Long before Andrew Garfield got blamed for ruining a franchise, there was Hayden Christensen—the OG victim of shoddy screenwriting and bad-faith criticism.
However, we are not reviewing Star Wars today so much as offering a new perspective on the way we consume and think about it.
Often pinned with the prolific title of “The First Cinematic Blockbuster,” Star Wars is, at its core, a space soap opera with glowing swords, old religions, and star-crossed lovers responsible for the deaths of countless innocents.
If the description above sounds like something out of a seventeenth-century theatrical production of Shakespeare, that’s because it is. Star Wars–Shakespeare—not exactly a winning formula for the game of word association, given the action-flick nature of the saga.
But if you get granular and examine it, Star Wars is really just a bunch of entitled clans flexing over whose clan has bragging rights to flex the most.
You know—Shakespeare’s career in a nutshell.
George Lucas’ personal opinion aside (he has said he views the first six movies as “The Tragedy of Darth Vader”), we as an audience should look at the Star Wars canon objectively and judge it for what it is.
A freaking mess.
But what a glorious mess it is.
Photo Credit: MarĂa Ten
Shakespeare's Legacy and the History of a Villain
If you search for top Yahoo answers on Shakespeare's villains, this is the top comment:
"I don't believe Shakespeare has any villains, but more like misguided characters … the "bad guys"… are not really bad deep down but broken out by the cruel hand of fate. The villains in Shakespeare's plays are not horrible people with no sense of humanity… but complex characters, usually more complex and deeper than his protagonists."
And boy, did Shakespeare love his villains. It’s arguable whether good old Willy even believed in human goodness. The innocent and the virtuous in his plays are almost always punished with death—or else forced into monstrosity by the twisted series of events that disfigure their souls.
Often misunderstood, Shakespeare’s villains, as mentioned, are less cackling masterminds than victims caught in the crossfire of larger-scale politics. He uses them to explore the very worst in people—what we are capable of before we crumble and self-destruct, and where the line of sanity is drawn.
There is a figure connected to Shakespeare and his work just as important as the man himself, I dare say.
That man is Samuel Coleridge.
Photo Credit: Peter Vandyke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
An English poet and literary critic, Coleridge outlined some of the most recognizable and widely used literary instruments: suspension of disbelief; the spiritual tether between metaphor and its real-life counterpart; romanticism at large; but most importantly, “transcendentalism” and “motiveless malignity.”
Two philosophies dissecting human character that Shakespeare loved to marry into one person.
Without Coleridge—who defined and tirelessly studied these subjects—I don’t think anyone would fully understand what Shakespeare was even on about in his sonnets.
The Magna Carta spurred revolutionary schools of thought and helped transform society into something closer to a civil body than a savage existence. And yes, there were brilliant writers in Shakespeare’s England who studied the human soul in similar ways—John Donne, Mary Sidney Herbert, or my personal favorite, Anne Lock, whose sonnet sequence A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner preceded Shakespeare’s melodramas about evil by almost fifty years.
But whether the texts were biblical, legal, romantic, legendary, or mythic, they rarely ventured beyond: evil = bad, good = good.
It was a dichotomy-driven, binary world—hard to imagine these days.
Then came Shakespeare with a new point of view. Heroes who become villains. Heroes punished for their chivalry.
A corrupt church. Love doesn’t conquer everything—it doesn’t conquer anything. In fact, it only brings suffering to those in love, and to everyone around them.
(Now the cornerstone philosophy of Star Wars takes a more apparent shape, doesn’t it?)
Without Coleridge’s criticism, we probably wouldn’t understand how deep Shakespeare’s conviction of human wickedness runs, or what triggers it. His constant battle to convince narrow-minded England that people are a vast, complicated spectrum of emotions still inspires writers today.
A timeless battle.
Not because audiences are too dumb—but because Shakespeare’s writing is, frankly, the most boring body of text you’ll ever read.
Shakespeare wasn’t really a writer. He was a playwright. His art is meant to be watched, not read.
But theater trips are too expensive for schools, so his plays are shoved into textbooks—hated by millions of children worldwide instead of appreciated for the diamonds they really are.
On stage, they’re hilarious, heartbreaking, daring. On the page, they’re just a mumbo-jumbo of iambic pentameter.
That’s where Coleridge’s input comes in—with his two ardent philosophies.
Photo Credit: Dentface from Wookieepedia
Transcendentalism—in its most distilled definition—is a movement originating in New England, built on the belief in the inherent goodness of people, a goodness bestowed upon them by their Creator despite the ever-engulfing delinquency of institutions and social structures working tirelessly to corrupt them.
Motiveless Malignity—on the other hand—is a term Coleridge first uttered during a university lecture in 1819, after seeing Othello performed on stage for the first time:
"…. the last Speech, the motive-hunting of Motiveless Malignity—how awful! In itself, fiendish—while yet he was allowed to bear the divine image, too fiendish for his own steady view.—A being next to the Devil—only not quite the Devil—& this Shakespeare has attempted—executed—without disgust, without scandal!"
