How cool would it be if Lord Vader: A Star Wars Story, were to actually be on the way? Don’t get too psyched since it’s not happening at the moment, but with so much material to work with, yes, even within the canon, there’s a ton of ideas that could come to fruition and a few of them that sound really enticing. One has to remember that the movies don’t necessarily come one right after the other. There are spans of time between them during which a lot of things could happen, especially considering that the Empire wasn’t idle during these times and Vader and Palpatine were still hunting down the Jedi that had survived Order 66. Plus, there are plenty of story lines that could exist between the prequels and the original trilogy given how old Vader is when he finally becomes one with the Force, meaning that there are battles he could wage, moral conundrums that need to be faced, and many plot lines that could be explored. The overall story of Darth Vader is one that has a lot of twists and turns from the moment he became a lord of the Sith to the beginning of Return of the Jedi. There’s more than enough material for a trilogy, let alone one movie. But the question is whether the fans would really get into it. Even with the obvious answer being “of course” there’s still a bit of caution to be observed since toying around with Vader’s story line could easily go the way of the current trilogy if someone decides to go by ‘their version’ of things.
That may or may not have been another dig at Rian Johnson but until the last one is in he’s kind of earned the vitriol that Star Wars fans have levied at him and Kathleen Kennedy largely because the two of them attempted to do a great deal of damage to the Star Wars saga in the name of doing something innovative. With Vader though a story based around his life and many misdeeds would need to be handled with a fair amount of respect and even trepidation if only because he happens to be one of the favored characters of many fans and isn’t a character that people want to see changed that much since the prequels are, like it or not, canon at this point since there’s no disentangling them from the original story. One character has already been messed with to the point of almost ruining him, though thanks to J.J. Abrams he was brought back from the brink and at least given the persona of a wise old Jedi master back. The idea of screwing up Darth Vader sounds like something that would all but ruin the career of any director that was seen as responsible since despite being more than just the armor and the evil acts, Vader isn’t really that complicated of an individual. He grew up as a slave and had obvious issues with authority and that showed as he continued to grow. The more he was pressed the more he pushed back until it was obvious that no one was going to get through to him that patience was the name of the game when it came to life and that he had little of it.
The fact that Vader’s been powerful since the time he was still Anakin Skywalker is obvious, but that kind of power without the necessary restraint, which the Jedi were just barely able to give to him, is more than a little dangerous and was bound to eventually break loose and become absolutely destructive. Unfortunately once he was freed he was even worse since with his power running unchecked he did a lot more damage than he would have had he stayed with the Jedi and ended Palpatine’s life, or allowed Mace Windu to do it. In truth, Anakin was a young man whose heart was bound to remain clouded until something or someone came along to give him a spiritual slap to the senses and remind him that loss is in fact a part of life, that no matter how much power he acquired he couldn’t have possibly saved his mother, or Padme, or anyone for that matter. Anakin was an individual that was bound to head down a dark path if only because despite whatever his mother might have taught him, there was still a void in Anakin that couldn’t be filled since he didn’t understand it and didn’t want to apparently. He wanted things to be the way they needed to be, the way he wanted, and he wanted the power to make life better for himself and his mother. Of course what he would sacrifice to gain that power made his wants and desires irrelevant in the long run. All in all though a Vader story would a lot of fun to see.
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