Anakin Skywalker’s transformation from a lovable, naïve Jedi into the iconic villain Darth Vader is still regarded as the most epic moment in Star Wars history, while legions of arguments have erupted around this specific plot-line.
While some fans of the franchise sympathize with Anakin and tend to interpret him embracing the Dark Side as a result of his love for his wife Padme and unborn children, others aren’t as forgiving, and their disdain for Vader immediately led them to place Anakin in a negative light.
Meanwhile, a group of Reddit users have drawn attention to an aspect of Anakin’s life that could have been elaborated upon, thus giving the viewers a deeper insight into the young Jedi’s sufferings.
User u/gleamingcobra posted on Reddit saying that The Phantom Menace could have focused a bit more on Anakin’s hardships as a child slave in the scorching heat of Tatooine. Instead, the writers “rushed” through the beats of his discovery by Obi-Wan Kenobi, putting less emphasis on his everyday life.
Even the young Anakin’s fleeting screentime in Tatooine didn’t do justice to the brutality of slavery and the miserable lives of the people there, and the user had a few words to share on the subject,
“Firstly, Tatooine should have been a lot more run-down, there should have been more suffering in it. Yes, Anakin is a slave, and that alone makes his struggle compelling and believable. But Anakin and his Mom don’t have an issue with lodgings, they have a house. Yes, it’s small, and they aren’t actually free, but we never get the sense that they have an issue getting food on the table.
The residents of Tatooine have dusty clothes, but Anakin still looks rather clean compared to what I would expect. He doesn’t have an abundance of scars or callouses or anything. If we had the sense that Anakin and his Mother were truly impoverished, going to bed hungry some nights and sometimes driven to scavenging or petty thievery, I feel that could have added to Anakin’s character and his struggle.
Also, aside from Sebulba and the slave master Watto, there’s not really a feeling that the people of Tatooine are cruel or unkind. It doesn’t feel like a barren ghost town in the middle of the worst gullet of the galaxy like it should in my opinion.
I don’t know, overall I just think young Anakin was a bit mellow in episode one (and not because of Jake Lloyd’s acting, because of the directing) when I think a course, rough, irritating street rat who truly felt raised out of nothing would have amplified the tragedy and pain of Anakin’s life.”
The post was met with a motley of responses. While some were genuinely impressed with this line of argument given it was barely talked about before, there are others who defended the movie, saying that the saga’s family-friendly nature would have been threatened if Anakin’s sufferings were graphically represented.
On the other hand, it was pointed out that the comics contained tortures inflicted on Anakin by his owner Watto, but since the film had to prioritize other plotlines, a relatively less deep analysis of his childhood is justifiable.