This Year's Model of Humanity

There's a generational leap between Episode Three and Episode Four -- I believe that nineteen years is the most common figure used. This leap enables us to go from the line of Obi-Wan-Anakin-Padme to the triangle of Han/Leia/Luke.

In The Phantom Menace and then A New Hope, it's about introducing these three characters to each other. We get to watch Obi-Wan meet Anakin Skywalker and we get to see Anakin hit on meet Padme. We get to see Luke meet Han and Leia.

It's so interesting that the thing we hear about Anakin is that, at nine, "he's too old", when it just strikes me that he's far too young. He's old enough to have gotten attached to his mother, but not old enough to have learnt how to let go. We meet both Luke and Anakin with the desire to leave, to make something of themselves, but Anakin is, for all his power, a child.

The thing that I'm loving about the SW saga is that there are several characters threads that can be followed all the way through. The most obvious, in retrospect, is the tragedy-laced story of Anakin Skywalker, but there is also the Skywalker Saga; the Rise and Fall of Palpatine; the Unlikely Comic Adventures of Artoo and Threepio; the maturation of Obi-Wan Kenobi, from apprentice to mentor to friend; and then there's the theme of love.

In the end, the love that is most important is familial love -- not love that is necessarily blood-based, but love that defined by the characters themselves in terms of that kind of relationship. Overall, the love that matters most is the father-son love of Anakin and Luke. Luke's love interest ends up being his sister, and this makes sense to both of them. And, of course, there's Obi-Wan's confession -- "You were my brother, Anakin, I loved you." It is this love, self-identified familial love, that drives the positive aspects of the saga. Romantic love is shown as a potential snare (Anakin/Padme) and overwhelming, and only to be trusted when it becomes selfless (Han/Leia) and is not the center of the universe.

Which brings me to the thought that I kicked this off with -- in the overall Republic to Empire comparisons, I place Anakin as equaling Leia. Luke is Padme, and Han is Obi-Wan. Outwardly, Anakin and Luke appear to be much alike -- they're both blond boys from Tattooine. And Leia and Padme also seem to be alike, both being brunette politicians from peaceful planets.

In the Republic Trilogy (RT), Anakin is the center focus of the other main characters. Anakin is the one that Palpatine tries to manipulate, Anakin is the one that Padme falls in love with, Anakin is the one that Obi-Wan falls in love with loves like a brother. It's all about Anakin, emotionally-speaking.

However, in the Empire Trilogy (ET), Luke is not the love interest. In the RT, Anakin was both the hero and the love interest, and (interestingly), in the world of SW, this appears to be an impossible conflict. The directional pulleys are set too widely apart, and to be a Jedi requires an entirely different sort of love as being the romantic interest. In the ET, Anakin's role is split up in his two children, and thus they can balance out the conflict. Instead of the two impulses tearing one person apart, the two people can lean on each other for strength.

As Angel taught me, it's all about balance. You lose that, you lose.

Anakin's entire purpose seems to be to bring balance (judging solely from the movies).

He never personally resolves the conflict of personal love versus universal good (even in the end, he chooses personal love -- it just happens that it's the right thing to do this time around). But he destroys Palpatine, comes to peace with himself, and brings into the world two people who can, together, provide that balance.

So, what about Padme?

Again, what we see in her character shows a tremendous lack of balance -- in RotS, she loses herself in her husband. Because of her wish for personal love, she ignores the danger signs, telegraphed in the meadow scene, where Anakin confesses that he sees nothing wrong with a dictatorship, and she lets him laugh it off as a tease. Because he makes her feel like a person and not a senator, she ignores the things he does that aren't in line with her personal morals. Her love for Anakin does end up destroying her, just as she feared that it would. But her steadfast love finds fertile ground in Luke, and her clear-eyed bravery is the forerunner of Leia's strength. The mother lives in her children, and though, like Anakin, Padme failed to find a balance between the personal and the universal, in the end, she is right. There was always still good in Anakin.

Now, the interesting thing about Obi-Wan and Han is how they are the embodiment of the best of what their respective time periods have to offer. They're [Jedi/smugglers] with hearts of gold. Also, they are the older 'not quite mentor's of their respective time periods (And, of course, Obi-Wan is Luke's Qui-Gon, but Luke was in a place where his dead mentor could talk to him and he could handle it).

I recently watched the second season of the Clone Wars and was delighted to hear Obi-Wan echo something that Leia would say later to Han. Because Anakin and Obi-Wan are the Leia and Han of the RT. They're the ones that are bantering about, while Anakin and Padme have a much less... oblique relationship. It's always hugely significant to me, the difference between the initial Anakin/Padme "I love you" scene and the Leia/Han one. Namely, that Anakin is surprised and pleased and thrilled -- and very open about it, while Han stays fairly cool about it all.

Hmm. Not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but I wanted to set down some of the thoughts that I'm having on the saga. All of this very much informs my characterization choices in stories, as well, if that is of interest.