This is a long post, but I’m eager to hear what people think. There’s plenty of posts on here about why people don’t like the prequels, but I think the main reason is that they fail at their most basic goal: showing how Anakin became Darth Vader. I’ll attempt to get my point across, but it necessarily covers over a thousand words.
What we have here is a tale of three Anakins:
Young Anakin: The Blank
I’m going to compare TPM Anakin to John Connor from Terminator 2. Plenty of similarities between the two:
At first, John seems like a total shit. He steals. He mouths off to his foster parents. He rides some shitty bike around. But his character becomes more sympathetic as the movie unfolds. You learn:
The very thing that initially makes Conner annoying (his arrogance and boldness) is exactly what lets him function as a hero in this story. Now that’s a well-rounded character.
Now we have Anakin. We’re told he’s a slave, but:
He has a pretty nice little house with his own room.
His mother doesn’t seem to work and isn’t poorly treated
He has enough spare time/resources to build racing pods and protocol droids.
He has a little group of friends his own age.
He seems to be let off work to go play at reasonable hours.
Never has a character been more divorced from their reality. He shows a touch of annoyance about his situation, but he doesn’t seem to have father issues or feel unhappy. Honestly, he would seem a little too happy-go-lucky and positive if he was living in a 1950s sitcom.
John Connor’s rounded personality comes from his natural reaction to his situation, and it allows his actions to make sense within the story, and you can totally see how he’d grow into a mature, respected, and successful leader. Anakin's personality is flat and uninteresting because he seems totally divorced from his reality. Where John's character perfectly informs his development, there’s nothing to connect this Anakin to the man he’s supposed to become.
Let’s compare against just one issue in Luke's development:
Maybe young Anakin could have formed such a relationship with Qui Gon and seemed really pissed or upset when he was killed? Instead, he doesn’t really seem to bond with Qui Gon and shows very little sadness at his funeral. His only line is “what will happen to me now?”I guess you could say he talks about wishing he could leave Tatooine, but this doesn't actually come across because his character is so upbeat and positive.
Luke talked about wanting to leave, but his frustration was better conveyed by his obvious reaction to all his friends leaving. On paper, he had a far better life than Anakin, and yet it's his frustrations we feel because his character is well developed and portrayed.
Overall, there’s no narrative strand that connects young Anakin to either old Anakin or Darth Vader. Nothing we are shown of Anakin in TPM connects with his later development or informs his decision to become Darth Vader. He could have been missing entirely from this movie and it would have made no difference. From a story-telling point of view, he’s a total blank.
The Immediate Dark Side
People say the prequels show how Anakin turned to the dark side, but they don’t. When we leave Anakin in TPM, he’s obnoxiously idealistic despite supposedly being in a bad place. When we meet Anakin in AOTC, he’s petulant, mean-spirited, and arrogant. He sticks out like a sore thumb among all these virtuous Jedi.
Just as young Anakin is utterly at odds with his situation as a slave, older Anakin is utterly at odds with his position in this elite group devoted to goodness and order.
Whatever happened to turn absurdly positive and helpful young Anakin into murderous, unpleasant older Anakin is never shown. Even in AOTC, Anakin seems to be spoiling for the dark side. Like it seems as if he was pretty much okay with going dark without the Padme thing. It would have been pretty disconcerting to see Luke Skywalker kill a room full of young children in ROTJ, but I get nothing in ROTS because Anakin already committed mass murder in AOTC. Even when he kills those Tuskans in AOTC, I'm not exactly holding my hand over my mouth thinking 'wow, this seems so out of character for such a noble, pleasant person'. You know, quite the opposite.
There’s a clumsy attempt to make Anakin’s fear of losing his loved ones what makes him turn, but throughout AOTC and ROTS it mostly seems like he’s an arrogant prick who wants to be more powerful for the sake of his own ego.
In no way do the prequels show what happened to turn a good man into an evil henchman. Anything of relevance to that story happened offscreen between TPM and AOTC.
Saying older Anakin was ‘seduced by the dark side of the force’ is like saying ‘I seduced my dog into eating this food’.
The Anakin/Vader Disconnect
Finally, the main problem: Anakin is nothing like Darth Vader.
Vader is cold, collected, and efficient. Yes, he kills people, but the force choke worked because of how impersonal it was. Vader didn’t seem to be getting off on choking Admirals to death; they’d failed him, so he dispatched them with ruthless efficiency.
Vader is ‘a cunning warrior’. We see this in every fight. Against Obi-Wan, he’s relatively cautious. Against Luke in ESB, he’s always baiting Luke into getting angry. In ROTJ, this is even more pronounced.
