Spoilers All Things STAR WARS - News, Speculation & Spoilers Thread
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Anakin 'able to fix anything' and 'the only human who could race pods' also works MUCH better as a teen or young man. To say nothing of piloting a starfighter in combat! The Force grants a lot of power, but should it make a 9-year old kid with no training a master mechanic?
This is another element that could have handled by starting the two of them as older. Also, there was no need for the mother of Luke and Leia to be some kind of royalty. What if they had flipped the script on this, making Padme a slave as well? Both born and raised on the same planet, growing up together, dreaming of living their own lives together free of their cruel masters. Anakin forced into racing professionally while Padme is the master mechanic who can fix anything. When Qui-gon and Obi-wan show up, they have their chance to gain their freedom- Anakin can win the parts to fix the Jedi starship, while Padme can fix it once he does. Take the story on from there. As Trek_God_1 said, grow the relationship naturally, through shared interests, danger, and hardship. How much more tragic does his fall become then?
Due to GL's lack of direction and acting completely against green screens, as mentioned above. At least, that's my opinion. Both have delivered solid performances in other releases.
To clarify my point, I don't want Anakin as the stereotypical rebellious teen, but that he rebels against the system of oppression on Tatooine. I agree with Jedi Marso that him even 5 years older makes his skills more understandable and a little more believable in the context of the story and world.
It's interesting, and something I didn't catch until The Hobbit films, but working in a green screen environment is difficult on even good actors. So, the lack of direction has a double impact when the director has their own struggles.
Correction: a 9-year old kid who's probably been forced to work in a junk shop cleaning and reconditioning old parts since he could walk. Have a look at some real history of child labour, especially during the Industrial Revolution. You'd be surprised the kinds of skills 9-year olds can pick up (and the limbs they can loose in the process.)
"So you know that Sith Lord who was a Jedi before he rebelled against his master and turned to evil; how did he start off anyway?"
"As a rebellious teen, fighting authority."
That's not a character arc, it's a straight line with a wardrobe change."As a rebellious teen, fighting authority."
No, I really wouldn't.
Given I just read about Rear Admiral Farragut who commanded a ship at 9.
Anakin at 9 though strains from a different level.
Agreed, as he was still a child with a child's understanding, Force enhanced or not. Out of the gates, Lucas misunderstood or glossed over the fact movie audiences were not going to buy a 9-year old successfully piloting a fighter in space, which takes skills one is not going to attain in a podracer. If someone believes R2 aided him, then that would remove the "special" nature of Anakin's feat, since the droid was essentially keeping Anakin--and himself--from being plastered into the side of the Trade Federation ship.
That would have been far more interesting than Lucas dipping into the fairy tale well one time too often with Padme being royalty (like Leia) while then-future love of her life Anakin (like Luke) was poor. The only difference is that Anakin was a slave--an unforgivable practice that was never effectively imparted with the Skywalker situation at all.
Agreed; in TPM, Padme sees him first as a curiosity, as he represents a life she's never known as a sheltered member of royalty, but Anakin was a child, so their lived experiences and perceptions could not be more dissimilar, yet we were expected to just buy that (and the convoluted way the relationship was handled in AOTC).
Yep.
Luke had flown a T-16 which was made by the same company and allegedly had similar controls; according to some source Rey had flown before.
Rey says "we've got one" when Finn asks about a pilot. Then demonstrates that she can fly.
In a deleted scene, added again in one special edition, Biggs says that Luke is the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim Territories to Red Leader.
Anakin is a street car racer who jumps in to a fighter jet.
That's what she said!
Yes, but that was never stated in the film.
I'd hardly characterise a pod racer as a "street car". Those things are starfighter engines strapped to a seat, steering yoke and not much else. An N1 must have felt like a smooth ride by comparison.
Also part of that race course is exactly the same place Luke would fly his T-16. We literally see Anakin racing down Beggar's Canyon.
Anakin also identifies himself as a pilot, then demonstrates he can fly. What's the difference?
At least we can see the back of the vehicle in the film.
Was that meant to be Beggars Canyon?
Since it's at Mos Espa I thought it was a different canyon.
Nothing.
Allegedly.
Yup. Specifically labelled as such in various materials from TPM, and even explicitly namedropped in BoBF, which almost exactly recreates certain shots of the same location from the podrace.
Mos Espa isn't all that far from Mos Eisley. We saw Maul viewing several different towns/cities on the horizon in TPM, and one of them could easily have been Mos Eisley. Then in BoBF we saw Fennic hop on a speeder and get from Espa to Eisley to take out the Pyke leadership in the time it took the whole street battle to play out.
As for how far out it is from Luke's neighbourhood out around Archorhead; yeah it probably took him and Ben the best part of a day to get out there in his landspeeder, but in his T-16 Skyhopper he could probably make that distance in under an hour (it's an air speeder after all.) Even if it took a bit longer, running through beggars canyon doesn't sound like the sort of thing he and his mates did on a weekly basis. Probably more of a once a season thing when Owen would actually give him enough free time to get away with it. Maybe it was something they only ever did the once before Biggs left for the Academy.
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Huh. Despite reading every Episode 1 related material I never caught that.
Today I learned.
ILM actually made a hand drawn map of the full course so they could keep everything straight while making the sequence, and you can just about make out the label "Beggar's Canyon" on that section, (though most of the scans you'll find are of pretty low resolution given the size of the thing.) So it was something that comes from the production itself, not made up after the fact.
That original map was not exactly, but closely copied for the one that appeared in the DK 'Incredible Locations' book (beggars canyon and all), and republished in several later editions, including the latest canon one. IIRC the only real difference is the removal of the "Old City" ruins from the Hutt Flats (the last leg, where Sebulba crashes) as that's something they planned but it got cut at some point. So it's been around, if you know where to look.