This may be the first time anyone tried to drag a thread into GQ, but follow my logic assuming the fake gravity on the ship failed.
Being at orbital altitude, but not actually in orbit (I love how they can just hover up there), it’s as if you’re just on a couple-hundred-kilometer-tall platform. And on such a platform, you’d still feel Coruscant’s gravity almost as strongly as on the surface.
In a typical orbit around Earth (not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far, far away), the Shuttle still experiences a gravitational field about 90% as strong as at the surface of the Earth.
Windu, at least in EU material, is held to be among the best duelists ever, with his special art of Vaapad or whatever it is. That’s what makes him different from all the other masters, and able to stand toe to toe with Sidious: even best him.
Yoda, Sidious, and Anakin (post Clone Wars) are all mentioned as being the only ones on his skill level, so it makes sense that they would jockey around for position a bit in the “who would beat who” fantasyland of duels. It should be mentioned that Dooku clearly quietly considered himself to be Yoda’s superior, though that is never really tested. How Obi-Wan, clearly not even in Dooku’s league (despite somehow being good enough to take down Grevious, who proves to be an almost laughably efficient Jedi slaughtering machine in Clone Wars), manages to beat Anakin is the stuff of legend.
The Qui-Gon stuff makes more sense in the comic books, but it still doen’t make much sense. : plotwise it’s worse than tacked on to explain what was before its OWN poorly tacked on device. I mean, geez, it’s like the power to turn invisible and intangible with no way to turn back, which is stupid enough if not for the fact that they don’t even use it for the obvious good effects (like spying on your enemies). Great, you can live forever: but what doe that accomplish in the here and now? Apparently, it’s good purely for lecturing the living and occasionaly whispering startling things in their ears. Yoda, who for some reason simply gives up and lets the galaxy fall under a dark cloud after failing a SINGLE attempt to take down Sidious unassisted, HEAD ON, with no planning or forethought whatsoever, is all excited that now he has discovered the power to DIE COOL? Yes, lets run off and study THAT while the galaxy is crushed by evil.
unless luke was also taking a dive in ROTJ. no, palpatine lost. this makes yoda’s quick acceptance of defeat unacceptable; there were no effort spent on indicating overwhelming odds posed by reinforcements. he just fell and ran away.
One of the things I’m still not sure is really cool or somehow wrong: The way the opening space battle matched up with the LucasArts X-wing series. The cockpit elements and radar were exactly the way they were developed for those games, so that you could look at the display and make out, without referring to the outside view, where the other ships were in relation to that ship, which were hostile and which were not, which one was targeted by the computer, etc. Also, the action of the homing torpedoes was duplicated perfectly, too. Something that’s really familiar from the games but was a little surprising to see on the big screen.
Hey, Luke remembered the line “There’s still good in him – I know it,” and he was less than a minute old. Something to do with mitochondrial DNA passing information on to RNA, or something.
The person I watched it with actual commented that the Yoda “costume” was much better than the puppet, and made little explosive sounds when Yoda took particularly hard hits. (Okay, she’s not very visually sophisticated… but…) Personally, I like the CGI Yoda a lot, and think that he was integrated pretty well into the scene. They did great work with Yoda in ESB, but the muppet limitation was way beyond the inability to engage in combat. He had almost no mobility – and those scenes with the “Yoda backpack” are pretty bad. Where it counts, the CGI Yoda has every bit as much presence as anyone could hope for.
As has already been pointed out, George gets no blame for that. She was said from the beginning that she doesn’t like the project. She’s pretty much phoning it in. Another poster said something about part of the job being not sucking. While I agree with the sentiment, I’m not entirely sure I’d include a non-sucking clause in any contract I negotiated with Ms. Portman.
That being said, in the previews her line “You’re breaking my heart,” as delivered, seemed about as trite as it gets — in context I found it pretty effective. I’m a big suck, though.
Anyway, not much to say, really, other than this is certainly the best of the prequels, and probably better than Return of the Jedi. Not too freaking shabby.