Beyond that, Vader is generally intelligent, resourceful, and articulate. In the OT, he isn’t important to the Empire because he’s strong with the force or a good fighter. It’s his ability to get shit done that makes him useful – he’d probably have been just as useful if he had no force abilities at all. Vader is just as cunning fighting a large-scale campaign as he is crossing sabres with a Jedi.
Then we have Anakin, who honestly seems borderline retarded. He’s laughably easy to mislead and never shows an ounce of intelligence. Far from a ‘cunning warrior’, he routinely rushes in without thinking and gets his ass kicked. He’s clumsy with his words and seems utterly incapable of concealing his anger or keeping it in check when venting will clearly turn people against him.
While Vader is an intelligent adversary who rarely seems to use his force abilities to help the Empire, Anakin is a complete buffoon who just happens to have a high midichlorian count. One of the key problems with the prequels is that force ability is only shown through fighting, so Anakin’s sole virtue seems to be his skill with a lightsabre. He just flies off the rails and starts it to kill anyone, which completely goes against what we know of Vader- in the OT, Vader only ever deigns to use his lightsabre when he’s fighting another Jedi.
Anakin is the pretty much the polar opposite of Darth Vader. No matter how hard I try, I cannot look at Darth Vader and see Anakin. Some people will say the years between ROTS and ANH changed Anakin into Darth Vader, but that’s a huge change, and it kind of invalidates the entire point of the prequels since there’s no connection between these two characters.
The Bitter Conclusion
So, there you go. A lot of people would call this nit-picking, but I just see it as exploring the underlying issues. Anakin’s development is as poorly written as his ‘I hate sand’ speech.
On a scene-by-scene basic, he’s insufferable. Over the course of all three films, and as a bridge to the originals, he’s the most inconsistent character I’ve ever seen.
What we have here is a tale of three Anakins:
- Ultra-Positive TPM Anakin
- Murderous Idiot AOTC/ROTS Anakin
- Intelligent, Nuanced OT Darth Vader.
Young Anakin: The Blank
I’m going to compare TPM Anakin to John Connor from Terminator 2. Plenty of similarities between the two:
- John Connor was 10. Anakin was 9.
- Portraying characters already established as important in previous movies
- Portraying characters prophesied to save humanity/the galaxy.
- Come from bad places.
At first, John seems like a total shit. He steals. He mouths off to his foster parents. He rides some shitty bike around. But his character becomes more sympathetic as the movie unfolds. You learn:
- His mother is in a mental institution after trying to convince him of what must have seemed ridiculous lies. This would fuck with his mind while giving him a sense of self-importance and, more importantly, a sense of responsibility.
- He grew up off the grid. This is why he seems unable to adjust to the normal rules of society.
- His mother constantly alienated potential father figures by telling them about the future. This reinforces his lack of trust in authority figures and his sense of abandonment.
The very thing that initially makes Conner annoying (his arrogance and boldness) is exactly what lets him function as a hero in this story. Now that’s a well-rounded character.
Now we have Anakin. We’re told he’s a slave, but:
He has a pretty nice little house with his own room.
His mother doesn’t seem to work and isn’t poorly treated
He has enough spare time/resources to build racing pods and protocol droids.
He has a little group of friends his own age.
He seems to be let off work to go play at reasonable hours.
Never has a character been more divorced from their reality. He shows a touch of annoyance about his situation, but he doesn’t seem to have father issues or feel unhappy. Honestly, he would seem a little too happy-go-lucky and positive if he was living in a 1950s sitcom.
John Connor’s rounded personality comes from his natural reaction to his situation, and it allows his actions to make sense within the story, and you can totally see how he’d grow into a mature, respected, and successful leader. Anakin's personality is flat and uninteresting because he seems totally divorced from his reality. Where John's character perfectly informs his development, there’s nothing to connect this Anakin to the man he’s supposed to become.
Let’s compare against just one issue in Luke's development:
- In ANH, Luke clearly longs for a father figure. He’s desperate to hear about his own father, and he clearly latches on to Kenobi as a father figure. That father figure is then killed by the man Luke thinks killed his real father.
- In ESB, part of Luke’s desire to become a Jedi stems from a heroic view of this father, a part of his motivation is to defeat Vader. He fails to do that, then learns that this is his real father.
- In ROTJ, Luke’s initial desire to become a Jedi because of his father is complicated by Yoda’s insistence that he needs to kill his real father (“then, and only then, a Jedi will you be”). He then needs to fight his father while keeping his anger in check and attempting to bring him back.
