My Long Anakin Critique I'd Love Your Opinion On

[suarezguy]

Remember that this is a space fantasy fairy tale and Tatooine is basically the old west. No, not the real, historical old west; the fictional, mythologised old west. In that context, the concept of a native people who are perceived as savage and little more than animals makes more sense.
Now, that's not to say this is what the Tuskens actually are, just how the settlers perceive them and since Padme had nothing else to go on, probably accepted that assessment at face value. It's a big galaxy after all.

Luke, by the way, felt pretty acrimoniously of and toward them ("They're the worst!") though he very much was the good guy and he didn't show (and was presumed to oppose) any other species-ist feelings.

 

[Reverend]

Luke, by the way, felt pretty acrimoniously of and toward them ("They're the worst!") though he very much was the good guy and he didn't show (and was presumed to oppose) any other species-ist feelings.

Pretty sure the line was "Sand People, or worse."
IMO, Luke's attitude isn't species-ist per se. Unless you consider a person species-ist for being non too fond of man eating wolves that prowl around their home, and occasionally carry off and kill the odd grandmother. As that's pretty much analogous to the mind set I think he would have had.

 

[HugeLobes]

Pretty sure the line was "Sand People, or worse."
IMO, Luke's attitude isn't species-ist per se. Unless you consider a person species-ist for being non too fond of man eating wolves that prowl around their home, and occasionally carry off and kill the odd grandmother. As that's pretty much analogous to the mind set I think he would have had.

Agreed. It's not even really clear in the OT whether sand people are actual humans.

 

[Set Harth]

I always assumed they were aliens.

and occasionally carry off and kill the odd grandmother.

Heh!

 

[HugeLobes]

When I first watched ANH, I just assumed they were some kind of nomadic people.

 

[Reverend]

For what it's worth, Lucas's script describes the sandpeople as "marginally human creatures". One could take that literally and presumably they're some kind of mutant species of human, but really I think it's more likely only meant to describe their shape and appearance.

 

[Set Harth]

Alan Dean "George Lucas" Foster even threw into the ANH novelization the suggestion that the Jawas could be the same species as the Tuskens, just the mature form, but noted that "this theory was discounted by the majority of serious scientists".

 

[M.A.C.O.]

For what it's worth, Lucas's script describes the sandpeople as "marginally human creatures". One could take that literally and presumably they're some kind of mutant species of human, but really I think it's more likely only meant to describe their shape and appearance.

On the AOTC commentary with Lucas for the Anakin/Tusken scene; Lucas does describe the Tuskens as being not quite human. I believe they're supposed to be a cross between rodents and man. To hideous to show, which is why they wear the garbs to cover their faces.

Also on Lucas commentary, during Anakin's search for Shmi; Lucas said there was supposed to be a scene where Anakin comes across the 25 bodies of the moisture farmers who Owen Lars had rallied together for a rescue mission. I forget why Lucas said he cut that scene.

 

[Prax]

Anakin isn't being "racist" against the sandpeople. He says "They're like animals." He's referring to their grizzly, ugly, inhuman deeds. They killed a couple dozen settlers and tortured his mother for who knows how long. He repaid them in kind. "And I slaughtered them like animals." An eye for an eye, blood for blood; not the Jedi way.

He feels immense guilt over his actions. He gave into his rage(understandably) and went berzerk. He knows what he did was wrong, and yet he still hates them for what they did(also understandable).

Padme doesn't exactly know what to say. She cares about Anakin and feels terrible for him, and for the Lars family. In keeping with her character, she wants to help him. She also loves him.

His actions here don't make him evil, but he has lost his innocence.

Are you sure the kid in terminator was ten years old? He looks like a young teenager. He's a bad boy, and not at all like Anakin in TPM. Anakin at 9 is innocent, and not old enough to be self realized. The kid in Terminator is not innocent. He has a good heart, I guess, but he's old enough to be a ruffian.

 

[Tosk]

Are you sure the kid in terminator was ten years old?

The character was, the actor was not.

 

[Prax]

Luke, age 6: "Uncle Owen, who are those guys with the funny masks?"

Owen: "Those are Tuskens, ...sand people. Get in the house!"

Luke: "..bbut, I was.."
Owen: "Now son! go!"

Luke, age 8 "Uncle Owen, what do you know about the sand people?"
Owen: "When you're older, I might tell you, but for now, we don't go out alone, and if you see one, run home"

Luke, age 12: "Uncle Owen, have you seen Lucy(Luke's baby dewback)? She's been gone for 2 days."
Owen: "I wonder if them savages took her... They may walk like men, but they're vicious, mindless beasts, and occasional cattle thieves...