It remains to be seen if all the little deja vus hold up after repeat viewings. I really liked them this go-round – but I do wonder if, after a few screenings, the reaction will still be the same. “Join me, and together we’ll rule the galaxy” will hold up, I think, because it works as a character thing. It’s natural to want to rule with your wife, the ex-queen (if you’re into that whole ruling-the-galaxy thing, of course,) and it’s natural that after things go to shit and she dies, if you’re still into that whole ruling-the-galaxy-thing, you’d want to do it with your remaining kin.
I’m not so sure about the “uncivilized weapon” nod, the turn-to-the-dark-side rap being practically word-for-word, and all the rest though. It worked for the first screening. It could hold up.
Only one way to tell – my ass is back in the seat for a matinee after the weekend.
Oh, and Kaspar, of course the soundtrack kicked ass. That was expected.
I didn’t expect Leia’s Theme to make me go all-over misty, though. Told y’all I’m a big suck.
Not as good as ESB but still…it had me captivated.
I found most scenes between Anikin and Padme to be painful.
I thought there were numerous cheesy scenes…(basically, anything non-action).
But, wow, I still loved it. I’d like to see it again.
I don’t watch these movies for great dialogue and depth of plot…I watch them because they’re Star Wars! And I grew up watching Star Wars, and hiding behind the back of the couch and pretending I was throwing Han Solo into the garbage chute (flyboy!) along with her.
For that, this movie delivered, for me.
And just to weigh in on the Death Star I vs. Death Star II arguement…(not based on the movies at all, just my thought)…
The first Death Star was built on the idea that the Empire/Palpatine (through the Senate/Republic) was basically in control. It was built structurally strong and then tested. And then it got blown up.
The second DS was built using the same idea, but learning from that experience - they made the defense forces of DS II strong first, for the express purpose of repelling the Rebelillon who would target it.
As I recall from ROTJ, the Emperor says, “See the fire power of this FULLY ARMED AND OPERATIONAL BATTLE STATION!” even though the physical DS v.2 (from what I remember) was not fully completed.
Death Star II was definitely not fully functional, even though its main weapon was online (to the Rebel’s surprise). The superstructure was only about 55% complete, with large gaps visible on one side.
What was Yoda supposed to do? At that point there were two jedi left. Palpatine controlled two armies (droid and clone) to Yoda’s zero, and had the Chosen One on his side. Yoda had at that point fought the emperor to a draw. If he had pressed on he might have been able to best him, but the longer he was there the higher the probability that several hundred clone troops would show up and then he’s be dodging blaster bolts AND force lightning. “Withdraw and regroup, we must.”
One of the most poignant parts for me was when Organa returns and the storm troopers tell him there’s a rebellion, then they start shooting at him. Suddenly a “youngling” jedi that’s somehow still alive appears and starts defending him, and then is shot down. It makes me wonder how Anakin’s slaughter of the rest of 'em went, and how many of them went down fighting (which would have been heart-breakingly adorable).
Also, while the dialogue being cheesy is a given, how did he get away with Vader shouting “NOOOOOOOO!” Star Wars isn’t one to avoid cliches, but come on, that’s pretty bad. They could’ve at least just gone with a loud frustrated scream. Oh well, at least in the next scene we get to see him collect himself and coldly watch the next Death Star being constructed (they sure work fast!).
First off, good effort. The list you made is pretty cool I think. I, unsurprisingly, have some comments on specific points.
I don’t necessarily consider the first a draw. Being charitable, it was almost too quick to really call it anything. Being uncharitable, Qui-Gon looked happy as hell to get out with his life, including the huffing and puffing on the ship and looking like he had generally gotten the beat down. So yes, I side with the “Qui-Gon runs away” angle here more, and consider this at least a partial Dark Side victory.
Bearing in mind that these were both the results of 2 on 1s where the one (the Dark Side) actually won. The second, in particular, is really pretty clearly two victories in itself.
Same point as above. Not only does the Dark Side beat the Light Side, it does it in a 4 on one. This could again pretty much be 3 victories, depending on how you count them up.
