Showing an innocent child who turns into an inhuman monster who kills children is very impactful as well, and showing Anakin’s childhood and his life in slavery is important to understand his character.
(Almost) Every child is innocent. Showing that Anakin was a good kid means nothing. I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer was a “good kid”. What actually matters is seeing that Anakin was a good man.
Also no, his life in slavery doesn’t end up meaning anything, in the end. It’s never brought up again after The Phantom Menace. It’s never delved into how it affected him. He just misses his mom, which is normal. His trauma isn’t explored until the Zygerrian arc in The Clone Wars.
Besides, being told he was a slave and seeing how it effects Anakin would’ve been much more effective. It’d allow the audience to fill in the blanks, rather then just seeing Anakin go “Yipee!” and having no apparant fear or hatred of his master. Allowing the audience to fill the blanks is way better because what the imagination can think of is far more horrifying then anything they could get away with showing on screen in a kids movie. That’s why Han Solo’s torture in The Empire Strikes Back works so well.
If you wanted to tho, you could show him in slavery in nightmares he has or something. Either way, it’s not a good enough reason to have him be a kid a whole movie.
Spartacus01 said:
As I said, everything in the Prequels is important, the problem is just that there’s a limited amount of on-screan time, which prevents you from showing everything in detail. That’s why I said that the Prequels would have worked better as EU. I mean, imagine if the Prequels were an EU multimedia project, consisting of books, comics and video games. It would have been great, because in a EU multimedia project everything can be shown in detail and you don’t have to worry about on-screan time at all.
Well that’s the issue, isn’t it? They’re too convoluted. They don’t work as films on their own. George should’ve cut down the story to make it less complicated.
The content of Revenge of the Sith and some of Attack of the Clones (plus showing how Palpatine became the Chancellor) are enough for a whole trilogy.