Great post Scruffy. That's a lot to read but your examples are sound. I'm not a fan of the EU, but those falls-from-grace sound better than the one we got for Anakin. Taking examples from the Lord of the Rings and Batman universes worked well in ways that I wouldn't have thought of.

Originally posted by: C3PX
Luke's "turn" in ROTJ was great because it was emotional, with him giving into his anger then realizing his mistake, rather than a retarded confused "should I do it? No I shouldn't! Or should I? Errr, what have I done?! NOooooooo!... huh? Okay, I'll be your loyal slave from here on out. Oh, what's that? Go kill a bunch of kids? Alright I am on it. I'll be back in time for dinner master, remember, I like the red table cloth with the little black zigzag design. And don't forget the candles!

Hilarious. That's a good way to describe the turn as a whole. While at first RotS was compelling in the way it convinced me of Padme and Anakin's love for each other, that, as CO described, eventually went nowhere and, if anything, became ridiculous by the end. Anakin's turn was completely arbitrary and involved no internal motivation that I could discern. Perhaps we're just not smart enough to see it?

The biggest thing that tends to kill my enjoyment of a piece of art would be flaws that are difficult to overlook in relation to that piece of art's best qualities. In other words, if I am forced to focus on flaws because they penetrate to the heart of a given work, I'd rather not waste my time even trying to enjoy it anymore. At best I'll just pick and choose what might have worked had the flaws been missing, but I'm not going to waste my time with that work of art when I have better things I could be enjoying.

Anakin's fall in the prequel trilogy is a perfect example of a flaw that ruins everything else. George Lucas made AotC and RotS both hinge on this event, but he screws it up by portraying Anakin as a whiny, amoral jerk. I don't want to pretend that Darth Vader, one of the most amazing villains ever, fell that way!

While the original trilogy's movies had big flaws, none of those flaws directly intersected what made those movies great and can easily be ignored. The prequel trilogy's flaws make it rotten to the core (as it were).