Pointy lightsabers are right up there with "Akiraprise" as Fanboy Obsessions I Will Never Comprehend. 
That's okay as some kind of story, but it's not a Star Wars story. Star Wars is not political or psychological (although it's fine to have both introduced as contributing factors) - it's metaphysical, about the eternal struggle between good and evil.
If you lose the metaphysical dimension, then Star Wars is just another space opera story. Might as well be Star Trek, except Star Trek does psychological and political storytelling a whoooole lot better.
For similar reasons, it doesn't make sense for Anakin's fall to be political (if he honestly felt an Evil Galactic Empire was a more rational and perhaps even humane system of government - I'm not even clear on whether that was the case). Star Wars has psychology and politics, but that's not what it's about.
Because none of the motivations make sense, we're left with the appearance of Anakin being a dolt - he falls for no observable reason. The reason should be something about the Dark Side - what it does to your mind, or your ethics, or your destiny, or something.
There's a whole lot of development Lucas needed to do, to figure out exactly what "falling to the Dark Side" means. How does it work? How does it feel? How much does it change you as a person? How much is it like drug addiction? Then the essential part of that larger picture should have been added to the script so that even if we can never actually feel what Anakin felt, we would still get the message that something is happening that is not psychology, politics or sheer stupidity.

His childhood is important if the story is psychological. Anakin was a messed up kid, which is why he fell to the Dark Side.To me, the first mistake was with The Phantom Menance taking place when Anakin was a boy. We're "introduced" to Anakin as an annoying young kid and not given anything to make us like him. In fact, his childhood (aside from "The Prophecy") is so unimportant, it's only mentioned once, in passing, at the beginning of Attack of the Clones. Why spend so much time showing him as a kid, to not have it bear any relevance to the overall "plot" of the prequels?
That's okay as some kind of story, but it's not a Star Wars story. Star Wars is not political or psychological (although it's fine to have both introduced as contributing factors) - it's metaphysical, about the eternal struggle between good and evil.
If you lose the metaphysical dimension, then Star Wars is just another space opera story. Might as well be Star Trek, except Star Trek does psychological and political storytelling a whoooole lot better.
For similar reasons, it doesn't make sense for Anakin's fall to be political (if he honestly felt an Evil Galactic Empire was a more rational and perhaps even humane system of government - I'm not even clear on whether that was the case). Star Wars has psychology and politics, but that's not what it's about.
Exactly. The metaphysical content of the struggle between Good vs Evil is simply missing, yet that should be the whole impetus of the story and the reason Anakin falls. If it's because he's messed up psychologically, that's just not fair. If it's because of his political beliefs (and assuming any effort were made to explain those beliefs to us), then the story comes down to some made-up space politics that don't really matter anyway. If Anakin legitimately believes in dictatorship, whoopee for him. The audience is never going to be convinced to side with him on that score, so why even go there?We never really feel that Anakin is seduced by the dark side, but rather that he is conned by Palpatine and convinced that the Sith are only evil according to Jedi propaganda.
Because none of the motivations make sense, we're left with the appearance of Anakin being a dolt - he falls for no observable reason. The reason should be something about the Dark Side - what it does to your mind, or your ethics, or your destiny, or something.
There's a whole lot of development Lucas needed to do, to figure out exactly what "falling to the Dark Side" means. How does it work? How does it feel? How much does it change you as a person? How much is it like drug addiction? Then the essential part of that larger picture should have been added to the script so that even if we can never actually feel what Anakin felt, we would still get the message that something is happening that is not psychology, politics or sheer stupidity.
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