Not to mention clumsily making one of the Wookies Chewbacca.
I think he just crashes there sometimes. We don’t see where any Jedi live and we know they can’t have material possessions beyond essentials. I assume they’ve all got some spartan living quarters at the Jedi Temple.
This is a bunch of extended universe stuff, of which I have no knowledge so I can’t really argue that. I’m going by what I see in the movies.
I’m not that familiar with the extended-universe, either. Here’s how I figure:
The Republic must have been running for a long time, because there’s all these “Jedi council traditions,” the Senate is well-established and has a shiny expensive room, and especially the Jedi archives are very thorough and treated as the be-all and end-all of encyclopediac information. The success and breadth of the Republic implies to me that it’s been around for a while, and the honored position which the Jedi hold implies to me that they’re to be credited with most if not all of that success.
Palpatine talks about the Sith ruling the galaxy at some point in time. Since the Jedi and the Republic are in power and have been for quite some time, the Jedi must have beaten the Sith a REALLY long time ago. Since the Republic is still successful at the opening of Phantom Menace, I assume the Sith haven’t made a major resurgence since then.
The minor resurgence to which I refer is the events of the six films. That resurgence is effected and stamped out within the lifetime of a single Sith lord, Palpatine. He turns Anakin/Vader, rises to power, and is defeated at most thirty years later.
I haven’t read any of the extended comics/books/novelizations, whatever, but just going off the information we get in the movies, I still say the Jedi are much more successful than the Sith in the long run.
Actually, all of Tracy Lord’s points there are from the movies. It’s mentioned several times that the Republic has been around for a very, very long time and that the Jedi (almost) wiped out the Sith a similarly long time ago. The Sith (Palpatine) come back and wipe out the Jedi and restructure the republic into an empire in Episodes I-III, and then the Jedi (Luke) kill off the Sith again and restore the republic.
Which made absolutely no sense at all. It’s as if the gravity on the ship is oriented relative to the planet below, instead of, y’know, to the ship.
Another toy for the shelf.
I give the movie a B-. Some cool stuff, some crappy stuff, a lot of meaningless filler.
Well, I can’t blame her completely, because like Ewan & Sam & Hayden, she was cast completely counter to what she’s best at as an actor. Natalie’s fine when she plays the waif, the ingenue, the cute little sprite.
But a world-weary head of state? An acutely perceptive politician, with, presuably a ton of experience in dealing with others? Who’s expected to age 15+ years over the course of the sage? Anyone looking at her body of work should’ve known this epic task was completely beyond her abilities.
Actors aren’t just cookie-cutter molds, where as long as they “look” right, their acting skills are otherwise interchangable (read lines, hit marks, etc.). But you’d never know it from watching these last 3 films.
re: padme’s will to live. anakin attacking her and nearly killing her, broke her mind. it was a mental blow she could not recover from.
it seemed obi-wan was trying to interest her in the twins but she wasn’t able to over come what anakin had done.
the parrot-lizard was named boga and did die. obi-wan and boga did have a much expanded relationship in the book version.
the timeline bothered me as well. that was one very fast pregnancy!
re: obi-wan leaving anakin. in the book: “obi-wan looks down at anakin, thinking it would be a mercy to kill hiim. he was not feeling merciful. in the end he was still obi-wan kenobi, and he was still a jedi, and he would not murder a helpless man. he would leave it to the will of the force.”
from episode 5 and 6 i had the impression that padme and bail would end up together. perhaps with bail a protecter/husband and padme passing sometime when leia was 3 ish. i was rather surprised by padme passing in childbirth, and bail having a wife.
re anakin’s end and vader’s beginning. it says that the sith lord laid his hand across the cracked and blackened mess that once had been his brow, and he set his will upon him. live, lord vader. live, my apprentice. live
as far as how vader turns cold: book time again: first he “remembers the furnace of vader’s fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth. there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand there was no dragon. there was no vader. that there was only you. only anakin skywalker. you did it. you killed her.”
“in this blazing moment you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the sith. now your self is all you will ever have.”
he tries to destroy the emperor, that is when every thing around him starts to break. but his physical limitations due to his injuries stop him from reaching out fully to destroy the emperor. and he realized that the emperor is all he has left, that he has destroyed everything else. he shuts down any feelings that don’t involve the emperor.
during epi 6 he is confronted by the feelings that luke brings to him. this starts to shake what he has been able to hold onto since becoming vader.
i reckon darth vader has to grow into his new parts, he isn’t gonna be an alek gudinov right off the bat. having him fumble and stumble about a bit didn’t bother me.
obi-wan does stop by the homestead to check on luke from time to time. while cleaning c3po luke tells him that he knows a ben kenobi that comes around once in a while to trade things. “i hardly talk to him, though. my uncle usually runs him off.”
Yes, much better!
I don’t have the strength to read the whole thread right now, but I noticed the same thing. My immediate thought was that they weren’t actually dead.
I’ll be even more heterodox and say that I don’t think SLJ is a good actor ever. Have never found him believable.
Don’t know how familiar you are with Wookies, but they are fairly long lived. Chewie would’ve been around 175-180 y/o in RotS, and in his “prime.” So it’s not inconceivable that he could have been there.
But if by “clumsy” you mean gratuitously throwing him into the movie when there was no obvious need, then yes, I agree.
Yes, pretty much that, also because Chewbacca in the original trilogy hardly seems to have ever been involved in the war or having any concern for the Rebellion.
Actually, I thought that worked. They’d gone to the lengths of showing how their powers were pretty much equal, as you said. Therefore, it took an advantage, any advantage, to separate their level of strength. Obi-Wan knew at that point how to combat a jump from Anakin’s placement in the lava. However, Anakin was arrogant and thought that he could still come out on top because he believed he was the more powerful jedi. Instead, he was taken down because he wasn’t as powerful as he thought he was - it was a losing proposition and he couldn’t turn it around like he expected. It showed how Obi-Wan was able to fish around and find a way to get a leg-up in the fight while Anakin was still so blinded by his hate and arrogance that he ignored the possibility that outward factors could possibly affect the situation.
That’s how I see it anyhow.
I have no doubt many people will, but I won’t. 
Yeah, I liked that too.
I normally wouldn’t say something like this, but what if you take “when I left you?” to mean when he pledged himself to the Emperor?
Okay, that’s dumb, I got nothing.
Err, what else. Oh, Obi-Wan and Anakin on the last level of the game. I mean, that lava world. While it was weird, Obi-Wan not killing him made sense to me. (It makes even more sense if you consider that in these movies the Jedi never do the smart thing, but leaving that aside. :p) He said he loved him and meant it. I think he really couldn’t make himself kill Anakin. He was also furious and let’s face it, he didn’t seem totally opposed to the thought of Anakin suffering out there on the rocks before dying alone. Is it the smartest or most logical and sensible thing to do? No; this is Star Wars. But I didn’t have trouble buying it. I distinctly thought two or three times “Oh my… he’s going to leave him there.” I liked it.
I learned back when I was 8 that if you try to bring logic into Star Wars, you’ll end up frustrated. This is entertainment first and foremost. Lucas wanted some action on the ship with people constantly having to adjust to the shifts in rotation.
Think back to Return of the Jedi, why did the Super Star Destroyer all of a sudden fall downward into the Death Star like a sinking ship?
In pretty much all the movies, prequels included, why is it that all the fighting seems to take place on a single plane in space. ITS FUCKING SPACE! There should be ships flying at each other and fighting from every angle!
This is the one that really irks me: In Episode IV, the Falcon is pulled into the hanger, which is in the equator of the Death Star. Now, the interior of the Death Star seems to be on the same plane as the hanger. And yet, during the Battle of Yavin, as the fighters fly across the surface of some random portion of the Death Star…now all of a sudden the interior of the Death Star is tangential to the surface! HOW!?
Luckily I’m usually able to put logic aside when I watch these movies, so I can get past this kind of stuff.
Oh, and I absolutely LOVED Episode III. Exactly what I hoped it would be.
Just saw it tonight with my brother, a fellow Star Wars geek.
I think the best thing I can say about it is that I am satisfied, and I mean that as a compliment of the highest order. For the first time, one of the prequels felt like a Star Wars movie. Well done, George.
