Well...we jammed three hours into our very busy weekend to see Episode III on Saturday night (after 16 hours at work).
I really need to see it one more time to be sure...but as of now, I have to say...it's the only movie of this trilogy that I walked out of with the same feeling as any of the first three. Anything that can keep me riveted after being up for 20 hours straight is a good thing. I'm glad George got it together for the "last" one...but it might have been nice to add a bit more of the action packed feel of ROTS to the first two episodes.
Spoiler alert! don't read this if you ain't seen it!!!
Good things:
Battle droid fight scenes were actually humorous...almost like playing Lego Star Wars (which BTW, is the coolest all-ages game ever!).
Hayden as Anakin: Finally got some motivation (though the "love" scenes are still painfully wooden).
3P0: Got a refit, not so many stupid pun lines, refers to Anakin as "the Maker", and we learn why he doesn't know Anakin & Obi-Wan in Ep IV-VI ...he gets a memory wipe order at the end of the movie...to which R2 actually laughs (or seems to).
Count Dooku: Chris Lee has gobs of screen presence, but the look on his face when Palpatine tells Anakin to off him is priceless.
Mace Windu: Was actually going to off Palpatine before Anakin showed up!
Palpatine: Actually seemed more evil BEFORE he's scarred by his own (reflected by Mace Windu) Sith lightning...or so I thought... until he told Vader it was his own fault for Padme's death. The added electronic manipulation of his post-scarring voice seemed unnecessary.
Anakin/Vader..again (before the mask): That so short a time after converting to the dark side that he would "force choke" the very person he went to the dark side for...and giving the same "We'll rule the galaxy together" line he gave Luke. Offing "the younglings" made for some scary stuff (fortunately daughter #2 fell asleep before this part).
Vader...after the mask: James Earl Jones Scream of "NooOOOooOOOooo" sounds more than a little bit like Luke's in "Empire".
Obi-Wan: Ewan looks more and more like Alec Guinness each movie, he was perfect in this movie...clearly the best actor in the cast (along with Chris Lee). You actually feel he likes Anakin now, and the feeling seems mutual (until Anakins ravings later that is). Gets the coolest ride of the movie (I can't even describe it...you'll have to see the flick). Does some kick-ass fighting, and of course makes it possible so that Vader can never produce Sith Lightning (not to mention leaving Vader for dead). The look of utter shock and abandonment on his face after he takes that action is entirely convincing.
Clones: The shots with the clones all having the same face were pretty darn good, gave some emotion and feeling to faceless masks. I chuckled inside every time someone said "Commander Cody".
We all knew that they would become the Storm Troopers... but that they were sleeper agents activated by "order 66" was pretty good, especially as they had the trust of most of the Jedi...of whom they were about to off.
I had always wondered how the Jedi were eliminated...I envisioned (before Episode II) that the clones might be of the Jedi and would off them with Anakins help...but Anakin exterminating the Jedi's future and the Clones offing the Jedi was actually more feasible.
Battle scenes: Exciting and even more jam packed than TOT...and none of them over long and boring like in Ep I & II
Not so good things:
I'm undecided on this first one...Was the Yoda/Palpatine battle really needed? It was good, but it seemed to take away from the cross cut battle with Obi-Wan and Vader.
Padme: Looks physically worse as the movie goes on (but strangely, when she's actually fading, she looks better). Never really convinces me that she has any feelings for Anakin until the scene on the birthing table when she utters a line Luke will repeat: "There is still good in him, I can feel it".
umm...why did NO ONE know she was having twins...until she had them? Didn't have the tech????
Not enough of the Wookie homeworld...and who would be convinced that those little Wookie dragonfly fighters could do any damage to the droid army.
8 comments:
"Exciting and even more jam packed than TOT"
What's TOT?
I agree with you in a lot of places, except for two things you listed as "good things". I thought the things Anakin was willing to do so soon after his conversion was a little unbelievable... I guess the real problem was with the one scene where Anakin turns, where I didn't see enough of why and it seemed a little sudden, so naturally the things he does afterward seem a touch out of place. And the "Noooooooo" I thought was the absolute worst line in the movie (including the love scene dialogue). Sooo cheesy and bad...
And I think the biggest problem with Padme was that in the first movie wasn't she this young queen who ruled armies and did all that good stuff? Now, all of a sudden she's passive and completely dependent on Anakin, who by the way is like 10 years younger than her. That didn't add up for me.
