Now that was what I wanted to see! I was worried that I was getting my hopes up to high, and I ended up being pleasantly surprised.
I loved all the proto-X-wings and TIE fighters in that opening battle. In fact, I loved the whole battle. It was busy, but awesome.
I thought Hayden’s acting was markedly improved from the last episode, and the scenes with him and Palpatine were very well executed. Ian MacDiarmid was so good at being sneeeeaakky. I was so happy when he told Mace Windu about Palpy being the Sith Lord, even though I knew it would come to naught. His early scenes with Natalie Portman were still goofy, but silly dialogue is to be expected in a Star Wars movie. (People who claim the acting in the original trilogy was so much better seem to be convenienly forgetting a certain scene on a certain bridge on a certain Forest Moon.)
The Order 66 scenes were gave me chills (yes, yes, I am an uber-geek). Anakin with the wee little Padawans was also well done. The moment those clones went for Yoda though… all I could think was “ohhh… you do NOT fuck with Yoda.”
Ewan MacGregor simply blew me away. He has given the best performance of the entire Star Wars series, hands down. And he managed to not look too ridiculous riding a dire iguana. That’s impressive.
I loved how bunch of Wookiees did that Tarzan-yell thing that Chewbacca did in ROTJ.
I loved Padme’s one good line (about liberty dying to thunderous applause).
I loved that odd-plant planet the Twi’lek Jedi died on.
I loved Anakin and Obi-wan’s showdown.
I loved the fact that there was Tarkin, and Captain Antilles’ ship.
I love that Jar-Jar was silent.
I have a lot of love. I’m seeing it again this weekend.
This, of course, is one of the central arguments in the Jedi Are Stupid theory. So, a Jedi that people hardly remember ordered this army of clones. On what authority? Where did he get the money? What was the motivation for creating this army in the first place?
All important questions that the Jedi completely ignore. It’s one thing to opportunistically “appropriate” the army to rescue their comrades on Geonosis. But years later, they’re still using these clones. Aren’t any Jedi remotely suspicious? Doesn’t anyone sense something the slightest bit fishy? Based on the films, No. They’re like Homer Simpson: “Yoink! Free Army!” And then it’s forgotten.
Of course, this makes the Code 66 thing possible, which means that the Jedi’s stupid-but-convenient oversight (their “wisdom” notwithstanding) is necessary to facilitate that particular plot point. Really really dumb.
Basicly, you have to realize that Lucas’ original cut was 3 hours and 10 minutes in length. He screeened it and his exec./ co-producers said that people aren’t willing to sit in the theater for three hours.
Under pressure, he cut nearly 40 minutes of footage. Included in this would be an interesting subplot in which Padme, Mon Mothra, and Bail Organa start the beginnings of the Rebellion. Also, was more of Palpatine f*cking with Anakin…saying he saw Obi-Wan leaving Padme’s apartment and stuff.
Granted, the turn does seem a bit rushed. Yet, in the original vision, I’m sure it was more realized.
Yet, when you have people telling you that you would risk turning a better profit if you keep the length…you’d cut it too.
Here’s my suggestion for an alternative to the “NOOOOOOOO!” scene:
It starts out the same: Vader is told that he killed Padme, he breaks out of the table while the whole room starts going to shit…but then instead of “NOOOOO!” he just drops down to his knees, head down and fists clenched…the destruction in the room continues and increases in intensity, so that even Sidious is taken aback a little bit. Then things quiet down, and Vader slowly rises to his full height and says, “What is your bidding, my master?” It is evident that with the death of Padme, he has fully abandoned his old life and has nothing left to live for besides service to the Emperor. He is transformed in that moment into the cold, calculating Darth Vader that we meet in ANH.
Then maybe he could have cut something else. Cut some of the space battle at the beginning, maybe cut out the Wookie battle that seemed tacked on, etc. To me it would have been more important to learn about the beginnings of the Rebellion than to see Wookies doing Tarzan yells.
Okay, yeah … you win on the Best Alternate Ending Idea. I’m a big enough geek and a big enough girl to have already been crying at that point, to have cried harder at the yelling … and that ending might have just left me in a quivering puddle on the theater floor.
