-- luminous

When J.W. Rinzler was testing the glossy print and sending it to Lucas for approval, this frame here came out too dark for GL's tastes:

And yet... holy fuck does this perfectly represent the inherent darkness of Anakin's possessive way of loving.

"Now the scene below subtly altered, though to the physical eye there was no change. Powered by the dark side, Dooku’s perception took the measure of those below him with exhilarating precision.

"Kenobi was luminous, a transparent being, a window onto a sunlit meadow of the Force.

"Skywalker was a storm cloud, flickering with dangerous lightning, building the rotation that threatens a tornado."

-- Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover; emphasis supplied.

Huyang said he was intense but I think that's much too neutral a description.

"[Anakin] fell in love with Padmé then became possessive of her. He got jealous and all those things. Then when he found out that she was going to die, he would do anything to stop that from happening even to the point of making a pact with the Devil."

"[He thinks:] 'I want the power to save somebody from death. I want to be able to stop them from going to the river Styx, and I need to go to a god for that, but the gods won’t do it...

... so I’m going to go down to Hades and get the Dark Lord to allow me to have this power that will allow me to save the very person I want to hang on to.'"

"In mythology if you go to Hades to get [your loved one] back, you're not doing it for them, you're doing it for yourself. You're doing it because you don't want to give them up. You're afraid to be without them."

"You talk to the devil, and the devil says ‘this is what you do’ and basically you sell your soul to the devil."

"He’s traded his soul for power. It’s Faust."

"The more power he wants, and the more power he gets...

... the more he loses."

"In the end you have all this power but you have nobody to share it with, except some wizened old man who’s even more evil than you are."

"If you’re going to sell your soul to save somebody you love, that’s as we say in the film, unnatural. You have to accept the natural course of life. Death is obviously the biggest of them all. Not only death for yourself but death for the things you care about."

Sources:

Vanity Fair, 2005

Celebration V, Main Event, 2010

The Star Wars Archives: 1977-1983, 2018