PT Why do so many people hate that Anakin was a kid in Episode I?

People forget that Obi-Wan is a manipulative, lying liar who lies.

 

He isnt to bad for me. At least before that starfighter part. The boy wasnt a good child actor and some of his lines been soso but the film has bigger problems. Of course the hatred and blame he got is totally undeserved and silly. Lucas pulled this up after all.

There is an interesting deleted scene where he gets into a fight with another boy and Qui Gon talks with him about that. Should have kept that imo.

 

My personal feeling was that Anakin should have been portrayed as around the ages of 19, 22 and 25 in the respective prequels, not too dissimilar an age to Luke in the classic trilogy.

This would have meant for a better arc by way of
1) Meeting / Adventure / Jedi Apprentice
2) Clone Wars / Training / Betrayal / Turn
3) Purge of the Jedi / Showdown with Obi-Wan / Final transformation into classic Vader​

 

Close-mindedness.

 

We'll never know because that wasn't the point of the story. The point was in showing how traumatic it was for young Vito to separated from his family and how that impacted him, which lead to his decision to become a criminal and eventually to take his revenge, years later. Much like Lucas chose to show us Anakin as a young kid, so that we know how that impacted his decision to become Vader.

Anakin was nine and Padme was fourteen. That's a total of five years between them. That's more than acceptable in terms of characterization. And the fact is that there are plenty of movies that have done recasting like that and not lose anything.

Not unless they're totally sheltered and/or see their parents die. Anakin at twelve is like a lot of us, we're ready to start getting out of our parents shadow. At nine, not so much.

The Harry Potter series was designed to follow the characters from the time they were eleven until they were like sixteen/seventeen and then jumped ahead about twenty years. The books followed them in real time and the films did likewise. There was never an intention on Rowling's part to due time jumps while they were in Hogwarts and the cast was dedicated to finishing out the series.

And that happened in AOTC.

How was that a lie? Obi-wan never said how old they were when they first met, what the circumstances were when they met, who was involved during that time period and what exactly happened when Anakin went to fight in the Clone Wars. Lucas left it very vague on purpose.

 

I feel like Lucas had a different vision for Anakin than most Star Wars fans. Star Wars fans wanted Anakin a figure that they wanted to be. A cool Han-Solo-esque figure or some kind of similar masculine figure. Lucas ''subverted expectations'' by making Anakin more of a pathetic figure that wasn't someone you necessarily wanted to be but more of a deeply troubled person that once a good kid. As he says, ''Ultimately, he’s just a pathetic guy who’s had a very sad life.''For Lucas, the story of Anakin Skywalker is more of a cautionary morality tale of letting our passions get the worst of us. Anakin's life story is more a warning than a life story you want to replicate.

 

I, too, have always been amazed at such hatred towards little Anakin. There is a strange feeling that people are disappointed by the fact that the mighty Lord Vader could once even be a child. Is it serious? That's ridiculous! I took both little Ani and teen Anakin in stride, and I believe that a silent and brutal warrior in black armor could be like that. Yes!

 

I think it is both inaccurate and dismissive to say that all that people that had issues with TPM or the PT just "Hated" little Anakin.
Were there some that went too far in their criticism? Yes but they are not the majority.
The same applies to the personal attacks some of the ST actors had suffered, those are not representative of those that have issues with the ST.

Many, including myself, felt that Jake's acting in TPM was uneven and that blame falls squarely on Lucas as he is the director. And that kid Anakin caused problem in that Obi-Wan and Anakin's friendship could not start and in AotC it was already strained. And to me, there is a lot of logical problems with taking a small kid into a war zone for no reason.

AotC Anakin I found unlikable and irritating, not the the result Lucas was going for I would think.
Again I don't blame Hayden, Lucas is the director and it is his job to get a good performance out of his actors.
Hayden is capable of better, RotS showed that. So in AotC he needed more directing but didn't get it.

So the issue is less intent and more about execution.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

And it was Lucas' prerogative to deliver on his own vision as he saw fit. I realise that I am just another fan with yet another eye-roll-inducing head-canon version of the character, but my opinion is this.

For the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker's downfall and turn to the Dark Side of the Force to be really effective, shouldn't the audience really root for him and in fact actually like him to begin with? I can't have been the only fan who built up in their mind an image of a character much like you describe, a dashing, daring but most importantly, likeable and affable young man. Lucas seemed to think that he should be a sullen, rather petulant figure so it was harder to relate to him and feel tragedy for his plight. I was actually glad when he got burned by the end of ROTS because he was so annoying.

 

I guess most expected to see badass Vader hunting done Jedi knights. I also read some complaints about the inconsistency between Anakin's behavior and his backstory as a slave. Apparently, if he's not beaten up or worse or acting gloomy then that's not depicting what real slavery looks like.

 

Only because the intention from the start was to make a film only about the Superman part of the origin as told between 1938-1944 and not include the Superboy portion, which became part of the origin in 44. Otherwise, it would have been "Superboy: The Movie" and followed by "Superman: The Movie".

 

It would have been better to see him actually train with Obi Wan in TPM. We never got to see their friendship and adventures properly.

 

Little fun fact:
Anakin has more screetime in the PT than Luke does in the OT.

