Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

[trekgeezer]

I never hated the other two like a lot of folks. I do think he made some mistakes, like all the cartoony characters and he should never have tried to make a love story with his lack of ability at working with actors. He badly distracted folks from the story he was trying to tell.

I think he really did a good job at showing how a democracy could be overthrown by the very people who think they are trying to preserve it. Palpatine played everyone against each other and used the Jedi's arrogance and apathy against them.

I loved the little bit in TPM when Palpatine says "We shall be watching your career with interest, young Skywalker." while subtley slipping into the Darth Sidious voice. Talk about foreshadowing.

People who even hated the other two have to admit he ended it well.

[Zapranoth]

I enjoyed episode III very much.  Please don't read my post if  you haven't seen the movie.

Agree re:  the horrid, horrid, horrid, horrid, HORRID attempts at love scenes.  Lucas ought to be banned from trying that sort of stuff.  Or he should hire someone whose job it is to poke him with a shock stick whenever he attempts to write intimate dialogue (instead of delegating it to someone who can).

Things this movie did for me that I was not expecting (and some random thoughts):

-  The Jedi are revealed as flawed, and their elimination is realized as part of the process of "restoring the balance."  *Not* just wiping out the Sith.  Wiping out the Jedi, too, is part of this process.  This was a startling facet of the movie, to me.   It is reflected in the many failures of the Jedi to do the right thing with Anakin; the Jedi fail *him* in so many ways, and in their failures they contribute to what is to come -- Windu, for example, is such a prissy sort of character, rather focused on power in his own way, and not willing to extend compassion or trust to Anakin; without that human element to mentor him through, how was Anakin supposed to overcome his passions?

-  I was very worried that the reasons for Anakin's fall would suck, or be incoherent at the least.  They were somewhat incoherent, but it "worked" for me.  I took it in the same way you take Romeo and Juliet falling in love after a brief meeting -- an element of tragedy that is presented in an abbreviated fashion.  Particularly I enjoyed the lines about "I'm not the Jedi I'm supposed to be.  Something is wrong."    He knows that he is being corrupted (that he has been in the process of being corrupted for years, really) -- but he can't find his way through because of his character flaws.  Yoda called it right when he first saw Anakin, of course; I find the motivations that drive Anakin to be believable, and reasonably established if you take all three movies together.  NOT high art.  But it "works" for me.

-  Wasn't the last scene where Obi-Wan defeats Anakin awful to watch, or was it just me?  I found the last meeting between them to be moving.  "I have the high ground, Anakin.  Please don't try this," as a line, covers a lot of ground.  And then after he defeats him, Ben can't kill him, and has to avert his face and leave.    The look of trapped horror on Anakin's face as the mask comes down to him.    It was extremely strange to hear Vader's voice asking questions about Padme's health, I admit, and the "nooooo!" I could have done without.  Just having everything in the room burst and bend would have been a better demonstration, with that Vader strangled roar as the only line, IMHO.

-  The use of Qui-Gon as a little plot device to explain how Ben achieves transcendence was pretty cool, I thought.  It adds to the first point I made -- in that the ultimate goal of the jedi ("oneness with the Force") is not achieved by any of the council, not even Yoda.  It is achieved by a rule-breaking rogue who does the right thing after careful consideration, and who disobeyed the council out of his best judgement (not passion).  Through him, the threads that sustain the hope for humanity (represented in Luke and Leia) are kept unbroken; without Ben's ghost, Luke would not have survived to ignite Anakin's eventual response that "restores balance to the Force."    Which is all to say, the Jedi's greatest goals are not accomplished by the people highest in its hierarchy, and that flawed hierarchy is destroyed as part of restoring balance.

-   It was a large mistake to use Samuel Jackson as a prominent character.  The SW movies benefited greatly from the use of actors who don't draw in many pop associations with them.  Christopher Lee, as Dooku, was okay, because Dooku is just a step sideways to become Saruman, in my mind.  But I couldn't watch Mace Windu without mentally editorializing:  "Say what again!  I dare you, I double-dare you!"   "Does he LOOK like a b***h?" ... the jedi council needed to be played by lower-key actors, and Samuel didn't belong.

Whoo, I wrote a book, sorry.  But I really enjoyed this movie, much more than I expected!  I didn't enjoy it just because it didn't suck (which is what my highest hope had been); I enjoyed it because it added things to the series that I had never before considered.

[Zapranoth]

So:

Did Palpatine's master create Anakin, then, as Palpatine implies?  Was he born to become a Sith tool all along?

[Ash]

I saw this and found it to be the best one since Empire.

I loved how R2 kicked ass in the beginning of the film and the Emperor definitely stole the show.
His evil cackle even when hanging on for dear life in the senate chamber made me laugh.

One thing I didn't understand is, how did the emperor get thousands of Republic loyal clone troops to go along with his bidding and slaughter the Jedi?
Did he use some big mind changing Force wave?
One second the clone troopers are loyal to the Jedi and the next second they're shooting at them.

I can't wait until this comes out on DVD so I can finally own all six films.

Lucas, for the most part, has redeemed himself.

[trekgeezer]

Hey Ash, he probably had them programmed from the beginning. He was after all responsible for creating them. Maybe some built in trigger or maybe they all had allegiance to the Republic, but not the Jedi.

I think Obi-Wan just assumed that Anakin was going to die, he was slipping into the lava as Obi-Wan left.  I think if Lucas had left out the one scene of Anakin basically burning alive, the movie would've been PG. Oh and I hope everyone noticed Obi-Wan picking up Anakin's light saber before he walked off.

It was pretty gruesome the way they just stuck some prosthetic limbs on him and slapped him in the suit without even treating his wounds or even cleaning him up. Man, he still had the melted clothing attached to him.