Besides that, I thought it was a swell movie! And I agree with pretty much everything else you said...
And yeah...TOT?
I agree with jgordner on Padme...she seems like a completely different person from who she was in Phantom Menace; and not necessarily in a good way.
Oh well. Sith was a great movie despite that.
The Original Trilogy
http://ux4484.blogspot.com/2005/05/star-wars-stuffthe-original-trilogy.html
About Padme being different...she was and the only way I can explain it is that love makes people do strange things. The only problem I had is that they NEVER made Anakin likable. In episode II Lucas tried too hard to show that Anakin was a stuck up twit. Noone likes a stuck up twit. I think the prequels would have been much more powerful if in Episode 2 and the beginning of 3, Anakin was liked and respected and acted like an upstanding Jedi.
Just having him slaughter the Sand People would have been enough to show he had a darker side. And it would have set up his fall in Ep III just fine. There was just no reason for anyone to ever like Anakin in the movies.
I have a feeling also that by Ep IV, not all Storm Troopers (or possibly any for that matter) were clones. The reason I think this is that the clones from the Clone Wars would have been reaching their early to mid 40s by Episode 4. It would have been too easy for the Rebels to sabatogue the Imperial military by getting in a successful attack on the cloning facilities. With the Jedi out of the way, conscripts would have worked fine for Storm Troopers. And as we saw, most of the senate was very excited about Palpatine's rule. Convincing people to sign up would probably have been easy.
I do think the Yoda fight was important to see. Otherwise people'd always wonder why Yoda went into hiding and didn't try and kill Palpatine himself.
I wonder about a few things though.
Did Palpatine create Anakin? He did say that his master knew the secret of creating life by altering midichlorians. I think its possible Palpatine created Anakin. He did create the events that resulted in Anakin's discovery. I think its possible that he created him and unwittingly created the very thing that would fulfill the prophecy. Just noone quite realized what the prophecy would entail.
The other thing I wondered was if all the Jedi really were killed. Obi Wan changed the homing signal at the Jedi Temple into a warning beacon. I'd say its possible that at least a few Jedi survived and went into hiding like Obi Wan and Yoda. Not really important for the movie, but made me wonder.
I think the Storm Troopers are clones because control is programmed in to them (as "order 66" indicates). Consider Leia's comment to Luke in IV: "You're a little short for a Storm Trooper!" Also, we had been watching the other movies slowly in the weeks building up to the release. The Storm troopers all have the same voice in EP IV-VI (though it's not quite the same as the Jango Clones in ROTS).
As far as Anakin being likable...like you say...it's annoying and maybe almost irrelevent...but for a different reason; his acting is so bad in E-II. Clearly there is some believable camaraderie and trust between Obi-Wan and Anakin compared to the last movie (not to mention nicely tied in with Cartoon Network's "Clone Wars").
As for Padme being different...I think this is really Georges fault. If he'd have let the actors run with the parts like in TOT, he might have ended up with quite a different dynamic. Love changes people, but usually for the better...not (as Jon points out) the meeker.
The NoooOOOooo: Many reviews and fans though Luke's NoooOOOooo in "Empire" was cheesy too...that they sounded alike to me seemed a good thing.
Many reviewers though Luke was whiny too at the time, but compared to Anakins whining, Luke sounds like Duke Nukem
Once Anakin cut Mace's arm off, the die was cast, he knew (or felt he knew) he had nowhere to turn, and decided: in for a penny/in for a pound. That he did so much evil so quickly made the conversion (I think) more believable. And what was with Palpatine yelling "Touch me Anakin"...yet Anakin never did?
It's not too important if all the Jedi were killed off or not, just that Yoda, Obi-Wan, Luke, & Leia survived. What was crushed was their infrastructure and credibility...which clearly did the job.
As far as Palpatine creating Anakin...Who knows? Lucas hinting at another preqel storyline this week could mean anything.
sorry...I kept on leaving out the last "t"'s in Thought...
That the Storm Troopers sound different from the prequels means nothing really...suspension of disbelief in that case ;) It is possible or likely that they were all clones. But hard to say.
As for teh Jedi surviving or not..no, its not that important. Just random thoughts.
These things are all important if you play the Star Wars RPG afterall!
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