- Collection of Lectures 1808-1819 On Literature
Coleridge was talking about Iago—the most caricatured Shakespearean villain in Othello—when he argued that Iago is evil for the sake of being evil. He doesn’t have gravitas or ethos; he doesn’t have a motive or a quest. He’s simply a villain who delights in villainy.
And that’s perfectly fine.
Not just fine—compelling.
Dr. Weller, a professor of English and Shakespearean scholar at Eastern Washington University, confirms Coleridge’s assessment:
"Coleridge asserts that Iago's motives (in our sense) were his "keen sense of his intellectual superiority" and his "love of exerting power." And so Iago's Malignity is "motiveless" because his motives (in Coleridge's sense) — revenge for being passed over for promotion, and for being cuckolded by both Othello and Cassio — are merely rationalizations."
Now that we’ve got our definitions straight, let’s apply them:
George Lucas created a character of pure Transcendentalism and married him with Motiveless Malignity.
Anakin Skywalker believes he’s special—more powerful, more deserving, more competent, more intelligent than his peers or superiors. His turn to evil isn’t born of necessity or tragedy; it’s just rationalization piled on top of ego.
So what’s the problem if the groundwork for the character—and the theory behind him—is so strong?
The problem is that George Lucas’ execution of marrying these two components is … kind of the worst.
The metaphors are simultaneously too literal and too figurative, which on screen feels less like storytelling and more like being strapped into a particle accelerator.
As Anakin’s mother explains, there was no father—she simply became pregnant one day. (That’s the Holy Spirit of the Force for you, I guess.)
Anakin Skywalker, a child of the Force—a literal son of God, if you translate it into a Judeo-Christian belief system—becomes a twisted monster because he gets too greedy.
"I want more. And I know that I shouldn't."
Photo Credit: dalekofchaos from Tumblr
See, audience? Do you get it?
Anakin is Lucifer—God’s most beloved son falling from grace, seduced by the power of evil. The most beautiful, blonde-haired creature of light, burning from the inside out on Mustafar. A literal [censored] version of the Star Wars universe, like an overdone panini sandwich, struck down by his warrior-brother—the other most powerful defender of peace in God’s heavenly army.
Do you get it? Do you? Hey, you in the back—you dumb-dumb over there—did you get it? Or should his last name be “the one who walks the sky” so you can grasp what we’re going for?
Star Wars Legacy – A New Type of Villain
Star Wars often gets accused of rudimentary messaging—that it doesn’t say much beyond good vs. evil, where evil is cartoonishly evil and good is cartoonishly good. But that’s not quite the case.
(If it were, I think Star Wars would’ve been better off.)
The morality of the characters in Star Wars is closer to Shakespearean fluidity than people usually give them credit for. Han Solo starts as a scumbag space pirate and learns to be selfless. Leia, on the other hand—the overtly self-righteous one—unlearns her black-and-white view of the world.
But the ties to Shakespeare run deeper, right down to Lucas’ sketchboard for the story—where he pulled his ideas.
George drew inspiration from the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and from the Third Reich.
The philosophy of extremist regimes stems from the need to identify a common enemy in society and then to elevate one “true” hero—the only one who can protect the state from the supposed agenda of a tyrant or political party bent on domination. Lucas basically copy-pasted this playbook for how tyrannical regimes rise to power.
Rarely does a totalitarian regime rise purely by force. From Caesar to Hitler to Gaddafi, these leaders were most often democratically elevated by people desperate for solutions, granting absolute power to someone who could “get stuff done.”
Although I’m not sure voters thought “getting stuff done” meant widespread [censored]. That goes for Roman senators, the German people, and the Galactic Senate alike.
To be fair to all those who misguidedly helped dictators gain their thrones: politicians rarely get anything done. And when they do, it’s hardly selfless governing.
So electing someone “not a politician,” armed with fiery rhetoric and promises to drain the swamp, can be—if not condonable or smart—at least understandable. Especially in the context of the Star Wars universe.
"This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
Photo Credit: Manuel C., CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
People can’t always define fascism. But if you ask them to show you—on this Star Wars doll—where fascism touched them, they’ll probably give you a spot-on answer.
We don’t always know what it is, but we know what it looks and sounds like: loud, spiteful speeches about a “great galactic purpose,” soldiers in pristine formation, black-and-green uniforms, blind and unquestioning loyalty.
So George Lucas might not have been drawing directly from Shakespeare so much as from the code and conviction of the Third Reich. But he tapped into the same references and sources Shakespeare did—ancient worlds and medieval legends about dictators—and blended them with fascism, which at the time of Star Wars’ creation was still far too fresh in everyone’s mind. He then wrapped it all in a fairytale gloss of Transcendentalist heroes resisting the Motiveless Malignity within them.
