We've been watching Star Wars a lot around here lately - those of you who know me won't be surprised. Brianna and I were talking about the series a few nights ago and the subject of Darth Vader came up. Brianna just recently saw the third episode "Revenge of the Sith" and we were talking about how Anakin becomes Darth Vader and I said something about how it was too bad that he became a bad guy
Brianna strongly disagreed with me. I was fascinated to find out that in her eyes Darth Vader was only bad for a little while, but that basically for her he's the good guy who ends up saving Luke.
I think one of the reasons for the disparity is that when I was a kid it was years between when I saw the original Star Wars series. For me there was a long time of fixating on Darth Vader as a bad guy, followed by a revelation at the end of the series that he was in fact Luke's father. Brianna saw the episodes basically one after the other in a very short period of time and in the context of having seen the prequel. For her it's a story of how Anakin goes to the dark side and is then redeemed, which I think is closer to the story that George Lucas sees as well.
