Full Series PT Anakin vs. TCW Anakin

What do you all think? Weigh in...

 

What are you talking about? PT Anakin? As in prequel trilogy? TCW is in the PT dude. There is no difference, prequel trilogy Anakin is at the same time as TCW Anakin.

 

I understand. What I meant is Ep II/Ep III Anakin vs. TCW Anakin... sorry. I'm brand new to TFN.

 

TCW is basically the second take on the Anakin Skywalker character. They realized what went wrong with him and pretty much fixed him.

 

That's what I was pretty much aiming for when it comes down to context. Some fans tend to be of the opinion that TCW Anakin was more mature and well-rounded compared to Anakin as he was portrayed in Episode II and III. To each their own.

 

Hayden's Anakin character portrayal is more in line with what he eventually becomes, Darth Vader. Lucas made it that way then. He was an emotionally flawed young man, that never quite got past his boyhood anxiety issues and over attachments to living and non living things once he formed bonds of possession. TCW is nice and all but the two Anakin's I dont feel are the same. The Mirco-series Anakin was closer to the portrayal seen in the movies, more likely due it made to tie into them while TCW sorta did its own thing and came after the movies were finished and seemed an attempt to try and fix and elaborate the weakly written Anakin character of the movies. But its rather hard to watch TCW after AOTC as a filler and then watch ROTS, things don't quite align. Towards the end f TCW show they tried getting more back to the movies, but it was too little too late.

I think Hayden was fine as Anakin, just the movies themselves werent that well made as they should've been.

 

TCW Anakin is same Anakin one sees in ROTS.

 

I'm pretty sure everyone understands that. This poll is just weighing between Hayden's portrayal of Anakin and the way Anakin is portrayed in TCW.

 

TCW Anakin is the Anakin I expected from the OT description. An exceptional pilot, a great warrior and a loyal friend... but clearly deeply flawed. He's very proud, headstrong and has definite anger management issues... but these are treated with sympathy not derision. In the films in order for us to see how 'The Chosen One' could possibly become a Sith they have to really play up the flaws to show the darkness to him... and in the limited time constraints the more positive aspects seem to suffer and lose focus.

I don't think it's totally fair to put is as 'Hayden's' Anakin as he was working with weaker writing. I don't see him as one of the all time greats in SW acting alumni but he could have done more with better writing I feel. And the other issue of course is that the show had time for him to actually struggle with his own weaknesses where the film had to rush to a conclusion. Show-Anakin could make the wrong call in one episode and the right choice in another and explore the difference. Film-Anakin was crammed in amongst a bunch of other subplots that none of them really got enough focus from.

 

TCW Anakin was better in pretty much every way imo. HE was the guy who Obi Wan described/remembered with such fond nostalgia in ANH. They show both his positive and negative qualities, making you like him while also sowing the seeds of his eventual fall, and making it seem tragic (which is what it was supposed to be, but the PT utterly failed to convey imo).

 

Lucas just chose to show the extremes of the character. That is what I most look forward to with the ST is the far better acting and writing we will see. Who knows if it will have as grand of scope as Lucas's overall story did but the individual scenes will be far far far better than what we had to sit through with the PT.

 

TCW Anakin was such a drastic improvement that I can honestly say he became one of my favourite SW characters, whereas I never would have said that about the Anakin from the films.

 

I like them equally on all levels but actor.

 

Wouldn't have cared much for Anakin if it weren't for TCW Anakin.

 

I like TCW Anakin the best.

 

It's all the same to me. They both had to go in slightly different directions, but you can see moments of each version of the character in both TCW and PT, so...yeah.

 

TCW depiction of Anakin was much better. But they had several seasons to develop his character.

 

I agree with jamminjedi23, the Prequels showed the extremes of Anakin's character.
In The Clone Wars and the beginning of ROTS you see his everyday life, fighting for the Republic. It's logical that he would act different these 'normal' circumstances.
Because turning to the Dark Side, hearing that your wife is pregnant and then having a vision of her dying are not part of someone's everyday life.

Also, I think that Anakin was a lot less mature in Attack of the Clones then in TCW or Revenge of the Sith. The war really changed and matured him.

 

Primarily by choice of voice actor. Hayden wasn't a bad portrayer of the character per se (a bit stiffer, but not bad), it's just that his voice is so reedy that his attempts at high emotion/anger come off more as "whine" than "rant".

 

Tcw anakin, as anakinfan said the cartoon portrayal fits most with old bens comments from the ct.

 

That makes me think that Anakin can only be stable when he has something to occupy him fully. The Clone Wars takes up all his time and energy, so he has less time to brood on things.

 

Agreed. Heck when Hayden just has to act in a physical/visual way, I think that he does pretty well. Like on Mustafar when he's just starring into the camera, he looks genuinely creepy. Once he starts to talk (and REALLY when he starts to yell/scream), well that's when the trouble starts. He just doesn't have a great voice for that sort of thing. And to be fair, the dialogue really didn't do him any favors either. Freaking Daniel Day-Lewis probably couldn't have made a lot of that dialogue work.

 

We should start a Kickstarter to put this hypothesis to a test!

 

TCW Anakin by a landslide ---- despite being shackled to using the likeness of Hayden and to try to imitate his voice/speech, the animated Anakin was free to actually "act" and show emotion without it looking forced, cheesy, wooden or dull.

In my perfect prequel story, though, Anakin would have a deeper voice, a style of speaking much more in line with his ultimate Vader persona. He would also be more military in build, fuller in the shoulders and maybe even a little taller, and from the very introduction of his character onscreen, he would be in his hid to late 20s and his mannerisms and nature would be much closer to the Vader that we all know ---- stoic, serious, intimidating, deliberate etc. He wouldn't have just become that way once the "Vader switch" was flipped during his dark side turn. There would be no rebellious, whiny, skinny teenager side to him.