BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Going from regret to killing children is justified by said build-up, and sold via pace, dialogue, scene progression and atmosphere.
Except that none of that was 'sold'. At all. The pacing is all off as Anakin never shows any real internal turmoil
Well we're off to a bad start here - what does "inner turmoil" have to do with the PACING?
Now the word "turmoil" has an amusing history in this general context, as does "unrest", so not sure what exactly you mean by that - however if you're referring to inner
conflict, it's obviously quite laughable to claim none was shown.
That scene where there's tears on his face, that doesn't count?
What about his reaction to the first assignment, both upon receiving it and right before carrying it through?
The long time it takes him to "you must choooooose"? What about the silenst scene right before that?
Or even the dissonant subtleties in his reactions to Obi-Wan in the opening scene?
There's some alternate verion of this movie that exists nowhere but your head (and that of those sharing your general views), where not a single thought was given to showing any "inner turmoil" in a character that's all about inner conflict, so those scenes / shots weren't included and what you're saying here is accurate.
and never sells the audience on decent into the sort of insanity that merits slicing up children.
Well, the "insanity" here is the belief that the Jedi are out to take over and cause a "civil war without end"; the psychological motivation to believe this truth is both gven and conveyed in the preceding scenes with Palpatine;
and the type of impressionable "traumatic mind state" where such truths are readily accepted, is also conveyed by context, style, and line delivery.
We never see any sort of conflict he deals with, no kind of inner struggles like "what would Padmé think about this?",
Well not that particular aspect, though it's possibly implied in the "staring at towers sequence"; and while that wasn't a thing considered before or during the transition (and should have for the sake of a complete framework), it does play a role afterwards when he sugarcoats his actions when talking to her, simultaneosly trying to makea righteous impression, indoctrinate her into his new worldview, and rationalizing his decisions to himself.
A lot of "point of view" stuff going on in both of those scenes, as he hardly lies outright.
we're just told to basically accept that he goes off the deep end after he kills Mace Windu. Does he completely lose his own self-will?
He has no choice left but to accept the new role, the rest is cognitive dissonance / rationalization to pacify said dissonance.
Will he
1) if not get fried by Palpatine, give himself in to arrest / expulsion, losing Padme and all his ambitions, living in guilt and shame, or
2) take the option where he can save his wife, receive acknowledgement and opportunites from this powerful emperor/sorcerer, and strive for ambition and power while seeing himself as the savior of the republic from those Jedi who disrespected him?
The wife thing is the primary factor; the rest can be described as the "id", ulterior motivations he had in addition to that and which end up swimming to the surface once he's given (himself) free reign;
and, on the surface, he just did a righteous thing by stopping Mace from killing an unarmed prisoner, making up for his own mistake.
And once the choice is made, of course all the justifying stuff about a Jedi conspiracy that makes his choice easier in retrospect and him come off better, aided by Palpatine treating him with respect and valuing his "agreement", is believed enthusiastically.
Does he ever ask Palpatine "how will you help save Padmé?". And we certainly never see him do what you'd expect in the situation: exact retribution on Palpatine for failing to hold up his bargain to save Padmé.
That's a typical talking point from your type, that Palpatine "tricked" him and "failed to live up to his part of the bargain", even though his speech clearly conveys that he had a good idea of how to tackle this... and, in fact, still the best if not the only one in the galaxy able to say that about himself.
It's of course classical recruitment procedure: first you give a hint, an idea too strong to let go, that starts gowing over time; then you wait a bit, and confirm their wildest hopes with a "yes it's al true" while still giving yourself some wiggle room for future... redactions; and once you got them by the balls, having broken with their friends and family and what not, you make clear that things are never this easy, but if they follow all the instructions and move up in the ranks, their wildest desires are still waiting for them at the end.
It's very primal
All we get is an angry Vader at the end.
Well, he's not angry at Palpatine because he thinks he's at fault (and he is). By this point, howeve, the axe has been wholly replaced and now he's the ruler of the galaxy with lots of prospects.
Pretty much a Doc Ock / Sloane moment, should've maybe been done with a similar speech instead of a big no.
By the end of Return of the Jedi, he barely finds it in him to stand up to the Emperor (finally). He's so easily manipulated by Palpatine that it's painful to watch.
Lol treating this like a continuity instead of a succession of retcons.
It's all sloppily written, because by the time George Lucas got to Revenge of the Sith, they had to suddenly wrap up everything neatly so Anakin could go and be Vader.
This statement is meaningless - of course "they had", that's the premise of the film; nothing about how well or badly it's executed...
We never see any real seduction of the Dark Side's powers,
Not sure what you mean by "real" seduction - the angle here is that the Dark Side offers some real goods, + brainwashing and cogntive dissonance.
It's not the same approach as in the OT, but the approach it opts for instead, it features in spades. The opera scene and the subsequent one count as seduction, I'd say.
