Think of Anakin as Hero Jewish Soldier. It's not a great parallel, but you get a sense for what kind of bitter enemies we're talking about, Sith vs. Jedi, Good guys vs. Bad guys. And Anakin's got a wife who he loves more than the universe who's dying of cancer. Now...
Clueless doldrums that the Jedi/Jews are, they regularly take meetings with Hitler, who has somehow managed to conceal his identity as leader of the Nazis. In fact, irony of ironies, he's a surrogate father and mentor to Anakin.
One day, Hitler reveals himself to Anakin, whom he thinks - what with all his fighting skills and whatnot - would make a great Nazi. Plus, he reasons, Anakin has been told all his life he's special and powerful, and since Nazis are the ultimate power, it's really in his best interest to join them. It's a good sell, but still, confronted with an absolutely soul-crushing betrayal and world-shattering realization (his lifelong surrogate father is Hitler, genocidal murderer of his people) Anakin decides to kill him. Makes sense so far. But Hitler has an ace up his sleeve: He's got the cure to Padme's cancer, and if Anakin becomes a Nazi, he'll give it to him. And here's where things start to go south.
Tortured and conflicted, Anakin decides to go tell his Jewish Army friends what he's learned. Now, Padme - principled and strong woman that she is - would probably rather die than have Anakin become a Nazi, but Anakin's so blinded by love he can't think about the shit that will hit the fan when he tells the Jewish people, and his Jewish wife, that he decided to become a Nazi. So Anakin rushes to join his army buddies who have gone to arrest Hitler, and what does he find? A bunch more of his friends are dead on the floor and a fellow officer in mortal combat with Hitler. Anakin REALLY, REALLY wants that cure for cancer, so he takes his buddy's gun away and Hitler throws his buddy out the window. Ok, well now he's done it: He is the ultimate traitor - to himself, his cause, his people and his wife. But at least he'll have the cure for cancer.
And then Hitler drops it: He was bullshitting. There is no cure for cancer. Maybe, he suggests, if Anakin wants to work on it with him, they can come up with one. That's literally what he says.
NOW...
You think about this for a second: You're Anakin. You're a Jew. You've fought for Jews all your life, in fact, you've been groomed as King of the Jews or whatever since you were a boy. You just betrayed every last thing you've ever stood for, every person you've ever cared about, and debased yourself as a traitorous piece of shit, FOR NOTHING. NOTHING. There's no cure for the cancer, and now Padme won't want you anyway, 'cuase you're a traitorous piece of shit. Hell, even if you could lie about it, you'd spend the rest of your life tortured with guilt.
You know what would make sense? Anakin goes Bakersfield Chimp and kills Hitler and himself. That I'd buy. That would make sense. I mean, dude has nothing left. But instead, this is what you're expected to believe:
Upon learning that - after a lifetime of deceit and lies at the hands of his surrogate father, Hitler - he, Hero Jewish Soldier has just betrayed his people, his wife and himself for a cancer cure that was just ANOTHER lie, Anakin... decides to join the Nazi party, pledges himself to Adolf Hitler, becomes a one-man Super-SS assassin and immediately sets to slaughtering Jewish women and children, literally.
Now, if you don't recognize this - the entire core of the prequel story - as being quite possibly the most ridiculous, stupid, utterly unrelatable, morally impossible and psychologically clueless idea ever proffered in the history of storytelling, you are, no offense, a moron.
What's that? It was Anakin's powerlust that made him switch? NO IT WASN'T. Didn't you see the movie? "I will do whatever you ask, just help me save Padme's life. I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT HER." It's not about powerlust, it's about saving Padme. And the Emperor says, point blank, that he can't. END OF STORY.
I don't blame you, though. That whole idea of Anakin being power hungry was served up sort of half-assed during most of the prequels, too, I guess in case you didn't buy the love thing. Like that Jesus/Virgin Birth bullshit that May-Or-May-Not-Be-Because-He's-The-Emperor's-Son-or-"Darth Plagueis's kid-or-The-Chosen-One-or-Concieved-by-The-Force-or-any-of-a-bunch-of-other-random-ideas-served-up-vaguely-because-we- have-no-real-focus-or-idea-but-you'll-praise-as-clever-anyway. That ambiguous lack of focus is all over the films.
Could an Anakin character have been written such that if he can't have Padme, at least he'd have power? Sure, but that would be for some other film, because it sure as shit isn't the character written for this series.
DRAMA 101: all movies are about people. Movies about aliens are movies about people. Movies about talking cars are movies about people. Movies about mutants, are movies about people. Anakin the person, doesn't make any sense. It's that simple. His motivations are completely unrelatable. His character arc is impossibly ridiculous, and the entire prequel arc is built on it. The core is rotten.
Add on top of that sub-college-student-film acting by otherwise great actors, 6 hours of Siggraph CGI demo reel shots, most of which look assy, and an endless series of fart jokes, unfunny slapstick and bad accents that make you want to pierce your own eardrums and you're starting to get the picture. Christ, even John Williams didn't get to do the one thing that might've put .0001% heart into this hollow, souless, idiotic waste of time.
There's just not one redeeming quality to these films, other than they're finally over.
I could write a tome breaking down, quantitatively, all the basic errors these films are comprised of. So could tons of other people. Hell, even the casting of Hayden Christensen was a mistake, and that happened before they'd shot one second of film. David Prowse was a 6'7" world-champion bodybuilder. He eats Hayden's weight in food for breakfast. Think that's nitpicking? Think again: have you ever met somebody whose physical size didn't have a direct impact on their personality? Think about short people and the Napoleon Complex, or check Peter Mayhew on "growing up big". People's physical stature has a direct impact on their personality, their social circle, their relationships, everything. The man we see as Darth Vader in the OT, physically strong, arrogant, intelligent... this is NOT the actor, nor the character built in the prequels. Not even REMOTELY the same guy. You know, they described Vader in the OT as the best starpilot in the galaxy, which means he was a fighter jock. Psychologically speaking, real fighter jocks fill a pretty narrow bracket, which happens to be compatible with the dude Vader is presented as in the OT, by the way. Again, not even remotely so in the Anakin character. (No, flying a ship real good isn't actually what makes a fighter jock a fighter jock.)
What's that? Vader "grew" or something? Or his suit was "upgraded", blah blah blah? Well there you have it: if it's not in the films, if it doesn't make any sense, you'll just fill in the gaps, won't you? You'll just make up some arbitrary reason to explain away things that aren't there, and could've been. Or maybe you're young enough, raised on such utter crap storytelling, you can't tell the difference. In the end you see what you want to see, and who can blame you? Nobody in the universe ACTUALLY wants to see little buck-and-a-quarter Hayden Christensen looking like Mini-Me in a fan-made Darth Vader costume stumbling around like Frankenstein, utterly destroying the most iconic film villian of all time. Uh, to quote: "Noooooo!"
Now go play with your Jar Jar doll.
_Mike