Well, you might consider this a bit cheesy, but my point is that much like Luke, he only really seems capable of doing the real damage to Maul because of a tapping into the Dark Side (as you referenced). It’s not so much the dropping into the pit (which seemed to me to be a one-off fluke event kill, after pretty clearly being bested overall), but when Qui-Gon dies, where Obi-Wan goes a little Dark Side nuts and only then manages to push Maul back and break his staff.
But hey, this is argumentation, I’ll admit that he did end up, somehow, killing the guy.
I’ve got to question putting Annakin clearly into the “Light Side” column at this point.
I agree with your reservation, I don’t really think this one counts as a true “Light Side/Dark Side” force encounter.
Yes, I do think he took a dive to set it up. That’s clearly my subjective opinion, however - I can’t blame you for putting this here.
As an aside, it is interesting that apparently, in the extended universe, Windu is so badass because he fights with a Dark Side style (as also witnessed by the purple lightsaber).
Yep, pretty clearly a good guy victory at last. Although again, the guy was beating the crap out of his much less experienced apprentice. Not as bad as Vader beating up on Luke, but still perhaps not a truly equal match.
Where my entire theory started. Luke clearly snaps and goes a little Dark Side apeshit over his sister being brought into it.
Sure, again, pretty cool effort I thought. We just disagree on some of the categorizations.
But they didn’t regroup. They sat around learning how to merge with the force: which while a laudable art (again though, what was ghostly Qui-Gon DOING while dead other than yelling in Anakin’s ear ONCE), accomplished nothing to stop the evil of the Empire from spreading. As far as we know, Yoda never made another attempt to ambush Palpatine or even thwart his plans in the least. Worse, it’s not clear that either Yoda or Obi-Wan had much of any role in setting up the eventually victorious Rebellion. Yoda doesn’t even seem to care about the force potential of Luke or Leia when we first meet him in ESB: he seems content merely to die in a swamp. Obi-Wan isn’t much better: it’s not clear that he had any plans for Luke until Luke found HIM. He certainly didn’t bother even trying to train Luke. or introduce himself (what, Uncle Ben was too powerful for Obi-Wan to win an argument with?) It’s also clear that Yoda could have wiped the floor with the Chosen One in one-on-one combat (hell, even Obi-Wan could do it). All that would be required was, at most, a LITTLE crafty planning. And yet, for all his vaunted wisdom, Yoda, who failed to see any of this coming or do anything about it, still makes a only single attempt to singlehandedly assasinate Palpatine in a frontal assault with almost no element of surprise or ambush.
In ROTJ, the non-force-empowered Rebellion basically destroys Palpatine themselves with only minimal help from Luke or any Jedi (if anything, Luke jeopardizes the mission, as he notes, and they are saved only because Vader was conflicted). So much for “regrouping.”
I also don’t think we can take much from the duels in the movies as to which side has the more powerful warriors. As far as what the movie’s producers have said, there are all sorts of differently skilled Jedi and Sith, and not all matches are even. Sidious takes down three Jedi masters esaily: but so what? Why should that necessarily count anymore than Anakin killing younglings? Sidious is described as the most powerful Sith in thousands of years, and there are obviously at least two Jedi warriors as good if not better than him: Yoda and Windu. The fact is that their matches, and most single matches, come down to luck and circumstance. Given that the potential “dark side abusing” Jedi were Luke and Obi-wan: respectively a dude who never even held a lightsaber until adulthood vs. the chosen one and a padawan vs. a fully trained Sith apprentice, even if they had abused the dark side, that tells us little about respective strength: both were relative amatuers who still pulled out wins against skilled warriors using the full power of the dark side.
Did it bother anyone else that a movie with a big of a budget as this one couldn’t make a woman consistantly pregant?
Freaking Natalie Portman went from no belly to huge belly, to medium belly, back to no belly when she got on the ship to find Anakin, and then back to huge belly at her funeral.
What. The. Hell!
I don’t know why, but I got so hung up on this that it was hard to suspend my disbelief. Probably because it’s not a huge deal to make someone look pregant and they couldn’t even get that right. It was a major detail that shouldn’t have been a glaring error.
