Ep3 review thread SPOILERS

[Shroom Man 777]

So, DW, what's your overall rating of REVENGE OF THE SITH?

[Darth Wong]

So, DW, what's your overall rating of REVENGE OF THE SITH?

I don't like number ratings. It's hard to put a number on a subjective impression, and it's of questionable value to do so. I'll just say that I liked it with few reservations. The guy who said that it was better than the original 1977 Star Wars is on crack, but it's right up there with ANH and TESB in my book.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I have to agree that what makes this the more sinister and depressing film is the fact that this is where the tide turns. Anakin finally falls and loses that bright future he dreamt of back in Episode I and helped ignite the flames of oppression as Palpatine took control. While I still feel Palpatine had control in the situation with Mace Windu (even if he was being beaten by pure muscle, he knew it was going to end with Anakin making the choice he anticipated; brains and power = good), the dilemma that Anakin went through obviously takes its toll. Just look at how rejected and weak he seems when he is coronated. It's like he already knows he has taken that wrong turn and doomed civilisation, not just his own aspirations for a good life.

The rest is, as they say, history. I can't watch the OT the same now with finally knowing how the most feared symbol of Imperial might came to be. It feels... odd.

[fgalkin]

There is a gap of great magnitude between the Vader of the OT and the Vader of ROTS, mostly because the OT Vader did not have angst.

The OT Vader is not a young man any more. I would expect dramatic changes after 20 years as a crippled Sith Lord cyborg with every one of his boyhood dreams destroyed by his own hand.

True. Perhaps I was wrong to expect Vader acting like Vader.

Btw, I believe you have summarized my gripe with the Padme/Anakin romance better than I could:

I didn't have a problem with any of the Anakin/Padme romance dialogue in the movie. It's not as bad as the stuff we heard in AOTC, and in fact, it now sounds authentically like some of the cheesy things that real (as opposed to carefully script-written Hollywood) young couples say to each other. I'm sure glad no one ever recorded the sappy things I said to Rebecca in the early days.

That's exactly the point. What works for 2 people does not work for an audience.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Shroom Man 777]

I wasn't really asking for a number, more like "so what do you think?"

Oh, and, take that all you haters! DW thinks its right up there with ANH and TESB! And that's what I call UNLIMITED POWER!!! AHAHAHAHAHA!!!



Yeah, nearly a day after watching it and I'm still hyped. Goddam I'm going back to the theatre to watch it again!

(edit: This was addressed to Darth Wong, BTW)

[fgalkin]

I wasn't really asking for a number, more like "so what do you think?"

Oh, and, take that all you haters! DW thinks its right up there with ANH and TESB! And that's what I call UNLIMITED POWER!!! AHAHAHAHAHA!!!



Yeah, nearly a day after watching it and I'm still hyped. Goddam I'm going back to the theatre to watch it again!

(edit: This was addressed to Darth Wong, BTW)

My god, you're an authority-appealing fanwhore. How is DW's personal subjective opinion of the film better or worse than my own equally subjective opinion?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Vympel]

[*]The opening battle was not a let-down. However, I did not read the novel beforehand, so I was not expecting the giganto-battle from the novel. Rebecca read it, and she said that the battle took up the first third of the book and was greatly pared down for the movie, so this is presumably why Vympel felt let-down by it. I went in with no expectations, so I thought it was awesome.

The script had a much longer space battle sequence too- they cut that down as well (I skimmed the script prior to the movie, I didn't read it, scripts are hard to read).

[*]According to Rebecca, the novel indicated that Windu was the only Jedi (including Yoda) who could have actually defeated Palpatine. The reason was that he had developed the ability to use an enemy's Dark side attacks against him. This also tracks with the line from Anakin in AOTC: "As wise as Master Yoda and as powerful as Master Windu". Yoda may be the wizened sage, but Windu is clearly the muscle of the Jedi Order. I don't know why everyone keeps saying that Yoda must be much more powerful than Windu; there is not a shred of canon evidence to support that claim as far as I know. And the idea that Palpatine deliberately allowed all of this to happen (including the reflection of his own attack that obviously injured him as indicated by the heavy deformation of his face) really sounds like people are reaching like hell to exaggerate Palpatine's control of the situation. Besides, Rebecca said so, therefore it must be true.

Matt Stover wrote Shatterpoint, which is pretty much a Mace Windu story, so he draws heavily on that when talking about their duel in the novel- his lightsabre form, Vaapad, is elaborated on heavily. I don't know if I put it in my old novelization analysis page, but you should check it out anyway (shameless plug). You're right that I assume that Yoda is better than Mace Windu, but I really think that Palpatine could've put up a better fight than he did- the clincher was him giving up on the lightning and going on about how weak he was, etc- that was him faking it, without doubt. At the point he lost his sabre, that was probably Mace, but once he was down on the floor, and Anakin had arrived, Palpatine decided to beg and plead to get Anakin on side- he probably could've continued his lightning attack, but whether it would've worked is another issue.

