I kind of saw it all as setting up his downfall. He seems to have a natural tendency to the flaw of pride, which would be further enhanced by the fact that he's one of the best in his career and has been told a lot that he's the fulfiller of a prophecy centuries in the making and become the ultimate Jedi. Also, I don't think that Anakin is the main character of TMP. I kind of thought Qui-Gon was; he's the one in charge of the mission, and the story focuses more on him deciding what to do when he thinks he's found the the Chosen One then it does on Anakin in this capacity. So, I don't see it as quite the same deal with the other major Jedi characters, Luke Skywalker and Rey, were time is taken to set up the skills they demonstrate, since in those cases they are the lead characters (like how we see Luke uses a rifle before we see him holding his own in a firefight, or how Rey's ability to use a quarterstaff well translates into her being able to know a few basics for lightsaber combat).
That is another thing that TMP could use was a bit more of a main character focus, because it shifts a bit from Qui-Gon focus to Anakin, but doesn't really seem to give them the weight like Luke or Rey, as you discuss. We don't really have a sense of these people in their daily lives.
Also, I agree that Anakin should totally be a Greek style tragedy in his tale, with hubris being his downfall. As I said in many posts, the fundamental elements of the fall of Darth Vader (as Lucas described it) are very Greek in their design. The problem is, we don't see anything that makes us want Anakin to succeed other than "Dark Side=bad."
I suppose, although I saw the theme of the movie more as showing characters making good and bad decisions in a bad situation that's far worse then they could've realized and the ethics of that. For example, Qui-Gon was right about Anakin being the Chosen One, but was it right for him to insist on training him even if the Council said "no" (not to mention if it was the right call period, given how things turned out in the later movies!).
This is a good point, and symbiosis doesn't have to be the central theme, but it certainly could have been one that was woven throughout and added a greater overall sense of
Midichlorians are not going to destroy America.
Hey, thanks
Not really the same thing. The Gungans & the Naboo have an ecological connection because they share a planet, while the midi-chlorians are quite literally biological, intracellular symbiotes.
That really isn't my point nor was I trying to say that they needed to be exactly, one-to-one, analogues of each other. The larger theme of "symbiosis" was more my point, that in the shared benefit of individuals working together.
You're not wrong though; the way they used it as "proof" of Anakin's preternatural abilities was a lazy move. Mostly because prior to that point, the concept hadn't even been introduced to the viewers, so it's significance is bound to fall flat.
Bit of a catch-22 though since what we do see of Anakin's abilities (his piloting skills, intuition, remote viewing and implied foresight) also lacks any real context since we have no idea what a force user his age would normally be capable of and thus no way to directly compare.
So in all fairness, though the execution certainly leaves a lot to be desired, from a pure plot mechanics POV I can't see how else this could have been conveyed within the story that was being told.
Like a lot of the prequel's flaws, it's a fundamental one and "fixing it" is nowhere near as simple as people seem to think. Most of them require a square-one rewrite of the whole trilogy.
Yeah, it's an endemic problem to the plot of the overall film that would require an entire rewrite, I agree.
That said, I think it would have been nice to see Anakin have abilities that he couldn't quite explain or use the Force without thinking about it. A great moment could have been in the pod race when the cable comes loose and he uses the tool to grab it. It would have been neat to see him
Before the prequels, it was assumed that Anakin would have started out older. Slightly younger than Luke when he meets Yoda, but still a late teen at the youngest. We were not prepared for a ten year old pilot. Without certain types of camera focuses and things like zooms, close up slow motions, or sound tiggers, it it really hard to show off what they said Anakin was doing in the pod race and later. I could guess something like "Seed mode" in later Gundam series, or some maybe something like Charlie Evans in Star Trek. But those don't seem to be Lucas' action, "faster, more intense" style of directing. Also it might just be they couldn't get that across and then added the midichlorian scene to make up for it. Because the only other scene that fits is Anakin accurately reading Mace's PADD device under testing as well as Yoda reading him. His flying skills at the Battle of Naboo come off like luck and survival skills rather than the Force.
I agree with most of this. I think that there is possibility to show Anakin using the Force in a way that he isn't aware of it, but it requires a little bit different style of directing.
