PT Why I enjoy Episode I and young Anakin.

I had replied to a post with this, then decided to make it it's own as I can maybe see alot of good views coming from it. So here is my opinion on why Episode I, and young Anakin, is a good entry to the prequels.

It showed us a glimpse of what the Republic was like in it's prime, and for those that don't like the senate scenes. How many would have killed for those types of scenes in Episode VII?.
The Jedi were in a stage where they were helping with trade disputes, almost casually by Qui-Gon's tone. So for the most part, the galaxy wasn't to bad in screen.

As for younger Anakin, it was good seeing a version of Anakin that I would miss by the end of Episode III.
I've read about, how many people wanted the prequels to jump into the Clone Wars, but with all that would be going on, what would be there to reference and miss, and what started Anakin on a path that would take over the rest of his life.
Episode I, helped show us why Anakin was so defensive in Episode II and III.
He came from a backround where he was put down constantly told he will never amount to anything.
He probably translated the Jedi council's strict code as more,
"The council will never see me anything past a slave. I wish Qui-Gon was here".
who sadly could no longer support him past Episode I.
After Qui-gons passing, Anakin is left with Obi-Wan, Padme, and.....Palpatine, as his supporting cast.
Learning tough love from Obi-Wan gave him an undecided view probably.
One minute he's getting scolded (more, "I'm just a slave boy", mentality).
And the next they are almost brothers.
So there was conflict over his feelings with Obi-Wan, especially after Anakin confided in Obi-Wan about the dreams he had about his mother, and Obi-Wan assuring him that they are nothing but dreams. Only to find they were true.
In the 10 year gap without Padme, and aside from having his "overly critical" Master, he had his most staunch supporter in Palpatine, who continually, undid all the strict maturity, the Jedi Council tried to teach Anakin, with Palpatine telling him, that he did not need them, he was stronger and better than they gave him credit for. That he, Palpatine, was the only one who appreciated his skills as a Jedi.
Enter Padme.
Aside from Obi-Wans tough love, the memories of his Mother, and Palpatine's constant praising.
He had Padme on his mind.
His angel.
After 10 years of being away, he finally gets to see her again.
This is who first grabbed his attention out of the group that day in the shop.
Who he "thought about everyday" for ten years.
He doesn't care about the Jedi Code. Because this is the person who helps him feel the least like his former slave self, even after being referred to as, "That little boy on Tatooine".
Look at the Lars Homestead scene, would that scene have had as much impact if we didn't experience what he came from in Episode I?.
Enter Episode III.
He has matured much since Episode II, but still has his defenses up.
And here is where Palpatine really takes advantage of Anakin's PTSD.
The Dooku scene shows this in a way.
"Kill him, kill him now...."
"I shouldn't"
*I can't. The Jedi aren't like this...but this man Palpatine has been my biggest supporter, and this guy Dooku has taken many Jedi and Clone lives.
Palpatine also makes me feel like a person named Anakin....instead of a slave*.
"Do it!.....".
*kills Dooku*.
Using the same mentality, that he's Anakin the person and not a slave to Palpatine.
He listens to Sidious as he reminds him of his power, and how the Jedi just want to keep him down. Even though inside he knows it is wrong, he takes in everything he is being told, because Palpatine is a friend, something that Anakin didn't have the pleasure of having many of. Especially ones that tell Anakin everythinghe wants to hear.
The purge was the defining moment in Anakin's life.
Here he feels everything and everyone he has trusted has betrayed him.
He put all his chips in on Padme making him feel special, killed many Jedi he maybe considered friends, all for someone he considered an angel on Tatooine.
So in the end. All he wanted was to be a person named Anakin Skywalker, but he couldn't get past the thoughts of himself being, that slave boy from Tatooine, and in the end, that is what sent him over.
And with Episode I, it helps Episode III's ending feel even more traumatic to me.

 

I prefer Jake Lloyd's Anakin to Hayden Christensen's Anakin, don't @ me.

 

I love both versions.
I see a lot of people saying Episode I wasn't needed though.

 

Very much agree about young Anakin.
The PT is a tragedy at its core and a tragedy needs something to be lost.

