I was thinking of the same scene, with the opposite conclusion. All the murdered Jedi got to fight for a few seconds before being overwhelmed, but it’s a whole lot more cold and ruthless to stick a shiv (or fire a blaster) in someone’s back when they’re not even looking. If you want to show that the dark side is evil, that would have been the way to do it; but Lucas likes action better than feelings.
The dialog was awful.
And I was disappointed by the final duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin. I really disliked the kid by that point, and wanted Obi-Wan to lay more of a beating on him. Which I think would have worked better with the plot, anyway; to have Anakin losing the fight but pressing on harder and harder out of anger. And the way it ended. They’re shown as being almost perfectly matched, even throwing each other across the room in unison. And even though these guys can leap 40 feet in the air, have been fighting from a conference room to a catwalk to a huge piece of equipment sinking in a river of lava as it heads for the falls, suddenly it’s “Aha, give up, I am slightly uphill from you!”
And call me old fashioned, but the CGI still ain’t as good as a puppet. When Yoda was poking Luke with a stick in The Empire Strikes Back, or wrestling with Artoo over a flashlight, there was a physical presence of him interacting with his environment. Yoda now has lots of nifty moves so he can start trashing bozos, but there just isn’t any sense that he’s really there.
Well, he was apparently badly wounded by Mace Windu when he “kidnapped” Palpy, hence the cough. Maybe he was biding his time until he could get some repairs or whatever.
I liked the movie a lot. I’ll have to mull it over before I decide how it compares to the originals, but it’s much better than Eps I and II.
Tell that to the people in the theater where I saw Heat. The ones (as in enough to be considered “the theater”) who cheered when they executed the cops. That was genuinely creepy.
Where was the heart, the whimsy, the soul? The original trilogy is transcendent, a permanent piece of American pop culture. These new ones tried hard but never really came close if you ask me. Thankfully George did get better with each one, but in the end I think I’ll be forever qualifying when someone asks me if I’m Star Wars fan… I’m an original trilogy purist.
As for the minutia:
Yoda looked perfect close up, Gollum perfect, but still visibly CG when viewed from afar. I think ILM is only the biggest effects house now, and Weta is the best.
Portman can act, I saw her do it in Garden State, therefore the blame goes to George for her third in a serious of bland, listless performances.
Grevous was dope. But what’s what the obviously bad guy names? Grevous, Sidious, Maul, Tyrannus? George aint the king of subtlety in filmmaking.
I did think George wrapped things up nicely though. The end story for the prequels actually flows coherently into the originals.
i kept thinking, would this have happened if qui-jon lived and trained anakin? or if another jedi had stepped into the father role for him.
he knew the council and obi-wan thought he shouldn’t have been trained. that qui-jon and obi-wan had argued over him. he grabbed on to qui-jon when he left his mother, qui-jon became his rock. then the rock was gone.
although he and obi-wan have a good relationship, it isn’t father-son, more older-younger brother. he didn’t forget the arguement and knew obi-wan started his training due to his promise to qui-jon than any feelings for him.
he needed a new rock. palpatine became that rock. he believed in him from the first with no hesitation. he became the father figure.
then when everything starts to break apart…
i can see where he would place his trust in the wrong person and do things that bit by bit would destroy his soul.
yoda is the one who has padme buried looking pregnant. further protection for the twins.
OK. Overall I liked it, but there were some flaws. Especially (as many others have said) the dialog.
My “laugh out loud at Lucas’s crappy writing” moment was when the medical droid said “She’s lost her will to live” like it was some sort of standard diagnosis. It sounds straight out of a Monty Python sketch: “Doctor, what’s wrong with me? Will antibiotics help?” “No, sorry. You’ve lost you’re will to live. You’re going to die.” “Maybe a different diet? More excercise?” “No, none of that will help. No will to live. I’m surprised you haven’t dropped dead yet.” …
Also, what the hell was up with Yoda telling Obi-wan that he was going to teach him to commune with Qui-gon? “Going into exile you are; teach you to speak to dead people I will; bored you not will be on desert shithole.” Did Obi-wan spend 20 years hanging out talking to dead people while Luke matured?
Oh, and Anakin definately could have been better cast. He wasn’t in the same league actor-wise as Ewan McGregor and stood out like a sore thumb when they were together.
Okay, Darth Maul was killed, but he took out Qui-Gon, so that’s pretty much a toss up. Count Dooku did the “Look, Ma” thing, but it was Sidious who sold him out. And big-picture-wise, the Sith have been calling the shots since the beginning of Ep I, and probably before. Where’s the revenge?
Admittedly, I was pretty tired at the end of the day, but did we see a single Jedi fight back?