George Lucas, much like Shakespeare, challenged both the perception of good vs. evil and the audience’s expectations of what that fight should look like.
That’s why the “No, I am your father” twist is so gut-wrenching and effective: it spins on the very nature of villains, a tradition Shakespeare first set down in Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and even Romeo and Juliet.
Good vs. evil isn’t always Devil vs. God. Sometimes the Devil is your half-cyborg dad, and God is a teenager with a Bieber haircut.
Take Vader out of the equation, and Star Wars wouldn’t be nearly as iconic. Writers have been trying to pull their own “I am your father” UNO reverse card for decades, and no one has come close to its cultural impact. Not for lack of trying.
Shakespearean settings are usually epic in scope. A petty family squabble or marital spat, blown out of proportion by the royal or socially crucial role of the family, with their choices directly reshaping the construct and fate of society.
In other words: horrible, selfish people being horrible and selfish for five hours. (If a plague wasn’t raging outside Shakespeare’s windows. If it was, he tended to keep things a little more succinct.)
In a 2015 interview with Charlie Rose, after George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, he said:
"We call it space opera, but it's really a soap opera. It's all about family and family problems. It's not about spaceships."
Photo Credit: Ada Elder from cheezburger
Well, amen, George Lucas. It indeed isn’t. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t like it as much.
Lucas set the death of democracy as the A-plot backdrop to the B-plot generational family drama of the Skywalkers.
(But he’ll also be the first to preach with unshakeable conviction that these movies are for children, to which I say: sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night, sir.)
The Star Wars saga is, in fact, a Shakespearean tragedy.
Here’s the trick to recognizing the bare bones of Star Wars under the meaty influences Lucas pulled from: focus on the driving force (ha-ha, get it) of the saga—the character that moves the story along—and you’ll have your answer.
Whether Lucas knew from the start that Star Wars would become one man’s tragedy, or whether he only retrofitted his creative choices once the saga expanded beyond the original trilogy, the central figure dominating the story is Anakin Skywalker.
“Dominating the story” doesn’t mean what most writers assume it means. A character doesn’t need to appear in every scene to be the central motivation for the plot and the reason other characters undergo their arcs.
In fact, if a character has a strong pull and a fierce personality, it’s often wiser to use them sparingly—which is exactly what Lucas did with Vader.
Vader’s allure is rooted in mystery. His pull comes from leaving you unsatisfied, craving more the second he exits the frame.
I’m a Star Wars fan, but I don’t need to read every book or comic to enjoy Vader. Honestly, it was detrimental to my perspective that I did learn what Vader thinks every step of the way, or what he does in his free time.
I’ve read a lot of the comics, and they often contradict what we know about him from the canon films. He shows tremendous personal ambition in them, which doesn’t really track when he ultimately always ends up as the Emperor’s blunt instrument. He has moments of compassion—rare, but present—that cheapen his eventual redemption. Instead of expanding him, they chip away at the core of his character.
He shouldn’t have side quests for personal gain, or moments of mercy here and there. That’s the whole point of Vader’s arc: no one gets through to him except his kid. He’s a serial killer sealed in a mechanical suit, with crippling depression and borderline personality disorder.
But naturally, Disney+ doesn’t give a rat's bottom about my or anyone’s feelings on the matter. We’re going to get so much more content starring the galaxy’s number-one sand hater. And why would they stop? Obi-Wan Kenobi pulled in over two million households—higher viewership than The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett.
Disney, man. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
Photo Credit: Natalie Budnyk from giphy.com.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Finally Apologized after 45 years
Now I’m going to say something you’re not supposed to say.
The only reason people love Obi-Wan Kenobi is: number one—Ewan McGregor’s incomparable charisma; number two—the one-liners; and number three—the memes.
Sir Alec Guinness’s legendary status aside, Kenobi in the originals was a solidly built mentor to Luke Skywalker and an intriguing figure wrapped in mystery, but it didn’t go much beyond that.
The dialogue and relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan in Lucas’s prequels were vague enough that Disney could exploit them into a million different shows.
Objectively, strip Obi-Wan of Ewan McGregor, and the likeability of the character is close to non-existent. His main function is trolling Vader.
The fact that he’s both the best part of the prequel trilogy and still sucks pretty hard should tell you everything you need to know.
Obi-Wan is the textbook example of a character written by five hundred different people. The operative word here is sloppy. And if there’s one thing that kills a story, it’s sloppiness and inconsistency.
But since we’re talking Shakespeare, let’s explore the dynamic between Vader and Obi-Wan. Or Lucifer and Michael, as Lucas might have it. Or not.
Who knows? We’re just riffing. No one really knows what the [censored] Star Wars even is.