-awkward silence-

...When I was a younger man, ohhh, not long before you were born, the Tuskens came and kidnapped my step mother. We tried to mount a rescue, then they slaughtered 26 of my closest friends and father's friends. They cut off my Pa's legs, and tortured my step mom to a slow, agonizing death, rest her poor soul."(Owen does sign of the cross).

Luke does not speak, for he is speechless.

 

[DarKush]

Kudos on this very well written critique Huge Lobes. I agree with a good deal of it, though not all of it. I do see PT Anakin and OT Vader as being the same character, with the OT Vader the poorer for it. The PT did make me look at Vader with less esteem than I held for him as a kid, however I still see OT Vader as a progression, or regression depending on a person’s POV, of PT Anakin. What helps big time is the also canon Clone Wars series which does try to fill-in some of the gaps. I mean, the cartoon shows Anakin as an ace pilot and cunning warrior far better than what we saw in the prequel films.

I think that Lucas just failed to show us how Vader was this tragic figure in the PT. ROTJ did a great job with it, but Lucas failed to expand on it. For one, it was going back too far in time to when Anakin was so young and relatively innocent. Lucas didn’t have the skills to pull that off, and Jake Lloyd wasn’t the best child actor either. Though I rag on Lloyd’s performance, I think his sadness and twinge of doubt/regret at leaving his mother on Tatoonine does factor into Anakin’s fall in AOTC. Also, Lloyd’s angry, or perturbed look at Mace during the Jedi Council scene, also presages his full turn in ROTS, so I give Lloyd (mainly) and Lucas credit for those scenes. One scene showing Anakin’s aggression was inexplicably cut from TPM, and I thought that was a good scene to show that Anakin already had anger issues even as a kid. I remember looking at some of the special features, probably for AOTC, where Hayden Christiansen had wanted to go dark with Anakin early on, but Lucas kept restraining him. I think Christiansen had a better instinct in that regard and knew exactly what type of character he was playing, whereas Lucas-perhaps because he was too close to it, I don't know-kept wanting to make Anakin sympathetic and also to build a romance between him and Padme-whereas the PT might have been better showing more of Anakin's descent.

I remember a fan suggestion from back in the day that I wish Lucas had come up with and executed and that was make Obi-Wan the main character for the prequels and that would’ve freed him up to make Anakin more villainous. But Lucas decided to try to make Anakin this tragic figure and he was torn between showing him go light and go dark and then having characters accept things or not question things that they shouldn’t. There’s no way Padme would just accept or excuse Anakin’s slaughtering of a whole village of Tusken raiders, and then later go on to marry this man and bear his children. Yoda would not feel Anakin’s intense pain/distress in The Force and not question him about it at some point. Making Obi-Wan the main character would’ve allowed for Lucas to have a straight up hero ultimately, which he can write. And it still would’ve allowed for some complexity and shades of gray with Obi-Wan turning a blind eye to Anakin’s relationship with Padme for example, a ball drop that had catastrophic consequences.

I also don’t see Vader as so much more supremely cold and logical than PT Anakin. I do consider that PT Anakin was a teenager, and perhaps reflected Lucas’s ham-fisted ideas about how teenagers act. Factoring Rogue One into the mix, Vader massacring the Rebel soldiers was not dissimilar to his actions in AOTC with the Tuskens or his butchering the Jedi Younglings and Separatist leaders in ROTS. We also see Vader as being emotionally driven, at least by the third film. His conscience is slowly pricking him and eventually he turns. He’s not as cold and methodical as he appears in ANH and TESB by ROTJ. So, the unstable and emotionally vulnerable Anakin from the prequels is a precursor to ROTJ Vader, and arguably the OT Vader period. He does enjoy getting back at Obi-Wan on ANH, he does seek to enlist Luke to help him destroy the Emperor by attempting an emotional appeal (which Lucas ‘foreshadows’, though really pays homage to, when Anakin makes a similar offer to Padme in ROTS), and he is cold fire emotionally throughout the PT. I can’t imagine he doesn’t enjoy killing the people who fail him or question his authority.