The young, relatively innocent and childlike Anakin of TPM is the perfect contrast from the man he develops into during the following episodes.

I might even venture the argument that the childish humor of TPM serves a similar purpose. From the onset of the film you know it will lead to tragedy, so you know from the beginning that the lightheartedness will not last.

 

For people who like the PT it seems that little kid Anakin is a fine way to start off the trilogy.

For everybody else, it seems like the choices made in TPM were the catalyst that led to them not enjoying the trilogy as a whole.

 

It was something to miss.
For the most part, life was care free in Episode I, so by Episode III, you can look back, and miss Jar Jar fumbling around.

 

If Anakin "didn't care about the Jedi code" and just wanted to remain Ani" why on earth did he become a Jedi then?

 

I like seeing young Anakin to measure how much of a improvement he is in ep 3 when he slaughtering the seppys and Jedi lol The emperor improved him! ;D

 

I think the issue with older fans who saw the OT first is that we seem to have ALL ASSUMED THIS. I've never talked to anyone who watched the OT before the PT that didn't land on your exact assessment. So that begs the question, how did Lucas not realize this?

 

I read that Obi-Wan was suppose to find him.
But Lucas enjoyed working with Liam so much. He created additional scenes, and sent him to Mos Espa instead.

 

Well, I know that originally the story only had Obi-Wan until we got to Coruscant and then we were introduced to Qui-Gon . Qui-Gon then went back to Naboo with everyone and got killed (I'm guessing just so Darth Maul could do something before being killed off). I can only assume that Lucas put Qui-Gon in earlier just so Obi-Wan had someone to share dialogue with (and thus to be able to give exposition to the audience). I know this then lead to Qui-Gon getting most of Obi-Wan's lines and Obi-Wan basically just existing during the duration of the film. If Lucas enjoyed working with Neeson so much, he should have just given him his own characterization instead of just giving him Obi-Wan's. Seems... well, lazy.

 

I honestly never assumed from ANH that Obi Wan discovered Anakin on Tatooine and urged him to leave. From the dialog I just figured the comments about Anakin being a good pilot, warrior and friend was based on a relationship built between two Jedi during the Clone Wars.

I grew up with the OT and never had any specific ideas on how Anakin would be portrayed in a story prior to the OT. I never had any expectations we would get more Star Wars at all by the time the announcement of the PT came around.

Little Ani was a good start to the story for me because of his relationship with his mother. For them to only have each other, and being slaves for all of his life up let the emotions begin to seep in. Seeing 9 year old Ani with his mom made her death scene in AOTC so much more powerful.

 

It's the combination of ANH and ROTJ that produces "Anakin was a great pilot before he left Tatooine" and "Anakin was a great pilot before Obi-Wan began to train him".

ANH
No, my father didn't fight in the Clone Wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.
That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals; he felt he should've stayed here and not gotten involved.

A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights.

ROTJ
Anakin was a good friend. When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot, but I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.

 

I feel like Obi-Wan saying that Owen thought Anakin should have stayed on Tatooine and not gotten involved in the Clone Wars directly contradicts Anakin leaving home as a nine year old and never having any relationship with Owen.

 

In theory. But after ROTJ, Obi-Wan's story can be called into question. Personally, I prefer a mix of the 2 ideas to keep more of a seemless connection, while maintaining the ideas that I think helps hold off Anakin's story from being more of a reskin of Luke's. As in when Obi mentions, "stayed here and not gotten involved." he's not directly talking about the clone wars, but the galactic situation outside of Tatooine in general. The issues from Owen come from feeling betrayed that Anakin left as a child, them and Beru being childhood friends, in a re-do of the prequels. And a continued resentment when he left again after returning in AOTC, feeling like Shmi may not have died if he'd stayed in the first place.

