One of the most infamous moments in Star Wars history is Order 66. Executed during Revenge of the Sith, the order forced Anakin to initiate wiping out the Jedi, which included the Younglings. A terrifying moment for all fans, it clearly wasn’t easy to film.
Hayden Christensen, who has been rightfully getting his flowers recently, did an interview with an interview with Empire Magazine to celebrate 25 years with the prequels. In it, he talked about a great many things, like coming back to the franchise after all this time for things like Ahsoka and Obi-Wan Kenobi. But one thing that still wasn’t an easy part of his Star Wars career was carrying out Order 66. Christensen recounted how he and George Lucas talked about it.
“Kids seem to forget about that scene when they meet me! There’s not any fear or intimidation,” Christensen said. “They’re just excited to meet Anakin. There was a lot of talk about us doing that scene, and I love that George [Lucas] did it. It was a bold move. And it’s shocking.”
But one aspect of the scene really needed to be sold to us as the audience, and when a Youngling mistakenly looks to Anakin for help against the slaughter, saying, “Master Skywalker, there are too many of them! What are we going to do?” Then, he flinches as Anakin ignites his lightsaber to attack instead. To get that scene, Christensen did what he had to do to get the reaction they were looking for.
“When we were filming that, we were having a hard time getting the reaction that we wanted from the kid. And so I shouted, or growled at him, because we needed a genuine moment of him being startled. It got the response that we needed, and it makes that scene work really well … I saw him years later. I said, ‘Sorry about how that went.'”
That kid’s reaction is a special moment in history
Watching this boy trust Anakin, who is ready to betray them all, is what makes that scene so heartbreaking. We don’t see the slaughtering of the Younglings, but it is implied. That scene works because we get to see just how far Anakin has fallen.
As an adult (or for my 13-year-old self), I understood what the lightsaber meant and what he was planning to do. I don’t necessarily think that all kids pick up on that, so it makes sense why the child actors wouldn’t be afraid of Christensen, but it is really sweet that he felt the need to apologize to the actor for what he had to do to make that scene work in the way that it does.
I never want to see Order 66 play out; I understand what happened and the way that Christensen and Lucas made it work in Revenge of the Sith was all we needed—thanks to, of course, that child (Ross Beadman) and his fear.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