Starfighter: Sorta, I think he tried dodging for a second
Speederbike: Not at all
Blue Twi’Lek in jungle: Not at all
Ki’ai’Mundi: Not at all, maybe blocked a shot or two, but sure as hell doesn’t count as fighting for a few seconds
There used to be many of them and they were essentially wiped out by the Jedi. People on the wrong end of a genocide tend to take it all personal and stuff.
Then again, I guess you have a pretty good question in that how is someone without knowledge of the EU supposed to know that? I suppose it could be seen as the poor lil’ Sith were being repressed by the Jedi or something.
I don’t understand all this gnashing over the “Will to Live” line. It seemed the medbot couldn’t find anything medically wrong and so surmised that the reason she was dying was because she hadn’t the will to live. It sounds better than “I don’t freaking know!” and people have been known to survive situations doctors say they shouldn’t because they’ve had “the will to live”, why doesn’t it work the opposite way?
Also from some posts it seems people thought the original trilogy’s dialogue was Shakespeare ;). The dialogue of Ep 4, 5, 6 was just as corny, ham-fisted, etc. It’s part of the whole space serial stereotype. The dialogue on RotS was just as good as that of the original trilogy. I mean, really, the original trilogy captured us, but lets not delude ourselves and call it great filmmaking with great dialogue and acting.
Okay, maybe the one on the speederbike. But the dodging and blocking a few shots are exactly what I’m talking about. It’s assumed within the movie that none of them had any realistic chance to get away (although the ability of Force powers to adapt themselves to the needs of the plot is impressive), but they all saw it coming. That scene would have played out so much more cold-blooded if they’d been killed without even knowing what hit them.
But Lucas makes action movies, and characters in action movies die in action. Maybe the scene the way I envision it would have been too chilling. There was already controversy that this movie was too intense for some kids as it was.
Yeah, apparently a lot of moms were mad about Lucas showing Anakin about to kill the kids. Though I don’t know if anyone would have complained more about them getting stabbed in the back instead of marginally fighting back before succumbing. It’s probably as you said and was about the action.
People in made for TV movies might do that, but not in real life. I was amused by this line as well.
Are you serious?
The dialogue in Eps 4-6 wasn’t perfect - but it honestly was orders of magnitude better. And I can’t even begin to express the difference in the acting. I feel like you weren’t even watching the same movie as me here. The acting in Ep 3, though, is what killed the movie for me. I will forgive just about any sin for good acting, especially since I really did like the story behind this installment. But I couldn’t even begin to see any real connection between Christensen and Portman. I couldn’t muster up the slightest sympathy for their characters. Ewan, of course, held his own, and the story was gripping enough to make the movie watchable in spite of it. But you’re overstating the quality of this one, and seriously understating the original trilogy. Plotwise, they were sometimes silly, even ridiculous. And Mark Hamill wasn’t exactly Laurence Olivier (but still, way better than Christensen) - but Carrie Fisher? Harrison Ford? Do you really think they weren’t way better than Christensen and Portman?
All a matter of opinion, I guess. But I think the original three have stood up to history in a way that Ep 3 just can’t.
I’m not about to defend the romantic scenes, but I will say that I never thought of Padme and Ani as “the leads.” She is merely a device to produce the twins, just as Qui Gon was a way for Obi Wan to take on Anakin’s training against Yoda’s wishes. The Lead characters of this film are Anakin and Obi Wan, and it’s their relationship that drives the film.
With regard to Kashyyyk and the Expanded Universe, at Celebration III (Star Wars Woodstock) Tim Zahn said “The way myself and the other Star Wars writers look at it, we’re just kids playing in George’s driveway. If he backs out and runs over our toys, we can’t really complain.”
I was at the midnight last night as well, and I’ve spent most of the day trying to decide how I felt. It was visually stunning, and not once did I look at something and notice whether it was CGI or not. The dialog was atrocious, but not terribly more so than the original trilogy. None of the acting caused me any physical pain, though Ms. Portman came close. Ulitimately, I guess we all knew Anakin was going dark, and we knew why (mostly because he’s being manipulated by an incredibly sinsiter man) the reason we, or at least I, came was to see how Obi wan could allow/facilitate in his fall. That part of the film was enough to sell me.
I still haven’t decided about Revenge of the Sith. I might not have liked it, but it was cathartic.
Whether or not she was a lead (and no, she wasn’t, but she was [or at very least ought to have been] a key character), Natalie Portman (who was indeed okay in Garden State), during the scene where she learned of Anakin’s betrayal, got a look on her face that reminded me of nothing so much as a child crying because they couldn’t have an ice cream cone.
Well, usually a pregnant woman’s stomach takes a while - like weeks - to go down. It doesn’t just go away right after the birth. So of course her belly was still round. However, it was also crucial that she appear pregnant because the babies were taken and hidden and no one else was supposed to know they are alive. If she didn’t look pregnant, Darth Vader might catch on that they were born and go looking for them…
Speaking of which, a question: When does Darth Vader learn his children are alive? Who tells him and when?