But we love it. I know it sounds like I don’t, but I promise you I do. Well—I’m in a very abusive relationship with Star Wars, to be exact.
I love it, but it hurts me deeply. And still, I’ll watch everything Star Wars until both suns on Tatooine burn out of the freaking sky.
Photo Credit: Megapixl
The idea of a prequel is always a hard sell, because we already know how and where each character ends up. You’d have to be a master storyteller to keep me on the edge of my seat during a movie that can’t go too wild for fear of breaking continuity.
And we all know George Lucas wasn’t in it for the money. Star Wars has always been his passion project, and his love for it always comes through. Plus, let’s not forget—this guy pitched a story about space wizards to a studio back when computers weighed more than the Empire State Building.
But what does Disney say about passion and love for a project? Well, we’ve got this internal Paramount memo from 1982, written by Michael Eisner, the former CEO of Disney:
"We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective."
Do not be fooled by the fact that this memo was written in 1982, because this is still the altar Disney worships at—and the hill they will happily die on.
And so we’ve ended up with this bizarre, disjointed streaming platform where creativity goes to die, and where Disney launders its ideas to make a side coin off nostalgia.
I can’t say I hate everything Disney does with Star Wars—I actually love how every movie, cartoon, series, or comic Vader appears in turns into survivalist horror. That’s exactly how it should be.
I don’t know how kids react to Vader these days, but my generation, our parents’ generation, and even our grandparents’ generation—when we saw Darth Vader for the first time, he was the most terrifying figure in film history. And if you ask me, he still is.
We had nightmares about that breathing, that mechanical chokehold, that glowing red death-stick slicing through everyone in his way.
And thank the Force that national treasure James Earl Jones is still around to voice him. Without his creepy, modulated performance, Vader would lose half his menace.
So yes—Disney does understand Vader, if nothing else. And they’ve given us some unforgettable Vader moments since they took over.
But here’s the thing: think of Disney+ as a street money-changer in former East Germany. You go in expecting fair exchange. Instead, you hand over your money to some guy in smuggled Nikes standing on a sketchy train platform, and what you get back is shabby, half-torn, and missing a few bills.
You’ll get your money—but it won’t feel like the full value you were promised.
Remember when I said, “Use Vader sparingly?” I stand by that. But if you greenlight a show called Obi-Wan Kenobi, doesn’t it beg the question of why it isn’t actually about Obi-Wan Kenobi?
Disney keeps pulling this stunt: launch a series about a fan-favorite character, then spend half the runtime on unnecessary side plots about everyone except the titular character.
They did it to Loki. They did it to Boba Fett. They did it to Hawkeye. And now Obi-Wan Kenobi is the latest victim of this nasty habit.
If there were ever a reason (and there really isn’t) to justify the existence of this show, it would be to see Kenobi finally apologize to Anakin. Which, incidentally, is also one of only three good scenes in the entire show.
Ever since I rewatched the prequels as an adult, there’s always been a disconnect between Anakin and Vader. My brain refuses to reconcile that the maniacal fascist in the suit is the same obnoxious kid from the sand planet—even though I literally saw the transition.
Honestly, that’s probably because Anakin’s turn to the dark side is more jarring and sudden than Daenerys’s. And, like with Game of Thrones, I had an out-of-body experience watching it—slipping into freeze mode just to survive the trauma.
The biggest testament to its clumsy execution? People still can’t stop joking about Anakin murdering younglings. The choice is so random, so poorly set up, that the internet had to invent a whole new league of memes just to process it.
Photo Credit: Internet Archive – “Star Wars 2017 Memes” Collection
Let’s talk about how Lucas handled the prequels: he separated Obi-Wan and Anakin for most of the trilogy, sending them on different adventures. Every chance to build their friendship was wasted on awkward dialogue that left both actors visibly uncomfortable.
Take the scene where Palpatine tempts Anakin to leave unconscious Obi-Wan behind. Perfect setup for Anakin to say, “He’s my friend. I can’t leave him.” But instead?
“His fate will be the same as ours.”
I get it, it's like poetry, it rhymes, they all die on the Death Star eventually.
But what does it mean in the context of this situation?
Well, converse with your priest and make peace with your God, because you won’t get an answer to that question in this lifetime.
People defend this as “Shakespearean dialogue.” As someone who studied Shakespeare, I promise you: it’s not. Vagueness and verbosity aren’t the keys to Shakespearean language. But at least it does confirm my central thesis—that Lucas was aiming for Shakespearean tragedy and ended up handing us unlimited meme fuel instead.
And when Anakin and Obi-Wan do share the screen? It’s nails on a chalkboard. They bicker constantly.
I wouldn’t say they lack chemistry—quite the opposite. But when you’re stuck delivering George’s clunky dialogue, trying to connect with your scene partner becomes a doomed endeavor.