The PT Anakin at least shows why OT Vader had never taken over for the Emperor and was second fiddle, for almost two decades. He had great skill but was not a great leader. He didn't know how to successfully rule an Empire. He was all about force, and that was in the prequels and original films. (I do think the Force in the OT was used for more than just fighting. I mean we see some of the telekinetic abilities, but also at least hear mentions of its clairvoyant abilities as well).

As well how you break down John Connor, it made me think that it’s not a fair comparison. I mean we only saw a snippet of the adult John Connor, as a grizzled, scarred warrior in Terminator 2 before we see a very opposite young John Connor, so it does make the audience wonder how do we get from Furlong’s Connor to the scarred, battle hardened Connor? However, we have no real knowledge about the future Connor, compared to the OT movies to view PT Anakin, even just TPM Anakin through that lens. Future Connor, in T2, was more of an image than a character.

And to get to Future Connor is not a straight-line, of course, considering Nick Stahl in Terminator 3 or even Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation. I think Jason Clarke’s Connor fares the best in conceiving how Furlong’s Connor would become this leader. Stahl’s Connor is scuzzy and living off the grid, which fits, however he has a profound lack of confidence that Furlong’s doesn’t. Bale’s is very much the warrior but little personality, and Clarke’s has the warrior side but also a little personality, and warmth, he had a bit of a sense of humor. All that being said, I think Thomas Dekker from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the closest to Furlong’s Connor, and age-wise (in terms of when TTSCC originally takes place) that makes sense, but even there, there’s subtleties in the performance, where I don’t think Dekker had Furlong’s brashness, though that could’ve just been part of maturing.

 

[Qonundrum]

I went through puberty too, but I didn't commit mass murder when I was 19.

Worse, Anakin consummated and it's stereotypically the ones that get none that go on rampages, apparently... In that regards, kudos to GL for fighting against stereotypes... or at least letting the teenager have better reasons (I suppose) to turn evil. Obi-Wan Ben's tale of Anakin in ep IV is a bit different but he could have lied about it, since Obi (as a force ghost selling vacuumn cleaners door to door) is also nice enough to use the "a certain point of view" excuse in a later episode because, as we all know, that would suck.

 

[LJones41]

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:

• Ultra-Positive TPM Anakin
  
• Murderous Idiot AOTC/ROTS Anakin
• Intelligent, Nuanced OT Darth Vader.

None of those characters form any logical connection with each other, and that’s the underlying problem with the prequels. Let’s break it down.

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.

Thing is, John Conner actually seems like a product of his environment.

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.

This all informs John’s character. His sense of responsibility prompts a strong moral code. His off-grid lifestyle makes it believable when he can help load guns and take independent action. His lack of a father figure reinforces his connection with the terminator and makes his ultimate sacrifice of that figure more important.

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.

This theme is reasonably subtle, but it’s a key part of what makes Luke’s journey and particularly his clashes with Vader so powerful and interesting. If he didn’t ask about his father as much in ANH or form a strong bond with Obi-Wan, the rest of the story wouldn’t have been as interesting.

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.

More prequel bashing bullshit. If someone is going to criticize these movies, I wish he or she could do it in a logical fashion. I've only encountered a few people who have offered logical criticism of the films . . . or even the Original films for that matter.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Good points in the OP. For me it all boils down to essentially two things:

1. Poor writing in the prequels. GL had a storyline to follow- he should have given it to guys like Kasdan to flesh out instead of just doing it on his own. Same thing with the prequels' direction. GL is an 'idea' guy and a passable movie editor, but script writing and directing were never really his thing.

2. Bad casting. Hayden Christensen never sold me as Anakin Skywalker from the first moment he appeared on screen to the final, small hands, pathetic 'NO!' moment.

 

[HugeLobes]

Okay, so it's been a while since I checked this thread.

Poor writing in the prequels. GL had a storyline to follow- he should have given it to guys like Kasdan to flesh out instead of just doing it on his own. Same thing with the prequels' direction. GL is an 'idea' guy and a passable movie editor, but script writing and directing were never really his thing.

Yes, I think one of the major flaws in the prequels is having large ideas that weren't really fleshed out, usually just as a plot convenience. The biggest of these is the whole prophecy/Anakin uber Jedi thing. Honestly, the idea that Anakin was incredibly powerful never came across and really just held the story back.

Bad casting. Hayden Christensen never sold me as Anakin Skywalker from the first moment he appeared on screen to the final, small hands, pathetic 'NO!' moment.

Again, even Ewan McGregor couldn't do much with that dialogue.

I think that Lucas just failed to show us how Vader was this tragic figure in the PT.

