I saw Revenge of the Sith for the fourth time yesterday, and it's still just as awesome as the first time I watched it at the midnight showing.

The movie completely blew me away. The opening sequence was spectacular. The plot flowed throughout the movie, and every scene was important to the story, something the other two prequels lacked. And the acting was much improved.

One of the biggest things I had an issue with, the first time I saw it anyway, was I still didn't feel Anakin's turn was completely explained. I felt he turned too quickly, like one moment he was good and the next he was evil. With repeated viewings, however, it became much clearer. Though it is not stated in the movies or the books, what follows is my explanation for Anakin's thought process.

For three years Anakin had two mentors, Obi-Wan (and the Jedi) and Chancellor Palpatine. He came to trust both them but for different reasons. He trusted Obi-Wan and the Jedi because they had taught him for thirteen years. Anakin had learned the principles of the Jedi order, and he knew they were the most moral way to use his powers.

In contrast, he trusted Palpatine because Palpatine told Anakin what he wanted to hear. Despite his knowing that his powers should only be used to help others, Anakin still had desires deep down to use his powers for himself. When he came to Palpatine the first time in Attack of the Clones, he was like any other teenager. He knew what was the right thing to do, but he still wanted to do the wrong thing; he just needed an excuse to allow himself do the wrong thing. It's like knowing you should eat carrot sticks for a snack but still wanting to eat cookies instead. If someone hints that by eating the cookies there would be none left for someone else to eat (so you are helping others by only giving them the option of carrot sticks for a snack), then you might feel justified for making the wrong choice. In the same way, Palpatine tells Anakin for three years that it's okay to want power. He tells him it's okay to get angry sometimes. It's okay to want revenge.

When someone tells us what we want to hear, we tend to like them and trust them immediately, and Anakin was no different. He trusted Palpatine because he seemed like a good man trying to keep the Republic together, and (bonus!) he was telling him things he wished the Jedi would say.

So for years Anakin learns and grows from both of these sources.

Now we come to the present (Revenge of the Sith). The Jedi are becoming wary of the Chancellor because of all the power he wields, so when Palpatine appoints Anakin to the Jedi Council, the Jedi take their chance, and they ask Anakin to spy on the Chancellor. To Anakin, this is like one parent asking him to spy on the other parent because he thinks of both them as such. In addition, they are asking him to do something that goes against what they've been teaching him. So this added with his anger at not being made a master makes him distrust the Jedi a little bit.

Then he has the dream about Padme dying. This dream is incredibly similar to the dreams he had about his mother before she died, which leads him to think that Padme's death is imminent as well. He loves her just as much as he loved his mother, so he wants to do everything in his power to save her from his mother's fate. So when Palpatine tells him that there is a way to learn how to stop people from dying, he naturally perks up and values his relationship with him a little bit more.

(Continued in Part II)