“That’s enough, dammit! I’m Obi-Ken Baker, and I’m madder than hell!” (gives Palpatine a lightsaber nut-shot)
Ewan: [gestures] This is the performance you’re looking for. I can go about my business. “Action” along.
You forgot NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Hyden had to be the worst choice ever for Manaquin Skywalker
I agree with many of your criticisms, but I think here you’re actually not giving Lucas enough credit. It’s possible that I’m just making this interpretation up, but I think that what happened in that scene is that Obi-Wan knew that Annakin wasn’t at any real disadvantage. But he also knew that Annakin’s greatest weakness was his hubris, his need to be better than everyone at everything. So he basically taunted Annakin into trying to come straight at him, up the high ground, rather than stopping to think for a moment and realize he could just go upstream a bit and hop out there or something. Instead, Annakin tried to jump all the way over Obi-Wan just to show how badass he was, and that gave Obi-Wan the window he needed.
Wow… I never thought of that before. Reminds me of my favorite bible quotation:
Proverbs 16:18 : Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Incidentally, the Episode III X-Box game has a bit of a suprise ending after the last mission:
Darth Vader leaps over Obi-Wan, then stabs him with a lightsaber after landing, before kicking Obi-Wan down the hill to the lava. When the Emporer lands in his shuttle to congratulate Vader for his victory, Vader kills him too, declaring (in his own whiny way) that the Galaxy is now his alone to rule.
Good write-up, Captor.
I especially second what you said about the look of the film – and I think that also applies to TPM and AotC.
It got overlooked in the binksing of these movies that Lucas showed more imagination and creativity in any 5 minute segment than The Exalted Peter Jackson showed in his entire trilogy.
But Peter Jackson was adapting existing work. It wasn’t this job to come up with a new story; it was his job to interpret an existing story. If he’d shown “creativity” and come up with entirely new story lines he would have been fucking it up.
Lucas doesn’t get bonus points for “Creativity” for creating three poorly written and directed movies just because they’re original screenplays. Logically, that would make “Plan 9 from Outer Space” more “original” than “The Godfather.” Maybe in one sense it is, but who cares?
Ah, but Trunk was responding to my point about the visual beauty of SWIII. Which I think applies to ALL the SW movies. Whatever you may think of the acting and direction (and I don’t share your opinions, I’m just choosing not to argue that point here) the movie had brilliant art direction, cinematography and CGI. But that’s only part of the story. Lucas is about the only director I’ve ever seen who is able to convincingly imagine what a society that is on the whole much wealthier than Earth would be like. I mean, imagine what New York would look like to a Stone Age tribesman. That’s kinda what I think the capital of a world-spanning galactic empire would look like to us. And Lucas has gotten close to conveying that
sense of wonder
than any other director I know.
Well, tell it to the Jackson worshippers. He was given a lot of credit for his vision and creativity in making those movies while Lucas got uniformly reamed, even for things he did better than Jackson (e.g. his digital city scapes, large scale action sequences, fight scenes, landscapes).
There were definitely problems with Eps I-III (“problems” that also existed but were forgiven in Eps IV-VI, but lets forget that for a second), but there was a lot in those movies to love, and it gets widely overlooked.
Just saw Ep III for the first time this weekend (which says something…I saw Ep I in the theater; Ep II when it came out on DVD. Diminishing excitement).
Looks fantastic in hi-def, by the way.
This seems like a good place to ask a question that just popped into my head after lo these many years: did Darth Vader ever realize that he had a daughter? It seems like the fact that Padme was carrying twins was completely a surprise to everyone not actually in the delivery room.
Is any explanation ever given in the books as to why Darth Vader never searched for his child, or if he did, why he didn’t look in the most obvious place? Seems like he’d want his child as a reminder of Padme and to indoctrinate it the dark side. (Kid’s bound to have a lot of metachlorians.)
Presumably he (and the public as a whole) thought Padme died before giving birth. Note that in her funeral, her belly looks pregnant.
Vader, Return of the Jedi
Err - let’s try that again:
Vader, Return of the Jedi
So Vader just picked up the twin vibe through Luke? He didn’t sense it while he was torturing Leia in Ep IV that…uh, hey…this feels like it might be the daughter I never knew I had?
(oh, right…that was before Lucas realized he need to write a trilogy.)
No, that was when Lucas thought that he might make it a 9 part epic.
He gets the vibe from Luke because Luke is thinking about it. He can’t get it from Leia because Leia didn’t know it.
(You’re right about the retcons, though. I now wish for an Ewan MacGregor dubbing session for Episode IV: “Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard since, oh, long before you were born. Well, except for the way your mother called me Obi-Wan right after you’d been born. Anyhow, here’s your father’s sword; he wanted you to have it. Well, no, that’s not entirely true; he wanted to keep it, but I hacked off his arms and took it from him anyway.”)
After seeing the movie again on HBO I was actually thinking of starting a thread like this myself.
All in all I liked the movie but it didn’t stick with me the way the original triology did. Probably has a lot to do with age but I also think it has a lot to do with one major character who was missing from the prequels:
Han Solo.
Star Wars worked for me because of Han Solo. Forget the force and all that nonsense. As a kid I wanted to be a wise-cracking, ass-kicking space pirate like Han Solo. Luke was boring. Obi-Wan was boring. Han got the girl, shot first and lived the fun life. He also made the movies in a sense. Not having a Han Solo character really lessened the prequels for me. Solo humanized the movies in a way that celibate monks just didn’t do.
Now onto the movie itself. A few things really bothered me about the movie.
-
Why didn’t the Jedi ever investigate who ordered the clones? Doesn’t seem like it would take that long to figure out someone was behind it. They know they Sith are out there so why not put 2 and 2 together? My theory is that Yoda knew the fall was coming and basically let it happen.
-
It takes 20 years to build a Death Star? WTF.
-
Just how fast can everyone move around in this galaxy? Seems fairly tiny to me. Palpatine can get from Coruscant to Mustafar in about 5 minutes.
You know…that actually makes sense.
Ding ding ding! Winner! I thought the same thing. There’s not a single likeable character in the prequels.
“See the blood on the handle? That’s from the children he slaughtered with it. A more elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”