Hopefully you all get something out of this departure from my normal haunts at N&P.
Edi
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The Jedi Order & the Sith
The Jedi Order struck me as wrong already in TPM. That impression only strengthened with AOTC, and that trend continued with ROTS. In the original trilogy the Jedi were held up as paragons of virtue and we were given an impression of a noble institution whose members were heroes. In ROTS, this vision is revealed as not much more than a gilded outer shell covering a nest of corruption within.
The whole basis of the Order's teachings seems unnatural. The Jedi are required to give up all outside attachments. They are taught to suppress all natural human behavior, in many ways almost required to strangle their humanity into a rigid mold that allows only duty and obedience. Feelings and emotions are seen as bad, things to be excised and denied for the most part, unless you are supposed to use them as intuition. The key wrong, in my opinion, is the focus on suppression and denial instead of teaching coping and acceptance. It's impossible to deal with anything unless you can first accept the fact that it is there and won't go away by itself. Only then can the problem be solved. Perhaps it is for this reason that they only accept very young children into the Order, because they need the younglings to be malleable, unformed by previous experience so that they can be better indoctrinated and that difficult questions need not be answered.
The Sith, now they seem the exact opposite of this according to dialogue and also from what we see of Palpatine and Anakin once he turns to the Dark Side. They derive their strength from their passion, but in large part it seems that their approach lacks control. They give passion completely free rein, so much so that they fail to see almost anything that does not coincide with what they want to see, unless they make a great effort to do so. They can be fearsomely powerful in pursuit of that passion, but it leaves them open to weakness and prevents them from seeing things as other than black or white, success or failure.
One wonders what the Jedi could do if they fully took their own advice about using their feelings in the context of not doing harm without simultaneously trying to suppress themselves to emotional cripples as they are taught to do...
We are not shown that many of the rank and file Jedi, but if the leadership is any indication, the whole organization was simply waiting for the death blow to fall. It has already been pointed out how Mace Windu displays a great hunger for more power, or at least a desire to retain power. He also never admits the possibility that his course of action may not be the most optimal. This is seen in AOTC as well, when Yoda uses the younglings to chastise Obi-Wan in finding Kamino and makes a very barbed remark about overconfidence to Obi-Wan and Mace Windu. Ki-Adi-Mundi is not quite as bad as Windu, but not far from it either. It was his suggestion to take over the Senate to stop Palpatine, something Windu immediately jumped at.
Windu's assistants, the ones Palpatine kills, reminded me more of Gestapo goons than the storm troopers and clones ever did, and the whole showdown between Palpatine and Windu is more like two Dark Lords of the Sith fighting over who is the master than a confrontation between a Jedi and a Sith. Palpatine tells Anakin to choose, and I got the impression that it was a choice of who should rule. Windu's arrogant dismissal and distrust of Anakin at every turn cost him his life. "If this information is right, then you will have earned my trust!" After years of service to the order, this is the extent of Windu's regard?
Throughout the prequel trilogy, the only ones who really live up to the image of the Jedi presented in the original trilogy are Qui-Gon Jinn, Yoda and Obi-Wan. They do not suppress their emotions and feelings, but accept them and deal with the consequences. They aren't afraid to question what is happening, to themselves and to those around them, and even in this, Obi-Wan displays obvious signs of being influenced by the general indoctrination of the Order. In TPM Qui-Gon has what amounts to a riproaring falling out with the rest of the Jedi Council save Yoda over Anakin, and subsequently it seems that all but Yoda and Obi-Wan hold to their preordained conclusions and simply wait for Anakin to slip up so that they can say "I told you so".
Another interesting point is the revelation of Qui-Gon being the discoverer of the ghost immortality seen in the original trilogy. It takes someone widely regarded as a maverick within the Jedi Order to reach this new height, and probably because he did not let himself be constrained by doctrine. Even Yoda, with over 800 years of experience in the force and in training Jedi, did not know this. Or if he did, he said nothing to the rest of the Council, which would be a pretty damning indictment of their integrity in itself.
In light of the Jedi Order's decay, Dooku is an even more interesting character than before. The circumstances of his becoming Palpatine's apprentice are unclear and not shown to us, but he was Qui-Gon's teacher and quite probably shared similar independence of mind that eventually led to a falling out with the Order. With the benefit of both long Jedi training and access to the Sith powers under Palpatine's tutelage, he seems in many ways more like a Jedi than many of the Council members, because he is not limited by their narrow mindedness. This is also the obvious reason for why Palpatine wants to be rid of him. Despite having less raw power than Anakin, he is too wise and too dangerous and not amenable to being a string puppet.
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Obi-Wan, Anakin, Vader & Luke
I didn't think of it much on first viewing, but the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan on Mustafar struck me as very poignant and significant, especially in light of the Bespin duel between Luke and Vader over twenty years later. Anakin loses at Mustafar and Obi-Wan leaves him for dead after a duel that runs the length of the installation with Anakin in single-minded pursuit.
Fast forward to Bespin, where Vader is in the same position as Obi-Wan at Mustafar. The Bespin duel is, aside from the setting, an almost complete replay of Mustafar. Luke pursues Vader who finally wins and leaves him for dead. It is as if Vader is not fighting Luke, but trying to defeat Obi-Wan, to justify to himself that he was right all those years ago and that he chose correctly in going to the Dark Side. It is ironic that Vader's mannerisms and behavior are so like Obi-Wan's on Bespin.
In this context, the Bespin duel also bears some resemblance to the Geonosis duel against Dooku, with Vader in Dooku's position and Luke standing in for the young Anakin.
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The Mustafar Moon
These comments are inspired by the contirbutions of Alyrium Denryle and Haminal10 on Mike's ROTS Reactions page. The comment about Mustafar's mineral richness is mostly what set my musings off.
When Anakin goes to Mustafar, we see that the volcanic body is merely the moon of a much larger body that is visible on the background. The massive, seemingly unnatural volcanism could be explained by severe tidal stresses caused by the big planet and possible other bodies in the Mustafar system (e.g. other moons of the same planet). The system is probably rather young, with the moon in such a volatile state. The volcanic activity induced by the tidal forces would probably pull mineral rich fragments up out of the core of the moon, which is supported by the levitating mining droids fishing out large chunks of solid matter from the middle of the molten, very liquid lava stream. Such richly concentrated material would require less processing before becoming finished product, and the environment on Mustafar is also very conducive to smelting it on the spot. Further, the place is so uninhabitable that you can simply stripmine the moon without an adverse impact on anyone. This would justify the cost of the facilities.
