‘I can recall reading the script and saying to George, “If I play Anakin as on the page – the whiny teenage quality – there’s going to be a backlash. Sometimes they [critics] were blasting me for Anakin’s flaws. Sometimes the feedback was…’ he sighs. ‘Sometimes I had to remind myself that George must have seen something in me.’

Hayden Christensen (via padmaynaberrie)

A little more context:

In the new film, Christensen gives the single greatest piece of acting in the Star Wars canon – Grand Shakespeare,’ hosannahs one source. A bit different from the notices he got when Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones hit
our screens in May 2002. Then a bullfrog chorus savaged his performance
as the adolescent Anakin Skywalker – the Jedi Knight doomed to become
Darth. If the then 19-year-old had once felt ‘lucky and blessed’ to have
landed the part over Leonardo DiCaprio and 400 other hopefuls, he must
have felt his luck had run out.

‘No, no,’ Christensen protests. ‘I can recall reading the script and
saying to George, “If I play Anakin as on the page – the whiny teenage
quality – there’s going to be a backlash.” And there was. But I thought
the critics got it wrong. Sometimes they were blasting me for Anakin’s
flaws. Sometimes the feedback was…’ he sighs. ‘Sometimes I had to
remind myself that George must have seen something in me.’

Source: Evening Standard, May 15, 2005

And that, right there.  Is why I don’t read reviews or listen to critics.  They’re so fickle and so quick to assign blame where it doesn’t belong.  And everything they say is so damned exaggerated–for better or for worse–that you can’t trust a single word that comes out of most of their mouths.  Watch for yourself.  Judge for yourself.  Fuck the critics.

Advertisement