I can’t speak for Mocata, Screams In The Void or others. For me it was nonsense because it was so poorly executed and poorly shown in ROTS, and I believe there were other better ways to have Anakin fall to the dark side. You think so too in creating this thread and your opening post: “Anakin’s turn to the dark side wasn’t structured the best in the Prequels.”
We’re talking about ideas here, not the execution. They (and you) were saying that the idea of Anakin wanting to turn to the dark side to cheat death is a fundamentally bad idea. That was my argument that it’s not.
I do not care too much for what Lucas said later, because if he needs to explain things afterwards he likely did not do a good job explaining them on screen at the time. Lucas is also not a reliable person to listen to so I do not take his words seriously as some others do, even as the creative genius behind all of this. I do like to listen to creatives talk about their work and intentions, what worked and what didn’t, but in the end what matters is what happens on screen.
As others say “show, don’t tell”.
And again, I was just discussing the idea of Anakin turning to the dark side 'cause he wants the power to cheat death, and not how it was executed on screen.
Also Lucas is only “unreliable” when he’s lying about things as they were depicted in the special editions or prequels always being the intent even when he was making the original trilogy even when there’s evidence against it. This quote is from The Making of Revenge of the Sith in which he has no reason to lie because it was literally from when the film was released.
Everybody has lied in their life, you can’t just dismiss everything everyone says as a lie because they’ve lied before. You have to look at the reason why they did it and see if it applies.