If Anakin was a pilot and cunning warrior, I picture someone like Han Solo, but also headstrong and foolhardy like Luke.
He sounds like someone who willingly joined up to fight in the Clone Wars and wasn’t a Jedi, that he was discovered to have such talents at an older age by Kenobi who was his friend?
An actor of that caliber in the 1990s who could have pulled off a Harrison Ford type, but someone with a darkness to them. Val was good as Madmartigan a Han Solo like character, I don’t know if he’s charismatic enough though.
He just wouldn’t have the smuggler or slacker thing Han had he be more about duty, loyalty and the cause. Someone bored by moisture farming, his brother Owen wanted him to join the family business, but he left to join the clone wars and never came home, became Darth Vader. Does Owen think he died or knows he is Vader, that much was always in doubt. I do accept he blamed Kenobi for Anakin never coming home from the wars.
I always imagined him as starting as a Luke-esque character and then ages into a Proto-Vader. As Luke is often compared to Anakin in the OT. What do you think about Jude Law as a late 90s/early 2000s Anakin?