Iremember looking at some of the special features, probably for AOTC, where Hayden Christiansen had wanted to go dark with Anakin early on, but Lucas kept restraining him.

Yes, that's the main problem with the prequels. I often hear people talk about how they showed a classic tragic hero, and I can't help but wonder if those people understand what makes a tragic hero. They're supposed to be virtuous people who turn bad due to one fatal flaw. From AOTC on, Anakin is a pretty terrible person and there's never really one thing that makes him bad.

As for the John Conner thing, I know the comparison isn't perfect. I just wanted to contrast with another young actor.

More prequel bashing bullshit. If someone is going to criticize these movies, I wish he or she could do it in a logical fashion. I've only encountered a few people who have offered logical criticism of the films . . . or even the Original films for that matter.

I think I backed up my claims pretty well here.

 

[DarKush]

^
I disagree that Anakin was a terrible person from AOTC on. He was whiny, needy, arrogant, but he wasn't a terrible person really until his mother died and he slaughtered the Sandpeople. (I also take into account that Obi-Wan was fussy and distrusting and only took Anakin on as an obligation, due to his promise to Qui-Gonn. Mace never trusted Anakin, and it had to be difficult, being older than the other Padawans, learning how to fit in, yet more gifted than just about everyone. It wasn't easy for Anakin, and when you add in teenage hormones, he wasn't going to be the most pleasant person, like many of us weren't either as teenagers). Even after the massacre, Anakin expressed some remorse (Padme forgive him, perhaps as a surrogate for the audience), and eventually-with Padme's prodding-came to his senses and helped rescue Obi-Wan and if we factor the Clone Wars cartoons into it, we see him pretty much as a heroic, noble figure for most of that war, with ripples of the coming darkness mixed in. And going into ROTS, even his execution of Dooku is debatable as a purely evil action. I mean, it depends on what are the standards of what's heroic or not. There's tons of 'heroes' who kill out of revenge or grief, and Dooku was a leader of an enemy that had plunged the galaxy into war. So, for me, Anakin's true fall came when he turned on Mace Windu. Up to that point, Lucas was planting the seeds-some very big-and Lucas also showed Anakin's fixations or obsessions and his guilt over his mother and then his fears over losing Padme. I'm not saying Lucas did all this well, but he did try to build up to Anakin having that big turn.

 

[HugeLobes]

I disagree that Anakin was a terrible person from AOTC on. He was whiny, needy, arrogant, but he wasn't a terrible person really until his mother died and he slaughtered the Sandpeople.

Well, all we see is him being whiny, needy, and arrogant. He's never really that good or decent person that he needs to be to feel like a tragic hero. AOTC Anakin should have be a great guy who had a strong relationship with his mentor. Maybe there would be a few minor seeds of what made him turn, but not a freaking massacre!

I think it's a stretch to say he's not a bad person. In any case, he certainly wasn't a good person.

So, for me, Anakin's true fall came when he turned on Mace Windu.

I don't know. I think once you get through the whole killing a tribe of sandpeople thing killing one Jedi isn't that surprising, and it never really felt like saving Padme was his ultimate motivation. You really have three. Anakin is desperate for more power, increasingly distrustful of the Jedi, and invested in saving those he loves. Apparently early in the script it was going to be distrust of the Jedi that did it, so that's just left there to wallow even though it makes little sense.

 

[DarKush]

I agree that Anakin wasn't a 'good' person when you look at in hindsight, however I do think Lucas intended for him to be. Why else show him as a pretty innocent kid-though one filled with a lot of fear (which was reasonable considering his circumstances) and a deep attachment to his mother (which also made sense) in Episode I? I think Lucas was trying to show how a good person becomes a monster, but he didn't have the skills to pull that off successfully.

That being said, if Anakin and Obi-Wan had had this great relationship (which I myself was assuming going into the prequels) then it would make even less sense for Anakin to have such hatred for him later on. In hindsight, at least Lucas got that right in terms of giving them a strained relationship right out the gate, one that was ambiguous, perhaps to match Anakin's own conflicted feelings about the Jedi.

When I think about it, how many 'good' people were in the prequels at all? Lucas likely intended there to be clearer heroes and definitely clearer villains with the Sith Lords, but he didn't do a great job in making his heroes as heroic as they could've been.

