Hayden wasn’t bad as Anakin. He wasn’t bad once he stepped into the suit as Vader either. All the complaints are on the directing and writing of George Lucas. The awful dialogue. Some of that is Anakin being a sullen bad boy anti-hero, when the prequel probably should have had Anakin as more heroic and then slowly seduced to evil. He turns bad in the film Revenge of the Sith, as we have it out of shear arrogance, stupidity and greed.
I get it that is the point, Anakin is pathetic and the OT built him up as this historic villain with a tragic backstory.
The story of him wanting to save his wife and child and making a devil’s bargain that is completely understandable.
But he makes it happen by how he interprets his vision of the future. He is responsible for her death. She lost the will to live and didn’t stick around to raise Luke or Leia. The movies don’t even blame him for the Tuskens, the ones he slaughter to the last women and child, Padme excuses it. He is well on his path to the dark side at that point when his mother dies and he snaps. And says he will learn power to stop people from dying.
No Anakin is judged for the premeditated murder of Dooku and the younglings in the film. The killing of the separatists leaders of the trade federation who wanted to surrender and pleaded for mercy in the novelization.
My biggest issue with the film is if Anakin and Vader are supposed to be different, I would suggest Vader and Anakin are one and the same as portrayed in the prequel except for in the Phantom Menace. The whole certain point of view, the good man who was your father was destroyed. Well, we never see him as a good man in the prequel or a good friend, he isn’t an amazing starpilot or a cunning warrior. He is just someone who made a devil’s bargain with Sidious based on one conversation. Rather stupid and abruptly because of some dream he had. Like Lucas was doing a play on Oedipus defying the oracle. Sealing his own fate, with Anakin’s vision of the future and trying to prevent it from happening making it happen.
Like Bruce Wayne is the mask. I submit Darth Vader is Anakin. He isn’t just his darker half or shadow. Certain point of view seems to be lying Ben Kenobi’s way to dissemble and to tell himself a lie because it feels better.
You’d have to do a page one rewrite of the prequel to have the good man who because of zeal joined the Clone Wars, and was slowly seduced to evil. All Anakin was is just driven by greedy and selfish motives, and it’s hard to have any sympathy. Other than for the little slave boy on Tatooine or the teenager who lost his mother. All the rest of his choices he makes on his own. Its true Sidious/Palpatine tells him what he wants to hear. While Kenobi urges patience and to follow the Jedi creed.
The biggest problem is he simply is not a likable leading character, he isn’t the Luke Skywalker of the prequel trilogy. Who isn’t really bad but is just impatient and chooses the quick and easy path. No, he is a loathsome and contemptible person. Revenge of the Sith made that clear.
The most likable people are probably Qui-Gon in the first one who really was a nothing character really the archetype of the mentor. And Obi-Wan is full of the Jedi code and creed in the prequels. But his sort of surrogate father/older brother figure to Anakin, he isn’t a bad guy per se. Maybe a little too dogmatic. Was he wrong about Anakin needing to center himself and to have patience.
And yeah Anakin could have followed his training or left the Jedi order. Is the Jedi responsible even a smidge for his fall. Kenobi certainly felt guilty of something. promising his master he would train the boy despite Yoda warnings.
The movies make the audience and Palpatine aware of what is going on but the Jedi oblivious. Is that good storytelling we need to go from point A to point B, the script needs a reason for Anakin to do these things because he is the villain in the OT. We don’t have a way to judge the story other than the dark side clouds everything. That is why the Jedi were dumb.