[*]Even without any careful analysis, you can tell right away that the blockade runner looks wrong. That's really a damned shame; I was hoping that it would be one of those things where you have to carefully analyze it to pick out the flaws, but no, it just struck me right off the bat as looking wrong.[/quoe]

I know, they got it totally wrong, it just doesn't greatly resemble the OT ship. Really annoying.

[*]Too bad Obi-Wan considers blasters to be "uncivilized", because he's really good with them; no doubt thanks to the Force guiding his hand, his first shot went cleanly between Grievous' breast-plates. A Jedi Knight wielding a blaster and a Gungan-style hand-held personal shield would be an absolute killing machine. Of course, Jedi are already killing machines, but that setup strikes me as even more lethal. You would need heavy weapons to take him down.

Hadn't Obi-Wan pulled them open (with Force strength- novelization) prior to that?

[*]On some level, Palpatine actually had a point about the Jedi. Mace Windu said that Palpatine was "under arrest", but he obviously had no intention of handing him over to the court system and giving him due process (see his later dialogue when he said that Palpatine controls the Senate and the courts, so he would have to kill him now). Windu clearly intended to decide for himself who should lead the Republic; what was he planning to arrest Palpatine for? Did he have any evidence of Palpatine doing anything whatsoever? He didn't have a shred, except for Anakin telling him that Palpatine knew how to use the Dark Side of the Force. Was he going to arrest him for using the Dark Side of the Force? The Jedi were arrogant; they were the nominal leaders of the military and clearly felt that they were in a position to override the will of the Senate (and by extension, the will of the people) if their code instructed them to.

They freely talked about taking over the Senate in the transition. That really clinched it for me, the Jedi had lost their way.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Shroom, you're coming off somewhat sycophantic. Knock it off. The discussion of the film and hearing of other opinions is what we're doing, not raising one above others and touting it as the definitive answer to all the critics.

Vympel: Yes, Obi-Wan had opened up the plates around Gen. Grievous' chest prior to finding the blaster and, well, blasting him.

[Shroom Man 777]

I was just joking around man. And like I said, I still feel very frickin' hyper after watching it.

EDIT:

Okay Vald, okay. Okay...breathe....breathe...phew. Okay.

EDIT2:

Yeah, I think I'm going to go sleep now.

EDIT3:

And I'm sorry guys if I got to your nerves, with my spaz attack and all.

[Darth Wong]

True. Perhaps I was wrong to expect Vader acting like Vader.

I don't know why anyone would expect young Vader to act like old Vader.

Btw, I believe you have summarized my gripe with the Padme/Anakin romance better than I could:

I didn't have a problem with any of the Anakin/Padme romance dialogue in the movie. It's not as bad as the stuff we heard in AOTC, and in fact, it now sounds authentically like some of the cheesy things that real (as opposed to carefully script-written Hollywood) young couples say to each other. I'm sure glad no one ever recorded the sappy things I said to Rebecca in the early days.

That's exactly the point. What works for 2 people does not work for an audience.

That's because the audience is conditioned by Hollywood's grossly unrealistic bullshit to think that it's somehow realistic. So when they see something that looks different, they say "nobody talks like that!" even if people do.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh and before I go off, did anyone else but me think that Grevious' (who was pretty 'meh' aside from being all flashy and eye candy) death was downright funky? I mean, a couple of blaster shots to his organs and he was...vapourized! What the hell was up with that (not that it wasn't cool)?

[Admiral Valdemar]

It almost seems like psychological blockage. You subconciously know you've probably said stuff like that before, but can't accept that a movie character who's meant to be Hannibal Lecter nasty would say it too, so ignore it.

[Darth Wong]

It almost seems like psychological blockage. You subconciously know you've probably said stuff like that before, but can't accept that a movie character who's meant to be Hannibal Lecter nasty would say it too, so ignore it.

I liken it to a parallel reality. There is real reality, and then there is Hollywood "reality". In Hollywood "reality", there are certain conventions that we have come to accept even though they have nothing to do with reality. For example, in Hollywood, if you hit a car in the gas tank, it will explode. If it doesn't, you wonder why not. In Hollywood, nobody ever trips over his own words or goes back and restarts a bungled sentence unless he's a social misfit or mentally challenged in some way. In Hollywood, teenagers speak like adults rather than real teenagers. Hell, they often look like adults rather than real teenagers. This may have something to do with the fact that the actors and writers are adults rather than teenagers.

[fgalkin]

I wasn't saying it's not realistic, I'm saying its not entertaining. There is a difference.