Photo Credit: TĂşrelio Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 de
From the moment Qui-Gon dies, Obi-Wan is saddled with training Anakin. It’s obvious they don’t want to be stuck with each other. But Lucas never wrote it that way. Instead, we get a severe emotional disconnect between what George intended and what the audience actually sees.
Suppose the dynamic had been written as Banquo and Macbeth—trusted friends whose bond makes betrayal devastating. The older Kenobi even tells us in the OT that they were good friends, that Anakin became a victim of Vader. But on screen? The betrayal feels hollow.
Because these two can’t stand each other. It’s like watching a pair of sassy cats fighting over their turf with lightsabers for three movies straight.
There’s no genuine camaraderie anywhere. Obi-Wan spends a grand total of two minutes pondering whether to kill his “best friend” before chopping his limbs off and leaving him to burn.
Yes, there are rare, whiplash-inducing moments of fondness, but for the most part, they just scowl at each other. And then, out of nowhere, Obi-Wan awkwardly praises Anakin’s “wisdom and strength” right before the big fall—because the script needed a goodbye.
It doesn’t land. Because after three movies of irritation and harsh criticism, that sudden “you’re great, kid” moment feels like bad improv.
So dragging Obi-Wan back twenty years later cannot be justified by anything except “let’s make money.” Especially not with the promise of “we’re exploring these two characters”—and then failing to do it.
The show doesn’t explore anything. It doesn’t deepen Kenobi, except in one final confrontation that should have been the entire point of the series: fixing the disconnect between Anakin’s split identities.
Instead, director Deborah Chow leaned on the horror of Order 66 to make Anakin’s turn seem serious. That’s how much of a meme the youngling massacre has become.
Yes, there are bright spots. I love how much Obi-Wan adores Luke and Leia. I love the reverence in the way he describes their parents. I love the sheer terror on his face when he first sees Vader tearing through a village, mercilessly snapping necks until Kenobi bolts, Fast & Furious-style, rather than fight.
I love that Kenobi is old, depressed, and drowning in PTSD—because, after everything, of course he should be. I love that everyone from his past rips him a new one every time they see him—because, honestly, they should.
And in their confrontation, I love how clear it becomes that Anakin and Obi-Wan hate themselves more than they hate each other.
But despite those moments, the 2022 Kenobi just doesn’t jive with the rest of the saga. Which is why it’s so frustrating to watch.
Vader in this show, however, is another story altogether.
Ewan McGregor admitted on his press tour for Obi-Wan Kenobi that seeing Hayden walk toward him in that suit scared the [censored] out of him—
"… and then you see fu**ing Vader charge at you, it scared the s**t out of me. I don't think I've ever had genuine fear on an acting set, and I've done horror movies, he's terrifying."
You can’t blame him—Vader wasn’t very menacing twenty years ago, was he? Nowhere near as horrifying as the Vader part of Anakin should have been.
Not many actors get a chance to redeem their most prominent roles and rectify the mistakes of the past. And boy, did Hayden Christensen absolutely nail it.
From the brief flashback of a training duel—where Vader’s anger and frustration seep ever so slightly into his features—to those crazed eyes and that delirious grin when Obi-Wan slices his mask in half and cracks open his respirator, we finally get to see what Obi-Wan sees.
This man is a deranged mess.
Obi-Wan calls him “Anakin” and apologizes for letting him down. Anakin absolves him, gives him peace, gives him permission to let go. And my nerdy, Star Wars–loving heart breaks just a little bit.
Because that kind of writing and direction, kids, is what we could have seen when we were ten years old.
If only someone had ripped the director’s chair and screenplay violently out of George Lucas’ hands and left him with just the concept sketches.
If only he had spent as much time writing Anakin’s dialogue as he did picking his hairstyle.
Priorities.
The hair do be fabulous though, as the kids say.
Photo Credit: big-ashb Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
"It's like poetry, it rhymes."
So, here we are. Hayden Christensen. A dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.
They say it’s best to start at the beginning. In this case, the beginning of understanding Anakin Skywalker is rooted in our perception of Darth Vader.
How is Anakin introduced to us? Before the prequels, our understanding was limited. (And honestly, it would’ve been fine by me if it stayed that way—but it’s too late now.)
We heard characters talk about him to his children. We knew he had the heart of a knight, excelled at everything he touched, and was extraordinarily powerful.
Snippets of a person described almost as a ghost—separate in memory, separate in language—from the man now known as Darth Vader.
And then we had the evidence: a seven-foot-tall, glowing-sword-wielding space-wizard Joseph Goebbels serving a cape-wearing Adolf Hitler.
We learned that the man treated as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde didn’t need a special serum to transform. He didn’t sever one part from the other. He was the same guy—capable of executing Order 66 (the real-life equivalent of Hitler’s Operation Hummingbird) and of killing the man who ordered it to save his son years later.
