Briefly:
We have a familiar, friendly character who can’t forget or escape the memory of their non-father father-figure and the lessons they tried to impart regarding the way the extraordinary ought to behave. They are extraordinary, and they do what they can to be moral and upright and to help the common man. They have a colleague that they admire, another extraordinary person, who they believe may be more extraordinary even than themselves.
Except that this colleague mixes his extraordinary work with his love for his wife, while at the same time allowing his lust for power and success to lead him to take risks that endanger his morality, his professional standing, and which result, in the end, in the tragic death of his wife. The guilt, grief, and trauma of those risky choices and results in turn push the colleague over the edge, turning him to use his extraordinary abilities for evil, and to an obscene and obsessive drive for power.
In Spiderman 2, the extraordinary character, when forced into battle with a colleague he cares about and believes can be turned back to the side of the good, manages to overcome. The extraordinary character does what he needs to do, even though he has to battle his old colleague to the death. The evil, power-crazed colleague is able to see the error of his ways before it’s too late, barely able to overcome his evil nature, but he makes the choice and sacrifices himself for the good of all.
In Star Wars, the extraordinary character is forced to do battle with the colleague he cares about, who he believes can be turned back to the side of good, again for the good of people everywhere, and in a kill-or-be-killed fight. Unfortunately, the extraordinary character cannot bring himself to go far enough, and the evil, power-crazed colleague is not killed, only crippled and trapped in a prison of evil expectations, and the extraordinary character runs away scared, and people everywhere are killed and enslaved for decades.
In both cases the extraordinary characters witnessed the dangerous transformation to the side of evil, and had an opportunity to prevent it, and even to end the evil much earlier by being willing to fight to the death sooner. I’m sure there’s more here, but I lost my notes and I don’t have time to develop this right now.
A proper comparison is deserved.
