PT Hayden Christensen's acting at the end of Episode III?

Wel, you could argue that from a dramatic standpoint he was badly written. The character was such a turn off to so many people, that most didn't care that he fell to the dark side. This has nothing to do with the complex emotional journey. The Clone Wars managed to turn Anakin into a complex character, but also showed the hero, and good friend Obi-Wan was talking about. If only Anakin been written like that in the films...

 

It just does feel like it for me personally, His transition to the Darkside felt forced and hurried. It didn't feel like it was something that developed. Anakin should have been the Character with the Most Depth. We should have been able to connect with him, Sympathize, even Empathize with him. When he turned it should have been a complete Tragedy like something we knew was inevitable. But felt abit gutted when it happened. It just didn't draw enough emotion out of myself.

I understand that's a pretty subjective view point and perhaps is something that I wanted from the PQ. I guess PQ was always going to struggle because everyone had their own pre-conceived ideas of who "Anakin" was supposed to be.

 

I think you've nailed the biggest issue. A character's fall is only tragic if you actually care about the character. I think it's pretty fair to say that a lot of people just didn't connect emotionally with the Anakin character or really care about him at all. Personally I think this is much more the result of writing and direction and I don't blame Hayden that much (I didn't care about Mace Windu or Padme either)

 

Off the top of my head I know about 50 people in person who've seen Star Wars and seem to like it enough that they're willing to talk about it. And not once have I heard from any of them that they didn't connect with Anakin's character.

So I think it's kinda silly of you to use terms like "it's fair to say that a lot of people didn't connect with Anakin" when all my personal experience tells me a completely different story. It's fine if you say that you didn't connect with him, but don't try to elevate your opinion by throwing other people into the mix. I could just as well start my argument with "I think it's pretty fair to say that a lot of people connected emotionally with Anakin's character." It just comes off as trying to give the statement more weight.

 

I don't get where some fans generalizations come from. Most people I know like the character and the Prequels. When they used to show Star Wars marathons on TV my dad would watch and stop at Rots. I've never seen him even watch the OT so obviously the characters are good enough for him.

 

Well as i stated in my post i didn't either, But people tend to tell you the characters they DID connect with, rather than the ones they didn't. There's only one person I've spoken to that really liked Anakin's Character and that was back when we were 14.

The Majority of people don't rate the PQ highly at all. Pretty common Knowledge, If audiences had connected with Anakin, then I'm sure it would have been rated higher. So I agree with Darth__Lobot and would say that it is "Fair to say" that most people didn't connect with Anakin and i think this is probably the PQs biggest failure, above everything else, If we had connected with Anakin, Cared about him and it had elicited an emotional response when he turned to the Darkside. It would have been a much better Trilogy.

 

Are you talking about rotten tomatoes scores? A lot of films I like usually have bad scores on there. But isn't a people vote? I think some PT haters go give it low scores. Like how they were doing the SEs on Amazon just because it wasn't the OOT.

 

I'm talking pretty much everywhere....I can count the amount of people i've heard say the PQ was good on one hand. You go pretty much anywhere on the Internet, Talk to most star wars fans, Not many of them will review PQ in a positive light.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate them, They are somewhat entertaining, It's just more, that they could and should have been so much better than they were

 

All the people I've talked with have told me that they connected with Anakin, so why are we still talking about others?

And with the internet it's all about where you look. I've seen countless pages that talk about the prequels in a negative light and I've seen countless pages that talk about them in a positive light.

 

Well that's fair enough, But I still think the Majority didn't. Based on the fact that most fans just don't like the PQ that much.

 

I never said that that prequels don't have a lot of fans. I mean I think most people should be able to admit the prequels aren't terrible movies (I mean; I'd much rather watch AOTC compared to something like Jupiter Ascending). From the semi-scientific data that we do have (imdb, rotten tomatoes, etc) it's clear that the overall reception does appear to be significantly worse than the OT. I personally think that a big reason for this is the failure of Anakin to connect emotionally to the audience.

I freely admit this is a theory, but I think it's a fairly reasonable one based on available evidence. I mean it's certainly mentioned in numerous reviews.

I apologize if I appeared to be claiming some kind of general consensus, as that was not my intent. I intentionally said "a lot" instead of "most" fans because I feel pretty strongly that there are a lot of people that didn't connect emotionally with the character of Anakin, but I certainly have no idea if that constitutes "most" fans or not.