Writing a character this torn apart by paranoia and fear—and executing it believably—is a tall order. Which is why the prequels are redundant, on top of being, in general, a huge mess.
Because they’re too much. Anakin and his sixty-six personalities are too much. It’s like eating KFC every day for sixty-six years: messy, greasy, and guaranteed to kill you. He needed respect, distance, subtlety.
All “Force of Nature” characters do. And whoever proofread Lucas’s work in the 1970s was clearly not around in the 2000s.
Too much of a good thing can kill you. Now imagine too much of that good thing has lost its flavor, and it still kills you anyway.
Vader doesn’t appear extensively in the original trilogy, but when he does? Oh, the chills.
And let me remind you: the whole point of revisiting Star Wars thirty years later was to explain how Vader became Vader.
Instead, we got… well, that. But to repeat my original point—none of that was Christensen’s fault.
People are finally warming up to that, mostly because the behind-the-scenes mechanics of filmmaking are more accessible now than they were in the early 2000s.
But let’s be thorough anyway.
An actor’s performance is 90% screenplay and direction, 10% talent. If you don’t believe me, allow me to present Exhibit A: behind-the-scenes footage of George Lucas “directing” Christensen where he looks either confused:
Photo Credit: ©Lucasfilm Ltd. / 20th Century Fox. Used here for editorial purposes
Perplexed:
Photo Credit: ©Lucasfilm Ltd. / 20th Century Fox. Used here for editorial purposes
Done with all this nonsense:
Photo Credit: © Lucasfilm Ltd. / 20th Century Fox. Used here for editorial purposes
Or my personal favorite—all of the above:
Photo Credit: ©Lucasfilm Ltd. / 20th Century Fox. Used here for editorial purposes
It’d be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.
This man was once nominated for a Golden Globe and a SAG award, by the way.
The lifeless performances around him only heightened the awkwardness. These actors clearly wanted to be in Star Wars—but once they read the script, they collectively decided to just labor through it.
No one could be bothered to act on that set.
Natalie Portman gave up halfway through prequel no. 2 after hearing the real MVP of Star Wars—the “I don’t like sand” speech. Ewan McGregor, the only one who seemed to know what kind of project he was in, decided to just play himself. Samuel L. Jackson and Liam Neeson injected about as much life into Windu and Qui-Gon as the green screen behind them.
So what we’re left with is this: a Leviathan-scale villain written both overwhelmingly and underwhelmingly at the same time, played by an actor who couldn’t figure out what the director wanted, surrounded by lifeless co-stars, and buried under a mountain of PS2-era visual effects.
By the end, you’re not sure who or what Vader is.
And if the audience doesn’t know, trust me—no one on that set knew either.
If Coleridge were alive, he would’ve retired from criticism after sitting through the prequel trilogy.
Which is exactly why Transcendentalism and Motiveless Malignity in Anakin fell flat on their stupid face. We shouldn’t be able to pinpoint the exact moment where those philosophies meet. They should overlap naturally.
It’s not supposed to be a cliff-jump—it’s supposed to be a slow, inevitable fall.
Instead, we can pinpoint the hour, minute, and second on the runtime bar when he decides to massacre an orphanage full of Jedi trainees on the basis of a vague promise.
It insults the Juggernaut nature of Vader’s character more than any dumb soliloquy about sand ever could.
Now, I’ve heard complaints that Anakin’s reasoning is undermined because he was passed over for a promotion.
That’s not the issue. In fact, that’s the one part that tracks with Shakespearean villainy: being denied what you feel is rightfully yours.
Entitlement destroyed. Years of dedication wasted. That was the engine behind Frank Underwood—basically a Shakespearean villain in modern drag, and an extremely well-written one.
And I have to assume that was Lucas’s intention: a Macbethian fall. A soldier of valor, seduced by ambition and fear, passed over by his overly self-righteous friend—whom he then betrays.
But it just ain’t working, my dude.
The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker
If you managed to get to this point—congratulations, thank you—and hopefully, you now see the pattern in George Lucas’s fractured characterization.
And the thread that connects it all is called literature.
Anakin Skywalker is written like a literary hero, not a cinematic one. Everything else around him—the pacing, the convoluted plot, the story structure, the one-liners—has a bookish quality to it.
The constant telling instead of showing. Characters describing things that happened off-screen that we never actually see. The weird, stilted dialogue. Yes, “tell not show” is also a sin in book writing, but it’s not nearly as jarring there as it is projected forty feet tall on a silver screen.
No matter how much George thinks of himself as a filmmaker, he studied literature early in his life—and everything he creates reeks of literary instincts.
He has a wild imagination, extraordinary world-building, and boundless creativity.
But those qualities do not make you a screenwriter. They hardly make you a director. There’s a reason those two jobs are separate and usually assigned to different people. Not everyone can be James Cameron. And that’s fine.
So if you’re asking yourself why Anakin’s writing is all over the place, it’s because George Lucas wrote a book series and called it a movie script.
