PT Child Anakin to appeal to children?

When our mate George made The Phantom Menace he decided to make Anakin a child. I don't agree with this, and feel that the story could have been told better if Anakin was a little older.
With the majority of SW fans at that time being people that were children when the OT was released, do you think he disregarded the original fans and made the decision to make Anakin a child to appeal to the children of a new generation to garner new fans, knowing the original fans would would lap it up anyway? Or do you think this is the way he always saw it? Or do you think he was trying to reach an amicable balance between the two with the inclusion of Qui-Gon as the main character in TPM?

 

I think it's probably a mix of the balance option and the fact he's still striving to actualise his vision accurately according to him. I didn't like it at all myself. I don't think it works either.

 

If Episode 1 was Episode 0 and we got another full movie of older Anakin working well with Obi-Wan before Episode 2 that would work.

 

That was prequel mistake number one in my opinion.

 

I disagree. In fact, I find it both funny and ludicrous that fans had expected the structure of the PT to be exactly like the OT. This idea that the story had to begin with an adolescent Anakin, instead of a nine year-old strikes me as irelevant. Why? Because no one has ever really expressed a good reason why this was a bad idea, other than their own personal beliefs and assumptions of what the plot for the PT was going to be about.

Why? Why is that necessary?​

 

Rush: You do assume overly much. We did not expect it to mirror the OT at least not all of us. Usually children are handled poorly in situations like this and the PT is one of them.

 

In actuality, he wanted to make him more around 13 or 14 originally, but he decided to go with 8 or 9 to make his departure from his mother have a more realistic impact on his psyche

 

He made Anakin a child because he wanted to show the roots for Anakin's fall and turn this whole Saga into Anakin's story. Anakin's origins were much more important in that regard than a film about his friendship with Obi-Wan.

 

Seeing Anakin as a young child in the beginning makes his fall to the dark side much more powerful and tragic than if he'd started out the same age as Luke in my opinion. I think it was done this way intentionally. You meet him at his best, in a state of pure innocence - the kind you only see in young kids. Then you follow him all the way to episode IV where he's pretty much a ruthless killer. Anytime you see him in the suit, as Darth Vader, you remember the innocent little boy from Episode I, and it's just sad.

 

He wanted to make the departure from his mother more poignant, and that can be better achieved with him as a child. Making him a teen from the start would have been more "marketable", sure, but he has earned the unique position to make the creative decisions he wants on such a big budget film without studios or money getting in the way and for that he gets my respect. Unfortunately not many people can do that.

 

Pretty much this. He wanted to make the tragedy of the fall give that extra punch. Now every time we see Vader in the OT, we remember that inside that suit was a man who, once upon a time, as a small boy, acted selflessly and wanted to help others.

 

For me, TPM is absolutely wonderful the way it is. It was my first Star Wars movie and one of the things I loved about it was the relationship between Qui-Gon and Anakin as well as Anakin's relationship with Shmi.

As far as I'm concerned, Anakin being a child in TPM is critical for his story and, the way I see it, Lucas broke down Anakin's arc into three major pieces:

TPM shows Anakin's foundational problems and how the environment he grew up in made him susceptible to turning. We see him as relatively happy, but he's also a child who has lived his entire life as a slave and doesn't know any better. He also, fortunately, has his mother's love to counterbalance a lot of the difficulty of that life. To me, it's clear that Anakin's issues with control (and being in control) as well as his desire for more power stem, in part, from his background as a slave. He's very well aware that he wouldn't have lasted long if he didn't have skills and abilities that made him valuable to others -- not as a person, but as a commodity -- which is one of the reasons he stresses to Padmé that he is a person first and not a slave. There's also the separation from his mother and how it will underlie his difficulties with the Jedi since he left her at such a vulnerable age without a proper substitute for her unconditional love. Similarly, it means he's already formed strong attachments that are almost impossible to break. His fear of loss I would also argue is made worse by his history as a slave, where families could be ripped apart at a moment's notice. Meeting Palpatine at this age, too, made a big difference I think along with the loss of Qui-Gon who might have been able to counteract Palpatine's poisonous influence.

AOTC, then, shows Anakin's character flaws. I'd argue that this is -- in large part -- why many people find his character distasteful. Here, we see Anakin before he's taken on his first mission alone and at a point where he is about to be confronted with many painful failures. This Anakin has a deferential relationship with Palpatine and his skills have made him arrogant. We see how powerfully his fear of loss and desire for control manifest themselves when he loses his mother and lashes out. He's impatient and dissatisfied with the Republic which he sees as doing too little to help people. AOTC, then, shows the beginning of Anakin's fall -- when it really becomes close to inexorable. It is the beginning of the end since his mother's death will leave a psychological scar that will not heal, Anakin gives in to his attachment for Padmé, and the Clone Wars begin.

ROTS shows an Anakin who is still decidedly flawed but who has also matured. He recognizes his character flaws more readily. But in regards to his fears and desires, he still doesn't know how to control them. ROTS is really about showing the circumstances of Anakin's fall. How the threat to Padmé's life, the disintegration of the relationship between the Jedi and Anakin, the need to end the war, and Anakin's dissatisfaction with the political system all come to a head. And Anakin thus makes a critical choice in his life -- with consequences that will follow him to death.

 

The problem with Luke is we didn't have to listen to him while he was growing up. We all know he said some dumb stuff the first time he met his first angel, but nobody wants to admit that the guy who told Palpatine to go and shove the darkside where the sun don't shine... was once a teen aged dork, just like his father.