Also:
Did anyone get the feeling that in this one the Jedis were basically just assasins? They just went on missions and snuck around to take out the head honchos so everyone could go home.
Overall conclusion:
Less talking, more lightsabers!
As someone else I think already said. Use the nonverbals George.
One thing I liked:
Throughout, I couldn’t reconcile Ewan McGregor’s ObiOne with Alec Guiness’…Until the end when he was standing on Tatooine after having handed over Luke to his aunt and uncle. Something about how he played that scene, his body language, was very reminiscent what the character originally was/eventualy became. That was the only time I saw continuity in the character.
Palpatine is pretty unambiguously taking a dive to manipulate Anikin into crossing the threshold.
He holds Mace off easily until the very second before Anikin enters the room, when he allows himself to be disarmed and kicked to the floor. Then he pantomimes being at the limit of his abilities to goad Anikin into “rescueing” him. After he’s told that he’s “under arrest,” Palpy busts out the Force Lightning trick – but only exactly the amount that Mace can deal with. Enough of an offense that Mace has to raise his sword against him. Then the pleading. “Ooh, I can’t hold him off much longer. I’m so weak, Annie. And old. Look at me! I’m a helpless old man. Boo hoo hoo. Yes, the last reserves of my strength are being used to keep this traitor’s lightsabre from penetrating my heart. Oh, poor me. Is this the end of poor old Palpy? And remember – I have the power to save Padme, and Big Bad Mace has always been disrespected you. Oh, please, Anikin, why are you thinking about this for so long? I’m so weak! Help me!” Anikin steps in and ‘disarms’ Mace, neutralizing the threat, still clinging to the ideal that it’s wrong to kill unnecessarily “Ah, there’s a good lad. WRAAAAAAAR, did I neglect to mention that I still have POWER? UNLIMITED POWER!!! Mwahahahaha!” *Casually blasts Mace twelve city blocks away, smearing him against a distant skyscraper, and then stands up strong and tall and begins talking shit about Destiny, ruling the Galaxy, and all that fun stuff.
It’s totally clear that he could have dispatched Mace without breaking a sweat, if he wanted to – but he needed him to force Anikin’s hand. Nothing subjective about it.
Really? I think Ewan McGregor’s performance was the single best thing about all of the prequels. He had Sir Alec’s mannerisms and inflections down spookily perfectly. There are some things that are borrowed from Star Wars, such as little idiosyncratic things he does with his robes, etc – but, overall, it’s a perfect mirror of the way that Alec Guinness was as a younger man. Which makes sense. People move and speak differently when they are younger. If Ewan spent the entire trilogy miming the aged Obi Wan, it wouldn’t have been nearly as believable – but we saw exactly what a young Obi Wan would have looked like. Flawlessly. The performances match more closely at the end because then it made sense for Obi Wan to have somehow “aged.” The weight of war, and all that. He’s fatigued and his spirit has taken a serious battering. Now he is an old man in a young man’s body.
Check out The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers, or Kind Hearts and Coronets – and then watch Ewan McGregor’s Obi Wan again. He did a fabulous job of duplicating exactly how a younger Guinness would have portrayed a younger Kenobi. Fantastic! Ewan is practically invisible.
And yet if it hadn’t been for Obi-Wan’s intervention, Luke wouldn’t have flown in the first Death Star raid and the Rebellion wouldn’t have survived. From what we see in Sith, Yoda, Kenobi and Bail Organa are pretty much the founding members of the Rebellion. Luke and Leia are the Rebellion’s aces in the hole. Yoda and Kenobi are meditating during their long exile to shield the twins from the Emperor and Vader’s scrying, just like Sideous blocked their awareness as his plans came to fruition.
If Yoda and Obi Wan hadn’t safeguarded the twins, there wouldn’t have been a Rebellion to fight the battle of Endor because they wouldn’t have survived Yavin. If the entire battle of Endor hadn’t been staged as a trap for Luke, the Empire survives. If the Force-empowered Leia hadn’t made friends with the Ewoks, the shield generator wouldn’t have been destroyed and the Empire survives. If Luke doesn’t confront Vader and the Emperor, Vader doesn’t turn on his master and the Empire survives.
At the time of the exile, there is no way Kenobi and Yoda can defeat the Emperor and Vader. They have to wait until the time is right.
Overall, a good flick! I was amused by the Kenobi / Grevious fight. Even though Kenobi is a master and Grevious just knows how to handle a saber without slicing himself to pieces…how did he lose? Four vs. one? A simple sandwich attack and Kenobi wouldn’t have been able to block them all.
Grevious had another chance when he held him in his claw and then just threw him away…just strangle him! It was shown that he was helpless against his strong metal frame in hand to hand combat.
I like how how the Republic went along with Palpatine because “Oh no! The Jedi are traitors!”
Commander … Curly?
Young…lings?
I thought Vader’s physical burning was odd. His body turns into a bonfire but when Palpatine and the medic team finds him he’s just charred…more of his body survived than I thought.
That’s it, exactly. Anakin’s children are the key to the whole thing. Yoda spells it out that way. “Hidden, the twins must be… Until the time is right, disappear, we will.”
The idea is that they are strong enough in the Force to defeat Vader and the Emperor – as long as they are raised right and shielded from the corrupting influence of the Sith. When Leia is captured, she’s on her way to meet Obi-Wan, who has been quietly keeping an eye on Luke. Presumably the plan was for him to give them both a quickie initiation at that time.
Remember, “Sith,” like “Jedi,” is one of those words that are the same whether they’re plural or singlular. In both Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith, we’re dealing with singular nouns – and they both refer to Anakin/Darth, and how his choices affect what he is.
I gotta say, when I was thirteen I really resented the “weakening” of the title of the third installment, but it was the right decision, obviously. As the man said at the time, a Jedi doesn’t take revenge.
In RoTS, he becomes a Sith by being goaded into vengeful actions. He’s repeatedly manipulated into it by Palpatine – as he first was in Attack of the Clones. In the beginning of Revenge of the Sith he’s coaxed into vengeful action again. First by Dooku himself, who is actively trying to bring out the Dark Side in him: “I sense hatred and anger in you – but you don’t use them.” He still doesn’t use them, because he’s clinging to the Jedi ideal. He disarms Dooku right after that. Palpatine encourages him to kill him, but Anakin resists, because he knows it’s not right. Eventually, he gives in, and Palpatine reassures him: “It was only natural. He cut off your arm – you wanted revenge.” This is another step down the path.
He continues to take revenge throughout the rest of the movie – albeit for imagined slights and insults to his ego. Palpatine keeps planting seeds of hatred in him against the Jedi. They disrespect him. They should have sent him to Kashyyk. They didn’t. They should have awarded him the rank of Master. They didn’t. Mace should have let him confront Palpatine. He didn’t. Anakin was coaxed into wanting power. Palpatine nurtured his ego, knowing that everything about being a Jedi would go against that. He set him up to avenge his honour.
Anakin took his vengeance, and became a Sith lord. That’s why the movie’s called Revenge of the Sith.
The Return of the Jedi refers to Anakin, too. The titular Jedi is the one who “died” when Anakin became a Sith lord. Luke helped to bring him back by simply presenting himself as a lamb to the slaughter, giving his father the same choice between good and evil that he had made twenty years before, and trusted that he would make the right decision. He did, and Anakin was redeemed. The Jedi returned, his body and the dross it had acquired were burned, and Anakin was shown in his Jedi robes, hanging out with Obi-Wan and Yoda.
It references the original rocket-equipped “bucket head” – Commando Cody, from the 40s action serials. Even the studio that put out King of the Rocketmen and the other Commando Cody serials is a bit of an in-joke.
The movie I saw was called “La Venganza de los Sith” – plural. Considering the really high quality of work they did in the Spanish version (like I don’t have the sucky dialogue complaint of everyone else), I can’t believe they’d screw up something as important as the title.
As for Episode 6, though, it seems that you’re right – “El Returno del Jedi” – singular.
Hmm… to be fair, is “Episodio III: la Vendetta dei Sith” singular or plural (Italian)?