All we get is an impulsive, snotty teenager
There is no impulsiveness anywhere, his demeanor is not nearly aristocratic enough to pass for "snotty" (technically neither do any of the other characters who DO act aristocratic; snotty is a particular negative subtype), and he doesn't act like a "teenager" anywhere in this movie, except maybe a few seconds here and there.
because an old geezer told him to.
It's "old fossil", not "old geezer" - where's your tonal awareness, I ask you.
Up to that point we'd only really seen Anakin go crazy when he took revenge on his mother's killers, and aside from Anakin's "I killed them all" tirade, nobody in the film really worries for Anakin's sanity (do Jedi apprentices never need counseling?), so why should the audience?
Well, going on a revenge rampage might be one of those things that might contribute to future instability, though other factors are at the forefront in III.
The prequels would have been far more interesting if they'd truly been dedicated to fleshing out Anakin's descent into madness and his transformation into Vader.
[...]
by cramming all of Anakin's meaningful character development into one
The point that two movies were wasted in that department (not only was the character largely shite, but both of those versions got retconned / redesigned for the next ones, as well), is certainly correct.
However, III does focus on said descent, obviously, though it's less "madness" and more "indoctrination".
Like, actually showing some of his time as Palpatine's lackey more than when he's killing stuff. Or showing him coping with truly accepting the Dark Side. The problem is that they fail miserably to do so,
Not fail,
but do something else instead.
What you said there is about as valid as saying "ROTJ failed miseraböy at showing Luke's growth into a master".
Showing him as Palpatine's lackey - well, this movie was about "the transition" (and cementation), so when he enters the service he carries out the coup (which is the film's second focus), making him feel significant, cementing his role and "hardening his heart", and then the result of his mind is shown when he turns against his friends and is punished for it, losing all he had priorly and leading to the "axe replacement".
That's the arc that the film went with - doing other stuff for Sidious would have to be squeezed into the second half, even though nothing actually in it, or in the OT for that matter, called for it (the deleted version of the movie with moar politics is a separate topic).
Showing his activities as actual Vader exceeded its timespan and arc, though it obviously could've been done in yet another follow-up.
one badly-written film that uses the idiotic idea of Padmé's death in childbirth as the driving factor behind Anakin going nuts. Let's not forget that we're never told why Padmé, in spite of the ridiculous amount of advanced technology, is going to die in childbirth. How is this believable? Are C-sections or contraceptives not a thing?
Scientific nitpicking in high fantasy? Lol whatever.
These concerns could've been easily addressed by bringing up those options, reminding that even they carry residual risk, and then reinforcing that any such attempt to cheat fate with technological means would result in the worst outcome.
Padme could've been like "c'maaaahn I know a good doctor", and Anakin would express doubts, but then let himself get pacified before another vision, or maybe something Palpatine says mercilessly comes back and confirms that yes, all his worst fears were true and there's no earthly way around this.
Now depending on how this would be done, this could either have been tedious techno babble wearing down the story, or provided an additional dramatic and thematic angle about unstoppable fate about magic vs. technology.
The way things are, however, it's basically a plot that could've taken place in some Ancient Rome setting translated into futuristic space, with him ending credence to those "visions" and his optimistic wife waving it off as nightmares only for Palpatine to confirm that he had been in the right all along.
It works just fine - regarding the "technological advancements" wasn't needed.
The only narrative flaw of any significance here is, however, that the perhistory crucial to this storyline, the death of Shmi, is handled too nebulously here where it should've set up and made clear that "earthly means" are powerless to stop such visions.
Of course the way II handled this was a complete screw-up in that regard - all he had to do to save her was just to have gone back to Tattoine 5 years ago, certainly considered it once the visions started, no supernatural aid was required; and of course when she was actually dying, he made no visible attempt to resurrect her or whatever, so that rant came out of nowhere.
Now I said "nebulously", because III retcons AOTC's romance plot with one swift sentence, and who knows what else it retcons that's related to that, such as the Shmi sidequest which of course happened right in the middle of it. So it's reasoable to assume whatever happened there in Sith's continuity was something similar but maybe different... the the dialogue in Sith is vague in that regard, except that it does imply a certain inevitability that can only be stopped by thinking big.
Either that or that premise is never questioned, which is then a flaw of a certain degree.
Why doesn't Anakin just warn Padmé "hey let's adopt or get a puppy instead" or just use a damn condom? You have to be out of your mind to seriously think this writing is believable.
Abortion =/= contraception.
Instead of content, the prequels focused too much on CGI, and the writing predictably suffered for it.
Folks like you keep using the terms "CGI", "special effects", "action sequences", "spectacle" and "style over substance" interchangeably, even though they all are very different and carry different implications in a context such as contrasting it with the "writing".
CGI, for instance, has fuck all to do with writing as it can be used for anything, obvious or hidden, intrusive or background details.
Now the worst writing in these movies, without contest, was the Naboo scenes in AOTC - which were mostly shot on location, often with no effects added at all.
The meadow scene was probably the best one, despite the CGI waterfalls, while the fireplace scene was among the worst, despite being shot on a set with no visible effects.
So that doesn't seem to affect the writing or the acting, contrary to popular "wisdom".