Lucas didn't do enough to build up to Anakin's massacre of the Sandpeople. I never got why he cut the Episode I scene of young Anakin getting into a fight, which showed his anger and propensity for violence, so when he slaughters an entire village, it was so left field, and only worked for me because I already knew-like many of us did-who Anakin was to become. And then Lucas tries to brush that under the rug and it's never addressed again in Episode II and only mentioned once in Episode III and that's it. It made no sense, but since Lucas seemed to move on from that I am assuming he was expecting that horrific display of Anakin's dark nature to be a major turn along his road to the darkside but not the complete fall.

Killing Mace is more important to me because of who Mace was and what he represented. In Star Wars, the Sandpeople were antagonistic and perhaps not even human, they were more obstacles and fodder really, but Mace was a character in all three prequel films. He had a name, he had a face, he was a respected leader on the Jedi High Council, so killing him, from a story standpoint carried more weight because the audience could better identify with him instead of a group of Sandpeople, who had just tortured Shmi Skywalker to death essentially. And killing Mace, or betraying Mace, showed that Anakin had decisively chosen to go against the Jedi, the Republic, and democracy. It is telling that he was named Darth Vader before gaining the suit.

Killing the Sandpeople was not as decisive in that choice-it was setting it up, but it wasn't Anakin really being presented with a choice about sticking with the Jedi or leaving or rejecting them. This wasn't helped by Padme instantly forgiving him and the Jedi never raising questions about it. Padme not only forgave him, but eventually agreed to his plan to carry on a secret relationship, got married, carried his children, and still thought there was good in him even after learning that he killed the Younglings. (Though now that I think about it, perhaps her forgiveness wasn't, or wasn't just, a sign to the audience to forgive Anakin, but a sign of Padme's willful blindness where Anakin was concerned. And that doesn't make sense either when you look at the kind of politician she was, she was savvy enough to know that Palpatine was taking power he shouldn't have, even if she didn't know the true extent of his plans. Then again, she had shown she could also be manipulated by Palpatine, as she was in Episode I, and he pulled the wool over her eyes until the end of Episode III).

Good point about how there were three motivations for Anakin. I do think saving Padme was Anakin's motivation, at least on the surface and how he rationalized things. (Plus Lucas probably thought it was the easiest one for the mass audience to understand). He loved her, and he didn't want to lose her like he lost his mother. In the novelization, he wanted to be on the Jedi Council because the masters had access to more information, information that he hoped to find a way to prevent Padme from dying, and that's why he had that tantrum when they told him he could sit on the council but not be a master. I wish Lucas had put that in the film to flesh out Anakin's reasoning better instead of making him just seem petulant. I personally would've been better with Lucas focusing more on distrust of the Jedi or him seeking power. If he had deep distrust of the Jedi that would explain why he could massacre them all so easily-even children. The 'Jedi are evil!" declaration at the end of Episode III never set well with me because we didn't see hints of that view in earlier films. Certainly he and Mace were never chummy and he felt Obi-Wan was holding him back, but he didn't voice disagreement with the Jedi as an organization, though he did chafe at some of their restrictions, but not to the point where he could say they were evil. (I haven't watched all the Clone Wars cartoon so if it's there and I am in error my bad).

Saving Padme might have ultimately been more about Anakin and his selfish emotional and psychological needs, as well as for his thirst to have the power to prevent death, 'to make things the way they ought to be', but he still did want to save her. His much derided cry of grief after learning of Padme's death showed he cared for her, loved her in his way. I think Lucas did a 'better' job there than basing Anakin's fall on a lust for power (to do what exactly? His exhortation to Padme to join him to topple Palpatine felt tacked on, a clumsy attempt to parallel Vader's approach to Luke in Episode V) and his distrust of the Jedi (after Mace, I get that, but not before. Anakin was supportive of the Jedi, if not skeptical in some respects, and supportive of the Republic-though Lucas did do a nice foreshadowing in Episode II to show Anakin really didn't have a problem with a dictatorial government. Not enough was done to show his ideological or philosophical differences with the Jedi way, and there was potential there. Coming into the Jedi life later than the rest he could've really brought a different perspective beyond just being whiny, arrogant, and impatient, but Lucas didn't have the skills or the time to get into philosophical debates about the best usage of the Force or the Jedi).

 

[psCargile]

Palpatine: Anakin, my boy, what troubles you?

Anakin: I had a vision Pa—my gir—a friend of mine that's a girl—will die.

P: You know, with the Darkside of the Force, you can learn to prevent death.

A: I don't know. Can't I just get a new...um, girl...friend?

P: No.