“I loved you! You were like a brother to me! And now, seeing you in defeat, humiliation, and unfathomable agony…uh, I’ll be going now.”
I suppose that could be an explanation, although it seems strange that they would put so many resources into starting to build a second Death Star when the first wasn’t even complete. But I can see how they fast tracked the second Death Star, probably cut a lot of corners, shoddy workmanship. If Lando hadn’t destoyed it it probably would have started falling apart on it’s own. The plumbing, the foundation, the roof probably were all done on the cheap.
Yes! And then add the fact that at the beginning, Natalie Portman surprises Anakin with news of her pregnancy, and that they’re still trying to keep it a secret, and in almost the next scene she’s wearing a tent. I figure the gestation period for a Naboonian is less than a fortnight.
And some excellent points from archmichael about how more activity in a battle scene usually cuts down on the tension and suspense, instead of enhancing it.
On the plus side, the theater where I saw this must have done a special mix tape for background music while people were coming in and finding seats; including Yoda, by Weird Al, and Bill Murray from one of his lounge singer sketches from Saturday Night Live singing the Star Wars theme with made-up lyrics.
Sure, but it was still kind of a bad line. That and the “NOOOOOOO!” were the things that really bothered me as bad lines.
For example, the part with Padme would have been much better if the droid had said something like, “Medically there’s nothing wrong with her. It’s as if she just does not want to live.” To me, anyways, that sounds much better than the actual line. The actual line, to me, sounds kind of like “Our Will-To-Live-Meter is reading a zero. She’s going to die soon”.
-Joe, still loved the movie
Forgot to mention: Guided Missiles!
Someone in a thread asked why there aren’t many missiles used in the Star Wars universe. Now we know why. Missiles that explode in close proximity to its target? Bah!!! Why do that when you can create a missile that tracks you, flys past your ship, gets a distance in front of you, explode in a cloud of droids that you hopefully fly through and finally have these droids slowly dismantle your ship.
No way! The lizard was great! When Obi-Wan needs to ride again, he just whistles, and there it is for him. No questions asked, no hesitation at whomping through heavy blaster fire, just loyalty. I’m a bit ticked that they didn’t make it clear if it survived the fall… Lucas had better not have killed it off after all it went through.
And I didn’t like the Death Star shot, either… It seemed like pointless fan-service. Yeah, they could have started the second one before the Battle of Yavin, but why? They certainly didn’t anticipate the first one being destroyed, and one Death Star is really all you need. And those things are expensive! Granted, this is a Galactic Empire we’re talking about here, but still, a battle station the size of a small moon has to strain their resources, much less two of them.
What? The Devil offering something for your soul and then reneging? Certainly not!
Care to rethink that one?
-Joe
Well, about the Death Star. Some people seemed to talk about the wierd passages of time. Where months or days were collapsed into minutes (it seemed). Could it be that the Death Star scene was more like 5 years in the future rather than right after?
Three-plus hours of George Lucas dialogue would have been lethal.
That is awesome. Our theater showed the preview trailers for all six movies, and staged an Obi-Wan/Vader lightsaber fight with two costumed employees before the movie started. 
I’m trying to imagine the dialogue for the “Start of the rebellion” cut scenes:
Padme: The empire has fallen. What do we do now?
Bail Organa: I don’t know. I am so sad.
Mon Mothra: We could rebel!
Padme: Yes! That is a good idea. We’ll rebel.
Bail Organa: We can call ourselves “the rebels.”
Padme: I miss Anakin. I love him more then life itself.
Bail Organa: That’s so sweet.
Mon Mothra: Don’t lose your will to live, Padme!
Padme: Perhaps the rebellion will give me ‘a new hope.’
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet, because quite frankly I grew tired of reading this thread at the top of page 2, but Lucas had me going until one idiotic choice he made took me right out of the moment to the point where I had to look at my friend sitting next to me and say, “you gotta be f*cking kidding me.”
The wookie swinging on the vine doing the Tarzan yell. :smack:
You gotta be f*cking kidding me.
Aside from that, I enjoyed the movie, and I ditto the above sentiments that the acting was wooden and the antichemistry between Portman and Annakin was hard to watch. Lucas should really turn those scenes and supporting dialog over to abler hands.
Seemed odd to me how Padme went from her regal, self-assured bearing in the first film to the whiny, sniveling mess we see in RotS.
I was disappointed that Lucas didn’t pony up to his big mistake in TPM and find a way to kill Jar Jar Binks off. At least make it a deleted scene on the DVD release. 
Also, count me as one who wasn’t impressed with Sam Jackson’s performances in these films. He really could’ve used an accent or something, because every time I heard his voice I expected him to start going off about how he doesn’t eat pork because pigs are filthy animals. 
Well, the longer the movie the fewer showings you can have during the day.
I think it’s the opposite. It would be honorable and jedi-like to kill someone in that situation, but Obi-Wan is overwhelmed by emotion.
Huh. You could be right. My personal thought was that the whole Order 66 thing was hard-coded into the clones’ brains while they were gestating.
Seems like a good way to guarantee they do what you want. Especially when you combine it with a “and whatever you do, don’t ever try to kill the Chancellor or Emperor.”.