 

Given the negative reaction to Anakin's portrayal by at least a significant part of the fan base and the general audience, the character can be viewed as less than successful from a general consensus point of view. Given that Anakin's fall is central to the PT, I think this is one of the reasons it is regarded by many as inferior to the OT.

I think most of the critisism is geared towards Anakin's portrayal in AOTC, and not so much against his portrayal in ROTS. I think many felt HC's performance in ROTS was much better, although still not stellar. At least that's the sense I get from reading the reviews.

 

Being the self-proclaimed statistician of this site, I have a pretty good idea of how the fans view the prequels, so can we please move on from generalizing to talking about how we personally feel about this subject?

 

Word

 

As a fan of the PT, I felt Anakin's portrayal in AoTC to be the weak link because as said above, he didn't connect with me as a human with a tragic story. He was a whiny, petulant brat (again, in AoTC). I didn't feel the tragedy of his fall, because it was so obvious he was going to fall - I felt the tragedy of the impact of his fall only as related to the lives of others.

It took several (like 5 or 6) viewings of ROTS before I could see that Hayden's performance approached that of Ewan's (who knocked it out of the park in all but a few scenes).

Hayden does intense fantastically well. His rants as Vader were fine (to me). His ROTS Anakin was good. But AoTC - no, his character wasn't balanced, or complex enough that you could hope he would avoid his OT fate. It was inevitable.

AoTC poisoned the well (to be fair, that movie didn't do a ton of favors for Ewan, either, at times. ROTS made me a Ewan/Obi-Wan fan.)

 

I don't know how you could develop any more over 3 movies never mind the six in total for the character.

The only other contender is Luke.

Well I'll have to use the well worn phrase I couldn't disagree more here then.

I don't know how much more subtle it could have been. If anything the "problem" for some is that it was far too subtle. They seem to would have rather had it been far less subtle, open and obvious.

I have heard that in many forms one way or the other and it ends up in him being more like Luke.

Jealousy?

What are you talking about?

That is a good explanation of your own analysis.

The thing I would say to that is the inevitable is as you say inevitable. To me you have to get past that just as you have to get past the inevitable that in virtually any other series of stories that in the end the good guys are going to win.

For the PT it was as inevitable as Luke winning in the OT and becoming a hero that Anakin was going to lose everything and become a villain. Going into ROTJ in 1983 it wasn't a question of "Will the good guys win?" but how are they going to do it?

Anakin is whiny etc in AOTC. He also knows they are faults of his and he is also kind, caring, loving, loyal and brave to a fault. He complains about Obi-Wan but it is in anger and he knows that it's really his fault.

The scene of Anakin's confession to Padme is so key.

I brought you something.
Are you hungry?
The shifter broke.
Life seems so much simpler
when you're fixing things.
I'm good at fixing things.
Always was.
But I couldn't--
Why'd she have to die?
Why couldn't I save her?
I know I could have!
Sometimes there are things
no one can fix.
- You're not all-powerful, Ani.
- Well, I should be!
Someday I will be.
I will be
the most powerful Jedi ever!
I promise you.
I will even learn
to stop people from dying.
Anakin.
It's all Obi-Wan's fault!
He's jealous!
He's holding me back!
He's jealous!
He's holding me back!
- [ Object Clattering ]
- [ Sniffling ]
What's wrong, Ani?
I--
I killed them.
I killed them all.
They're dead.
Every single one of them.
And not just the men...
but the women...
and the children too.
They're like animals,
and I slaughtered them like animals!
I hate them!
[ Anakin Exhales ]
To be angry
is to be human.
I'm a Jedi.
I know I'm better than this.

That scene is one of the best and lays out the conflict of Anakin so well to me. I feel for him because he wants the power to save those he loves and can't really accept that he can't save everyone.

He can't let go. He wants to save people for himself ultimately out of greed and selfishness.

This plays into my exact point. For some reason some fans and viewers connect the way the character is played and meant to be played and tie that directly into the performance.

Like somehow disagreeing with how the character is conceived is wrong because that is not how that person wanted it.

Yet many of those same people like the way Anakin was done in TCW because there he is much more the hero figure that they wanted him to be akin to how Obi-Wan talks about him in ANH and ROTJ. That Anakin we only see at the start of ROTS though then his downfall through the rest of that film.