The Bad:
The acting. OK, I know Natalie Portman is a good actress. I saw Garden State. But here, not so much. Even Samuel L. Jackson, fer Chrissake, universally regarded as one of the coolest actor of his generation, came off as a stiff. Hayden, the Force love 'em, tried. Oh, how he tried. I find that in the Lucas-directed movies, the older actors tend to come off better, perhaps because they have more experience directing themselves when confronted by uneasy directors.
Unlike most directors, I think George needs a second unit director for his non-action scenes.
The Badass:
Everything else! From the infiltration of Grievous’ ship to the transformation of Palpatine to the final fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, it all just fit, man. That final lava scene was the most disturbing thing in a Star Wars movie since Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s smoldering skeletons in Episode IV.
Ian McDiarmid was the most fun, over-the-top movie villain since Jack Nicholson as the Joker. I really hope, and all evidence points to it, that he had as much fun playing Palpatine/Sidious as the audience did watching him.
At first I was disappointed in Yoda’s apparent pussiness, but then when I thought about it I realized it was entirely in character. He’s always been a bit of a pessimist.
Crowd-pleasing scenes: The attack on/infiltration of Dooku’s ship, Artoo’s antics, and Yoda’s effortless dispatching of the proto-Imperial Guards.
Now – onto the TV series!
Didn’t feel that way in the opening scene of this one. Unfortunately I was in the second row and it was kind of sensory overload, felt like I was on a rollercoaster. The duels were also a little bit of a pain in the ass because of the constant cutting. I didn’t choose to sit that close, of course.
Perhaps I was unclear. What I meant was that there are certain ways in which the Dark side is stronger, and certain ways in which it is weaker. To decide that it is stronger in general because it has a better track record with lightsaber duels is what is arbitrary. I could just as easily claim that the Light side is stronger because it has a better track record with running the galaxy.
Just for fun, let’s see what’s in the win columns of the two sides.
Draws
Ep. 1 – Qui Gon vs. Darth Maul in the desert (Reservation: Qui-Gon runs away.)
Ep. 2 – Yoda vs. Dooku (Reservation: Dooku runs away.)
Sith Victories
Ep. 1 – Qui-Gon vs. Darth Maul II
Ep. 2 – Dooku vs. Obi-Wan & Anikan
Ep. 3 – Dooku vs. Obi-Wan (Breaking this one into two battles)
Ep. 3 – Palpatine vs. Those Three Jedi with Windu (same here)
Ep. 3 – Palpatine vs. Yoda (Reservation: could be considered a draw; Palpatine has soldiers coming to his aid, and the battle isn’t much different than the two draws I listed above.)
Ep. 4 – Vader vs. Obi-Wan (Reservation: Obi-Wan is an old man, and also more or less takes a dive.)
Ep. 5 – Vader vs. Luke (Reservation: Luke is clearly just a trainee at this point)
Ep. 6 – Palpatine vs. Luke (Reservation: Luke throws his light saber away!!! Jesus, that’s stupid. What did Yoda tell him just a few scenes ago? Do Not Underestimate the Emperor. What did he think was going to happen? Anyway, I’m hesitant to include this, but Luke definitely got messed up, so here it is.)
Jedi Victories
Ep. 1 – Obi-Wan vs. Darth Maul (Reservation: Obi-Wan enraged, tapping into Dark Side? I don’t think so – remember, he was only able to cut Maul in half because he collected himself.)
Ep. 3 – Annakin vs. Dooku
Ep. 3 – Obi-Wan vs. General Grievous (Reservation: Grievous apparently not a true Jedi/Sith.)
Ep. 3 – Windu vs. Palpatine (Reservation: Palpatine taking a dive? I really don’t think so, but I’ll pay special attention to that next time I see it.)
Ep. 3 – Obi-Wan vs. Anikan
Ep. 6 – Luke vs. Vader (Reservation: Luke enraged, tapping into Dark side?)
The Drak side comes out ahead 8-6-2. Considering all the mitigating circumstances and the small sample size, that’s pretty damn even. And there are lots of reasonable ways to categorize those fights. I see from 0 to 4 draws, from 4 to 9 Sith victories, and from 4 to 7 Jedi victories.
P.S. Forgot to mention all the riffs John Willaims did on the Imperial March and the Emperor’s theme throughout. We die-hard nerds certainly noticed!