As for Vader, I guess I have become accustomed to seeing him as this awesome symbol of the Empire, and the epitome of being a villain. Anakin-Vader did not meet my expectations, so I'm a little disappointed about that.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Darth Wong]

I wasn't saying it's not realistic, I'm saying its not entertaining. There is a difference.

Considering how short the romance dialogue sequences in question were, I can't believe you would have a gripe with them simply because they weren't "entertaining" enough.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I liken it to a parallel reality. There is real reality, and then there is Hollywood "reality". In Hollywood "reality", there are certain conventions that we have come to accept even though they have nothing to do with reality. For example, in Hollywood, if you hit a car in the gas tank, it will explode. If it doesn't, you wonder why not. In Hollywood, nobody ever trips over his own words or goes back and restarts a bungled sentence unless he's a social misfit or mentally challenged in some way. In Hollywood, teenagers speak like adults rather than real teenagers. Hell, they often look like adults rather than real teenagers. This may have something to do with the fact that the actors and writers are adults rather than teenagers.

This is why the majority of mass produced Hollywood garbage is... garbage. Independent films can often have that realistic edge or rarely you may get a screenplay and director/producer combo in Hollywood that somehow turns out a film that comes off as realistic.

The problems do come from the audience expecting too much too though. If we went for reality and not the stuff The Last Action Hero parodies, then female stars wouldn't all be sexy as fuck for instance. I guess you just have to compromise some aspects and suspend disbelief with others. Though I do prefer real science at least in movies meant to be realistic.

In anycase, the romance in RotS wasn't a) hammed up, or b) overly long and tedious.

[Firefox]

The "she's lost the will to live" is probably tied with "NOOOOO!" as the only annoying aspects of RotS. It just didn't seem right to me, that she would be fine, physically, but to die for some other reason? Come on. At least say Vader's force choke involved some manipulation of her internal organs, and that she suffered internal hemorrhaging of some sort.

And I agree that the space battle was not a letdown, but then again, I haven't read the novelization or script. Watching capships slagging each other and burning in the background was pretty good as it was.

[fgalkin]

I wasn't saying it's not realistic, I'm saying its not entertaining. There is a difference.

Considering how short the romance dialogue sequences in question were, I can't believe you would have a gripe with them simply because they weren't "entertaining" enough.

Considering that the Padme/Anakin subplot took up what seemed like a third or more of the movie, yeah, I have a gripe with them. They fucked up the pacing of the movie and they took up time that could be spent on better stuff, like the birth of the Rebellion. Hell, they could have extended ther battle of Kashyyk. There were Wookiees fighting Droids, yet there were no arms ripped off! WTF?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Noble Ire]

I wasn't saying it's not realistic, I'm saying its not entertaining. There is a difference.

Considering how short the romance dialogue sequences in question were, I can't believe you would have a gripe with them simply because they weren't "entertaining" enough.

Considering that the Padme/Anakin subplot took up what seemed like a third or more of the movie, yeah, I have a gripe with them. They fucked up the pacing of the movie and they took up time that could be spent on better stuff, like the birth of the Rebellion. Hell, they could have extended ther battle of Kashyyk. There were Wookiees fighting Droids, yet there were no arms ripped off! WTF?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Well, I would agree with you save that the Padme/Anakin scenes are, you know, kinda important to the plot.

[Admiral Valdemar]

If the opening had been like the fanfilms you see on SB.com, then some would be very pleased at being able to see a full match between the great ships of the line then and their foes. But that would be dull because it wouldn't really pace well as it adds nothing (the opening flyby supposedly by Spielberg shows you how bad this snatch and run mission was) and would simply be a wankfest for those that love seeing how amazingly powerful these ships are in comparison to other vessels in other series. If you sacrifice plot for eye candy, you've started making a Michael Bay film and that's never a good thing.

[Vympel]

In terms of the spacebattle, it was the fact that even though I was resigned to not seeing the level of capship slugfest I was hoping for (the ones that were there were all good, naturally) they didn't even have Obi-Wan and Anakin doing anything. The only thing they did of consequence in the battle was dodge some missiles and play silly buggers with buzz droids. Just a handful of shots of them fragging enemy fighters would've made it so much better.

It was awesome, but I was letdown by the length. Once I realized that hey, they're about to land, I was thinking "what?! thats it?! MORE!!!".

[Darth Wong]

Considering that the Padme/Anakin subplot took up what seemed like a third or more of the movie, yeah, I have a gripe with them. They fucked up the pacing of the movie and they took up time that could be spent on better stuff, like the birth of the Rebellion. Hell, they could have extended ther battle of Kashyyk. There were Wookiees fighting Droids, yet there were no arms ripped off! WTF?

