Posted 04 April 2006 - 08:58 PM
I agree with all the comments about. The handling of Vader is why I mentally exclude the prequels from the "Star Wars" universe, even though both the PQ and the OT are Lucas' vision.
There is really just no way that the Darth Vader we see in the original trilogy has anything in common with the character of Anakin Skywalker in the original trilogies. Actually, I can swallow the Jake Lloyd character growing up to be Vader, but definitely not the one Hayden Christopher portrayed. I think the main problem is that Anakin Skywalker, as presented in AOTC and ROTS, carries no air of authority and isn't terribly bright. Darth Vader in the OT had the wonderful movie villian qualities of being menacing, ruthless, and obviously intelligent. Perhaps in one of the EU novels it will be revealed that Palpatine implemented a chip in Anakin's brain during the surgery, that raised his IQ by fifty points.
In fact, given that we don't know for sure that Vader is human until the end of the OT, just about any male character in the prequels is more plausible as Vader than Hayden Christiansen's character. This includes Obi-Wan and Wattoo. In fact, ROTS would have been much improved if Lucas had revealed that in fact it was the prequel version of Obi Wan that wound of as Vader.
Since Lucas wrote the prequels on the concept of Anakin Skywalker becoming Vader, sacrificing a coherent explanation for the origins of Palpatine and the fall of the Republic in the process, this is really the main failure of these three movies. Its also the single biggest inconsistency with the OT. After all, its basically Anakin/ Vader that links the three movies.
The prequels are definitely Lucas' vision, but I find it easiest to think of them as a completely separate series of scifi/ fantasy from the OT, with very different themes, that happens to use characters with the same names as some of the OT characters. Its not that Lucas made much of an effort to link the two series together in other ways.