[Eirik]

The movie overall: Best of the new series, in my opinion.  Probably better than Episode VI too.  Tried to be more character-driven but still nowhere near ANH or ESB.  Special effects - the opening space battle in particular - were again the highlight.

The wrap-up: Way overplayed.  We didn't need to see every last thread from this episode to ANH connected right down to Tarkin, the construction of the Death Star, and Captain Antilles.  We would have gotten it without all that.  I also thought the ending scene with C3P0 was dumb...  but then again, I thought the very idea of having C3P0 or R2D2 in episodes I-III was staggeringly idiotic anyway.
 Overall, the long denoument made the movie seem like an homage to the first movie rather than an actual part of a coherent series (having Chewbacca in it also had this effect).  I hear that Lucas cut a scene with a young Han Solo on Naboo because that would have been "too much."  If only he dropped all the other stuff that was too much.

The acting: Hayden Christiansen was remarkably good as an insecure, squirming, reporter with a poor handle on the truth in a fact-based movie called "Broken Glass."  Unfortunately, I think he is real poorly cast as an elite Jedi knight with a tortured soul and a mean streak.  Reminds me more of a kid throwing a tantrum.  Natalie Portman really  looked like she was tired of these movies.  MacGregor was excellent, especially in the climactic confrontation.

The Wookiees: Did anyone else feel like the Wookiees were tacked on just so they could have Wookiees?  Totally irrelevant to the story, although maybe it could be an indication that Lucas is softening his hardline stand against re-releasing the 1978 Christmas Special?  We can only hope.

George Lucas's political awakening:  The hamfisted attempt at an allegory of the times was hamstrung by over-obviousness ("If you're not with us, you're against us" -- Darth Vader/George Bush) and a D-minus grasp of how the world works ("If we can just catch that madman hiding somewhere in a cave, the war will be over and peace will reign." -- Yoda/John Kerry).  Stick to escapism, Mr. Lucas.

Overall: I liked Episode III, but I'm glad that Lucas is done with Star Wars.  If he had made these first three movies back in the 1970s with the sensibilities he obviously had back then, they would have been much better I think, even with the diminished effects.  Whatever Lucas did between Jedi and Phantom Menace did not have an overwhelmingly positive impact on his ability to tell a good story.

[Eirik]

"Grevious was a cyborg. Obi-Wan clearley exposed his heart and lungs, that being the reason he targeted that area with the shock stick thingy they were using."

I got this...  but then how did he manage to survive in the cold vacuum of space outside his ship?  Not pointing this out as a weakness, just offering fodder for the geeks to enjoy explaining away.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Eirik,

You forgot Padme's line "So this is how liberty dies - with the sound of applause."

I agree 100% about the wookies being in the film just for there to be wookies in it.  The battle on the wookie planet did little for the storyline.

[Eirik]

"Also, throughout the years, I have always assumed that Vader was the baddest of bad, that he became Vader because of hatred and anger. Sure, that had a little to do with it but it seems more like he became Vader almost for a noble cause, to attempt to save the life of someone he loved"

I actually thought this was the best and truest thing about this movie - the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

[odinn7]

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS****



Eirik wrote:

> "Also, throughout the years, I have always assumed that Vader
> was the baddest of bad, that he became Vader because of hatred
> and anger. Sure, that had a little to do with it but it seems
> more like he became Vader almost for a noble cause, to attempt
> to save the life of someone he loved"
>
> I actually thought this was the best and truest thing about
> this movie - the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

Still, I say weak, the way it pertains to Vader. I understand what you're saying but it doesn't work for me.

You also brought up a good point that reminded me of something I didn't mention earlier. The ending where everything ties so nice and neat to ANH...Vader and the Emperor standing at the window looking out at the Death Star being made. Hmmm...I figure in ANH that Luke must be about 16 or 17 and in that one we see the Death Star as something new that was just finished. It took them that long to make it? Ok, you could argue that but then how long passed between ANH and RotJ? If you recall, there was a second Death Star that was nearing completeion and operational in that one. Did they somehow take 17 years to build the first but just pitched the second one together in a few years? Nitpicking, I know, but there was no need to show the Death Star at the end of this one.

[Eirik]

"You forgot Padme's line "So this is how liberty dies - with the sound of applause."

I actually thought that was a good line -- and the whole theme of tyrants using a crisis to consolidate power and destroy a democracy is very accurate.  My problem was the implication (by rather obvious analogies, two of which I pointed out) that that is somehow relevant to today's America.  I find that proposition laughable.

The overall message is not new to the series.  In Star Wars, Tarkin announces at the Death Star staff meeting that the Emperor has "dissolved the Senate and is using local governors to control the star systems."  Replace Senate with Reichstag and star systems with regions of Germany, and you have exactly what Hitler did in 1936 (or so... bad at dates).  In abstraction, it is a powerful message for a sci-fi movie to incorporate...  Laden with current partisan hyperbole, it is eye-rolling Hollywood silliness.

[Eirik]

Good point odinn7.  I find that an even more egregious "chronology-problem" is the fact that a 30-something Obiwan will become a 70-something Obiwan who can't remember R2D2 in those 17 or so years.

[AD]

More Movie Shouting Scenes...

VADER: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
KIRK: KAAAAHHHNNNNN!!!
ROCKY: ADDRRIANNN!!!!
JACK (from Titanic): I'M THEE KING OFF THEE WUUURRLLLDD!

etc....

[Scottie]

From Team America.....

Matt Damon: "Maaaat Daaaamon."

[Ozzymandias]

Don't forget Brando and "SSSTTTTTEEEEELLLLAAAAA!"