re: .

The problem really wasn't the actors. I think Hayden Christensen was fine for the role. In Revenge of the Sith, he actually had a believable look. But the problem was the material, the concept, the direction.

One of the issues that a lot of people don't get about Star Wars is that the movies aren't made for 50 year olds. They never were. There's a group of Star Wars fans who want to turn Star Wars into The Godfather or The Outlaw Josey Wales in terms of tone, and they forget that Star Wars has a (original) Flash Gordon-style tone... just taken to a whole new level of execution. So you're never going to get that movie out of Star Wars. The series has a formula that practically prints money, and they are going to stick with it. This includes merchandisable characters and equipment, plots that are comprehensible to children, and humor that plays to them.

The problem is that there's no reconciling the "formula" of Star Wars with Anakin's tale of tragedy. If you want to tell that story the right way, with a big, intimidating lead, and themes of pain, torture, slavery, loss, betrayal, and murder... can't you see where it's doomed to fail, given the formula?

You can't do "murder lite," or "slavery lite." And that's what they tried to do with the Prequels. It fails on the conceptual level. In one scene we're talking about freeing a child from slavery. In the next, an alien gets his tongue paralyzed in an engine. Think about it.