People often assume that critics of the AoTC love story performances want Anakin to be all suave like Han Solo, and deliver polished, teen-heartthrob romance dialogue. But nobody really wants that. We’re fine with Anakin being slightly awkward. Luke was awkward and whiny and acted stupid as well. That’s fine. What we really want is for Anakin to not come off so much like a creepy asshole. At one point Anakin actually channels Malcolm McDowell from Clockwork Orange as he Kubrick-stares at Padme while grinning, prompting her to say she feels uncomfortable. Anakin can be really clunky and awkward, but he shouldn’t be creepy and grating to the point that I am physically compelled to want to skip all those romance scenes.
I understand your point, but I have one objection. Yes, in that specific scene, Anakin does have a rather creepy expression. However, I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault — neither George Lucas’ nor Hayden Christensen’s. Hayden has distinctive facial features, and every time he tries to pull off a smug look, it comes across as a bit creepy. This happens in other films he’s been in as well. It’s just a feature of his face, and you can’t really blame anyone for that. Unfortunately, there’s no way to cleanly remove this from the film without disrupting the flow of the scene. Every attempt at fan editing to fix this ends up feeling incomplete, and you immediately realize that the scene has been cut, because the transition between that scene and the next scene doesn’t feel natural.
The worst thing is that nothing happens in AOTC that really explains why Padme even likes this guy. I guess she feels bad about his mom or something, but you’d think any sympathy she had would dissipate after finding out he committed mass murder.
In my edited version of the film, I kept the scene where Anakin carries out the massacre, but I eliminated the scene where he confesses it to Padmé. This way, you can assume that Anakin didn’t kill the women and children, only the men. Plus, Padmé wouldn’t know about it either, making her reaction in Revenge of the Sith — when she finds out he killed younglings in the Temple — feel more natural and believable. In any case, I believe that if they wanted to include a scene in which Anakin confesses to having carried out the massacre, then he should have talked about it with Palpatine, and Palpatine should have strengthened Anakin’s beliefs by saying that he had done nothing wrong, and that revenge is a natural thing.