Thoughts on Revenge of the Sith (unboxed spoilers)

Cafe Society
561

Saw the movie today. Wow, was it crap. I mean really, really crap. Unintentionally funny like Battlefield Earth crap. The entire movie pretty much consisted of alternating between beautifully rendered but utterly senseless action scenes and cringingly bad dialogue between cardboard characters to advance the asinine, half-baked plot. I actually started to try napping through the dialogue bits so I could at least enjoy the next bit of action eye candy.

Anakin, Jedi Council, Padme, insipid, insipid, insipid. Palpatine had all the subtlety of a kick to the head.

Except for about 10 to 15 minutes of watchable film, this was pretty much a C movie with a huge budget. Man, I so want my money back.

562

Hey, Lucas managed to milk an entire subplot out of that re: Boba Fett.

563

I actually thought it was quite easy to believe, with the whole clone thing being force grown in vats and then put through a harsh training regime on Kamino to weed out the deficiencies , having a manchurian candidate program intergrated into the clones would have been de-rigeur.

Palpatine is oviously a sysadmin who invoked root and changed the permissions

Yup , they deserve it, yoda essentially brought about the downfall of the Jedi

No standing Federal army , but while it may have taken ten years to grow 250 k troopies , less the weedies ,those proto star destroyers , both in quantity and quality did not just materialize out of thin air , so there must have been member worlds who maintained armed forces.

This was a manufactured crisis brought about to ensure palpatines rise to the chancellorship, as far as I can tell, Naboo itself had no strategic value and the planet did not look like it was defiecient in natural resources to starve out , exports may have been a problem.

Palpatines accendancy is assured by naboo ,and now must create a climate of fear, so agents provacateur and egg on people that probably would have been trouble makers anyway and assume emergency powers for the duration.

Now all palpatine needs to do is to clear the deck of all other players , so Vader goes to mustafa and cleans house , the clones take down the jedi order and the robot army is shutdown.

Its not that the clones are bad guys , they just have a programming subset that was envisioned a decade previously.

Declan

564

OK, there’s no way I’m wading through all of this, although I did make it through the first 6 or 7 pages.

I saw the movie on Friday night, and it wasn’t bad. There are two things which bother me, though, one major which hasn’t been addressed as far as I know, and one minor which someone else touched on. Major one first:

Why didn’t Padme know she was carrying twins? Is there a chance she knew but wasn’t going to tell Anakin? That seems unlikely. I’m assuming a woman of her rank would have some kind of prenatal care, and twins shouldn’t be that difficult to detect. Thoughts? Theories? Kluged up explanations?

Minor one: How on earth did Padme sleep in that nightgown? Pearled sleeves can’t be comfortable, not to mention all that junk around her neck.

Actually, let me throw in one more thing. For some reason, it would be a bad idea for word of Padme’s and Anakin’s marriage to get out. Nevertheless, she’s visibly pregnant, at least for most of the movie. I figure there’s got to be some pretty hot gossip about this.

The rest of the movie wasn’t bad. I did spot the Millenium Falcon prototype in the background of one scene, and I was amused by the constant traffic in the background. I liked the over-sized iguana Obi-Wan rode, although I wonder why someone gave him such a half-trained mount. Yes, I was rooting for it to survive, too. I figure the reason Obi-Wan left Anakin on the lava planet was because he could see him sliding toward the lava and catching fire and knew he was doomed. The fight itself was classical Anakin stupidity.

I’ll also throw in my take on something I’d rewrite. I can’t see a woman as strong-willed and competent as Padme dying of a broken heart, especially given Leia’s comment about remembering her mother. Instead, I’d have Padme taken in by Bail Organa and his family and kept in hiding with the hope that she’d be able to raise her daughter to be a proper successor. Some years later, Padme is killed, perhaps in an ambush or by betrayal.

Overall, I’ve wasted more time and money in worse ways.
CJ

565

I still don’t see how anyone here could include one of the new prequels among the “top three” in a ranked list of Star Wars movies.

The sarcastic charisma of Harrison Ford, played brilliantly off Carrie Fisher’s gradually diminishing snobbishness and Mark Hammill’s youth, MADE the original Star Wars. The new films have no such rougishly charming hero.

566

Sounds like you’re describing Return of The Jedi to me. ( I just watched it again yesterday).

While the Star Wars films can never be described as high art, Sith was better than the rest of the prequels and certainly better than Jedi. If only because of the lack of Ewoks and /or other cute and annoying characters.

567

Well, I retract my previous opinion of Revenge of the Sith due to catching a matinee yesterday with my brother (my original Star Wars geek enabler). I really enjoyed the movie! It helped going in with modified expectations. Revenge of the Sith is now my favorite prequel. Musicwise, I think The Phantom Menace is tops. Did anyone buy the Revenge of the Sith soundtrack? How is it?
Anyone else want a book series that follows the Millienium Falcon’s original owner? Anyone else going to watch the original trilogy and try to spot the places where Artoo seems to know more than everyone else? My brother mentioned several glaring parts of ANH when Artoo was more knowledgable than everyone else. Also, the whole discrepancy with Leia remembering her mother and Luke not could be explained by the birth order. Maybe Sidious wasn’t lying about the Sith ability to extend life yet he neglected to mention that this ability makes you a ghost. How ironic that the Jedi mastered the technique that eluded Anakin and ultimately lead to his fall?

568

So you admit he was nothing more than an attack dog.

See? You’ve just taken your first step into a larger world.

-Joe

569

I don’t understand why so many people hate ROTJ - and how anyone would prefer any one of the prequels to it. All the creativity that went into Jabba the Hutt and his palace, and all of the ingenious animatronics and costumes behind the creatures in the beginning of that movie alone (unlike the prequels’ lousy CGI that ages poorly and looks like the latest video game’s graphics 5 years down the road) make it at least a decent movie to me.

Sure the ewoks are kind of annoying, but you have to appreciate that that’s a real live person inside each one of those furry little suits - and they look and act a lot more real than computer graphics.

Lastly - the scene where Luke removes Darth Vader’s mask is an amazing scene, and the best one in the movie, in my opinion. To see the imposing, faceless, mechanical Darth Vader weak and vulnerable, wheezing with his last breaths, revealed to be nothing more than a sad-looking, scarred old man, the emotion in that scene is nowhere to be found in any of the prequels - and that includes the latest one.

570

I just can’t agree with you. For all it’s faults, ROTJ is still a watchable film. It has characters you care about, you can believe their motivations and interactions. You can actually tell what’s going on in the action scenes. Granted, it benefits a lot from the goodwill and background it brings forward from the earlier movies, but it’s at least a competent piece of film-making.

ROTS is like a first-year film student won the lottery, from bad script to bad direction. Did no one tell Lucas that this script doesn’t make a lick of sense? That the characters’ motivations (or lack of them) are all wrong? That making your characters as dumb as posts really turns the audience off? That calling the dialogue wooden is an insult to trees everywhere? Yes, this movie drags in the badwill and lack of background from the earlier movies, but this was a chance to do better and it fails miserably.

And what female pissed in George’s cereal? The only woman with more than a passing presence is Padme and she comes off as a complete twat. Her onscreen romance with Anakin has had all the smoldering passion of a tea candle. She can’t believe he would do anything wrong even though he’s a whiny jerk every time they talk and he FREAKING SLAUGHTERED A VILLAGE OF SAND PEOPLE INCLUDING CHILDREN. We’re not talking about a doe-eyed teenager here, she’s supposed to be a mature woman, and she doesn’t get the slightest hint that maybe he’s got issues? Then Anakin flips on the dark side switch (guess I’m evil now), and she has nothing to live for? Uh, how about saving that Republic you loved so much? Making sure friends and loved ones survive the new emperor’s rule? How about YOUR FREAKING CHILDREN? Has George never met a pregnant woman?

Bleh. I think I’ll just stick with the “There are only three Star Wars movies” self-deception and forget I-III even exist. At least the Serenity trailer looked damn good.

571

That’s not a high bar to clear. :wink:

572

It’s been almost a month since RotS came out and on self-reflection, it is STILL my second favorite Star Wars movie after ESB. It barely beats out ANH for me. Sorry, but I never considered the Star Wars movies to be high art and the entertainment value of RotS was just wonderful to me.

Btw, may I say at this point that I really, REALLY hate when people go for the whole “There were no sequals” self-deception. I just don’t get the point. Obviously they’ve seen the movies and didn’t like them. Are they trying to be funny? Because it ain’t. It’s more annoying. No offense to you, duality72. I just find it to be, by far, the most annoying thing done on this forums.

573

Nope. But thanks for playing.