G&G Fan, is your opinion that Vader killing the younglings is a good storytelling choice or that it just isn’t a new low for him?
Mostly the latter. The former heavily depends on execution, but it’s not a good choice in the film as it’s scripted, structured, presented, etc. Another thing to be considered is tact.
I don’t feel like it’s a new low in the sense that I expect him to have some a higher conscience or moral code than this, but it’s definitely a different kind of evil to what he does in the OT.
George Lucas seems to have written himself into a spot where there are children who have to be killed by this regime, but I feel like there’s a big difference in characterization between depicting a guy who leads troops into a bloodbath where children die, and depicting a guy who personally stabs children who trust him.
Would you feel the same way if George Lucas depicted Anakin as having killed small animals as a teenager? That’s also something I don’t think Darth Vader would have some moral problem with, but making him into the kind of guy who used to do that changes his characterization significantly.
Him killing kids, plus him killing the sand people, make Anakin seem like he was always just a bad egg. I think that’s what you like about it, but if the prequels are supposed to be about the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, I think it makes it a lot less tragic.
It might be different if the scene was in a different context, but I also don’t think gradually leading into it more wouldn’t change it that much.