-Joe
Not at all. I have vague memories of seeing the original trilogy as a child, but I didn’t remember it well at all, and I was able to watch with fresh eyes when I was quite a bit older. Honestly, I think that good acting - and particularly chemistry between actors - is something subtle that some people simply don’t perceive. In a lot of great movies, their greatness comes down to the cast and how they interact. When Harry Met Sally didn’t have a script that was so much amazingly better than most of the trivial rom-coms produced. And hell, Meg Ryan is not going to go down as one of history’s greats. But she and Billy Crystal were simply so good together that it worked. I don’t think there’s many other ways in which the movie was different from any of the dozen identical rom-coms that get released every year. Same goes with Silence of the Lambs - silly little drama-thriller, except that Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins are amazing actors, and had amazing interaction with each other.
If you can’t see what Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke had together (even if Mark Hamill’s line deliveries were occasionally not all that great) then it’s not quite as striking when it’s completely absent. But I’m quite certain of what I saw in this movie, and I wasn’t convinced, even for a moment - by Portman or Christensen.
And the give-and-take when a real ensemble works together would have made it a yet more powerful scene. Ewan McGregor is amazing, though. I’ve never seen him do a poor job with any role. Him and Samuel L. Jackson (who has such a presence even when he’s not talking) were the best parts of this movie.
I liked the CGI a lot in this one. Someone earlier said that it felt like Yoda wasn’t there in some scenes, but I didn’t see that. It’s usually my complaint with CGI, too - I’m not sure if their computer models are just inaccurate or something, but there’s some physical response that CGI characters don’t usually quite nail. When they move, there’s no sense of mass to their movements. And for once, I didn’t see that.
But visually, I found the movie mostly pretty disappointing. I was irritated at how many times I saw the exact same thing: every landing pad, for instance, looks exactly the same, it’s just the bluescreen behind it that changes. So damn much of the movie took place on what was probably the single landing pad set in the filming that it drove me nuts. Same goes with scenes of people sitting next to very high windows in large halls. I kept seeing basically the same idea for a visual repeated over and over and over, and it became distracting and monotonous. Which is such a shock because the original trilogy showed of Lucas’ genius for good visuals, and it’s one of the few things that wasn’t all that bad in the first two prequels.
Hmmm… I’m clearly outnumbered here, I thought it was lame.
Too, too much. too many spaceships, too many lightsabre fights, which were too bent on showing people spinning and twirling inside cramped rooms.
Really made me appriciate the 1st movie.
“When I left you I was but the learner…”
“No, actually Darth, you were a burnt peice of amputated dog-meat.”
So the Jedi are extinguished, their “Fire gone out in the Universe” and yet Obi-Wan can just go into hiding without bothering to change out of his Jedi robes.
Speaking of robes, did Ewan’s robe look like it was made of a K-Mart fluffy bathrobe or what?
After some reflection and meditation on these important matters, I have some additional thoughts on the movie.
The entire plotline with the Wookies should have been handled much better or just cut entirely. Wookies are cool and all, but the setup was very poor. Why is Kashyyyk supposed to be such a strategically valuable planet when it appears to be a backwater with relatively low tech levels? And if Lucas was going to bother showing Wookies, he needed to really show them for more than a couple of establishing shots. Instead it’s pretty much, “Look, Wookies! Meanwhile…”
I didn’t really mind Vader’s “NOOOO!” but I would have done more to show Anakin truly becoming Vader. So Anakin whines and starts trashing the place, then Palpatine scolds him. “You are Darth Vader now! You must control yourself!” Vader calms himself, then tries to Force choke Palpy, who then gives him the beatdown. Palpy says, “You are strong, my apprentice, but I am the master.” Finally Vader submits.
There’s a story in star wars Tale #3 called “Free Memory” that touches upon that.
How about this: the Republic had been at peace for a very long time. The masterful warrior-Jedi of yesteryear had found themselves unneeded, and eventually died out as time went on. By the time of The Phantom Menace, the combat skills of the Jedi were nothing close to what they had been at, say, the end of the Sith Wars.
I like this. The idea that she died because she lost her will-to-live is a great one, in my opinion. It just needed to be communicated better. I think its strength is that it makes Anakin’s betrayal even worse. He turned evil to save her life, but ended up killing her in his attempts to prevent that death. How powerful is that?
I think the past tense is important here. He used to love Anakin like a brother, but after seeing him kill younglings (I think “children” would have made that much more powerful; “younglings” makes me think of animals) and betray the order, he no longer has that love. I think that he actually considered rescuing him, until Anakin said “I hate you.” Few Jedi could handle such a slap in the face.
I agree. For me, however, the problem was the pose. Even the “Noooooo!” wasn’t bad. It was his awkward, trying-to-touch-his-elbows-behind-his-back stance that made it strange. What made it worse was his Frankenstein-style walk to the edge of the cliff. The idea is great, but it’s so old that it added cheesiness to the scene.
I just assumed that both Senators and Jedi were given special living quarters, and that Anakin and Padme did the Star-Wars equivalent of renting a cheap apartment so they could spend weekends together when they were supposed to be away on “business.”