PT Anakin Skywalker MEGAthread - Don't talk to him about sand, it makes him uncomfortable

He's somewhat complex, But not enough in my view, a Character with so much potential that was never really reached, I think Hayden was great, But the writing / his story arc wasn't up to what I had personally hoped for , He is abit whiny, which is fine. I'd have preferred a little more internal conflict and more "ramp-up" in his character as in his progressively building towards Vader.

But overall he is a good Character in the Saga, But for me should have been easily the best.

 

Anakin wants to be a good person and help others while keeping his family and friends around. He's both selfless and selfish, but can't quite keep those two qualities balanced. In the end, his selfishness wins out because he let's his fear decide.

That's about as complex as any character in the Lucas Saga gets.

 

I'm not sure how much more internal conflict Anakin could take. He was pretty conflicted in almost everything he did until ANH.

 

I’ve been meaning to post something in this thread, but I never seem to get around to it because Anakin is such a fascinating character it’s difficult to just make a quick comment and you’d almost have to write an essay on him and that seems a little daunting. There are several things I’d like to talk about but right now I’d like to write about Vader being a badass for a bit.

I agree with the OP that even though there seems to be this idea among some fans that Darth Vader was the badassest badass to ever badass, he can be read totally differently. Personally, I see Vader as a completely beaten, defeated man who has lost everything he once cared about and who has turned into a mockery of everything he once believed in and stood for. There’s nothing particularly cool or badass about him. In fact, I’m not even entirely sure where the idea of him being so badass comes from. I mean, yeah, sure, he Force chokes people and he has the occasional cool line (“I find your lack of faith disturbing”), and, sure, you could say he’s definitely a cool villain - that voice, the helmet, the breathing is all very cool and I’m not the slightest bit surprised that he has become such an iconic character.

But when you look at the OT, what do we see him actually do? He isn’t really shown to be a character who succeeds at everything and is totally in charge of what’s going on around him. In ANH, for example, Leia refers to him as being on Tarkin’s leash. It may be just her impression or her trying to annoy him, but we don’t really see much to contradict that. Vader clearly takes orders from Tarkin. He doesn’t succeed in stopping Luke from destroying the Death Star. And even though he kills Obi-Wan, it’s something Obi-Wan lets him do. It wasn’t a victory for Vader, not really. And then in TESB and ROTJ we see him kneel in front of the Emperor and be all “What is thy bidding, my master?” and “I must obey my master”. He’s the Emperor’s servant. He’s really not shown to be some awesome badass, imo.

 

Very well said. I would add that I have always wondered (in the times of OT) why the helmet of Vader is like his. I see the obvious reference to the typical samurai helmet, I know about the mask, but why we never can see his eyes? This is the most inhuman thing in Vader and I think that makes him so menacing: he has no face and no eyes (at least we cannot see them).. And many fans think menacing=badass. Well, not at all. Yes, he has his power, he is still exceptional pilot, etc. but he is empty from inside. And in his last scene of ROTJ when he is redeemed, we can see his human personality again. This is very important: we see Vader as human with eyes, face, emotions. And now in PT we see also one thing: this suit buried him alive practically. Yes, it helps him live but it closes him in some inhuman form. So being in this suit is not cool or badass or something like that, for him that is punishment. I would say double punishment, because Anakin was handsome and he lost his pretty face too.

 

TPM he's not really that complex or badass but not that whiny either. In AOTC is pretty much a whiny brat, with no likability to me. ROTS he's a little more of a complex character, more likable and actaully has a few badass moments.

 

For me, the best depiction of Anakin Skywalker is the TCW series (in the latter seasons at any rate). This is pretty much the only version where he is a genuinely decent guy and a hero but also gets to showcase his undoubted flaws (pride, impulsiveness and a very short temper on occasions) without having them completely overshadow the kindness and the determination that were his greatest strengths. The films just had so much to get done in so little time that it never really worked out doing him proper justice. We got told what a great guy he is/was but never really got to see it for ourselves. It was all about the fall without properly establishing where he'd fallen FROM, as it were.


There's a few books that also give a suitably conflicted Anakin but a lot of the time they end up either whitewashing the flaws or 'blackwashing' the positive aspects again due to time constraints. The long-running serial nature of a TV show means that you can play up both and have time to properly explore the implications.

