Indeed, but I for one never had any trouble imagining myself as 20+ year old Luke, even as an 8-year-old. It’s baffling that anyone working on the movie forgot that kids loved the originals with not a single child to be seen onscreen other than the Ewok babies.
This one at least I have a satisfying fan-wank for (although no idea if Lucas had anything like this in mind): It’s a ridiculous thing for Obi-Wan to say. And Obi-Wan knows that it’s ridiculous. But he’s taunting Annakin, luring him into doing the stupidest possible thing (trying to jump all the way from the raft, uphill, over Obi-Wan’s head, onto even higher ground). “I have the higher ground… and no one, not even the most powerful Jedi, could POSSIBLY overcome that, since I’m higher than you…”. Get Annie to try to brute force his way through the problem rather than taking a moment to realize all he needs to do is raft down the lava a few yards and hop off, or what have you.
Sure enough Annie then does the stupidest possible thing, and Obi-Wan beats him.
Having worked with marketing people in the entertainment industry (Toys, Greeting Cards, Books, etc…) for over 30 years, it doesn’t matter about the proven track record of something, like the original Star Wars film. Their first thought is we must appease the kids, and kids will only be interested in something if kids are represented.
You can’t get them to budge from that, even with proof.
It would even address the issues another poster brought up about pod racing. Who would let an eight-year-old compete in a sport that is regularly fatal to adults?
Obi-Wan “Asshole” Kenobi, that’s who. “Yoda wants you to be calm and play it safe kid, but you have time to learn that later! We’ll free all those slaves later, too, but first you have to win this pod race. That way, I go down in the history books as the Jedi master who trained The One from the prophecy.”
I don’t know, maybe that’s taking things a bit too far, but at least it would be consistent with the original movies.
A competent screenwriter would have achieved this by including a scene earlier in the movie where Anakin’s vanity and impulsiveness allow him to be goaded into doing something stupid that nearly gets him killed, which Obi-wan then points out and warns him about. Obi-wan then exploiting that same flaw would provide a satisfying payoff for the audience.
This next point is not directed at you specifically, but I’ve seen so many fanwanks trotted out to cover so many flaws in the prequels (see the poster above excusing the “I don’t like sand” speech, which I’ve heard many times) that it’s driven me bonkers. People, you should not have to work so hard to explain a sci-fi adventure movie. The whole appeal of Star Wars is that you don’t need to parse it or argue its symbolic meaning — it’s an old-fashioned yarn dressed up in cool sci-fi trappings. It isn’t fucking 2001.