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Good.

If this the kind of thing we're all gonna be doing, then fine, I'll go ahead, I don't like that Harley's gonna be thrown in chemicals, or Superman's attitude in the BvS trailers. I am more often a DC fan and it was the first thing I started watching, but generalizing because they don't like it and blaming them for not responding with bad remarks towards a pretty good trailer isn't winning DC fans anymore points than DC haters. Why does there have to be antagonism on either side? I'm sure we can all be better than that. I'm sorry for my aggressive remarks.

God bless you! God bless everyone!

You're right about all that, Dagen, in the context of what we're given.

Anakin justified all his atrocities in the name of Padme, buying Palpatine's lie that only after he has become powerful in the dark side, will he be able to save her from death. He was absolutely selfish, and I think that's the part I have difficulty buying. In the Clone Wars animated series they touch on Anakin's temper issues, and we see Anakin killing the Tuskens in AOTC.

That's all fine, but it still doesn't properly show a descent into evil for my liking.

From cutting Mace Windu's hand off, to storming the Jedi Temple and killing everyone. He surely knows what he's doing is wrong, but does it anyway. Sure, he loves Padme, but he also loves Obi-Wan, and even if he had disputes with the Jedi, they nonetheless were family. Lucas tried to make Anakin a tragic hero but it didn't work out exactly how I would've wanted. It's just a little too flimsy and abrupt even if they show scattered incidents of temper issues beforehand.

The point of the jedi as they are is to be separate from attachments. They don't do family. Anakin may be like a brother to Obi-Wan, but Obi-Wan doesn't have the attachment that Anakin could have, which causes a disconnect in their relationship. If placed in the same situation as Obi-Wan I don't see Anakin putting the future of the galaxy above those he cares for. It's not so much about who he loves for Anakin, but his powerlessness. His love for Obi-Wan isn't as important for him as his attachment to Padme. Also, you have the feeling of betrayal Anakin perceived from Obi-Wan, not just with the idea that Padme was with him, but also that he was willing to kill him. I don't think there was a tragic hero aspect, so much as a villain with tragic intentions. As the movie displays it, it's not just about, it's not just about his anger. The killing of the tuskens isn't the only point where he starts either, but also with Dooku and with his desire for power, for acclaim and then the ability to save Padme.

So I'd propose a more believable plot on behalf of Palpatine (and for the audience) to convey that the Jedi really are evil and must be taken down. That they indeed have betrayed Anakin personally, and propose a threat to the Galaxy in some way. Some bigger revelation scene where he 'lifts the lid' on what they're up to. In the film it's purely circumstantial that Anakin walks in on the attempted arrest of Palpatine.

Sure, the Padme plot could remain. But in the film it's just that Anakin killed a bunch of people and now his vision of reality is distorted by the dark side. It's all about the moment someone consciously *decides* to make an important life decision. Truly believing the Jedi are evil and must be stopped, with your good old buddy Obi-Wan leading the charge, makes it better in my opinion. You don't think you're being exploited or tricked, and you're not exclusively a blind, lovesick puppy. And that way you're going to embrace the dark side with more conviction.

That takes away from Anakin's villainy for me. He becomes a villain. Not anti-hero or a villain who kills other villains. His actions are selfish, not altruistic in some way or misguided way. I wouldn't call it circumstantial, but I would call it orchestrated by Palpatine.

God bless you! God bless everyone!

I agree with your point about his powerlessness and him justifying himself, but Anakin didn't really offer Obi-Wan a chance, he told him he wanted to become Emperor and that he'd better not stand in his way. The duel between the two former friends was very convincing though.

I think to Anakin, saying, "I you're not with me, then you're my enemy." is his way of offering Obi-Wan to join him. But that might just be my interpretation.

And it was still senseless to me how he wanted to Force-choke Padme' in a matter of minutes after telling her that he doesn't want to lose her.

That's what happens when you're not so much concerned for those you love, but the idea that you're going to lose them. Yoda lays it out pretty well in the scene with Anakin: "Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is." Anakin's attachment to Padme has stopped being about being about his caring for her and more about his greed desire for her, his greed for her in a sense. Thank you for the polite responses! Sometimes prequel defenders can get some harsh reactions from some.

God bless you! God bless everyone!

I suppose it's there Dagenspear, but it all happened too quickly for that to convince me. First Anakin wanted to keep Padme' from dying, then after he helped the Emperor kill Mace Windu, he was happily murdering people around and talking about how he'll rule the Empire and how all who are not with him are his enemies, while after he was defeated by Obi Wan he remained Sidious' apprentice...

I'll be the first to say that the end result was kinda rushed. But he wasn't shown to be happy about anything he's doing. Only when he's confronted by Padme does he start to really double down and justify his actions to himself and her and also, and this is the part that I think is rushed, where he starts to get a power high.

I think his turn to the Dark Side happened with a lot of fanfare and in a flash and to me it was not consistent with his character up to that point that he would become like that and even hate Padme' and Kenobi.

He didn't hate Padme or even Obi-Wan really. He even kinda offered Obi-Wan the opportunity to be on his side. But Obi-Wan rightfully rejected it. Anakin was before that to desire power, to want more acclaim, to want more. Really, if you think about it Anakin's vow to never let himself lose someone again is more about his powerlessness than wanting to save someone he loves.

In conclusion, it was not great character development to me, and they did much better with Darth Vader in the original films where all we knew was that he was the one who killed Luke's father and then it was revealed he was the same person who turned to the Dark Side.

God bless you too!

They kinda had to, by the prequels very nature, show more about Anakin than the original trilogy. Thank you very much!

God bless you! God bless everyone!

In some ways I think Kylo is what Anakin should have been in the prequel era. Conveying that messed up, conflicted headspace. Someone who wants to be dark but really, it's just not for them. But they force it upon themselves anyway.

I've thought the same regarding Anakin and Ren, TDK. In the prequels, Anakin to me felt like someone who was definitely not selfish or had a real tendency for violence, but who was very emotional, something that the Jedi sought to control, and while I enjoyed RotS I still don't buy that he turned into THE Darth Vader from the original movies from the young, impulsive and in love Anakin Skywalker who decided he had enough of following the rules and wanted to gain all the power.

If anything, Padme' dead should've made him realise what he'd done and that he really made the wrong decision in abandoning the Jedi, and not make him go full dark.

Lucas tried to tell an ambitious story in those films centered on him but it didn't quite work.

Anakin specifically became selfish. He became who, because of his emotions, could be violent. Why should have Padme's death made him realize he made the wrong decision. Anakin was exclusively someone by the end of ROTS who wanted justify his bad actions to himself. The whole idea, as it seems, of Anakin is that he makes compromises in what he knows is right to get what he wants. At the end of the day, after everything he's done, Anakin would stand there and justify everything he did to himself. The attitude of self-loathing because of those actions, but justifying himself is basically the attitude that is Vader, not  Kylo Ren's, "I want to be evil, but it bothers me kinda, at times."

God bless you both! God bless everyone!

And then your dumbass comes along and says "oh he's here, but only briefly." But you're either too damn self-righteous or too damn stupid to comprehend the issue with that or with the other sh*t you do that drives everyone else up the damn wall, clearly. Or, more likely, a bit of both. You're almost too ignorant to be pompous but you still make the grade somehow.

I want to say that insulting still isn't necessary with this and that you're both not seeming to come out of this looking very good. Please we can all try to be better than this.

God bless you all! God bless everyone!

Dagen, I think you may need to reread TDKR because Superman didn't "go to work for the government". The government said they were going to take all superheroes out and to make the peace Superman volunteered his services to the government in exchange for the rest of the superhero community being allowed to dive into a hole and pull it in after them. He was just trying to protect his friends. I don't think that's a completely true depiction of Superman as a character but then TDKR is Batman's story, not Superman's.

I don't think I commented on the conditions or the reason for it. I wasn't talking about TDKR either really.

God bless you! God bless everyone!

Double post. Sorry!

God bless you all! God bless everyone!

[THE GOVERNMENT]

Just to summarize, your opinion seems to be that Batman has the right to commit breaking and entering, commit assault, torture perps, tamper with/steal evidence from crime scenes and do all these things without any sort of internal oversight of him and his methods?

But somehow Superman is in the wrong for telling him not to do those things?

By the by, if actual police operated the way you seem to advocate, there'd be riots in the streets. More than there are now, I mean.

That's the fault of the corrupt society. I legitimately do think that breaking man's law can be a necessary action, if you want to do the right thing.

People can love or hate the government but at the end of the day they are the guarantor of civilization.

Now don't get me wrong, a philosophical point can be made that, given his biological origin and his vast superpowers, human laws don't really apply to Superman. I'm not sure I buy that but I've seen people persuasively advance that argument.

The point is that rejecting a government's authority is inherently a crime. It's one Batman commits on a regular basis. Now yes, (A) he does so only on a micro level and (B) there are in-universe justifications for many of his actions. But you're advocating Superman reject THE GOVERNMENT. This is a macro rebellion you're advocating and, oddly enough, would be the fulfillment of every paranoid-delusional claim Lex Luthor has ever made about him.

Do you not see? It looks like Batman v Superman is making a point/counterpoint here. Lex sees Superman as a power-mad rebel and possible conqueror. Batman sees Superman as a threat to the human race.

If Superman goes after Batman using force, he's fulfilling Batman's predictions.

If Superman tells the government to go pee up a rope, he's fulfilling Lex's predictions.

The fact is Batman is the one committing crimes; not Superman. Based on Superman's likely incomplete assessment of the situation, it's a completely justifiable thing for him to tell Batman to back off or face the consequences. That single act is more merciful than anything Batman has been shown to think, say or do at least up to a certain point in BvS.

Based on what we've seen, it's actually remarkably far-sighted (and yes, merciful) for Superman to give Batman a verbal warning.

The point I'm making is that I think that Batman breaking the law, as long as he's not killing people, to fight crime, isn't a justified reason to go after him.

I think people aren't used to, or actually don't like to see Superman being firm and standing up for himself and his values. Perhaps they are used to the cheery, aw shucks interpretations which he gets blasted for as well. As colors says, in many ways big blue is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. He's like the big kid in the playground. If he intervenes, he's a bully abusing his power. If he sits back and lets things play out, people could argue he's equally to blame for whatever happens due to his inaction.

The Superman I like is TAS one. He was firm and stood up for his values. He had a temper, was troubled sometimes, made mistakes, could be reckless, feared his powers. He fought crime, intervened, even told Batman to leave Metropolis. But he didn't try to force Batman to stop being a crime fighter and he shouldn't and he wouldn't have the right to.

It's funny. People say the government connection in TDK Returns makes Superman weak and a lapdog. But when you think about it, if any hero was to be deputised, and properly honoured and respected by authority, it's Superman. Batman isn't a public face and he lacks superpowers. While he's a rags to riches story, I still feel Spider-Man lacks the maturity of a international face for freedom. And let's face it, you need superpowers such as Clark to adequately be a global protector. As said, Supes doesn't see himself as a god. He wants to be at humanity's service. And that doesn't have to equal rolling over on your values. He still has a brain and can make decisions himself.

Working for the government isn't something superheroes should do. They can be corrupt, fickle and hard to get out of, even for someone with superpowers.

God bless you both! God bless everyone!

[legal]

Does he have a legal right? As above, we don't know. But anybody has a moral right to stand up to what they believe to be injustice. Superman sees criminals getting the snot beaten out of them and has a problem with that.

Putting aside law and jurisdiction, how is he factually, morally or any other way wrong there?

Everyone has the right to object to something. No one has the right to order someone to stop fighting crime if they're not murdering people. Superman is wrong for having a problem beating the snot out of criminals. How else is someone supposed to stop criminals?

I think endangering children, inspiring the Joker to return to active duty and assaulting police officers might have figured in there as well.

Funny you should mention TDKR though. Clark warned Bruce. He told him to stand down because sooner or later he'd have to take him out of action. Bruce is the one who ultimately forced that confrontation. Clark tried to avoid and Superman barely fought back. That battle is all on Batman.

Superman said stop. Batman said no. Superman fought Batman because of it. Superman had no right to do it, with government authority or not. Batman isn't to blame for the Joker's actions. The city was under tyrannical psychopath rule. Batman was necessary there. Batman's endangered children for years. The children would endanger themselves and they would get killed a lot more quickly because of it without Batman. If Clark really wanted to avoid it he never would've done anything at all, including telling Batman to stop. To be clear I'm saying that Superman should reject the authority of the government.

One of the things I liked about MOS was that the melodramatic dialogue was kept down to a minimum. Compare that to the last few Batman films we saw, everybody took turns in giving long-winded and pretentious monologues.

The dialogue was kinda more melodramatic than TDKT. Not that those were bad in TDKT.

Right. Using John Byrne's 1986 MOS series as an example again, the only reason why Batman and Superman met each other for the first time was because Supes thought the Caped Crusader was an outlaw, and went to Gotham with the intention of turning him over to the police. When Superman sees something as a threat, he'll act.

Besides, you can easily say that Batman - or any other superhero for that matter- isn't the law either. And if they have no right to interfere with the law and if we overthink it too much, we might as well ask ourselves why would we even bother reading comics or watching movies in the first place.

Batman doesn't have the legal right to interfere, that's true. But he doesn't need to as long as he's stopping criminals and not murdering anybody.

God bless you both! God bless everyone!