Huh? Were the execs drooling idiots? Just 2 years ago, a 3 hour and 20 minute epic, the last movie in a hugely popular trilogy, grossed 377 million dollars.
I think that what you see there is Anakin heartbroken. I think it is the RESULT of that heartbreaking that Vader turns so cold. He cannot love again because the pain was too much. It was that that turns him into a cold, unfeeling monster.
Liked the movie, very entertaining. But I do have a couple of nits:
Anakin and Padme live together yet they are supposed to be keeping their marriage a secret? How does that work?
We see the beginning of the Death Star, which apparently will take 20 years to complete. Yet in Ep VI there is a new Death Star, I’d say at least 75% complete and partially operational only a few years after the original is destroyed?
The only thing that really bugged me about this installment is that there’s no real sense of the passage of time, and the second half of the movie seems to happen WAY too fast. After Anakin attacks the Jedi Temple, Yoda and Obi-Won are able to return to Coruscant fast enough that there’s still smoke pouring from the building and troopers hunting for stragglers. At the same time they’re doing that, Anakin is already on Mustafar slaughtering the Separatist leaders. Obi-Won then travels to Mustafar so fast that he’s already there before Yoda makes it to the Senate building for his confrontation with Palpatine. Then, after Anakin’s immolation, Palpatine travels to Mustafar so fast that Anakin is still alive and CONSCIOUS when he gets there. That kind of flying makes Han Solo making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs look like a walk in the park.
Actually, in the latest directors re-cut re-release, Han Solo mentioned making the Kessel Run in 0.6 parsecs, so the travel times in this movie make sense.
Good point there. In addition, the first scene of RotJ implies that the Emperor has the construction of Death Star the Sequel moving at the fastest pace possible … and he wants it even faster. The Empire took its time building the first Death Star, making sure they got it right. They knew exactly how to go about building the second.
The two previous movies and revisiting the original trilogy has basically trained to spot problems in this movie.
-Too busy. Yeah, there were tons of fighters in the opening scene. The problem is when you add too much, the human brain has a tendency to just add it to the background noise.
-Background noise is exactly what it was. I had the same sensation as I did watching those other Matrix movies. There is no sense of danger. It’s just Ani and Obi out for a pleasure cruise through enemy fighter infested space. Joking with each other. Casually talking. Sure the other clone pilots get killed but no one really seems to bother shooting at the Jedis.
“Hey! Hold you ship still while I knock off those droids with my wing”
“Is there anyone on our six?”
“Who knows! Who cares!”
-Even when they get to the ship, they just kind of stroll through. Yeah they get fired upon, but they seem very bored.
-With all the Hong Kong martial arts cinematography talent we have at our disposal, there is no excuse for having badly shot fight scenes. All you can see is spinning bodies and twirling lighsabers. Sure it’s a lot more fancy fighting than the original trilogy, but this movies brought home how much pointless spinning, backflipping, and twirling of sabers there exists.
Hayden sucks. ExTank mentioned Shattered Glass, as a better example of his range. I don’t see how that is possible. He plays a whiny, crying Jedi filled with self pity in this series. In Shattered Glass he plays a whiny crying journalist filled with self-pity who was caught making up stories to get published.
Love Samuel L. Jackson, but I got pulled out of the movie by him. I sat there wondering why? Oh…he’s yelling that’s why. Jedi Masters aren’t supposed to yell. It was a nice moment that gets used a lot. A good guy who sees that doing an evil like killing the Sith Lord would end up being for the better good. It was just very Samuel L. Jackson.
“You’re God damn right, Darth Sidious deserves to die! And I hope he burns in hell!”
“What does Master Yoda look like?!? Does he look like a bitch! Say ‘what’ again, I dare you. I double dare you!”
The Obi and Ani moment was ruined for me. From the original trilogy, I thought Darth Vader fell into lava, and somehow managed to survive. I didn’t understand that Obi left his good friend and apprentice (albeit one who turned to the darkside) as a half charred triple amputee, to die a slow death from heat exhaustion next to a lava river. Do they have some sort of code against doing putting people out of their misery?