 

By the way, I never watched the micro series, but in this clip I see too much Tartakovski and too little SW. But maybe is interesting to see the CW in another perspective.

 

Yes. The TV shows have a hard time portraying the same depth as the movies.

 

Just wanted to let you know that this is what Lucas was going for. He was sort of surprised and partly bothered by the fact that so many people thought Vader was the coolest in the first two [IV and V] and I think that's when the redemption idea he had been toying with really cemented in, to really hit home the tragic aspect of this character.

I've edited down the great parts from this interview with Lucas, but I feel it belongs deeply in this thread. Hope you all enjoy, it's from 2005 with Rolling Stone:

What was the greatest challenge with him?
I had to make Darth Vader scary without the audience ever seeing his face. Basically, it's just a black mask. I said, "How do I make that evil and scary?" I mean, he's big and black and he's got a cape and a samurai helmet, but that doesn't necessarily make people afraid of him. His character's got to go beyond that – that's how we get his impersonal way of dealing with things. He's done a lot of horrible things in his life that he isn't particularly proud of. Ultimately, he's just a pathetic guy who's had a very sad life.

The first film, people didn't even know whether there was a person there. They thought he was a person there. They thought he was a monster or some kind of a robot. In the second film, it's revealed that he's a human being, and in the third film you find out that, yes, he's a father and a regular person like the rest of us – he's just got a bit of a complexion problem. [laughs]

Even as you were building up this iconic villain, you knew the tragedy behind it.
He's so overwhelming in that first film, but you get to the point where you say, "Wait a minute, if he's so powerful, why doesn't he run the universe?" He even gets pushed around by the governors! They know the Emperor is the final word, so what happens is the same thing that happens in any corporation: Everybody worries about the top man, they don't worry about his goon. And by the time the Death Star is finished, it gives them the sense that they have a bigger, better suit than Darth Vader. In a standoff between the Death Star and Darth Vader, they have no question about who would win, and it's not this mumbo-jumbo Sith guy. So it's even more tragic, because he's not even an all-powerful bad guy, he's kind of a flunky.

He's not Satan, he just goes down to the corner and gets Satan's cigarettes.
You got it. And when he finds out Luke is his son, his first impulse is to figure out a way of getting him to join him to kill the Emperor. That's what Siths do! He tries it with anybody he thinks might be more powerful, which is what the Emperor was looking for in the first place: somebody who would be more powerful than he was and could help him rule the universe. But Obi-Wan screwed that up by cutting off his arms and legs and burning him up. Now he's in an iron lung. From then on, he wasn't as strong as the Emperor – he was like Darth Maul or Count Dooku. He wasn't what he was supposed to become. But the son could become that.

When you were growing up, what villains made an impression on you?
I was more impressed by the good guys. But I remember the bad guy in Ben-Hur who got dragged behind the chariot. John Wayne films had a lot of bad guys, but I can't remember any of them. Most of the movies I liked didn't really have strong bad guys. In films like Bridge on the River Kwai and Citizen Kane, the bad guy's the good guy.

Rewatching the Star Wars films recently, I found it interesting how the new films reframed the old ones: They now seem primarily concerned with the tragedy of Darth Vader, rather than the triumph of the Rebels.
Yeah, I made a series of movies that was about one thing: Darth Vader. Originally, people thought it was all about Luke. The early films are about Luke redeeming his father, so Luke's the focus. But it's also about Princess Leia and her struggle to reestablish the Republic, which is what her mother was doing. So it's really about mothers and daughters and fathers and sons.

So now, instead of all these surprises that aren't actually surprises, when you get back to Episode IV, as soon as Darth Vader walks through that door, and you see Princess Leia with R2, you're going to say, "Oh, my God, that's his daughter. Are they gonna find out?" And you get through the whole first movie and nobody figures anything out. The figuring-out part is mostly done off-screen. The first three episodes are a tragedy, and the second three go slightly goofy, but they're inspirational: Even the worst, most evil people find compassion. Darth Vader has compassion for his children, and that's ultimately what children are for.

