On the first point, Lucas succeeded in showing me that Darth Vader wasn't a bad kid on the block from day one, so he succeeded in that point. On the second point about fears, he failed miserably. First of all, Anakin was a slave, Lucas showed nothing of the mental scars on Anakin/Shmi that being a slave does to you. He came home with Padme, Jar Jar, and QuiGon, and they had a nice dinner, and everything was hunky doory. Just watch Conan the Barbarian, it is only shown for about ten minutes, but that is what it is like being a slave. You see Arnold doing the same job for years and years and you yearn for him to get the hell out of that awful life. I don't think Conan is the greatest movie when it comes to character development, but it suceeded a hell of alot more of making its point than TPM does.
OK, so Anakin leaves him mom for 10 years, and has a dream she is suffering. He goes back and finds her near death, and when she dies, he goes apeshit and kills Tuskens. At that point, Lucas had me, I bought that whole scene in AOTC, cause I put myself in that position, and I could rationalize if someone killed one of my parents, I would get irrational and may lose it like Anakin did. To me, Anakin took revenge on the Tuskens, and all of us have that revenge gene in our body at some point in our life, and this was as extreme as you get.
OK, so we get to ROTS, and Anakin has a dream of Padme and she is dying, at this point I still buy it, I am on board with Lucas. So Palps tells him he has this trick of saving people, cool scene, good setup. So what does Anakin do? NOTHING? The whole next hour of the movie should have showed Anakin trying to find out more about this trick, does he ask Yoda? Does he ask Kenobi or Mace? Now at that point, he doesn't trust the jedi totally, but it would still make a point by them laughing at his question, that maybe they aren't showing him everything to be a jedi.
Then he doesn't even ask Palps just once, how is this done? Not that Palps would even show him, or even respond to him with a coherrant answer, just give him more B.S. that would make the viewer sympathize with Anakin that he is on board with Palps. The fact that Anakin does not even question how this is done wants he finds out Palps is the Sith Lord makes the story ridiculous. How could Anakin believe Palps after he has started this war for 10 years? How could Anakin believe Palps after he was behind killing several of his fellow Jedi? How could he believe Palps as Palps watched him fight Dooku and didn't say a word other than, "He is a sith lord, you're no match for him." You may look at it as Anakin being desperate, I look at Anakin now as a total idiot, and being duped and being an idiot are two different things.
So we get to Mace fighting Palps, and Anakin walks in. Doesn't Anakin wonder what happened to the other 3 Jedi who left with Mace? So Mace is about to Kill Palps, and Anakin takes his hand off, then Palps kills him with Lightning and Anakin says, "What have I done?" Right there, he knows the jedi aren't evil, he knows he did a bad thing, but what does he say to Kenobi on Mustafar, "I always knew the jedi were evil!!" If you did Anakin, you wouldn't have said, What have I done?
So he then pledges to Palps his allegiance, so Palps say to go kill all the kids in the temple. Why wouldn't Anakin atleast say, "Hey, wait a second, what does this have to do with saving Padme?" My point is Lucas did such a bad job of distinguishing the dark side instead he made it all about Padme. Anakin should have felt the darkside in him, and that would make him think irrationally, he was always rationale, cause it was only about Padme, and that is why he has tears on Mustafar before Padme lands, he always knows what he is doing, and that is just plain stupid.
So then we get to Mustafar, and his argument with Padme. So then he throws out, we can rule the galaxy, I can overthrow the Chancellor......." Where the hell did that come from other than tying what Vader said in ESB? Anakin never talked about ruling the govt other then the little picnic with Padme where he thinks one person should make all the decisions in politics. Lucas never established that Anakin was about power from day one, it was always about Padme, so that line comes from left field.
Then he says to Kenobi, "My Empire!" WTF? When was it about his Empire? Anakin just cried 5 minutes ago before Padme showed up, cause he knew what he was doing wasn't right in some ways, but it was for Padme, so he could justfiy it. So what does 'My Empire' have to do with saving Padme, other then tying to Vader in the OT.
So this leaves me my question, "What the hell do attachments have to do with any of this stuff?" If I had a dream about my mother dying and wife dying, I would be just as scared as Anakin was to lose someone, and Lucas didn't need Anakin leaving his mother to make that point, the dreams did!! Not once did Anakin leaving his mother occur to me in ROTS that was one of the reasons for his actions, and I know many of you guys didn't think that until you heard Lucas's commentary or read an interview somewhere. And if that is true, then Lucas failed, cause if fans can't pick up that message by watching the movies, and have to get their facts through interviews, then the story failed on screen.
Lucas had me at the end of AOTC, I was buying the whole story in 2002 about Anakin, but ROTS is so ludricrous and so uncompelling, I turned against the PT after ROTS and the bad turn, not because of Jar Jar.