My take on Anakin is that he was meant to be a precocious, generous, insightful, audacious, imaginative and great-hearted boy whose great capacity for love - combined with his insecurities - caused his eventual fall. Later, this same capacity to love also redeemed him.
In TPM, Anakin is a beyond-his-years child engineer and superhuman pilot. (He's the only human who can pod race.). He helps Qui-Gonn devise a plan to repair the Naboo space craft by piloting a pod he has built himself. He sees it is the only plan available, has the confidence he can succeed, and thinks nothing of the personal danger. Qui-Gonn remarks that he "gives without any thought of reward." He understands Qui-Gonn and the rest are not there by accident, and he goes on to win the Battle on Naboo with his piloting skills.
Episode 2 should have shown us the flowering of these traits: a generous, fearless, insightful and imaginative leader, moved by love and generosity and guided by the force. He should have blossomed into a beloved and gifted leader, albeit sometimes at odds with (and a bit of a threat to the authority of) the emotionless Jedi Council. His eventual fall would be precipitous, shocking and sad.
A young leader like that would inspire love and devotion from those he met, and Padme's falling in love with him would be more believable. We could also see why Anakin would become so fatally attracted to her. Having met Padme just before being separated by his mother, Anakin transferred his maternal attachment to her. While not letting himself hope to reunite with his mother, his hope was redirected towards Padme.
Unfortunately, episodes 2 and 3 were so preoccupied with Anakin's fall that they never effectively showed his rise, nor gave much reason to even like him or mourn his fall. I think the Clone Wars cartoons at least make him likeable, but even they don't make us believe that he is quite the special person we are told he is.
__________________ "Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage."
I think the way Lucas saw it was that Anakin fell before he ever met his full potential. Anakin's rise was his redemption...saving his son's life.
I agree that a better formula would have been to show Anakin as a very likable and gifted leader. This is what Episode 2 definitely missed out on for sure.
Yeah he cried like 3 times during the movies, the point is anakin had no character development he kind of did develop in the CW but in ROTS he was just the same as AOTC, a whiny, arrogant, crybabish brat.
That's a really strange thing for you to say, given your username.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
Now now, let's not be hasty Master Hobbit. Anakin did have some character development. He went from a creepy, insubordinate, leering douchebag... all the way to a psychotic, genocidal, megalomaniac. In just two films!
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
anakin wasn't like that in the CW but he obviously had problems, he beat up Greedo as a child just because Greedo thought he was cheating, he later grew up to be a pervert, a geonocidal whiny douchebag and then a crybabish emo psychopath who slaughtered thousands just to save Padme but failed because he choked her