Again, that’s a writing and acting problem. It could have been done well.
You remember Anakin’s best moment in the trilogy? It’s after he’s fallen into the pits, and Obi-Wan does his “You were the Chosen one!” speech. He looks at Obi-Wan and shouts “I HATE YOU!”, and it’s the first and last time in two movies that Hayden emotes convincingly. Well, Steven Spielberg directed that scene. Spielberg, who has always been a terrific director of actors, especially children. There is another world - a much better world - where Steven Spielberg directed all three of the prequels (and insisted on rewrites before he started shooting). In that world, we’re not having this conversation.
It all comes down to the execution. Shows like “Rebels” and “Andor” have shown that “Bad guy hunts the good guys” can be very entertaining and popular.
There’s a very long fight scene in Rashomon that is actually pretty amazing, in context.
If you know anything about the film, you know that it shows the same events from multiple points of view, and how the teller’s interests and prejudices color their recollection (or at least their account). Told from the point of view of the Husband and the Thief, their fight was a model of heroic swordplay. But as told by the disinterested woodcutter, it’s a show of startlingly inept brawling with little swordplay, little finesse, and no honor. Both the Husband and the Thief come off pretty badly in his telling.
So it’s an overlong, stomach-churning, bad fight scene. But it had a point.
Because Vader is supposed to be a bad ass. Not comic relief. People should be whimpering in fear when he lets them live long enough to walk away, not groaning at how bad a pun that was.
Vader is also the guy with the funniest line in the Original Trilogy:
“Apology accepted, Captain Needa.”
Vader’s sense of humor is well-established. Be assured, though, that he doesn’t make jokes so that other people will laugh - he jokes solely to amuse himself.
Caleb’s death in The Witch. I loved that movie, but in the main I thought it was far more sad than scary. This family just gets hit by disaster after disaster.
Caleb’s death, however, seems to have come out of nowhere. What’s more, his final moments are … well, if he wasn’t a 12 year old boy I’d say it looks like he’s in ecstasy. And there’s a little glisten on the blanket where his johnson would be. I left the theater thinking that, for some reasons, the filmmakers threw in an allegory for male puberty, although to what end I couldn’t possibly say.
And it’s an actual through-line with his characterization as Anakin. He was always a sarcastic, quippy swashbuckler type. He didn’t lose his sense of humor when he turned evil, it just got a lot darker.
Okay, I watched Life Of Brian again last night, and the flying saucer scene still just doesn’t work for me. It wouldn’t have been quite so out of place in Holy Grail (a much better film IMO) where anachronistic scenes are commonplace, but it’s the only such sequence in LOB. For the record I’ve loved the Pythons for over 50 years and jarring shifts in time/place/realities are fine by me, but context is everything and in my opinion LOB is the one Python universe where it didn’t belong.
The whole “NOOOOOOOOO)!” scene (complete with down on one knee, arms raised, pulling out) was just silly. The only thing missing was a “Dun-dun- DUUUN!”
The overwhelming emotion should have been rage, both at palpy and himself. My reshoot involves Vader going in a force powered attack against the Emperor. He catches Palpatine somewhat by surprise and comes close to inflicting some serious damage. Once Palpy turns his full attention to Annie, however, he easily smacks his attacker down.
“You have much to learn, my young apprentice,” he says, “But you are not ready for that lesson yet.”
Roll credits.