 

Why do we need to see Anakin train, when we saw Jedi training in TESB? As to their friendship, we did see it in both AOTC and ROTS. You assume that it was all peaches and cream. Lucas never indicated that there weren't rough patches in the relationship, prior to Anakin's conversion to the dark side, either. Remember, Lucas combined both Anakin and Vader into a single person in 1978. When he did that, he had to address both aspects of those individual characters. The good friend that was Anakin and the troubled student that was Vader. That's what we get in AOTC and ROTS.

 

I think he should have been introduced as older, even if he was only sixteen or seventeen.

 

Because the actor who played him was atrocious. He could not act a lick and completely took you out of the film.

It was just a really bad idea on GL’s part. ​

 

I can see the point of both sides of the basic argument here. IMO I don’t think showing a 9 yr old Ani was a mistake while Jake was just okay as a actor - I do think people’s expectations are too high on just how good a young boy can be. I do see having him be independent and trying to act “superior” might have been a mistake as it made him look a little odd or cold

Looking at his environment not a lot of teenage girls running around - the Angel line seems okay to me. I can really see him and relate as I for sure remember what it was to be a young boy being quickly attracted to a a young Padme.

Sure bringing Ani to the war a little unrealistic some what contrived but so is having Padme running around expertly shorting people. It’s a movie these things happen The buttons. I find that very acceptable in this movie verse And yeah tell a kid hide of course gonna hide in a fighter

One thing that also I feel that causes a problem is in this film the Padme character is shown as a more adult female a lot of times especially by the Queen double. And yes 14-15 year old girls can be seen as adult while 8 year old boys are not seen as even teenagers. This is a huge disconnect when in movie two Ani is now more mature and Padme is viewed at times as mostly the same mature character that was shown in the first movie

Getting back to ani and Luke. It should be remembered that in 4 Luke was shown as not happy with his life and like most teenagers was ready to leave the nest. While Ani was shown happy with his life in the movie. This helped set up him leaving having a huge effect especially leaving his mom. It would be harder to show this with a older Ani as most teenagers are ready to leave mom

In my mind a lot of these issues could have been handled if Lucas had added a 4th film all things being equal I imagine Lucas would agree with this but That didn’t fit the narrative

 

Don’t know maybe because Lucas picked the wrong child actor and no one cares about little anakin before he became a Jedi.

 

No problem with kiddyAnakin from TPM.
I even believe now that Episode 1 is the best of the 3 prequels.

 

I don’t have a problem seeing Anakin as a kid. I actually like that it shows us how gifted in the force he is and how it’s a natural part of his life. It also gives way us an explanation that he started training later as a Jedi and as such, adds depth to his fall.

The actor... the dialogue? I don’t know.

 

I think Jake Lloyd's performance is C+ to B average. I never thought he was terrible in it. The dialogue as silly. They should have emphasized his fear of Watto hurting him and his mom through blowing them up. They should have emphasized him wanting to save his mom in TPM. Yes, they did it in AOTC. But in TPM, they should have shown that he had some flaws, like his temper when he beats up Greedo. Ya know? Makes sense. It foreshadows him a bit, like Rick McCallum said.

But, yeah. My Dad liked Jake Lloyd's Anakin and he still does to this day. I never had a problem with it.

The real problem in all those Tattooine scenes is that Wattoo is too likable in all of them. He's a slave master. And Qui-Gon is super morally ambiguous on Tattooine and he's not elsewhere in the film. Lol. (No, I don't count his mind trick of the Gungans. That was necessary for him to get to help the Naboo.) Qui-Gon was strong enough to free both Shmi and Anakin without going about it through the legal way or the trickery route he opted to take. Plus, he was smart enough. I read plenty of EU on Qui-Gon to be a fan of his brain. He's just not smart in TPM because Lucas is silly with dialogue and stuff. PS: Yes, I know Qui-Gon is a Grey Jedi, and his defiance toward the Jedi Council is interesting. But that action is not moral ambiguity. It's him seeing that Anakin is the Chosen One. But that's another problem. People hate the prequels for making Qui-Gon wiser than Yoda, but I don't. I think Yoda was wise in other ways, just not in terms of seeing a Greyness to the Force until later in his life.

 

I agree. They should have made Watto a lot more meaner than he actually was. It would've gave a reason to why Anakin had a lot of
emotional problems.

 

Indeed. Watto was not that different than Jabba in many respects. That's what people tend to forget.

 

People expected Anakin to be a Han Solo-like character in the prequels and less what we got. Lucas wanted to show how innocent Anakin starts out and so began the story when he was a kid. Just a difference in expectations, but I think that what we got makes for a more realistic character arc.

 

I think that would have made the movie darker than Lucas wanted it to be. The way it is, we understand the sadness of Anakin's plight, but you know, at the same time, it isn't traumatizing little kids.

I actually really liked how charismatic Watto is because it shows how banal evil can be. Watto isn't some sadistic caricature like Jabba. He's just a pathetic loser who's eked out some small semblance of power and status in a slave society. If it were otherwise, maybe you could say, well, just take out Watto and that'll solve everything. But instead you get the sense that this is just the way things are on Tatooine and there's nothing really Qui-Gon can do about it on his own.