AOTC is not about that Anakin. Anakin became that person after AOTC and after the events of the film. The character was portrayed as Lucas and HC played him.

If all Lucas wanted to do was "please the audience" then he could have taken the easy and well worn road that he already very deliberately in the OT and that the ST is doing now.

Why would he want to? He did that already. That is why Anakin is 9 and not 19 in TPM and why in AOTC it's not a story of love is the right thing to do. In AOTC love is the wrong thing to do. It's the selfish thing. We are not used to movies where two young people falling in love doesn't overcome evil but starts the road to ruin.

For Lucas it was totally successful in the story he was telling. The number one person Lucas was making all the movies for was himself.

 

This is a pretty bang-on statement of how I feel about his character in the prequels, as well. I know people like to say "well Anakin wasn't supposed to be likable" in the films, and perhaps that's true, but after seeing how great Anakin's TCW portrayal was, and how that guy was gradually slipping to the dark side, the tragic impact of having a likable and easy to care about character like that fall from grace makes for a much stronger narrative that affects the audience more.

 

Anakin is also portrayed really well in the Clone Wars micro series if you've seen that

 

Honestly I don't think there's an actor in Hollywood that could deliver 70% of the lines he was given and come off looking like he's not a complete stiff. Most of his and every other characters dialogue is so bad that it is hard to fault Hayden or anyone else for that matter. He's not nearly as bad in his other movies. He's not really good either except for maybe 1 or 2 decent turns. The point is, the script gave him and everyone else some really hard lines

 

I feel Anakin in TCW is an expansion of Anakin in the beginning of ROTS before he starts having nightmares about Padme. Short of making another movie between AOTC and ROTS, George didn't have much time to show more likable Anakin considering everything else he had to establish.

 

It's disappointing to see people constantly bring up their opinion of the number of opinions that agree with them (I say "opinion of" because the actual numbers don't always match what people are purporting). If that's how every PT discussion is going to go, then why have discussions at all? I'm sure if we bring up Justin Beiber's sales, that logic will magically flip around and the number of people who like something won't matter again anymore (until it suits their narrative again later).

Personally, I always loved Hayden's performance from the beginning. The first time I saw AOTC I was actually disappointed that he was kind of upstaged by Yoda (because I liked where Hayden was going with it). Ironically, all of my friends loved that movie and thought I was crazy on the drive back from the theater. Once I accepted the story they were trying to tell for what it was (ie: instead of rebelling against it for 15 years), I enjoyed the movie more.

One thing I think people often forget is the Jedi of the PT are intentionally more like Vulcans in Star Trek. The Jedi code itself says "there is no emotion". They feel emotion like Vulcans do, but they try to control it (just not as strictly repressive). The characters in the OT aren't in that situation. A character who is trained that "there is no emotion" from the time they're born is going to have a more wooden way of expressing themselves than you or I.

I thought it was great when Hayden won that MTV Movie award for best villian in ROTS. Nice that he got some credit for playing such a memorable character.

 

Oh, I forgot about that one. ROTS also won Favorite Movie (!)

 

there were some weird lines, but i agree; i think he did a great job in episode III

 

I didn't really like his acting in AotC, only the part with the Tuskens, his mom and the reveal to Padmé. I always get chills when I see that part of the movie. (Also with the DV-theme) I really get emotional when he says: "I hate them." So strong ...
I think the big problem I had was the cheesy dialogue with the love story.

I liked him more in RotS. Still had some bad lines, but that's also the blame for the script.
As someone here said, I like Hayden more with his non-verbal acting. On Mustafar he really seems broken.
And I like it when he is angry. When he transforms to Darth Vader, he does get better for me.

 

I've always believed it wasn't his acting that bothered people, but the character. I in fact believe Christensen is an actor of immense talent. He was tasked to bring Anakin to life, not an easy character by any stretch of the imagination. And I think Lucas got exactly what he wanted from Christensen. Therein, I think, lies the problem for some. Some people didn't like the version of Anakin Lucas had envisioned. And because Christensen nailed this vision so well, a vision and direction some people didn't like, they began to dislike Christensen himself.

I watched the PT recently and was thoroughly impressed with Anakin's portrayal. Christensen was tasked with a very diverse role and from my point of view delivered what was asked from him.