 

DRush76 The only time I liked Anakin and Obi-Wan together was at the start of ROTS.
In TPM they have what 30 seconds of interaction? Excuse me? The dominant friendship of the PT only has 30 seconds of interaction in the 1st movie? No, just no. Never mind that Obi-Wan didn't even find Anakin. An argument for another time.
In AOTC they have more screen time but are tense with each other a lot of the time they are together.
Start of ROTS they are perfect but we all know what happens after Obi-Wan leaves to fight Grievous. If we could have early ROTS Anakin and Obi-Wan for another movie win/win. Get to keep Qui-Gon as well.

 

The decision to make him a child was relatively benign. No problem. And it gave much more room for plot than other avenues.

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Absolutely.
Lots of people are alientated because they don't find Episode I and Episode II Anakin compatible. I always thought otherwise. It's all there. He didn't have control over his own life in TPM, he experiences his lack of control over other lifes in AOTC and later seeks the ultimate power over life and death. He learnt to love his mother, left and lost her and becomes extremely possesive. He thought being a Jedi finally makes him free to do the things he wants to do, yet he finds himself heavily restricted by the Jedi in AOTC. Of course that makes him anti-authoritarian and constantly questioning authority (Obi-Wan). I thought it was all well explained.

There is also a tragic nature that subtly underlines Episode I with Anakin as a child. If you look at Anakin superficially, he is a nice and innocent boy who seems to be unburdened. But in the moment you look closer, you beginn to see the roots that will sink him ultimately. They are already there and clearly visible, although Anakin himself is completely unaware of them.
That's very sad in a way. He leaves Tatooine thinking he would live a better life as a Jedi doing good things (free all the slaves etc.), yet when he would finally return to Tatooine he would find nothing but pain and ultimately lose everything and everyone he loved in ROTS. But a lot of the factors in his personality that led to this ultimate fall were already planted way before he became aware of them in TPM. He did not have the slightest idea.

 

I didn't mind Anakin being 9 years old when I first saw the film, and I don't mind now. I grew up with the OT on VHS, and never understood why people had some weird assumptions about who Anakin would be in the Republic days.

 

One thing that I haven't noticed being brought up was that TPM had another teenage character -- Obi-Wan. I have mixed feelings about the TPM focusing more on Qui-Gon than Obi, and I think either way probably would have worked. However, if Anakin is a teenager, then he's about Obi-Wan's age, so it would be really weird for a teenage Obi-Wan to then take on a teenage Anakin as his padawan at the end of the film. To make that work, you would have to make Obi-Wan older, and for that reason, he wouldn't be Qui-Gon's apprentice anymore, and since he's not Qui-Gon's apprentice, it probably would be weird for Obi-Wan to agree to train Anakin to fulfill Qui-Gon's dying wish. So, at this point, you've got yourself almost a totally different film: a teenage Anakin, a 25 to 30 year-old Obi-Wan, and a Qui-Gon who is I guess the same age as he is the TPM, and all of them would interact differently because they are at different ages and they have different status relationships to one another. Plus, Anakin's and Padme's relationship would be different too, since they'd both be past puberty. By the end of day, the 1 change of making Anakin a teenager has changed so much of the rest that you'd have a new screeplay, which might have more problems than the original TPM had, so all of this uncertainty makes it almost impossible to say whether a teenage Anakin is better than a kid Anakin.

In more direct response to the original post, I think part of GL's choice to make Anakin 9 was to appeal to children, but I think the same is true about his choice to make Luke a teenager (and young looking one too with a high whiny voice). I think GL didn't want to repeat the same formula of introducing a teenage Anakin in TPM and give it the same feel that ANH had with Luke.

GL has also said that he wanted to show Anakin as a sweet young child to add to the pathos of his fall. GL doesn't think that all evil people start off as bad seeds but instead that many are corrupted by experiences in their lives. Showing a sweet child Anakin allows Anakin to start of as very likeable boy, allowing the films to show how much he lost and how much he regains when he redeems himself in ROTJ.

 

Umm…isn't Obi-Wan 25 in TPM already? When I look at Ewan McGregor in TPM, I do not see a teenager at all. McGregor was born in 1971 so he was 28 when TPM was released and would have already been at least 26 when filming. So if a teenaged Obi-Wan is what Lucas was going for, I didn't see it personally. Anakin in AOTC can pass as a teenager but I don't think Obi-Wan does.

Luke looks like a young teenager to you? Mark Hamill was in his mid-twenties when ANH came out so I never got that impression. I think the box sets say he is supposed to be playing 19. Hamill was born in 1951 and since Star Wars was released in 1977, he would probably have been about 24-25 when they were filming.

 

I guess "officially" Obi-Wan was 25 in TPM though a lot of sources merely said "mid-twenties."

The one time he sounded much younger was when saying, "But Master Yoda says...." Man, I still could swear he sounded like a teenager then, not sure what authority figure he was supposed to emulate. You'd think an "almost Knight" 25 year old would sound more definitive than questioning.

If I had more druthers, we'd have had less pod-racing and assembly line hijinks in the first two films and a bit more character development - at least a hint of the years between, because I think for many the transition from TPM eager, helpful, seeds of issue little boy is by AoTC suddenly an arrogant-sounding, too big for his britches late teenage is rather abrupt.

Some fans blame the Jedi Order (and/or Obi-Wan) for this transition, some blame puberty along with Palp's undermining, but really, there's no clear hint of the factors in play. What hints there are, are quite subtle.

 

I think he was going for as wide appeal as possible. Young Anakin catered for a certain section of the target audience.

In my fantasy Episode One Anakin's a teenager, already well underway with his Jedi training. His mother's earlier death and his feeling of helplessness following this is referenced, but not shown. He still falls in love with Padme and doesn't want to lose her as he did his mother, and that still provides the vehicle for his turn. There's no prophecy and no virgin birth. He's trained by Obiwan, but there's no Quigon.

I know, nobody cares what I think. Just wanted to get that off my chest!

 

It was a preemptive strike, anakinfan!