Anakin Skywalker...Good vs Evil

By DAVID GERMAIN
The Associated PressThe Associated Press

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. May 17, 2005 — The father turned evil. The son didn't. Was Anakin Skywalker the proverbial bad seed, or did he just have a tougher upbringing than his boy Luke?

George Lucas' chronicle of the Skywalker family, which concludes with "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith," makes a nice cinematic case study of the old nature vs. nurture debate. Are good and evil are bred in the bone, or cultivated through life experience?

"Revenge of the Sith" completes Lucas' prequel series about the roots of Anakin, a dashing pilot and Jedi knight who turns to the dark side and is transformed into Darth Vader.

How about it, George? Was Anakin born bad?

"No," Lucas told The Associated Press. "That's why most people got upset about `Episode I.' They said, `Well, he should be a monster.' But he's not a monster. He has sort of heightened skills and awareness, and he's smarter than most people, but at the same time, he makes rather bad decisions."

Lucas chose to start with Anakin's boyhood, showing him progressing from cheery, precocious innocent in "Episode I The Phantom Menace," to churlish, lovesick puppy in "Episode II Attack of the Clones," to twisted terminator in "Revenge of the Sith."

As a prodigy with skills beyond his years, Anakin became seduced by the thought that he was destined for greater things than the average Jedi, said Lucas pal Steven Spielberg.

"I think it was simple ambition that turned him to the dark side," Spielberg said. "The trilogy says to me it's the dangers of that ambition. Look, he was in pod races at too young of an age. In this case, it was sort of the evil result of ambitions, being too ambitious for his own good."

Born into slavery on the desert planet Tatooine, Anakin was a mama's boy raised in a single-parent home never knowing who his father was. Identified by the Jedi as the next big thing, Force-wise, Anakin is whisked away to grow up under the tutelage of such galactic godfathers as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Mace Windu.

As a teenager, Anakin returns to Tatooine and slaughters a band of nomadic "sand people" for killing his mom, the Jedi apprentice's first steps toward a life of malevolence.