Could Anakin's Fall to the Dark Side Have Been Done Better?

[VulcanMindBlown]

I keep hearing from critics of the Prequel trilogy movies that George Lucas wrote Anakin Skywalker as too whiny and immature.

People didn't like how Anakin was portrayed by Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christenson. "He was too whiny and immature..." "I didn't believe that Darth Vader would have come from that character..."

Well, how do people (I'm mostly talking to the critics here) could have rewrote the character of Anakin Skywalker in the first three chronologically numbered movies? As I've said before, sometimes, people who are bullies or join gangs are immature or they had a bad upbringing (usually based on the deficits in their parent(s) doing their job to raise the child.) that led them to the Dark Side are those things and all soft inside....

Do you guys want to pretend that whiny, immature people don't exist? We may not like them, but they exist.

Luke Skywalker was a little whiny when he asked his uncle to go to the Toshi Station... are those same critics of Anakin going to wish that that line was taken out of Episode IV? There's a continuity of genetic lineage. Ulic Qel Droma was whiny in the "Tales of the Jedi" series and I see the parrellels between those characters... Kylo Ren is whinny... do you critics wish he wasn't and those characters were bad***es all the time with no character flaws? We may not like the whinny characters, but their failings are what lead them to or out of the Dark Side.

 

[Venardhi]

Luke whined but was sympathetic, and his heart was in the right place. He wanted to do the right thing, and he was a stand-in for all the small town kids out there who want to escape that provincial life.

Anakin (I'm talking Ep II and III here) was the chosen one, he was experienced, worldly, got the girl, had power and privilege, was a hotshot pilot and a hero already by the time we met him. He couldn't afford to whine. It immediately made him less sympathetic, which made it all the harder to buy into his acceptance of Palpatine's lies or his moral 180 after finding out the truth about him.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Had the character been sympathetic or likeable, the arc would have worked a million times better.

I'm hoping for a big turn in the next Star Wars movies - I want Kylo Ren to turn to the light side. Why? They made me care about the character. Anakin could save vanished midway through Attack of the Clones and I may not have noticed.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Had the character been sympathetic or likeable, the arc would have worked a million times better.

I'm hoping for a big turn in the next Star Wars movies - I want Kylo Ren to turn to the light side. Why? They made me care about the character. Anakin could save vanished midway through Attack of the Clones and I may not have noticed.

Yes, Anakin was adversarial and arrogant right from the beginning of AOTC. That made his journey to the dark side less of an arc and more of a straight line.

 

[fireproof78]

It never felt like Anakin would do anything else but fall to the Dark Side. I never had a sense of what would happen if he made a choice other than joining Palpatine.

 

[Reverend]

Regarding Anakin's behaviour in AotC: I know I've gone on about this before but a detail I feel a lot of people still miss is that contrary to appearances, Anakin doesn't usually whine and pout and act openly belligerent. One would certainly be forgiven for thinking otherwise given how little context is given, but if one pays attention to Kenobi's reaction in that first scene with Padme and contrast it with their interaction in the lift just prior, it should be self evident that this is atypical, if not unprecedented behaviour.
Also note that throughout the film he only does this when Padme is around and he's having his pride wounded. Yeah, it's not a good look for a hero but that's his fatal flaw: he's extremely emotionally vulnerable when it comes to his mother figures (yes, as gross as it sounds, Padme is very much a surrogate mother figure for him.)

I suspect Lucas recognised and attempted to correct this narrative shortfall which is why RoTS opens with Anakin & Obi-Wan mid-mission and working together like a pair of old friends.

Honestly, I think the biggest flaw in this story arc isn't the way Anakin is portrayed but how Padme is utilised. As the trilogy goes on she gets less and less agency and you get the sense that Lucas really doesn't have a crystal clear idea as to how her story interfaces with Anakin's. That's why the "love scenes" are so unconvincing and why Anakin's fall felt so inevitable. Padme felt less like a character and more like a prop. Moved from scene to scene and doing things because that's what the plot requires.

 

[Tosk]

You need go no further than The Clone Wars to see a better written Anakin.

 

[Tuskin38]

I was going to say that, Clone Wars really helps to flesh him out more.

 

[Reverend]

Well sure, but a 100+ episode TV show has a lot more latitude in what it can do in terms of character development than three fantasy adventure movies. Not exactly a fair comparison.

 

[fireproof78]

Also note that throughout the film he only does this when Padme is around and he's having his pride wounded. Yeah, it's not a good look for a hero but that's his fatal flaw: he's extremely emotionally vulnerable when it comes to his mother figures (yes, as gross as it sounds, Padme is very much a surrogate mother figure for him.)

Eh, he's still a bit more snarky and disrespectful in the elevator and in the speeder chase.
It does get worse around Padme, to be certain, but his tone of respect towards Obi-Wan is almost always immediately followed by snarky and sarcasm.

