thankfully, this is far from the case.

Personality: Vader’s personality is where he really shines. Revenge of the Sith paints the portrait of a brilliant, talented young man who is constantly looked down upon and ignored by his peers despite his numerous successes and who is unable to openly be with the woman he loves and who carries his children due to ridiculous rules; is it any wonder he was taken advantage of by a predatory elder and groomed into a psychopath, only realizing far too late what had been done to him? This aspect of his personality has often been criticized by those who hate the prequels, but I think it is important to show that Vader was once a normal, frustrated young man who honestly had good intentions and wanted to protect others, because it helps make his eventual turn away from the Dark Side and redemption at least be a little believable.

Once he truly becomes the Vader we all know and love, he loses sight of who he was and buries himself in the Vader persona. What happened on Mustafar with Padme and Obi-Wan broke Anakin, and so he truly throws himself into the Darth Vader identity. He becomes cold, ruthless, and downright terrifying, with only brief glimpses to the cornier, kinder persona that the man who hates sandf with a passion once had, the moment where he makes a lame pun in Rogue One being the perfect example of the cheesy Anakin of the prequels shining through if only for a brief moment before Vader’s final scene in Rogue One shows that Anakin has once more been suppressed and the terrifying Vader persona is out in full force, with the real Anakin only breaking through in the end to restore balance to the Force.

Final Fate: Vader, in a final act of heroism, picks up Palpatine and tosses him down into a pit to save the life of his son Luke. Ultimately, this means that Vader fulfilled that prophecy from so long ago and restored balance to the Force, redeeming him in the eyes of his son and allowing him to become one with the Force itself and stand beside his former mentors Obi-Wan and Yoda in the final scene. It is a bit cheesy and even a little hard to swallow if you think too hard, but come on, it’s a fun space opera where good triumphs over evil and true love prevails, so just let Anakin have his little redemption.

Best Scene: The scene in which he emerges from the pitch black hallway in Rogue One and mercilessly slaughters a group of rebels with absolutely no effort, washing away decades of diminishing returns and undermining of his threat level in under a minute as the franchise reestablishes Vader as the horrifying threat he originally was.

Best Quote: Can it really be anything other than the (at the time) mind-blowing reveal he drops on Luke in The Empire Strikes Back after Luke accuses him of killing his dad? Say it with me now:

“No, I am your father.”

Some of you probably said it wrong, but I can assure you the line written above is exactly as it was said in the movie.

Final Thoughts & Score: There’s honestly no denying the level of impact Darth Vader has had; I’d say he’s up there with characters like Mickey Mouse and Mario, just an instantly identifiable character anyone off the top of their heads can name. George Lucas struck gold when he came up with this guy, that’s for sure. Is it any wonder that there are so many characters all across fiction who draw inspiration from Vader?

Vader stands tall as one of the greatest creations in pop culture, and though characters that copy him tend to offer diminishing returns – with a few notable exceptions, of course – he definitely is a wonderful source of inspiration, especially when it comes to designing a character who is still interesting and absorbing despite having seemingly simple, cliched motives. And while it is true Vader comes off as a bit cliched these days because he pretty much wrote the book on a lot of the cliches attributed to him and his ripoffs, my point still stands, because even in modern times you’d be hard pressed to hear anyone call Vader a poor villain despite his main goal basically being “kill rebels.”

Vader is a rare breed, and so deserves a rare score. He is the only villain as of now I think truly deserves an 11/10. He is the villain other villains wish they could be. He is the most striking character in the entire cast. He’s so downright cool, is it any wonder his own grandson decided to emulate him by becoming his biggest fanboy?

While Vader does ultimately redeem himself in the end, it serves as a culmination of one of the most profoundly tragic character arcs in cinema, as a wide-eyed idealistic boy full of love, hope, and a sense of righteousness is slowly and surely broken down by the world around him and the very heroes he idolized to the point where he is preyed upon by a predatory authority figure who whispers everything he wants to hear in his ear and offers him something he never got before: respect… and then from there, his life spirals downward ever further, until he ends up being utterly consumed by hatred as he burns alive on an alien planet before the man he considered a friend and a brother, the knowledge that his wife feared him in his mind as he was fried to a crisp; and when he is finally brought back as a cyborg, his first moments awake again are shaken by the revelation his wife is now dead, and he is responsible. And then from his lowest point, we see Vader climb again into the light, extremely slowly, until that final choice he makes where he can either do the right thing as he was always meant to or continue subjugating the galaxy that beat him down and abused him.

The fact he chose to be good in the end despite everything in his life prior, despite all of the crimes he committed, really makes him a far more interesting character than if he had been straight-up evil to the core. Instead, he is the ultimate darkly tragic fallen hero given one last shot of redemption in the arms of death. It’s beautiful in the cheesy, dramatic way only Star Wars can be, and I think that more than anything is why Vader has endured as a cultural icon, because at his core he is everything beautiful, tragic, and cheesy about Star Wars rolled into one awesome, black-clad Sith Lord.

#Psycho Analysis #Darth Vader #Star Wars