Back in the seventies, he probably had script doctors fixing the issues, which is how the original trilogy turned out so beautifully.
Check the credits: The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the bunch, and it’s also the one George had the least technical involvement in.
J. K. Rowling pulled the same stunt with the Fantastic Beasts saga. That’s why those movies are broken, too.
Screenwriting and book writing could not be more different. Movies usually follow a three-act structure. It’s the most straightforward, most accessible to audiences, and the easiest to execute. It works—so most directors use it.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
When I rewatched the prequel trilogy as an adult with critical thinking engaged, I was so done that I would’ve taken any structure. Even a made-up one. Just give me something, man. I’ll take anything at this point.
No such luck.
And it took me twenty years and three college diplomas to figure out what the real problem with Anakin is.
The Phantom Menace has some of the most disturbing dialogue about slavery I’ve ever heard, and it baffles me that more people don’t have a bigger problem with it.
Some of those lines are thirty-one kinds of wrong.
I get it: watching the movie feels like being injected with elephant tranquilizer, so it’s hard to ponder the meaning of the dialogue when the line delivery makes you feel like you’re already dead.
I’ve heard plenty of commentary on the insulting nature of Jar Jar—the racist Jamaican caricature—and yeah, while Jar Jar is idiotic, he’s not nearly as damaging as Watto.
Because Jar Jar, for all his nonsense, doesn’t really hurt anyone. Watto, on the other hand—the Jewish–Paul Giamatti–faced, spoof-Italian-accented enslaver who’s literally some sort of flying vermin—pains me deeply.
It’s not about introducing slavery into the story. It’s about how the characters treat it, talk about it, and deal with it—especially since, you know, Anakin, the main character, is a ten-year-old child slave.
And here’s the kicker: these are lines spoken by the heroes of the story—the Jedi, the elite warrior-monks sworn to protect the galaxy—to that aforementioned child slave:
"I haven't come here to free slaves."
"Why do I feel like we have picked up another pathetic life form?"
"I tried to free your mother, Ani, but Watto wouldn't have it."
Oh wow, thanks for nothing then, all-powerful wizard. It’s the effort that counts, I guess.
By the way, I don’t think anyone needed to see Darth Vader as an annoying kid with a creepy mother-son dynamic toward the girl he’d one day marry.
If you think little Leia in Obi-Wan Kenobi looks too young to be ten, rewatch (at your own risk of slipping into a coma) The Phantom Menace—where ten-year-old Anakin, who looks more like seven, flirts with his future wife, who is supposed to be fourteen but looks twelve.
See, they will bang one day, is the point, I think. Idk. Lol. I don't know why this dynamic is in the movie, gives me the ick.
Photo Credit: Andres Rueda, CC BY 2.0
Star Wars may not excel at plot continuity, but it has mastered the art of miscasting children.
If Lucas’s reason for starting Anakin’s story as a child was to establish both his slavery and his Transcendentalist “intrinsic goodness,” then those two things were always on a collision course.
Because Anakin can’t go around making choices to “help everyone, that’s who he is”—as his mother insists—without those choices being self-serving. Helping people who could free him and his family from slavery isn’t pure altruism. It’s strategy.
It’s clear that once Anakin realizes Qui-Gon Jinn is a Jedi, he helps him to bargain for freedom.
And then the confusion deepens. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan free Anakin but leave his mother behind. Then they march this traumatized kid before the Jedi Council, who talk to him for three minutes before proclaiming: evil.
Why? Well, converse with your priest and make peace with your God before you depart this world, because you will never get an answer.
That kind of writing only happens when you’re working backwards from a predetermined fate instead of focusing on the story in front of you.
Then comes Attack of the Clones, where the Clones don’t actually attack, and a teenage Anakin appears who has nothing in common with his younger self. He’s suddenly brooding, sinister, throwing side-eye at everyone.
The kind-hearted kid? Gone. Now we’re introduced to his psychotic side.
When Ani’s mother dies, he slaughters an entire village. The issue isn’t that he does it—it’s how everyone else responds.
It’s never clear who else he tells beyond Palpatine and Padmé. But Padmé’s lack of horror is blatant character assassination.
If the supposedly pure-hearted queen who once screamed “Justice for all!” can shrug off her boyfriend’s [censored] and marry him anyway, the message to the audience is: He was justified. No conflict. No moral collapse.
Compare that to Banquo discovering Macbeth has gone mad. Banquo is horrified, flees, and joins the opposition. That’s how you define morality: through both a villain’s actions and the reactions of those around him.
That’s worldbuilding. That’s code. That’s culture.
If you set a story in a world different from ours, you have to show us how morality works there—consistently.
When the Jedi kill killers, it’s justice. When Anakin does it, it’s malice.
And then comes the supposed point of the prequels: How did Anakin Skywalker become Darth Vader?