 

[Reverend]

Eh, he's still a bit more snarky and disrespectful in the elevator and in the speeder chase.

That doesn't read as disrespectful to me. It seems like genuinely affectionate banter, with a little sarcastic comment here and there. They're still master and student and there's clearly a little bit of Anakin starting to feel a little chaffed so close to his trials, but not more than there was between Obi-Wan & Qui-Gon. There's no actual hostility there.

It's only with Padme does he ever become openly belligerent, as if he has something to prove. He even does it *to* Padme in front of the Queen when he feels like he's being undercut. I'm not saying it's in any way her fault, she's just a catalyst for this angry, self-hating, insecure version of himself that's been quietly bubbling away beneath the surface ever since he left Tatooine.

 

[fireproof78]

That doesn't read as disrespectful to me. It seems like genuinely affectionate banter, with a little sarcastic comment here and there. They're still master and student and there's clearly a little bit of Anakin starting to feel a little chaffed so close to his trials, but not more than there was between Obi-Wan & Qui-Gon. There's no actual hostility there.

It's only with Padme does he ever become openly belligerent, as if he has something to prove. He even does it *to* Padme in front of the Queen when he feels like he's being undercut. I'm not saying it's in any way her fault, she's just a catalyst for this angry, self-hating, insecure version of himself that's been quietly bubbling away beneath the surface ever since he left Tatooine.

Agree to disagree. Since I saw it in 2002 in the theaters, I read it as disrespectful, especially in the elevator. But, I do see a small point about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. The respect never felt genuine with Anakin to me.

 

[Reverend]

Agree to disagree. Since I saw it in 2002 in the theaters, I read it as disrespectful, especially in the elevator. But, I do see a small point about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. The respect never felt genuine with Anakin to me.

Well, it's been 15 years since then, so why not take another look at it?

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So what's so disrespectful about that? Seem's pretty chill to me, despite Anakin's nervousness.

 

[fireproof78]

Well, it's been 15 years since then, so why not take another look at it?

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So what's so disrespectful about that? Seem's pretty chill to me, despite Anakin's nervousness.

AOTC is my favorite film of the PT-I've seen it a time or two or ten since then

I still read it the same way, perhaps with a touch less snark on Anakin's point. But, "You feel in to that nightmare, Master" I always read as bit more sarcastic than necessary. Or maybe its too flat to really be certain, and that's my dry sense of humor misreading it.

 

[LJones41]

I thought it was done a hell of a lot better than Rey's discovery of her connection to the Force . . . or Kylo Ren's fall to evil.

 

[fireproof78]

It was done a lot better than Rey's discovery of her connection to the Force . . . or Kylo Ren's fall to evil.

We barely saw Kylo's fall so that's not a fair comparison.

Rey was a part of her personal growth and expansion of her worldview. But, she could have turned her back on it at any time. Anakin never felt like he had any agency beyond what was necessary for him to be come Vader.

More succinctly-I felt like Rey was a person vs. Anakin who felt more 1 dimensional.

 

[Tuskin38]

or Kylo Ren's fall to evil.

We haven’t even been told how he fell yet

 

[Reverend]

But, "You feel in to that nightmare, Master" I always read as bit more sarcastic than necessary. Or maybe its too flat to really be certain, and that's my dry sense of humor misreading it.

His line delivery is a little flat because he's pants-shittingly nervous at seeing Padme again, which is why Obi-Wan brought it up: to try and help him relax with a little banter. That's the whole point of this scene.

 

[Tosk]

Well sure, but a 100+ episode TV show has a lot more latitude in what it can do in terms of character development than three fantasy adventure movies. Not exactly a fair comparison.

I'm not saying you can cram hundreds of episodes worth of character into two movies, it was as an example of how to write Anakin better. He is a better written character in every 20-minute episode of the series than he was in either film.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Honestly, I think the biggest flaw in this story arc isn't the way Anakin is portrayed but how Padme is utilised. As the trilogy goes on she gets less and less agency and you get the sense that Lucas really doesn't have a crystal clear idea as to how her story interfaces with Anakin's. That's why the "love scenes" are so unconvincing and why Anakin's fall felt so inevitable. Padme felt less like a character and more like a prop. Moved from scene to scene and doing things because that's what the plot requires.

Y'know, considering how many of Padme's scenes in both AOTC and ROTS hit the cutting room floor (and there's still a few left that haven't been released anywhere), I gotta wonder what was going on. On paper she had as much of a story arc as Obi-Wan or Anakin did, yet on screen it was all pruned to the barest possible minimum. There was nothing wrong with Natalie Portman's performance in the deleted scenes we've seen so far, so what was Lucas's problem?