I think Anakin would have worked better if he was portrayed differently. He is so unlikable. So unrelatable. A problem of the prequel is there no Luke Skywalker to latch onto. No real central protagonist, even though Anakin is supposed to be that. Is he supposed to be an Anti-hero? Lucas didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go with the character.
Hayden acts like he is portraying dark and conflicted/selfish and arrogant. But where is the good friend and star pilot. Damn fool who follows old Obi-Wan on an idealistic quest.
I agree that Anakin was portrayed as too unlikeable, especially in Attack of the Clones, but at the same time I think making him too likeable would’ve been a mistake as well. If you make Anakin too likeable, it becomes almost impossible to believe that this same person could eventually turn into Darth Vader. That’s one of the issues I have with The Clone Wars, for example. In TCW, Anakin is so likeable that you never really think of him as the guy who’s going to become Darth Vader.
So yeah, toning down Anakin’s unlikeability in the Prequels makes sense, but going too far in the other direction doesn’t work either. For me, the Anakin we see in the first half of Revenge of the Sith is likeable, and I think that works well. The only real problem is Attack of the Clones. I think that movie needs some cleanup. In that context it makes sense that Anakin is more impulsive and rebellious than he is in the first half of ROTS, but Lucas overdid it and made him way too unlikeable. I feel like if you just trim some dialogue and cut a couple of scenes, the problem would already be fixed.
You don’t have a believable through line of the Anakin who wants to use power to restore order to the galaxy, because he has zeal for justice, but the ends justify the means. And the more he uses the dark side, the more he digs himself into a place where he can’t escape and The Emperor is waiting to grab a hold of him.
That is what I wanted to see the Shaw Anakin become Darth Vader. The Horror Gargoyle in the Mask, the machine man.
That kind of gradual, slow transformation is impossible to pull off in just three movies, mainly because of limited screen time. Three films just don’t give you enough space to make it work. To really show that kind of gradual and slow change, the Prequels would’ve needed to be a live-action series with at least six seasons of twenty episodes each. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work the way you want it to.