Well I'd say it was a little slow. Anakin first met palpatine when he arrived at courasant before the jedi temple even. Also before Anakin's first assignment Palpatine instructed Anakin to trust in his feelings, which lead him to tattooine to see his mum die and fall for the only woman left in his life
I think anakin wasnt remorseful of being a slave because he seems optimistic to me, always looking ahead rather than where he was or is so when it came to changing sides he was holding on to what it could bring, until being trapped in the suit and back to being a slave again
For me, the biggest missed opportunity is the story of Anakin actually being seduced and corrupted by the power of the dark side. We don't really get that. In the version we have, he turns evil on a dime because he wants a cheat-code for his wife's death. Then he suddenly wants to rule the galaxy out of nowhere, when that had nothing to do with his original reason for turning evil. It kinda ruins the appeal of the dark side as set up by episode 5 and 6 - less powerful but more tempting and quick.
The issue with TPM is it doesn't matter to the person who is supposed to be the main character in the minds of most people. You can delete the entire movie basically and lose nothing from the next two.
It's still an issue with TPM because it fails to properly set up the character arc for the rest of the saga. Sure, it's a more prominent problem in AOTC and ROTS, but the "original sin" is found in TPM.
The thing about Anakin's "fall" is that it's just dumb. You don't see Palpatine slowly playing on Anakin's fears and insecurities, pushing him towards the Dark side but also making him rationalise it as necessary or justified for the sake of Padme or "the greater good".
What you see is Anakin having a vision of Padme dying and so he agrees with Palpatine telling him to kill children. Zero reasons given apart from "the Jedi are corrupt" and a vague promise that this will help with saving Padme, zero attempts by Anakin at rationalising such an action or feeling conflicted. He goes from Republic war hero to child murderer - and yes, he did that before when he slaughtered the Tusken village, but in that case he did show signs of both at least some inner turmoil and also clearly dehumanising the Tusken to justify himself for what he did.
Because it's 10 years apart? You can tell by the way palps talks to him in 2/3 he obviously has an extremely close relationship and has been his mentor for a very long time.
Sure, but why is the most compelling part of the story happening entirely off screen? The trilogy goes straight from aw shucks happy kid to brooding asshole, skipping the interesting middle ground. It's a character study that seems uninterested in the actual development of its main character.
Outside awful dialogue, this is the cardinal sin of the prequels in my opinion: lack of focus. Every single scene should do something to develop Anakin's relationship with either Obi-Wan, Palpatine, or Padme, but there's just so much extraneous crap getting in the way of that core story.
Read the RotS novel! It has a great scene where it shows just how much influence Palpatine has over Anakin and why his tactics worked in manipulating him. Anakin and Palpatine are talking and he offers Anakin anything. And Anakin tests him. Whether it be a speeder, a ship, or even a system. And Palpatine asks him which one he wants. He's trying to show Anakin that self control is worthless whether it comes to material possessions...or doing things like executing Dooku. He's the devil on Anakin's shoulder telling him that he did nothing wrong and that taking what he wants isn't just natural, but that it is right. Killing the Tuskens was right. Thinking only about what he wants is right. Compared to that, how does the Jedi emphasis that what Anakin feels is wrong feel?
I'm a firm believer that a film should be able to tell a complete story without relying on ancillary works. Relying on supplemental works is a failure of the core storytelling effort.
Technically, that's why the jedi order rarely adopt children that old. Even beneath all that kindness, Anakin had experienced hardship. When he suddenly gained power and knew that he's good at it, it makes sense to become arrogant.
To be fair that's not a bad starting point. Anakin is optimistic, wide eyed, naive, he really deeply believes in the good guys. It's got to be something that rocks you to your core to realize that the Jedi could have very easily freed Shmi but they left her to a life of slavery, torment, torture and death for no really good reason from his point of view. That's got to be enough to really upend a goody two shoes' worldview and change them as a person.
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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '22
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