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

I dont hate that he was a kid so much as I think the overall trilogy would have been better if he wasn't. Start him out as a teenager same age as padme, he's been a slave longer, has a longer relationship with his mother etc etc. Being recruited into Jedi council even more controversial. It just adds so much more drama to the overall trilogy. You don't really even need to adjust plot much. It would just be more interesting.

 

I get the impression that many fans wanted to see more Anakin/Vader much earlier than they got - some of those fans also have stated they wanted the 3rd movie to have lots of Vader hunting down/killing Jedi. They didn't get it and they think the movies suffered for it.

(That's my understanding, not my view.)

 

Anakin was originally written as a twelve-year old during the development of The Phantom Menace, but Lucas reduced his age to nine because he felt that the lower age would better fit the plot point of Anakin being affected by his mother's separation from him. Eventually, Anakin's younger age led Lucas to rewrite his participation in the movie's major scenes.

Here's a link to a website that explains the original story for Episode I: http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistory...AS_dgsssNFclzKh2FN8N4T1aqHLLZLznmPwUFB8qhNrtI

 

First to the underlined, what?
I have not come across that argument nor does it play any part of why I think the PT is less than great.

At most I think Qui-Gon makes Yoda and the other Jedi look cold and uncaring.
Qui-Gon tried to free Shmi, because he knew it was the right thing to do and he did care about her as well.
The other Jedi are seemingly content with letting Shmi rot as a slave and see no reason to act.
And they show little understanding that a nine year old, who has just left his mother and only family and is surrounded by strangers and asked probing question, that this kid would be scared and miss his mother.

Also there is Padme, she likewise did nothing.
This is not an issue in TPM as much as it is in AotC as it makes Padme seem uncaring and the Jedi as well.
And it did not have to be an issue. Simply have Padme mention in AotC that she arranged to have Shmi freed shortly after TPM but Shmi elected to remain on Tatooine.
And they go to Watto in AotC because Shmi's house is empty and they want to find out where she is.
And the film goes on from there.
I think this was an oversight on Lucas part.

I get why Lucas made Anakin this young but I think it caused more problems than it solved.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

I've thought exactly the above for a long time. Have him as an already angry, but good-hearted, wisecracking teenage rebel without a cause figure - the romance already makes more sense, and the trilogy benefits hugely. But Lucas subverted expectations, did something very different. I don't hate it - I've always liked Jake Lloyd's hones, unaffected performance - but it was probably a mistake.

 

100 percent agree. I just think you have a totally different trilogy if you cast Hayden right away. He's on Tatooine like you said rebel without a cause. A slave for 15 years or so. The story could be the same but all the stakes are already turned up to 11.

 

The problem with these arguments against introducing Anakin as a kid is that introducing him as an older teenager would have made the PT less accessible and inviting to the very kids who are the target audience of Star Wars in the first place.

 

I think the stakes would have been turned down to like 7, actually, because a fifteen-year-old leaving his mother, while tragic, isn't as emotionally affecting as a nine-year-old doing same.

I like the innocent, childish atmosphere of TPM. I wouldn't trade if for a teenage angst version of the film. That's what AOTC is. I like that each movie in the trilogy has a different maturity level.

 

There were no kids in ANH, ROJ, ESB and kids loved it.

 

Why did so many hate the idea of Anakin being a child in "The Phantom Menace"? I honestly don't know. Was it because they had expected him to be the same age as Luke in "A New Hope"?

It was just as "rushed" as Leia and Han's romance in "The Empire Strikes Back" to me.

 

Precisely!! It was something that was very badly needed to draw in the younger audience.... you're actually helping to make my point.

 

Which is a quite justified assumption given what is said in both ANH and RotJ.
In ANH Beru and Owen both clearly knew Anakin and saw that Luke was much like his father and was not a farmer. In RotJ Obi-Wan said that when he first knew Luke's father, Anakin was already a great pilot.
Why would anyone hear this and think that Luke's father was 8 at the time?

And just from watching the trailer to TPM; most of the audience knew that Anakin would be a kid.
And a lot of people looked forward to the film.
But after watching it, some felt let down, that the film wasn't all that good.

So people had problems with the execution of kid Anakin, say the acting and the dialogue.
Plus there are logic holes when they decide to bring a small kid to a warzone for no reason.

Plus it required the recasting of a major role and Anakin had to be re-introduced in the next film.

And having Anakin as a kid makes the Jedi and Padme seem uncaring, neither thought of trying to free his mother despite how much he missed her.

Hardly, Han and Leia had started to get to know each other in ANH and they have spent three years together between films. Anakin and Padme met for a few days in TPM and then they never saw each other for ten years. And after a few days they decided to get married.
Han and Leia admit their feelings for each other at the end of ESB but they are a couple at the end of RotJ.
So few days vs couple of years.

This to me is pandering, "Oh kids won't understand or watch a film unless there is a kid in it, so put a kid there."
This underestimates children and they are much more capable of understanding things and don't need to be talked down to all the time.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I know that I would have been even more madly in love with SW if there had been a small kid as one of the main protagonists in the first one that I got to see. It's also a fact that a lot of kids who got to watch Episode 1 during its initial theatrical release enjoyed it precisely because there was a kid in it. That isn't pandering in any way whatsoever, any more than it is "pandering" to have kids be the stars of the Harry Potter series.

Also, I never said kids needed to be "talked down to" at any point, so please don't start with straw man arguments because it just shows how desperate you are and how little your objections have to do with the topic at hand.

