If Leonardo DiCaprio played Anakin as originally considered before Hayden Christensen, would audiences like the movie more? DiCaprio’s star status and acting abilities definitely would elevate Episode II and III and make the movie more appealing to mainstream audiences.
shareDiCaprio has charisma, Christensen sadly doesn’t.
shareYoung Anakin.
No one could’ve saved the atrocious writing and dialog in this trash.
I thought James Franco would have made a good Anakin. He was a good gloomy young fella in Raimi's Spidermans, sadly those movies probably kept him busy during that time.
shareThe Star Wars title makes these movies more appealing to mainstream audiences than any actor could. These movies made a lot of money on their first release, would DiCaprio have attracted even more money... I guess, but not that much more.
Even though I'm not a DiCaprio fan, I do like some of his films and I think he would have been an upgrade.
Neeson and Jackson (the two most recognizable names at the time the prequels were released) did a great job in their roles.
The biggest challenge for Anakin's role would have been the terrible dialogue during the romantic scenes.
By this time in his career DiCaprio had been the lead actor in several big budget romantic movies,
so perhaps this experience along with the possibility of developing a creative relationship with Lucas
would have had a positive impact in further developing these scenes.
By the time Attack Of The Clones was being produced, DiCaprio had already worked with very well known Hollywood directors: James Cameron, Sam Raimi, Baz Luhrmann, Woody Allen, Danny Boyle... and besides a huge fan base (composed mostly of teenage girls) he had starred in the highest grossing film of all time. I'm pretty sure the relationship between him and Lucas would have been more of an "equals-collaboration" instead of an actor "just" following (basic) directions ...without any creative back and forth, etc.
I don't know much about Lucas's directing style, but I don't think he enjoys the actual shooting of his movies, specifically directing actors that much... he likes making them, but he probably enjoys writing (he's extremely creative with coming up with great stories... weak dialogue though) perhaps during filming he's more concerned of technical aspects, then the post-production. I've watched some Star Wars documentaries where the actors comment that his directing back in the 70s was basically telling them: "Faster and more intense".
Behind the scenes footage from the prequels he was surrounded by a crew of "yes-men".