of course, but better quality for defeating the emperor doesn´t make you the strongest.
actually vader died killing the emperor (who actually resurrected in the expanded universe)
...anyway have you ever thought on ob1´s line in ANH "if you strike me i´ll be come more powerful you can imagine" or something like that, doesn´t it make him stronger, living through the force and going anywhere he wants?
and then in ROTJ yoda becomes a spirit like obiwan, so yoda also.
and then anakin did the same.
are jedi spirits so strong and powerful? are they any powerful? if they are, what does their power do? or how can they use it?
No, it does not mean that Anakin was necessarily the strongest because he beat Palpatine. That is always a false analogy.
The reason he could beat Palpatine was that he was the CHosen One. Purely from that basis, he might have been more powerful or he might not; it was being the Chosen One that counted.
To Jedi Fernando :
I agree with what you say about Luke being the motivating reason for Vader to attempt to kill the emperor; it was the love for his son which awakened the dormant good deep inside ( love is a positive emotion and all that ), that gave Vader the impetus to attack the emperor, although he was himself badly beaten and wounded. And I agree with you that it is because Vader was impelled by a positive emotion when he attacked the emperor, that he succeeded; had he tried to do it for some other, probably selfish reason, he may not have succeeded because he would have been using the dark side.
I think therefore, that is was Anakin's inherent goodness at his core, which the emperor could not remove, although he did manage to convert Anakin to the dark side, that proved to be his own downfall. ( *) - i've just put an asterisk here because I want to come back to this point later.
To Ush :
I stand corrected about what I said about the " bringing balance " line after having read your Lucas quotes; it IS a fundamental tenet in most eastern religions / philosophies that the universe's existence is based on the principle of duality / opposites; good/evil, light/dark, heat/cold, strong/weak etc. etc.
and the interplay of the opposites; both are neccessary or the universe would cease to exist. So you're quite right about your interpretation of the " bringing balance " line; neither the light side or the dark side being dominant over the other but in " balance ".
But there's a slightly different point that I want to raise here ( again I do not intend to arrogantly state that I am right, it's just my personal, subjective view point ) -
that, QUALITATIVELY speaking, the light side is more POWERFUL/STRONGER than the dark side, that just as opposites / duality are a fundamental natural law in the universe, so also it is a fundamental law, that ultimately, in a clash of light - dark / good -evil, good always prevails over evil - REGARDLESS of whether, on a universal level, the forces are in balance or they are not because either the light side or the dark side is more widespread than the other.
Coming back to the point where I put the ( * ), this is why Vader was ultimately able to triumph over Palpatine; because although he was a sith lord, seduced by the dark side, " twisted and evil, more machine than man ", he was still, at his deepest core, Anakin Skywalker, the good one; and it was Anakin that surfaced over the evil Vader personality, ( because of the emotion of love for his son ), that attacked the emperor; and THAT is why he won, because good prevails over evil, by nature. So Jedi Fernando is quite right about that point - had it not been good attacking evil, but instead Vader i.e. evil attacking evil, for selfish purposes in some different circumstance, he may not have been able to succeed; ( although somehow I still can't see Palpy overcoming a seven foot tall sabre wielding unwounded Vader
with his dark force lightening and force tricks ); maybe you could say that Darth Sidious was the more powerful sith lord, but Anakin Skywalker, jedi knight, had the light side power within him and his exceptional strength with the force because of highest midichlorean count, to overcome the master sith lord Darth Sidious ( highest midiclorean count with the exception of Palpatine - I'll give you that point JediFernando - but I feel that the argument about us not knowing much about Palpatines origins therefore he may have a higher count is rather technical/theoretical - I can't see Palpatine having a higher midichlorean count than Anakin - if you take the spirit of the script, it's obvious that the whole thing of " highest midichlorean count, including Yoda " was part of the script to convey that Anakin has a unique, special strength with the force that NOBODY else has .)
haakun did say it nicely; we all have our valid arguments; some of the points made by Ush do make sense; some others, to me, don't; and vice versa I'm sure. So I guess it will boil down to personal opinion; but I hope that a lot of these questions are clarified by Lucas one way or another, either in interviews, or through the remaining 2 Star Wars movies.
Well, obviously the ultimate triumph of good is a main theme of the movies, otherwise he wouldn't have made them.
As you know, GL talks about symbiosis all the time. In the final analysis, the bad guys lose not because they lack strength, but because they lack the symbiotic balance that GL believes is vital to all things. As I say, he calls the Sith the 'antithesis of symbiosis'.
In the end, they dug their own grave.
Well, anyway, that seems to settle all that. I see from the poll that most people tip Vader to be top dude, anyhow.
I'm still hoping that, perhaps in episode III, something about all this wil be made clearer.
We are still left with the fact that the script notes and semi-canon sources clearly say Palpatine is stronger, so I'll continue to believe that, as I guess you will all beleive your own thing.
just wanted to say that im happy we accomplished (well i know i did) some good stuff with this thread.
first i was in favor of vader but then i realised why not palpatine and then again with vader. Many stuff about your points of view convinced me one way and many other facts the other.
At the end we all had many valid points and kept a reasonable personal point of view. which i think is the right thing, we áren´t all the same and dont think the same way.
I keep myself in favor of Vader, or I should say Anakin, coz how harmax said it was the Jedi Master who killed the emperor, not Vader, a sith.
great discussion guys, i´ll be very happy to discuss another topic with you.