"Is he a good guy or a bad guy?" My niece & nephew ask this question over & over & over again every time they watch movies & TV shows. They are infatuated over who is good & bad...yet they are only 5 & 3 respectively...so at this age exactly what is their concept of good & bad or better yet Good vs. Evil? At this point in their lives listening to Mommy & Daddy & their teachers I'm guessing must be the definition. A guy hitting a good guy must make him bad in their eyes...yet good guys in fiction & real life frequently fight & hit each other do they not? They seem to draw on what they watch on their plasma TV in the family room these concepts.
Which brings us to the Anakin Skywalker conundrum. I think it's safe to say most of us grew up on an Evil Darth Vader. He was big, dark, sounded scary, & his helmet looked like a Nazi's from WW2. The epitome of human evil on a grand scale (even though Mao & Stalin may just have more kills for the record). He was evil personified. He blew up an entire planet killing Princess Leia's family & people with one shot...& she turned out to be HIS daughter! He almost killed his own son! Yes...in the end it turns out there is still some good & kills his dark lord...but he had decades of innocent blood on his hands. It would be like Goebbels shooting Hitler as the Russians descended on Berlin...would he be any less evil?
Now while we grew up on that Anakin & then as adults 20 some odd years latter see him as a child, then young adult & watch him go bad (serious Mommy issues)...my niece & nephew who have watched all the Star Wars movies a million times each are growing up watching a HERO named Anakin Skywalker on the Clone Wars TV series. He is the greatest Jedi in the universe backed by Clone Soldiers (who become Storm Troopers) defeating evil for the Jedi cause throughout the universe. In their young minds do they realize that the evil Darth Vader is their Clone Wars hero? If not as what age does this become clear? Growing up on him evil to me he's evil...& this is just the story that leads to him going bad...but how do they view their hero...eventually becoming one of the most evil beings in the galaxy? How does it affect their views of right & wrong, good & evil? Our hero's as kids Batman, Tarzan, John Wayne never went bad...the Joker, Goldfinger, Dracula never were good. Most characters we saw go from good to bad or vice versa or back again were as teenagers or older...how many did we grow up on went from such a hero to such evil?
Well there is one... & really think about this one. We all grew up with the Devil as the epitome of evil. He is God & Man's arch-nemesis. The root of all evil. "The Devil made me do it". If you're bad...you will go to Hell with the Devil & be damned for eternity. That's the Devil we all grew up on. But...what if instead we grew on on Lucifer...an Angel. One of God's top Angel's...one of his favorites. What if we grew up on Lucifer doing God's will as children & then later learn the story of his fall or finally put two & two together & realize oh...God's top Angel is the guy who fell to become the Devil. What would our view be of him then? Was the evil always there? Deception has always been one of Evil's greatest weapons. Or is the lesson that any of us...even the best of us can go bad...very bad. So...how exactly does one answer "is he a good guy or bad guy" he's good...for now....?
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