As is, I do think the situation is more teneous. In theory it could be retrofitted to have Anakin as a child in TPM, Qui-Gon not taking him with them, but promising to return. After Qui-Gon's death, the council declining Obi's request to get and train Anakin. Early on in AOTC, Obi, protecting Padme, hide on Tatooine again, them searching out Anakin, finding him on a Moisture farm as a teenager, he and his mom having been bought and freed by Lars early on, he and Shmi falling for eachother and getting married, with Owen and his girlfriend Beru living with them and helping there. In the midst of this situation, Shmi can be killed (who knows, maybe by tusken raiders, that he'd still kill, or by something connected to the upcoming clone wars), and so Anakin wants to leave, whether because he has no desire to live there without his mom or for revenge, much Owen's protesting, feeling like their farm and family needs all the help they can get and that Anakin's mom would want him to stay. Anakin rejects this and leaves with Obi-Wan and Padme, the beginnings of Anakin's and Padme romance. Even seeding Anakin having dreamt about hsi mom's death, but not understanding it, and feeling powerless to have stopped it. In the midts of the clone wars beginning, Anakin is knighted as a jedi, as the jedi need all the help they can get and so on and things go forward as is, for the most part. Though I think with this, the Palpatine Anakin manipulation is mostly lost.

 

I guess what has always bothered me is why did Lucas think we needed to start off with having Anakin be a nine year old in the first place?

I think the answer that has the most credence is the fact that Lucas was trying to retroactively turn the Star Wars movies into the "Tragedy of Darth Vader" meaning he wanted all six episodes to cover the majority of Anakin's life. So right there I have an issue because the OT is obviously about Luke. And especially ANH, there's no way anyone was ever going to see Vader as a focal character on that movie. He only has seventeen minutes of screentime and is a co-villain with Tarkin.

Most people say that Anakin needed to be nine or else his fall to the dark side over his fear of loss wouldn't work. And without getting into whether or not I even agree with that line of thinking, even IF it were true, nothing in the OT ever said that Anakin's fall was due to a fear of loss. Anakin could have fallen to the dark side for a different reason.

To touch on this, I think (imo) Lucas using Obi-Wan's one lie of the OT as an excuse to just do whatever he wanted without having to worry about continuity is one of the bigger downfalls of the PT, at least for me. Obi-Wan's stories are our only hints at what happened prior to ANH and Lucas paid them practically no mind. There is a lot of interesting history in that Obi-Wan story concerning his relationships with Anakin and Owen. Lucas didn't use hardly any of it.

 

I don't agree that would have to be the only reason. I think a reason could be out of a way, in theory, to avoid a reskin of Luke's.

I think Anakin's fear of loss plays as a nice parallel and contrast to Luke's fear of losing his friends in TESB and Palpatine's taunting of Luke in using the deaths of his friends and sister to try and turn him to the dark side. Story and character wise I think that works more.

I don't know if I agree. In theory, maybe, but also, for character that only appear in 1 quarter of 1 movie and are never mentioned again after that, I think it'd be forced to make so much out of Owen and Beru. I think the re-do of this plays into the middle ground of that. Obi-Wan's stories don't really talk much about his connection to Owen. I do think it's not out of the question as a whole, but I prefer not to tread such similar ground.

 

Watched this again today as it’s one of my all time favourite stand alone Star Wars films.

Im very glad Lucas decided to go down the route of the tragedy of Darth Vader rather than it all being about Luke. I enjoy that we get to see a young Anakin and see how his attachment issues begin as then we see the dominoes fall throughout the rest of the PT and TCW

 

Lucas could have just made the PT about Anakin and the OT about Luke instead of tying to retroactively make all sex movies about Anakin.

 

SW Episode Sex.

 

My inability to proofread has doomed me again.

 

I enjoyed both Christensen and Lloyd as Anakin. No Star Wars movie ever made after "A New Hope" wasn't needed. Not even the 1977 movie was needed. But I enjoyed all the six films Lucas had made, nonetheless.

 

I remember my first viewing in the theatre, and seeing young Anakin jog down the stairs and onto the screen for the first time. My heart broke, and I was actually almost in tears at the thought that this nice, helpful child grows up to be Darth Vader. I think that was the idea behind showing him as a child in the first place.

The pod-race was a bit lengthy for my taste, but it was Lucas' indulgence. I still am not a Jar-Jar fan, but I also understand the movie was for kids (who loved the character, and rightly so). It was just cool to see a new Star Wars story on-screen again. Thought that would be the last go-round until the sequels.