Quote by Just_A_Guy_You_Know
I have to respectfully disagree with you on Darth Vader. Sure, he's a ruthless murderer who has committed genocide against entire planets, but he's like a general in the military who must believe that he is in the service of a greater good (the empire). I believe that Vader is largely motivated by political desire to unify and bring stability to the galaxy. The Rebels are the enemies of law and order, from this perspective, a force of entropy that seeks to undo the accomplishments of the empire, and spread chaos. Essentially it's a colonial agenda of civilizing the barbarians by violently establishing power and authority over them in order to educate and enlighten them about the correct order of things. Yet, even the colonists who committed awful atrocities against native populations did not do so because they were 'pure evil'. In fact, most of them believed themselves to be righteous and glorifying God (or the Force) in their actions.
Of course, I'm talking just about the original trilogy. You could also point to the prequels and Anakin's poor broken heart, but I found that to be less convincing as a motivation for Vader's 'evilness,' and was handled very clumsily by everyone involved. Honestly, I think Vader has had time between being recruited to the dark side, and the beginning of Episode IV to do quite a lot of mourning work, and to come to terms with the traumatic events of Episode III. There might be some unresolved grief issues (he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who is going to go see a therapist about his problems, but that might be a fun spin-off), but the pain of loss is bound to be somewhat less sharp than it was 18 years ago (or however old Luke is when we first meet him). To me, the reason for Vader's 'evil' is far more mundane - he's just doing his job.
I guess I've always been much too enthralled by the simplistic plot of Star Wars to take its political structure any seriously. Was it actually meant to be taken seriously? Because you know, as much as there was a galactic war going on, it's never been fully explained what was at stake other than a vague quest for 'absolute power' and virtuous attempts to defeat it. Hell, we don't even get to apprehend what exactly is 'The Empire', other than some synthetic planet inhabited by grim quinquagenarians (which they affectionately call the Death Star and which happens to be a gigantic weapon of mass destruction, just in case a slow 8-year-old kid might have a hard time grasping that they're the stereotypical bad guys).
Ask yourself what's the focus of these movies: was there ever an in-depth analysis of the context or the characters? We never get to understand what's the planet of origins of humans or how they conveniently came to populate the four corners of the galaxy, Luke's childhood is totally left to open interpretation, we don't even get to discern what-in-fuck is Princess Leia supposed to be the princess of in the original trilogy (I guess they just needed a princess to make her damsel-in-distress moments more [s]clichéd[/s] mesmerizing). And in the specific case of Darth Vader, the only sort of 'character exploration' that's ever offered to us aside from his illustrious "I'm your father" is him dismembering his own son or chocking his officers to death in his spare time. I dunno, but to me the entirety of it all hardly comes across as anything else but a theatrical context to make the lightsaber clashes more epic and engaging.
Look, I enjoyed the ingenuity of these movies just as much as the next guy, but that ought to be one of those most stereotypical works of fiction ever created. Everything about it is highly stereotypical, from the simplistic plot (ie. young man unexpectedly embarks on a journey to save the world and must forge his character through numerous tests) to the characters themselves (ie. prophesied protagonist, unmissable mentor(s), faithful allies, damsel-in-distress, typical villain who's barely human anymore and who compulsorily loves to dress in black). Seriously, any profound imbecile could have guessed which character was going to fill each stereotypical role just by previously observing the movie-posters for a mere 2 seconds:
The whole essence of these movies was to offer the legendary 'eternal battle between good and evil' an inventive spin with amicable robots and colorful lightsabers, and the producers most certainly never attempted to conceal the conspicuous stereotypical nature of it all. Sorry to say, but you establishing parallels with real-world generals and plugging all sorts of intents which were never properly explored in the movies hardly makes it a non-stereotypical saga.
I'm highly curious though, which villain would personify a 'pure evil' villain to you if even Darth Vader himself doesn't?