Revenge of the Sith.
Meet Anakin—yet another version of him. Sometimes he’s dutiful Jedi pilot. Sometimes he’s brooding in his Manhattan penthouse, plotting treason because the Jedi Council is hazing him on cue.
He whiplashes from Macbeth pre-madness, to Hamlet post-madness, to Iago, to Claudius, to Hamlet again, then back to Macbeth in full meltdown.
In a DVD featurette, George Lucas says: “Anakin is a victim.”
Okay, but a victim of what?
Well, converse with your priest and make peace with your God, because you will not get an answer in this lifetime to this question.
The “whys” behind his choices are endless—fear of losing Padmé, anger issues, Palpatine’s manipulation—but they’re presented chaotically. They’re rationalizations, not motivations.
And Coleridge warned us long ago: rationalizations do not make a villain.
And here’s the real kicker: rationalizations work perfectly fine for heroes-turned-villains, if they’re written as flawed humans to begin with. But Anakin was written as a Transcendentalist demigod. His fall is as believable as Jesus joining the Romans because Pilate promised to spare Mary and Joseph.
If only he would stop being so freaking difficult.
Photo Credit: popculturegeek.com from Los Angeles, CA, USA CC BY 2.0
Anakin does seek help—but everyone around him is blind, stupid, or too self-righteous to care. Padmé, once a warrior queen, spends the entire film barefoot and pregnant. Obi-Wan notices Anakin’s discontent but ignores it. Windu keeps poking him. And Yoda—the wise and compassionate Yoda—basically tells him: Just stop caring so much, bro.
Detach from your wife. Detach from your unborn child. Detach from your best friend.
There you go. Problem solved.
The funniest thing? That blasé dismissal is the only consistent Jedi writing choice across the saga. They tell Luke the same thing twenty years later. Almost word for word.
Sorry dude, your father is evil. Kill him and let your friends die, too lmao.
Anakin’s life is one long chain of servitude: slavery → indentured servitude → unlawful recruitment.
From the moment we learned he was born a slave, the logical throughline should have been his struggle—and failure—to escape bondage. That’s the only narratively sound reason for a Jesus-like savior figure to fall into evil: turning to the dark side as a twisted attempt at freedom.
But instead, it’s buried under sixty-six reasons of dumb.
Everyone tells him what to do, how to feel, who to love, who to hate, when to fight, where to go.
Yes, there are brief, subtle peeks when you can tell how much he craves to be free. That he has a profound, more evolved understanding of the issue when he schools his girlfriend about how archaic and downright tyrannical the Jedi rules are:
"Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi's life. So, you might say that we are encouraged to love."
But he also says that their political system is broken, and maybe brutal dictatorship is the way to go.
"Well, if it works."
Because dictatorship over his life is all he has ever known, Anakin can’t even grasp the concept of agency—even if he craves it more than anything.
There is only one power higher than any god, one power even gods respect.
That power is free will.
The tragedy of Anakin Skywalker is that he never fully realized he was a slave his entire life. Not until his son shattered the illusion of free will his masters had given him—by offering him a choice without conditions.
Luke didn’t judge him like his mentor. He didn’t fail to set boundaries like his wife. He didn’t give up on him like his brotherhood.
That little nod Luke gives after Vader says it’s too late, that he must surrender him to the Emperor—that is the single most brilliant screen direction in all of Star Wars, and one of the most beautiful moments in cinematic history.
That nod means: I respect your choice. I can’t condone it. I disagree with it. But I will gladly die if it means that it is your choice and yours alone.
The camera zooms in on Vader as he leans against the railing, shaken. He finally wakes up. He realizes—no, that’s not his choice. That’s not what he wants. He just didn’t know it, because no one had ever given him a choice that wasn’t manipulation or conditioning.
Luke offers him unconditional love—not by excusing his crimes, but by promising to love him despite them. That’s the kind of connection Anakin craved all his life. That’s what resonates. That’s what redeems him.
There are many reasons Luke Skywalker stands as the epitome of a true hero, and arguably the best-written hero in all of fiction.
It is far easier to condemn a monster than to show it compassion.
But Luke’s compassion operates on another level. Not because it’s limitless, but because he doesn’t demand others match it. He doesn’t expect, require, or feel entitled to everyone sharing the same standard.
He holds a funeral for his father alone. He doesn’t force his sister or his friends to join him in forgiveness.
He doesn’t preach to the galaxy about how they should feel.
He burns his father’s body alone, and says goodbye to him alone.
"I burn his armor and with it the name of Darth Vader. May the name of Anakin Skywalker be a light that guides the Jedi for generations to come. Rest well, Father. The Force is with you."
Compassion heals, love redeems, and free will is the greatest, unalienable gift of all.
Photo Credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
All six episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are now streaming on Disney+. You can watch the trailer here:
