Thoughts on Revenge of the Sith (unboxed spoilers)

Cafe Society
41

From another thread:

LOVED IT!

What a fabulous movie! As I was saying, all the prequals were leading up to this and it sure did not dissapoint. The CGI which looked somewhat cheesy back in TPM is jaw dropping here. This is the best looking movie I’ve ever seen. It blows LOTR trilogy out of the water. The action is non stop and the dialogue isn’t bad (as good as the original trilogy). McGregor is perfect as Obi-Wan, Christensen plays Anakin well, and McDiamid is excellent as Palpatine.

I would have liked to have seen Anakin’s fall more streached out, but the movie was over 2 hours as it was! That said, I was satisfied that keeping Padme alive turned him.

And I like the visual touches at the end. Padme’s burial procession shows that they faked the twins dying when Padme did.

And how much fun to see a proto-Death Star?

I’d have to say this is perhaps the best Star Wars movie aside from ESB.

I give it an A!

Also I liked Palpatine’s ‘aging’. It seemed he planned it way to make him look more weak (the whole goal was for Anakin to betray Mace Windu) and to show the Senate how he’d been betrayed by the Jedi.

42

Well I thought it was convincing. Anakin brought the news to Windu and then Windu tells him to wait in the Council like a good little boy. Anakin feels the Jedi don’t respect his power. And while in the Council he gets scared that the only person who truely knows him (Padme) will die soon. That conglomeration of feelings leads him into the wrong path.

I think they were shocked and had no idea what was going on. Their own forces had turned against them and they lost focus of battle and where flabbergasted this was happening.

As stated earlier, Yoda realizes the battle cannot be won. Palpatine is too powerful to fall to Yoda. So he decides to fight another day.

43

To add to ISiddiqui’s reply, it had also been established since Episode II that the Jedi’s ability to use The Force had been diminishing. Since this move, Order 66, was totally driven by the Dark Side, it’s completely understandable that the Jedi had no clue what was going on.

As wrong as it was for Anakin to turn and help dismantle the Jedi, the Jedi Order did have flaws (namely pride and naivete, or however that’s spelled), along with the Republic itself. Anakin was indeed powerful enough to see this, but Palpatine’s manipulations ensured that he went about “correcting” those flaws the wrong way.

44

Quite right! This is why I don’t think the Jedi were idiotic to take him on when they thought he’d “bring balance to the Force”. There probably were plenty of Jedi who thought things were not going as they should and Anakin would help bring the Force to what it should be and end the arrogance of the Council… unfortunetly they let him be controlled by Palpatine (part of their arrogance and naivety).

45

Once again showing the ultimate message of the Star Wars films; no matter what is said, in reality the Dark Side is stronger than the Light Side. Strongest Dark Side guy is stronger than the strongest Light Side guy (I don’t give a crap about Mace Windu, and there are plenty of theories why he was not stronger).

Corollary - For Light Side to defeat Dark Side, Light Side practitioner must go slightly apeshit Dark Side himself, at least for a period of time, during the fight.

Why oh why must they make the Dark Side practitioners stronger? Wouldn’t it be nice to see the example of the true Light Side master whose serenity and quiet strength actually allows him to beat somebody of equal stature? I suppose Obi-Wan, in the last part of the 3rd movie, is a half-way decent example. That’s about it as far as I can tell.

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In the same way that Sauron was “stronger” than Gandalf (yeah, non-interference, I know…)

47

That depends. After all, you’ve already talked about Obi-Wan. He didn’t flirt with the Dark Side at all during the fight with Anakin, at least as far as I can tell. Palpy is stronger than anyone in the movies though… with the possible exception of Luke (and that’s in the Extended Universe).

48

See, it’s an interesting point . . . almost every fantasy epic has opponents stronger than any of the good guys (but then, it’s hard to construct a story otherwise.) However, strength is also always implicitly associated with worthiness and “specialness” - thus, the bad guy is always stronger, because he has powers that the good guy is just too damn moral to use.

49

I agree that the love scenes and dialog weren’t GREAT. But then, I didn’t think they were terrible, either. But more importantly, the Annakin-Palpatine and Annakin-Obi Wan relationships were just as central, if not more so, and I thought they were both fine.

Anna Paquin? Haley Joel Osment?

A traditional Wookie weapon. Or at least, one that Chewbacca used in Return of the Jedi. It was a bit weird then, and is still a bit weird now, but is doing nothing but carrying over continuity from the original trilogy.

(a) they’re Jedis
(b) they little platforms they were riding were design to be rid around by people on lava, and had little force screens supporting them that you could see from time to time. It would make sense for those force screens to have thermal insulation of some sort

Now you’re just plain wrong. They found palpatine in the spire, but then (in a lengthy action sequence involving the floor turning sideways and an elevator shaft) brought him back down to the main part of the ship, then were captured and taken to the cockpit where Grievous was.

Four characters get hands chopped off, by my count:
-Dooku
-Grievous
-Mace Windu
-Annakin

If you think about it, that’s probably a pretty likely way for a lightsabre-duel-to-the-death to end.

Yeah, that was weird.

Oh, and by the way, back when Episode II came out, there was a tidbit up on starwars.com with a fake news article about how the flying jets on an R2-series astromech droid have only a limited lifetime.

50

Best. Star Wars movie. Ever.

Utterly mind blowing. Now we can forget that Episodes I and II ever happened. 3, 4, 5, and 6 are the complete epic.

Totally different feel from the first 2 prequels. The most Star Wars-y feel since Empire Strikes Back.

Still stunned 14 hours after seeing the midnight premier. Gonna see it twice more tonight.

And those reviewers who said the acting was wooden, did we see the same movie? I thought it was pitch-perfect, only one line I would have changed (the “You’re beautiful.” “Only because I’m in love.” exchange).

Gut wrenching scene at the end with Obi-Wan almost crying his lines over a burning Anakin. “You were the Chosen One. You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them. You were my brother.” Cinema gold.

The CGI was flawless, totally seamless–way, way, way ahead of its time technically. This movie is like Return of the Jedi in that it will take many years for another picture to look as good in the SFX department.

The montage of Jedi being cut down by Order 66 felt like that part in The Godfather when Corleone has all of his enemies killed in one long montage with epic music playing. When Ki-Adi-Mundi is leading a charge on that cold and barren planet, and turns around wondering why his clones aren’t following him, and is then slaughtered in a hail of gunfire–pathos beyond description. What a lonely, sad way to die.

I was very concerned that this movie would make the Dark Side seem “cool”. Haha what a misplaced concern. The Dark Side is way not cool. It’s sick, twisted psychopathic, “Consume you it will.” The perversion, the psychopathic sickness of what it does to you is no fun at all. Watching Anakin carry out his Sithly duties, knowing full well he can’t go back, knowing he’s made a terrible choice but he can’t retract it–the tears he sheds as he goes about the evil he is now required to commit. What a sock in the gut. Wow, just wow.

The emperor. When he’s telling Anakin about how he killed his master, Darth Plageuis–shades of Hannibal Lecter there. He almost laughs at how his master taught him everything he knew, and then Sideous casually wasted him in his sleep. Sideous looks down to the right and smiles as if he’s fondly remembering the night of his betrayal.

I could go on and on. I’m 37 years old, having seen ANH and ESB in the theater at ages 9 and 12, and never thought it was possible to regain that same feeling I had coming out of those 2 movies. The first 2 prequels let me down so badly, I had no expectations whatsoever for this one. George, I owe you an apology. It is clear that this was the movie you wanted to make all along. Rock on!

51

Indeed. I have never seen a movie with visuals as breathtaking as RotS. My Lord, this was HOW the CGI was supposed to look in TPM and AotC. I wouldn’t mind, at all, Lucasfilms touching up the CGI from EP1 and EP2 to look as good as RotS looks for a second trilogy set.

I couldn’t believe that it looked that great. It leaves LOTR’s special effects in the dust. If they don’t win an Oscar for that, then there is no hope left for those awards.

52

Agreed… I was surprised at how sad this movie made me, and Lucas did a great job of instilling the whole movie with a sense of dread. Can I assume that you, like me, were pissed off at the fans who cheered when Anakin turned to the Dark Side or when he led the troops into the Jedi Temple?

People! You don’t root for the bad guys!! Shit like that is why I hate the people who dress up and stage lightsaber battles in front of the screen beforehand. They lose sight of the story and just focus on the “badass” stuff. I’m actually thinking of starting a thread about it.

53

That’s why I liked my theater. So quiet you could hear a pin drop during the scenes of Anakin turning and the fight scenes in the last third of the movie (with an 80% filled theater). You could feel everyone in the place feeling the dread. Though there were plenty of laughs earlier, such as when Yoda threw the red uniformed guards aside… but almost nothing after that until the end (which had applause).

54

I liked it. It is flawed, but overall it certainly satisfied me. I have some thoughts to share:

  1. Poor 3PO. He has absolutely nothing to do in this film but stumble around and worry about things. But at least he isn’t being forced to be the comic relief.

  2. Hooray that Jar-Jar has no lines!

  3. When Greivous’ ship breaks in half near the end of the opening sequence (which is, all told, an incredible piece of filmmaking), all I could think of was the poor people on the surface of Coruscant. When that back half of the ship hit the ground, I’m guessing about 150,000 people died instantly.

  4. I’m glad I got to see Alderaan, even if only for a minute.

  5. The fight between Obi-Wan and Vader in this movie is a lot more impressive than the one in the original Star Wars. In fact, in general, the fighters in all the fight and battle scenes in this movie seem to move with a lot more speed and agility than they do in the original trilogy.

55

Ok, what the hell was up with Kashyyk? For one thing, I’m upset that there wasn’t more screentime with the Wookies. I was promised Wookies dammit! And I thought Kashyyk was supposed to be a forest planet where the Wookies all lived in the canopy and the jungle floor was a dark, dangerous place. So why does the battle of Kashyyk take place on the water near what appears to be prime coastal real estate?

56

Keisha Castle-Hughes (nominated for best actress leading role, Whale Rider) played Queen of Naboo.

57

From what I read, Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen worked for 2 months on fencing and fitness before the film. It seems to have paid off.

58

I thought you were just fantasizing about him for a minute and accidentaly hit submit.

59

But it wasn’t. The animation job on the unmasked clones was embarrassingly awful. I’ve seen better in video games. It was most noticeable in the group that was standing around Obi-wan’s ship before he took off to find the general. Their movements were all wrong, and their heads were too big for their bodies. On top of that, the footage of Temuera Morrison that was texture-mapped onto the heads of the clone warriors was terribly done. I found that whole scene to be really jarring, and it left me wondering why he do what they’ve done to have one actor play several characters for forever – clever camera angles and digital insertion – instead of building them all in a computer. (Of course, the answer is that George Lucas loves using ILM for everything when sometimes it’d be better to look beyond.)

It was largely a great technical achievement, but it was in no way “way, way, way ahead of its time technically.” The effects were much better than in the other prequels, but they still had their flaws.

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I personally laugh my ass off whenever Lucas decides to go against what fanboys have decided is the “truth.” I love it when EU ends up being wrong. :stuck_out_tongue: