“Wait, Mace Windu, don’t kill Palpatine, it’s not the Jedi way!”
Literally 15 minutes later:
Anakin slaughters the Jedi, including defenseless toddlers
This is the biggest logic leap in the entire franchise, and it completely ruins the rest of the movie for me.
I unfortunately have to agree. The kid’s all over the place. It’s telling that the only way for the novelization to make this work was to spell out that Anakin was literally out of his mind and seemingly incapable of making rational decisions.
Isn’t that how the Dark Side works though? Prior to ROTS we saw Anakin loose it completely in AOTC when he slaughtered an entire village (incl. the children), and even Luke went kinda berserk in ROTJ after Vader threatened to turn Leia. That’s a pretty agressive and wild outburst for an otherwise fairly calm and rational character. ROTS even emphasises Anakin’s yellow eyes to illustrate that he has been completely consumed by the Dark Side.