Maybe young Anakin could have formed such a relationship with Qui Gon and seemed really pissed or upset when he was killed? Instead, he doesn’t really seem to bond with Qui Gon and shows very little sadness at his funeral. His only line is “what will happen to me now?”I guess you could say he talks about wishing he could leave Tatooine, but this doesn't actually come across because his character is so upbeat and positive.
Luke talked about wanting to leave, but his frustration was better conveyed by his obvious reaction to all his friends leaving. On paper, he had a far better life than Anakin, and yet it's his frustrations we feel because his character is well developed and portrayed.
Overall, there’s no narrative strand that connects young Anakin to either old Anakin or Darth Vader. Nothing we are shown of Anakin in TPM connects with his later development or informs his decision to become Darth Vader. He could have been missing entirely from this movie and it would have made no difference. From a story-telling point of view, he’s a total blank.
The Immediate Dark Side
People say the prequels show how Anakin turned to the dark side, but they don’t. When we leave Anakin in TPM, he’s obnoxiously idealistic despite supposedly being in a bad place. When we meet Anakin in AOTC, he’s petulant, mean-spirited, and arrogant. He sticks out like a sore thumb among all these virtuous Jedi.
Just as young Anakin is utterly at odds with his situation as a slave, older Anakin is utterly at odds with his position in this elite group devoted to goodness and order.
Whatever happened to turn absurdly positive and helpful young Anakin into murderous, unpleasant older Anakin is never shown. Even in AOTC, Anakin seems to be spoiling for the dark side. Like it seems as if he was pretty much okay with going dark without the Padme thing. It would have been pretty disconcerting to see Luke Skywalker kill a room full of young children in ROTJ, but I get nothing in ROTS because Anakin already committed mass murder in AOTC. Even when he kills those Tuskans in AOTC, I'm not exactly holding my hand over my mouth thinking 'wow, this seems so out of character for such a noble, pleasant person'. You know, quite the opposite.
There’s a clumsy attempt to make Anakin’s fear of losing his loved ones what makes him turn, but throughout AOTC and ROTS it mostly seems like he’s an arrogant prick who wants to be more powerful for the sake of his own ego.
In no way do the prequels show what happened to turn a good man into an evil henchman. Anything of relevance to that story happened offscreen between TPM and AOTC.
Saying older Anakin was ‘seduced by the dark side of the force’ is like saying ‘I seduced my dog into eating this food’.
The Anakin/Vader Disconnect
Finally, the main problem: Anakin is nothing like Darth Vader.
Vader is cold, collected, and efficient. Yes, he kills people, but the force choke worked because of how impersonal it was. Vader didn’t seem to be getting off on choking Admirals to death; they’d failed him, so he dispatched them with ruthless efficiency.
Vader is ‘a cunning warrior’. We see this in every fight. Against Obi-Wan, he’s relatively cautious. Against Luke in ESB, he’s always baiting Luke into getting angry. In ROTJ, this is even more pronounced.
Beyond that, Vader is generally intelligent, resourceful, and articulate. In the OT, he isn’t important to the Empire because he’s strong with the force or a good fighter. It’s his ability to get shit done that makes him useful – he’d probably have been just as useful if he had no force abilities at all. Vader is just as cunning fighting a large-scale campaign as he is crossing sabres with a Jedi.
Then we have Anakin, who honestly seems borderline retarded. He’s laughably easy to mislead and never shows an ounce of intelligence. Far from a ‘cunning warrior’, he routinely rushes in without thinking and gets his ass kicked. He’s clumsy with his words and seems utterly incapable of concealing his anger or keeping it in check when venting will clearly turn people against him.
While Vader is an intelligent adversary who rarely seems to use his force abilities to help the Empire, Anakin is a complete buffoon who just happens to have a high midichlorian count. One of the key problems with the prequels is that force ability is only shown through fighting, so Anakin’s sole virtue seems to be his skill with a lightsabre. He just flies off the rails and starts it to kill anyone, which completely goes against what we know of Vader- in the OT, Vader only ever deigns to use his lightsabre when he’s fighting another Jedi.
Anakin is the pretty much the polar opposite of Darth Vader. No matter how hard I try, I cannot look at Darth Vader and see Anakin. Some people will say the years between ROTS and ANH changed Anakin into Darth Vader, but that’s a huge change, and it kind of invalidates the entire point of the prequels since there’s no connection between these two characters.
The Bitter Conclusion
So, there you go. A lot of people would call this nit-picking, but I just see it as exploring the underlying issues. Anakin’s development is as poorly written as his ‘I hate sand’ speech.
On a scene-by-scene basic, he’s insufferable. Over the course of all three films, and as a bridge to the originals, he’s the most inconsistent character I’ve ever seen.