The entire Padme/Anakin subplot is considerably larger and more important than the "romance dialogue" parts I was talking about. Don't change the subject.

[McNum]

I was pleasantly surprised at the movie. One thing I noticed was that the shot from the opening crawl and to the next cut was very, very long. I almost wish they would have made the entire approach to the Invisible Hand without any cuts, but that might have been hard.

The battle through the Invisible Hand was kind of good. The droid voices felt a bit off, but still very nice. Someone should teach those droids that melee range is a bad idea against two Jedi, though. Dooku was decent, although a minute more of saberfighting and trashtalking might have been good. The escape and emergency landing was pretty decent and a good way of starting the movie with a bang.

Anakin and Padme were... tolerable. If the movie had been about the romance alone it would have been a bad romance movie, but there was just enough to set the tone... and set Anakin up for the fall. The whole game of politics and plot-exposition was ok. It's not great, but it's needed.

Obi-Wan and Grievous was a decent fight. I had expected a little more of Grivous though since he did beat 5 Jedi at once in the cartoon. And Obi-Wan is an excellent shot with a blaster. Kind of a gruesome death for Grievous. At least at the time it seemed gruesome.

Palpatine and the arrest... Palpatine is a sly little villain, isn't he? I like it. Palpatine basically stole much of the show from here on out. Mace was a little.. well... arrogant. "Don't come along Anakin, we're only gonna arrest the closest thing you ever had to a father." And he expects Anakin to stay away? At least he could have had him tag along so he could have kept an eye on him. And then it happens. Anakin turns. I found it beliveable enough. He just helped kill a Jedi Master and Palpatine is he only one he thinks can save Padme.

The purge was ugly... in the good way. The younling scene was brutal. Not in what it showed, but in what it didn't show. Even though you hear a lightsaber turn on several times in the movie... That one time it sounded so evil. Thumbs up to the sound designer for that one. When Vader went on to kill the seperatists I think he sold Vader. I could see traces of OT Vader slowly building up in him.

The formation of the Empire was a good scene. And Padme had her very best line there. But I could swear she said "This is how liberty dies..." instead of democracy.

And then they fight. Well after a few not too bad, but not great scenes between Vader and Padme. Obi-Wan could have gotten out of that ship in a less obvious way, though. The fighting was decent and I found myself hummin the music from there on the way home, so it must have been fitting. Yoda and Palpatine was a good fight, too. Scarily enough it was almost like THEY were the comic relief during the Duel. Oh... and props to the sound designer again for Yoda's nails on senate pod sound. Ouch...

Anyway I like how Obi-Wan and Vader kept fighting no matter what. Even dangling off a tower in lava they took swings at eachother. Perfect. And Anakin loses, despite Obi-Wan's warning that the battle was over. And then I learned that Grievous didn't die in a grusome way compared to what happens to Vader, except Vader survived.

The childbirth/operation intercutting was good and it was nice to see the inside of the helmet. And Vader's first question was about Padme... The whole reason he fell to the darkside, and she's dead by his own anger. No wonder Vader seems so bitter in the OT. He hates himself for what he did. Isn't that what you'd call... angst?

The wrap up was good. And the binary sunset was the perfect way to end it.

Also, who installed that new attitude in R2? I mean he was a wiseass before, but in this move... I did like the oil+thruster move, though. And they say droids aren't creative... Apparently R2 thinks it's funny when other droids get mindwiped, too. The little punk.

The main thing about the movie, however, is that it changed my view of the OT. Especially Vader. I'm probably gonna be lynched for saying this... but on the way home in the bus I was half asleep and I saw some of the OT Vader scnes... with Hayden doing them unmasked. And they worked in my mind. Why the heck would I see that if he didn't deliver a good line between Ep 2 Anakin and Ep 4 Vader? And the redeption scene makes a lot more sense now. He failed to save his family once, now he gets a second chance. Naturally Vader is going to take it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

In terms of the spacebattle, it was the fact that even though I was resigned to not seeing the level of capship slugfest I was hoping for (the ones that were there were all good, naturally) they didn't even have Obi-Wan and Anakin doing anything. The only thing they did of consequence in the battle was dodge some missiles and play silly buggers with buzz droids. Just a handful of shots of them fragging enemy fighters would've made it so much better.

It was awesome, but I was letdown by the length. Once I realized that hey, they're about to land, I was thinking "what?! thats it?! MORE!!!".

We all know Vym that it could've been two solid hours of Hornblower in space and you'd still be begging for more after it was over.

[Firefox]

It was awesome, but I was letdown by the length. Once I realized that hey, they're about to land, I was thinking "what?! thats it?! MORE!!!".

Anakin seemed to agree with your sentiment. "But I wanna help Oddball out!"