 

I don't disagree that it helped to have a younger character for children to identify with (I certainly identified with Anakin) but at the end of the day, Lucas made the decision about Anakin's age based on the needs of the story. He needed to have Anakin's separation from his mother have the most dramatic impact while still allowing Anakin to plausibly do things like win podraces and pilot a starfighter.

It's not pandering to kids or talking down to them to put a child character in a movie that they can relate to. The problem isn't that Lucas was underestimating children but rather that certain older viewers have an aversion to children in certain kinds of movies.

These are the same kinds of critics who think so poorly of children that they think they'll immediately lose interest in the story because of a single Senate scene.

 

You said that the absence of a kid in TPM would have made the film less accessible and inviting to kids in the audience.
Saying that they needed that in order to get into the film and the absence of a kid would have meant they would have trouble getting into and accepting the film. Saying that they are not as capable of getting into films as older people.
Kids can get into films just fine even if there are no kids present. the first Star Wars is a clear example of that.

And speaking of that film, have the film exactly as is and make Luke nine years old. Would the film work?
No.
Given the overall story, characters and what is going on, I would think that adding a kid there would almost certainly work to it's detriment.

I saw the original Battlestar Galatica when I was a kid and the kid there, Boxey?, was not one the highlights. I liked other things about it.
When I was young, whether I liked or disliked something was more than just "Oh a kid, I instantly like this." Mostly ray guns and spaceships was my bag back then.

As for TPM, I am fairly certain that if that had a somewhat older Anakin then a lot of people would still have liked it. Impossible to say more or less.

@The_Phantom_Calamari,

It becomes pandering if you argue that kids can't get into a film unless there is a kid in it, which is what the argument I was responding to seemed to suggest.

And instead of dismissing other people's opinions consider instead that their problem might be EXECUTION and not the idea itself.
That people don't have a problem with romance in SW, some just feel that the one in AotC was done poorly.
And people might not have a problem with politics in SW but feel that the senate scenes were not that good.

And I liked Looper a lot and that had a very young kid in it. Sixth Sense, liked that one too.
Road to Perdition, another good movie I think.

Harry Potter was mentioned, I liked the books and I like the films. the first two films are to me some of the weakest and part of that is the uneven acting from the kids. Not enough to take me out of the film but not great either. They did get better however.

Bye.
Old Stoneface

 

See, there you go again, putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. Just because something makes a movie even more accessible to children doesn't necessarily mean "they would have trouble getting into and accepting the film" without it.
Those things aren't the same, and you should know better. Many kids already knew at least a little about Star Wars, but before 1999 there wasn't any movie in the series that starred a kid. That doesn't mean there weren't a lot of kid-friendly things about the series.
It's just like the original Captain Marvel in the 1940s. There were already a lot of superheroes, and kids liked a lot of them. But with Captain Marvel came a new concept - that a young kid could transform himself into an adult superhero and back again. And kids really loved it, and it became the most popular comic book of the early 40s. It doesn't mean kids couldn't also enjoy Superman and other comics where the main superhero isn't a kid.
This lack of imagination on your part shouldn't amaze me, and yet somehow it does.

 

This is where I've always felt critics have contradicted themselves.
Is it too child friendly or not child friendly enough?

 

Those critics are more full of contradictions than any movie I've ever watched....

 

Also the idea that the politics in TPM was a turn-off for kids. Was it really? I'm pretty sure kids tend to like TPM. I was a kid when I saw it, and I thought the politics were interesting. I felt like the movie was treating me like an intelligent person who could understand more adult topics. And I could understand them. It's not hard to understand what's happening in that Senate scene, even for a child. And that shows a great deal of skill on Lucas's part.

 

I was 23 when TPM came out and I thought it was great that Anakin was a kid. I can't understand the things my peers have said about what GL has done to their childhood. Not only did the PT enhance my adulthood but it spoke deeply to my inner child and kind of connected the two in a wonderful way.

I related a lot to Ani. But also I was about two years younger than him when RotJ came out, which was during the height of the SW fandom of my childhood. That age range is typically when SW is the most magical to the imagination and my generation was the first to grow up in a world with SW. I thought young Anakin was a nice touch in that regard, among many - whether intended by GL or not. And it's a shame how some people my age reacted. Not only to Ani but to Jake Lloyd as well. And, again, to George.

 

Absolutely this

Also, I feel like him being a 22-23 year old general is not a good idea. Military leaders are generally older.

 

Oh dear. I hope that's not the case, because that would have been a shallow plot for the third film.

Luke was a military leader in "TESB" at age 22. I guess that was a problem as well. Along with Leia being a senator at age 19 and Padme, an elected queen at 14.

I've read a lot of reasons why many believe Anakin should have been older in "TPM". They just don't strike me as very convincing.

Actually, I had no problems with it. Anakin was a Jedi apprentice who was also inexperienced in romance. He wasn't exactly Han Solo. And it wouldn't make sense if he was another Han. As for Padme, she was like her daughter - hardly any romantic experience, despite having a mature demeanor.

 

Because people like to pretend Star Wars movies aren't kiddie flicks. They're rather sophisticated kiddie flicks, but they are children's entertainment nonetheless.

 

I like that he’s a kid in the film. If there were a few other changes to dialogue and side characters, I really don’t think this would get as much attention.

 

Star Wars can be both kiddie flicks and movies for adults. They're for all ages. It seems pretty apparent to me. The movies feature adventure scenarios and characters that children would find appealing. But they also feature drama and philosophical themes that adults would find appealing.