up until the 80's people didn't feel the need to make their characters cut n dried, perfectly good, or completely evil.....a nasty character didn't have to be either redeemed or punished by the end of the film.....this is the trend these days....people are treated like idiots who can't handle any ambiguousness at all....like we'll all become serial killers if we see something we have to think about that isn't spoon fed according to the hollyood rule book....a film like taxi driver will, in all likelihood, never be made again....
so if this is what lucas is in some part doing, i feel my respect for him returning.....he started as a director in the 70's, his peers are coppolla, scorsese etc.....the greedo shoots first thing made me think he had lost that part of him, and was totally playing by the new hollywood rule book....but maybe, just maybe he still has a little of it left in him....
if he does, then hats off, because it would make him a very lonely figure in the current landscape.....
anyway, with that off my chest, queeq, maybe empathetic is a better word than sympathetic?.....just to understand what he might be thinking and feeling, without necessarily condoning or identifying with....i know i get a lot more out of the character now when i watch the ot....before he was more like puss in boots....a pantomime character.....now, it's more like watching johnny boy in mean streets (bad example, best i can come up with at the moment).....but i'm rivetted in disbelief and dread the same way.....
mmmm....the way it works for me, as i said before, is the feeling i get watching johnny in mean streets....maybe ed norton in rounders.....you just want them to not do what they're about to do with every fibre of your being, it hooks me in every time....ben kingsley in sexy beast is a little too unsympathetic to be mentioned here, but that's kind of the effect i'm talking about....and it's a very 70's cinema mindset, as stated in my previous ludicrously overlong post.....
a lot of people made the observation when ep I came out, that for all these little kids anakin is their hero, what kind of effect is it going to have on them when they see what happens later?....scarred for life....but if he kills padme by accident, i will feel more in understanding with his character....you already feel a little sorry for him in those shots of him in the shackles yeah?.....
I meant Vader is kind of a tragic figure in the OT, more so than before.
Maybe sympathetic wasn't the right word. Keep in mind that he's whiny because Palpatine has been telling him the Jedi are holding him back.
In that area, GL hasn't explained everything. To me, its implied that Palpatine has been playing on his vulnerabilities for quite a while, even though its not said outright.
VAder empathetic? When is that? Anakin empathetic? With whom, himself? Yes indeed, not much with anyone else.
And yes, I felt Vader both tragic as well as sympathetic. Someone turning at the end of his life and asking to see his sonmwith his own eyes. I mean, yes, that moment (as well as JW's music) made him both tragic and sympathetic. Actually I felt that was already happening on that bridge on Endor when Luke and Vader talk eye to eye. You feel Vader's good side kicking in, but the Dark SIde is still stronger.
yeah, i get the same vibe on the bridge on endor, and in the lift.....even as a kid i found it weird that vader was almost seeming human to me for the first time, it stood out.....someone else (think it was PVS) was saying that he might start to soften as early as the end of ep IV, and there could be some truth in this....
i think the sympathy will start when he wakes up in the suit at the end of ep III and continue through the original trilogy.....before that my sympathy lies with kenobi for having to put up with the little f****r.....