I recently rewatched TPM and AOTC again for the first time since their theater release, and that along with the CGI Clone Wars show makes Anakin’s turn make a sorta sense kinda.
Its the clones, the clones are the key. In TPM although Anakin is a slave and lives in a fairly luxurious dwelling and apparently can even own property and money he makes an offhand joking comment that is terrifying. He says that he along with all slaves in the city have explosive implants in their bodies, if they stray too far…BOOM! In facxt he says he was been using gadgets to try to find his implant as he doesn’t know where it is.
When he first meets Qui Gon he says he had a dream of being a Jedi and coming back to Tattoine and freeing all the slaves, the Jedi and the republic to him represent freedom.
So he becomes a Jedi and lives in the republic, and what does the republic do? It starts using slaves as cannon fodder is what it does. Not only that but slaves that some Jedi like Krell refuse to even addfress by name only by number, disposable men whose lives are meaningless. Being a Jedi no longer stands for anything, they are slave masters. Not only that but they are using slaves to fight a war that is ruining the entire galaxy and killing untold innocents, because the Jedi are so blind they cannot see what is in front of them.
In ROTS Anakin is the only Jedi that gives a shit about the clones, in the opening battle Anakin wants to go back and help the clone manned fighters and Obiwan stops him saying “they are doing their job” I think that shows Anakin is one of the few Jedi to care.
It’s hard to believe he actually cared for the clones and when he didn’t care for the women and children amongst the sand people, nor later the “younglings.”
His mother who was kidnapped and crucified and beaten to a pulp and tortured and raped for a month by the sand people of that tribe just died in his arms, it is safe to say he wasn’t thinking clearly. In fact he regrets his actions not a day later when he confesses to Padme, who is sympathetic.
Keep in mind this is a man who has been a general in a war that has seen a trillion deaths according to wookiepedia, that alters your moral sense. He has had to make strategic decisions that sacrifice lives daily, what are a few thousand Jedi and younglings compared to stopping the war?
To some degree, they imply something similar in the movies and in the TV series. Anakin isn’t all “end slavery forever raaAAAAaaaggfu!” - but there is a big difference in how he treats clones, and people in general, than in how Obi-Wan does (and especially droids).
It’s not that Obi-Wan is a bad man, but he acts like a general. Individual soldiers are a resource to be used to accomplish a goal. Anakin is a warrior himself, and he’s happier down on the front lines fighting alongside his men; there’s the implication that he’d gladly risk his life to save one of them, even if they are turned out in cloning vats. Obi-Wan probbly wouldn’t, unless he had a very good reason to do so.
Obi-Wan fights for the cause. Anakin fights for his people. I heard the movie was bad, but I think the Clone Wars series is pretty good at bringing this across, as well as the sheer scope of the war (battle after battle, army after army, fleet after fleet), and at howing how the Jedi are changing in the face of a brutal and seemingly unstoppable war. They don’t all turn to the Dark Side, but some have, while others became much more aggressive and casual about killing. In that context, it starts to make a lot more sense that Anakin might also fall, if he thought that the Jedi were traitors, and particularly if someone he trusted was pushing him that way.
Plinkett goes into this. In the third movie, Lucas realized he had not actually, you know, shown too much of Anakin being a good hero. So, he has him briefly consider going back to save the endangered clone(s) during the opening space battle.
However, we already pretty much saw that no one cared for them in the previous movie. Remember when the clone pilot dropped them off at the docking bay where they fought Dooku? They got dropped off, ran in, and the ship got blown to pieces seconds later.
As Plinkett put it, “Thanks for the ride, idiots!”
