How Old Should Anakin Have Been In Ep. I? (Why age 9 works)

[@DSMusicParodies]

Underrated

[@pinzstee]

14:46 And it was Palpatine as his father figure that stoked Anakin's sense of entitlement, which combined with his unprecedented potential, led him to believe he could harness the power to stop death.

[@GeistInTheMachine]

Yeah, having a sociopath as a father figure is not good for the soul.

[@OfficialRaveBlitz]

I was literally the same age as Anakin when TPM released, 9 years old. I thought the film was awesome, and I related to Anakin as a kid. I also thought Jar Jar was funny, and loved it when he united the Gungans and the Naboo people together. The Podrace, and lightsaber duel with Darth Maul were awesome as well. Overall, The Phantom Menace is a great film that was perfect for young kids, and my generation who grew up loving the Prequels.

[@Chemical_Argentum]

I grew up with the film as well. But even then, I didn’t like Anakin as much as Luke. Or Han. Or any of the power rangers (yup I loved that crappy stuff when I was a child xD ). Seriously, even as kids, we think adult action hero’s are cool

[@johnb2422]

Anakin should have been older. Lucas is a toy salesman and hack. He made a 9 year old kid character for 9 year olds thinking they need to see themselves in the movie instead of someone like Luke, an older hero they could aspire to BECOME. It's a movie for babies.

[@OfficialRaveBlitz]

@@johnb2422 He's not a hack, you just don't understand his sensibilities as a filmmaker. Lucas is not your typical Hollywood filmmaker, he's an Experimental filmmaker. The films are designed to be akin to 1930's TV serials like Flash Gordon, Buster Crabbe among others, avante garde style documentaries, and silent film of the period. They are, in essence, high Space Fantasy adventures for children. In terms of the order, the films are meant to be seen in chronological order, I-VI, and are designed to be one movie with six parts. George Lucas kept on working and tweaking his films right up until he sold to Disney, in order for everything to be cohesive and work together. If you try to compare Star Wars, especially Lucas's Six films, to something like the MCU, or a standard Hollywood film of a similar size, you're going to fail, because it's comparing apples to oranges.

[@pinzstee]

The original trilogy movies sold plenty of toys without kids in the films. There are specific story reasons he went with a 9-y.o. for TPM.

[@Chemical_Argentum]

@@pinzstee That was also the ONE reason Lucas decided to have teddy bears in RotJ. The demographic for toy buyers were in the age between 7-11. He wanted to expand it

[@georgebrady5369]

For me this pretty much sums up George Lucas as a filmmaker. An exceptional concept/idea with a poor execution. George Lucas was always at his best when he had someone else help him put his ideas into practice

[@zestyoverlord6772]

Too old the fall to the dark side feed more him being messed up from the beginning and undermines all the hood he did in the clone wars and makes the tusken thing a lot worse. Too young and The Padme love doesn’t feel right plus he doesn’t have the trained late and too much emotion and trauma.

[@matthewsands1572]

It was one of many terrible decisions Lucas made when making the prequels. Making Anakin so young and achieving so little in the overall story just gave him more to cram into the remaining films, and because he didn't move it along much more in Ep 2, he gave himself almost a trilogy of development left to cram into Ep3, which is why Anakin's turn felt rushed and so much was missing from the narrative. If he was worried that leaving his mum at an older age wasn't dramatic enough then just kill her off in the first movie and make that the dramatic loss, instead of just leaving her.

[@OfficialRaveBlitz]

There was nothing missing from the narrative, you probably just didn't pay attention. The Prequels were perfectly paced, and most of Anakin's story was in Revenge of the Sith anyways, as Lucas stated it was roughly 60% of the story, with the remaining 40% in Episodes I and II. George Lucas accordingly, doesn't make mistakes. He told the story he wanted to tell. Sorry if he didn't do what you wanted.

[@matthewsands1572]

@@OfficialRaveBlitz Fuck off with that condescending nonsense. You prequel fanboys are pathetic with your blind sycophantic worship of those films and everything Lucas does. You even admitted yourself that most of Anakin's story was in Ep3, which was a large part of my entire point. And you also pretty much admitted that you will call anything Lucas does perfect simply because he did it, making your opinion of his work pretty worthless. Luke's story is evenly spread out in the OT. Anakin's is mostly crammed into Ep3, which I think caused a lot of problems, including his rushed turn. Good people don't become child murderers in a single day. Instead of giving us a good jedi who slowly turns to the darkside we get a kid, then a whiny teenager and then in the final movie of the trilogy he has to make the journey of noble jedi to evil Sith in such a short time, even most prequel fans admit to such flaws, outside of the pathetically sycophantic ones like you. It's not about him doing what I wanted or expected. It's about him causing problems that even he admitted were problems, by not spreading the overall story out more evenly among the 3 films. 90% of it is in Ep3.

[@Chemical_Argentum]

“When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot” Amazing what you can do at the age of 9!! NOO! Ofc it was planned that Anakin was in his 20s when Obi Wan met him. My guess is that George made him a kid so that his toys would sell better

[@johnb2422]

Exactly.

[@bchristian85]

The mistake was Jake Lloyd being the actor, not his age. It would have been better for both the film and Jake Lloyd's career and mental health if a different actor would have been chosen.

[@SubtextMining]

Lucas picked Lloyd out of thousands of kids, because he was what he was looking for, and he gave the performances Lucas wanted. If he was teased, that's the teasers' problems. Hopefully as a society we've learned from this. Plus, there were other family issues going on in Lloyd's life besides just the Star Wars aftermath.