The things I have to put up with on my posts in this fandom sometimes, I s2g.
Okay, first things first: SOUNDS LIKE YOU SPEND A LOT OF TIME THINKING ABOUT HAYDEN’S FACE THERE, BUDDY. I KNOW THAT FEEL.
Second: If you just go about your day not caring for the prequels or Hayden Christensen’s acting or whatever, we’re not going to have a problem. Granted, whenever you put something out on the internet, you have to accept that you can’t control the reactions to it–but that also means you gotta deal with the reactions you get to your reactions, when you act like an asshole towards other people.
AND THUS THIRD: So many of the times I see criticism of Hayden’s acting (in addition to it being a race to the meanest comment or the least charitable interpretation) it’s usually in the vein of BUT I WANTED PROTO-VADER TO BE ALL BADASS AND STUFF. D: D: D: Which, if that’s your Darth Vader, that’s cool. But it’s not who Darth Vader of canon is and Anakin Skywalker wasn’t some super awesome badass who you wanted to be. Anakin Skywalker was a tragedy.
Anakin Skywalker was supposed to make us feel uncomfortable. To get someone like Darth Vader, you don’t have a person who is stable or in control of themselves, you have someone who is unhinged and monstrous. You have someone who is haunted by the anxieties and that drives them to burn large swathes of the galaxy down to achieve their goal. For Darth Vader to be human at all (and to be worth saving he had to be human) he can’t just be some figure out of myth that’s never really explained.
Darth Vader has an explanation and you’re looking at him in this photoset–someone who is deeply conflicted within their own mind, who is haunted by their anger and has more power than they know what to do with, who has their self-esteem in the toilet but their ego has been stroked into orbit. This is someone who hates himself so he swings hard in the other direction (encouraged by Palpatine, who is so much easier to listen to than the Jedi, who tells him what he wants to hear, that he’s justified in lashing out, that he’s justified in holding onto something, when it’s so much work to let it go like the Jedi say, it’s so much work to wade through all those things, when it’s easier to just wrap himself up in his fears and anger like a security blanket), that’s why he’s not coherent, he’s not supposed to come across as justified, you’re not supposed to be in approval of his actions.
You’re supposed to be watching someone who is falling apart and that’s awful, brutal, and uncomfortable. Look at Anakin’s face when he tries to convince Padme that they don’t have to hide anymore, that they can rule the galaxy together–he’s unhinged in that moment and Hayden portrays it beautifully. Look at his face when he tells Mace, “I need [Palpatine]!”, that’s the face of someone desperately wanting to do something not because it’s the right thing to do but because he’s scared and reaching for any justification for it. Look at his face when he moans, “What have I done!?” because this is someone who is miserable. You’re supposed to be uncomfortable watching him! It’s not supposed to be a beautiful, awesome, badass fall! It’s supposed to make you cringe and go NO ANAKIN TURN BACK FROM THIS.
I chose these moments because they’re across the whole of the movie and show various moments of what Anakin’s going through, but scanning back over them, it pops out just how messy he is. Look at his hair, it’s forever wild and often sweaty, like he hasn’t brushed his hair in far too long. Because Anakin Skywalker is a mess, Hayden Christensen’s handsome face aside, Anakin is falling apart and is unkempt and not together at all.
Those expressions that seem brittle and uncomfortable and trying too hard? Anakin Skywalker is brittle and uncomfortable and trying too hard. That’s it, that’s the character.
A good portion of the reason Darth Vader seems so with it is because his death mask and robo-legs and modulated voice do the work for him. When you only see that part of him, sure, he can seem badass and maybe like he’d be a cool guy to be. But that’s not the whole of Anakin Skywalker and who he is wasn’t meant to be a badass with nothing deeper about him.
No, he was meant to be a brilliant shining star who it’s so easy to see why Padme and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka loved him, why he was so good in so many moments, but also that he was awkward and fragile and tormented by things he couldn’t let go of. And Hayden Christensen brought that to life incredibly well.
I would still snuggle this Anakin. Maybe after, like, sedating him and calling proper authorities. But before then, I would pet the hair.
I WOULD, TOO. Okay, the original post was about Hayden’s acting, which I think is at its best in ROTS, so it focuses on Anakin falling apart, but you know what scene I also really, really love the acting in? After his mother died and he does the whole, “And not just the men but the women and the children too.” scene. For as many problems as there are surrounding the scene–yes, it’s still a monstrous act, yes, Padme still ignores a huge warning sign and that she should have told someone about, yes, it’s still way early in Anakin’s story to go there–but I think Hayden’s acting really pulls that scene together for me in what it says about Anakin’s character and I AM WITH YOU THERE, PADME, I WANT TO HUG HIM, TOO.
He murders innocent people, not just the ones responsible for his mother’s death, but literally anyone who is near him, including the children, but the way he tells it to Padme is really spot on. He’s practically goading her with the terrible things he’s done, he’s very nearly daring her to reject him and find him a monster, all because he knows how wrong this is and wants so badly wants her to say it’s okay and forgive him, so badly wants her to understand him and this giant tangle of things inside him.
That little head shake gets me every time. “Not just the women.” he says and shakes his head, like, nope, I didn’t stop there, it was a lot more than that, I murdered the children, too. I murdered the undeniably innocent along with the guilty. But he says it with tears in his eyes and voice, he says this in the same conversation where he blames Obi-Wan for holding him back, and you see that he’s pinwheeling here, desperately trying to grab onto something, anything that can make sense of what he’s done and this riot of feelings that’s tearing him up.
He’s trying so hard to fling himself into his rage and hate because his grief is killing him (and because he has so much rage) and it comes across as awful and uncomfortable and it should. This is not someone who knows what the fuck he’s doing, this is not someone who has his shit together even in an angry sense. This is someone who lost control of himself and still doesn’t have it, this is someone who is spinning from one feeling to the next because he can’t control any of it.
This is someone falling apart and it’s ugly and uncomfortable and awful to watch. Which it should be. And Hayden’s acting really does it for me here, where I feel my skin crawling because I can sense that creeping justification that he’s grabbing for, I can sense how unstable he opens himself up like this, I can sense how this beautiful, bright, brilliant person has all this darkness in him that he tries so desperately hard to control, that he feels so deeply and truly, that I want to believe he can get that control back, I want to hug him and help him and believe in him.
Look at that face when he says, “I hate them!” I can never look at that face and not feel the bone-deep, aching loss and hurt he’s feeling. I look at that face he makes and I see the good person still in there, I see the person I would want to save, even knowing what terrible, terrible things he’s done. Because that little lip wobble isn’t just about a pretty face, it’s about showing Anakin’s suffering and understanding how he got to where he is in this moment, it’s about how this person is in pain and I would want to help him because there’s so much good there that I want to save. And Hayden fucking nailed that.