Often, in classical tragedies, there's a final moment when the scales fall from the hero's eyes.
Well, in real Greek tragedies, the kids are usually the problem. They're the ones that are killing the parents, but this is more uplifting: It's up to one generation to fix the sins of the last generation.

How did James Earl Jones get involved?
I said right from the beginning that I was looking for a voice for Darth Vader. I went through a lot of different tapes of people, including Orson Welles. But then I landed on James Earl Jones, because he's a superb actor. And I was so worried at that point, because it's minimalist acting in a mask: He doesn't get a huge range of stuff to deal with. I was looking for him to pull a realistic performance out of this constrained reality I had created and really grab the audience. It's one of these horrible acting exercises – sometimes directors put themselves in a corner, and it's thankless for the actor.

The same thing happened with Padmé in Episode I, when she had this very stilted dialogue as the Queen. And also with Hayden in Episode II. He said, "I don't want to be this whiny kid." I said, "Well, you are. You gotta be a whiny teenager."

Like father, like son.
He said, "I want to be Darth Vader." I said, "You gotta be a petulant young Jedi. You're not going to be the guy you thought you'd be when you signed your contract." Hayden was grateful for this last movie, where he actually got to be Darth Vader.

Why do you think people have focused so much on Vader?
People like villains because they're powerful and they don't worry about the rules. And as you go through puberty, you have to break off your social bondage and become your own person. So when you have a film aimed at adolescents, the movie is there to say, "Well, all well and good, but this is what happens to you when you do that. This is why you're compassionate, and why you join together as a group to help each other." These are the same basic stories that have always been told.

It was interesting how many people wanted to see Darth Vader massacre the Jedis.
Well, when I said I was going to do the prequels, everybody said, "That's great, we get to see Darth Vader kill everybody." And I said, "That's not the story." When I announced that the first story was going to be about a nine-year-old boy, everybody here said, "That's insane, you're going to destroy the whole franchise, it's More American Graffiti all over again." And I said, "Yeah, but this is the story."

I don't have energy to just make hit movies. I'm not going to make James Bond Pt. 21 – I'm just not interested. Everybody said to drop the stuff about the midichlorians, it makes it too confusing. But it's a metaphor for a symbiotic relationship that allows life to exist. Everybody said it was going to be a giant turkey: "This isn't going to help LucasFilm at all." I said, "This is about the movie and the company is just going to have to deal with whatever happens." That's one of the reasons why there was so much hype on the first prequel: Everybody was terrified.

Having thought of Darth Vader as this ultimate evil, it was alarming to see him as a cute kid in "The Phantom Menace," as if we were watching home movies of Hitler.
Well, a lot of people got very upset, saying he should've been this little demon kid. But the story is not about a guy who was born a monster – it's about a good boy who was loving and had exceptional powers, but how that eventually corrupted him and how he confused possessive love with compassionate love. That happens in Episode II: Regardless of how his mother died, Jedis are not supposed to take vengeance. And that's why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections. His undoing is that he loveth too much.

[About Anakin's origin]
Now, there's a hint in the movie that there was a Sith lord who had the power to create life. But it's left unsaid: Is Anakin a product of a super-Sith who influenced the midichlorians to create him, or is he simply created by the midichlorians to bring forth a prophecy, or was he created by the Force through the midichlorians? It's left up to the audience to decide. How he was born ultimately has no relationship to how he dies, because in the end, the prophecy is true: Balance comes back to the Force.

Vader is largely machine. Is that a reflection of Anakin having lost his humanity?
It's a metaphor: As your humanness is cut away, your become more like a programmed droid. Even though some of the droids, like C-3PO, are very human in nature, caring and worried that they're going to do the wrong thing. But they're programs – there's a difference. Even with R2, who is clever and ultimately the hero of the whole piece. He's the Lassie of the movies: Whenever there's a pivotal moment of real danger, he's the one that gets everybody out of it.

One of Vader's favorite ways of dispatching people is by strangulation. Is that because of his inability to breathe without the iron lung?
Well, it's a bigger metaphor than that. Strangulation is always a theme. Life is breath. It's a powerful idea in Buddhism: Cutting off life is cutting off breath. The road to the Force is through the breath. Impotency is cutting off hands and legs and arms. That's a theme too.

 

Also, second post on this, but wanted to say your thoughts are also backed up by Joseph Campbell, Lucas' primary anthropological influence in developing the themes for the original Star Wars trilogy.

An abridged version of his related remarks from Bill Moyers' interview with him in 1988:

CAMPBELL: I've heard youngsters use some of George Lucas' terms -- "the Force" and "the dark side." So it must be hitting somewhere. It's a good sound teaching, I would say.
MOYERS: I think that explains in part the success of Star Wars. It wasn't just the production value that made that such an exciting film to watch, it was that it came along at a time when people needed to see in recognizable images the clash of good and evil. They needed to be reminded of idealism, to see a romance based upon selflessness rather than selfishness.
CAMPBELL: The fact that the evil power is not identified with any specific nation on this earth means you've got an abstract power, which represents a principle, not a specific historical situation. The story has to do with an operation of principles, not of this nation against that. The monster masks that are put on people in Star Wars represent the real monster force in the modern world. When the mask of Darth Vader is removed, you see an unformed man, one who has not developed as a human individual. What you see is a strange and pitiful sort of undifferentiated face.
MOYERS: What's the significance of that?
CAMPBELL: Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That's something else, and it can be done.
MOYERS: By doing what?
CAMPBELL: By holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you. But the force of the Empire is based on an intention to overcome and master. Star Wars is not a simple morality play, it has to do with the powers of life as they are either fulfilled or broken and suppressed through the action of man.

 

xezene
Those quotes were really interesting, thank you for posting them!

It does seem like Darth Vader captured people’s imaginations so strongly in the OT that the perception of him as this awesome supervillain sometimes overshadows the character actually portrayed in the films. Which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it does get a little weird when people bash the prequels and PT Anakin because “that petulant teenager could never become the Ultimate Badass Villain we see in the OT!!!” when we never actually really see him being the ultimate badass villain in the OT.

 

Yeah, it always gets me when Vader says "It's too late for me, son" in Return of the Jedi. Those are the words of a broken man. The true 'badass' if there is one is Luke.

 

Those words are so sad to me and I think they’re also really important for understanding Anakin’s character.

He doesn’t say: “The Dark side is awesome! Why would I ever want to let go of it?” or any variation thereof while cackling with fiendish glee. He says “It’s too late for me.” In other words, he might even want to do what Luke says, but he feels he can’t. It’s too late. He has done too much evil and travelled too far down this road to turn back. He has given up hope. He doesn’t see a way out.

And that’s what happens in ROTS too, when he pledges himself to Palpatine’s teachings, isn’t it? He doesn’t seem thrilled or excited at all in that scene. He asks “what have I done”, horrified, after he attacked Mace Windu. It seems he doesn’t see any other way at that point, that after attacking Mace he can’t be forgiven by the Jedi, and now he has chosen his path and has no choice but to travel down that path. The emotions I see in Anakin there (and in ROTJ) are despair and agony. He doesn’t become Darth Sidious’s apprentice because he thinks it would be cool and the Dark side is so awesome. He does it because he thinks he has no choice. It’s not a moment of triumph or satisfaction for him. And that scene at Mustafar when he cries after killing the separatists? I don’t know how else to read that scene but to see him as a man who regrets what he has done and loathes what he has become.

So… yeah. To me Vader is a guy who hates himself and what he has become, but he doesn’t see a way out (until the very end of ROTJ, that is).

 

Absolutely. Anakin knows that he made a Faust’s choice and he thinks he made it for a reason but in the end, the goal doesn’t justify the means and we know that and he understood that but it was too late, Padme was gone. He almost dies in ROTS, all that he has is the anger and the hate, including the self-hate. That's make his Sith abilities stronger, but he is just a ruin of the man he used to be. We see that in the OT: before the crucial moment in TESB there is nothing but anger, hate and evilness in him. What Luke did in the OT, in the beginning with his mere presence was to raise the soul of his father from the ashes, to make him feel alive again, because of Padme, of course. Padme is a symbol of all the good in Anakin and the feeling that he didn't destroy her maybe was the fist moment of relief for him after all those years. I think it is a pity that Lucas didn't include something about that in the remastered versions.

 

Yeah, absolutely. I think I might eventually write and post an essay in the PT forum about Anakin and his relationship to learned helplessness and slave mentality. It's actually really sad but a very compelling subject. Such a great character.

 

It would be great if you could write that essay, I’d love to read it!

I’ve been thinking about Anakin and the themes of freedom, slavery and personal agency lately too, but honestly, I don’t think I’ll get around to writing anything resembling a coherent essay about it. I’m much more comfortable writing incoherent ramblings and comments to other people’s posts than cohesive essays. So I’m probably not destined to write much about the topic myself, but I’d be really happy if someone else did!

But it really is an extremely interesting topic. We find out in TPM that Anakin was a slave, but after that it’s not explicitly mentioned in the films. But it’s still there, maybe beneath the surface but it is there, and it affects his whole personality and mindset in a major way, imo. I mean, growing up knowing that you don’t have much control over what happens to you, and knowing that you are a commodity with a price tag has to affect you in an extremely fundamental way. I’m not convinced he ever got out of that mindset, to be honest. And definitely his experience being a Jedi would be very different from the ordinary Jedi who didn’t grow up as a slave. I mean, here he is, finally freed and no longer a slave and he’s going to be a Jedi - but what’s that really like? He has people telling him what to do, where to go, how to feel, how to behave. And he’s once again calling other people “master”. I think that word would have different connotations to him than it does to the other Jedi. And I’m not sure if the other Jedi truly ever understood all that. For example, if Anakin disobeys Obi-Wan or the Jedi Council, I think it would be easy for the other Jedi to see it as a sign of being arrogant or disrespectful. But looking at it from a different angle it could also be about Anakin trying to find personal agency in a world where his whole life there’s been someone telling him what to do. Or what about his tendency to want to control everything? Maybe that has something to do with the feeling of lacking all control over what happens to you and your loved ones.

I’m getting sidetracked here, but I meant to say that after he leaves the Jedi Order he kneels in front of Palpatine and pledges himself to his teachings. And then spends the next 20 years going “yes, master” and “what is thy bidding, master?”. It’s just all so sad. It’s only in the very last few moments of his life that he doesn’t have someone he calls his master. But I think I’m going to contradict my earlier post (about how Vader is not a badass in the OT) and say that actually, when he chooses to throw the Emperor into the pit he is being pretty badass. I mean, he has been manipulated and controlled by this guy for decades by now. He appears to be completely hopeless and beaten in ROTJ, and yet he manages to salvage enough of the person he once was to make this decision and destroy the master he thought he always has to obey. That’s pretty badass if you ask me.

 

STANDING OVATION. At first I was going to just give a metaphorical cookie for your work, but really, great post. This is exactly what I want to write about, and you pointed out a few things I didn't think of (master, control). I may quote you then. You are right on the money. Great!

 

xezene
Glad to hear you liked the post! I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

 

I think he is the best character of the series. And I feel sorry for him, his life was very sad.




He was really disgusted by Palpatines order.

 

I have a lot of thoughts around this too. There are some moments in the movies where it makes me cringe, how many times he says "master" at once. Looked at it from the point of view that he was a slave, his constant chafing to be considered a Master himself comes off less as a young guy who is desperately impatient than a guy who had his agency taken away from the age of three (or less) and wants to finally be the equal of everyone else. And then in a desperate gambit, he gambles all that freedom and loses horribly.

It also speaks to his greed and lust for power. There was this great segment on modern day slavery on NPR a month or so ago that spoke to some of these people, after being released, become very controlling because they need to control their existence since they had no ability to control anything (including their own lives) for so long.

I think Obi-Wan seemed to understand that a bit, because he let him be empowered for the most part, but the Council certainly did not.

 

Every time I re-watch ROTS I appreciate him more.

 

I totally agree. Anakin wanting to be a Jedi Master is one of those things where he might come across as immature or “whiny”, but when you actually look at the character more closely you realise it’s not just about him being immature or greedy, there are some real, very sad reasons why that might be a sensitive topic for him.

I also don’t think that the other Jedi understood Anakin very well, if at all. I’m sure they’re very wise in many ways, but when it comes to how they handled Anakin they came across as clueless to me, to be honest. It’s like they’re so used to training “normal” Jedi - the ones who have been raised by the Jedi since they were very little - that they had no idea what to do with someone who was more unusual for them.

 

Great argument.
It is a combination of both. We all have certain personality traits right from the get go. Right now, no one can actually pin point them down to a specific genetical makeup (although there is some evidence around), but we can be sure from studies done with both identical and non-identical twins as well as studies on individuals who fall on the anti-social personality disorder spectrum that they are there.

Anakin shows traits of being reckless and being overly confident which is a precursor for arrogance even in TPM. Of course these traits alone don't make someone do "evil" things (I am putting evil in quotation marks because evil is a concept that belongs into the realm of philosophy and theology not psychology), but there is strong evidence that one needs to have certain character traits in the first place to be capable of committing homicide or other acts of cruelty. This is why people who have experienced even multiple severe mental trauma are not all down the road to disaster. Perhaps the most interesting study done to date on why certain people do certain things and under which circumstances is Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and the resulting studies. Other researchers later concluded that out of the group who signed up for this in the first place most score higher on narcissism and aggression among other things.

He also is immature. I think a good real world allusion would be likening him to a teenager or young adult who is exceptionally gifted in one or more areas. They often are immature for longer because they struggle with being ahead of most people, even most of their teachers, and they know they are ahead of them. Yet they are challenged with puberty and entering early adulthood at the same time and therefor lack experience and mental maturity. This almost always creates points of friction, especially with authority figures. They often cannot understand why they are constantly getting reigned in and see this as a personal affront, even more than a ordinary teenager would. I have seen this happen with one of my brothers and it can be pretty frustrating for all parties involved. The good news is that most people eventually do mature out of this perceived injustice and I do think there would have been a good chance for Anakin to do just this despite the odds not being that favorable for him due to his circumstances. You could even see this happening at the beginning of ROTS. Palaptine noticed that and started to isolate Anakin so that he would be in an even better position to influence him.

His past of being enslaved played a huge role into amplifying these traits as well as creating tension in the life that followed. Other decisive factors or events are the loss of his mother and the absence of a father figure. And no, there is no blame on Shmi or even implying she did not do well with Anakin. But the absence of a father and Anakin's continuous quest of finding one lasted well into his early adulthood and is certainly among the reasons why he was so perceptive to Palpatine manipulating him.
The loss of his mother ranks pretty high as well for certain. I would posit that he was never truly ready to leave her and this lead to his almost pathological obsession with Padme over the next 10 years and his love for Padme, no matter how "pure "in AOTC, slowly shifting into a more possessive love.

Add to that his idealism, the attachments he formed before entering the Jedi order (most notably to Shmi and Padme), him not exactly choosing the Jedi way of life despite living it for many years, Qui-Gon's death (first father figure), never truly understanding and willingly internalizing one of the most crucial Jedi teachings "you have to let go" ( the Jedi teachings about detachment and compassionate love harken back to some of the most noble and beautiful concepts in the realm of theology and philosophy, but it is not something that can just be taught. You have to willingly accept them as the way for you. Like Qui-Gon told Ankin "It will be a hard life"), a tendency to be short tempered, dissatisfaction with his current living conditions and you have the perfect storm.

If that all wasn't terrible enough for Anakin there is also Palpatine, who nurtures Anakin's weaknesses, tells him what he wants to hear - but not what he needs to hear, makes good use of the seeds of doubt that Anakin as about the Jedi, acts as a father stand in, takes advantage of the fact that Anakin relates better to people than concepts.
It's all there: The capacity to behave different, the early life traumatic events, the general dissatisfaction and someone who takes advantage of this. Recipe for disaster indeed.

Of course this can only function as a very abbreviated proposition. Anakin is a more than complex character, he would be even in the real world. If you take into consideration that we are in a fictional universe in which both the dark side and the concept of evil are very real you could write your phd on that.

 

For the record, in another thread someone said that Hayden couldn't express different emotions well. yes, we all see that
And, great discussion guys! I have always wonder why so may people underestimate the character, why they want to make him one-dimensional (badass or whiny or whatever) as he is so complex, I would say realistic human character. And we see the palette of his emotions, feelings and ruminations exactly in PT. In OT we see just a shadow of Anakin who become human again in the end of the saga.