Miscommunications lead to the Dark Side

[karohemd]

Just as I was on my to Bar Hill to pick up robinbloke and the_mendicant, when my phone rang and twentypence was on telling me we were seeing Revenge of the Sith tonight so I made my excuses and turned around.
Was picked up by twentypence and autumn_storm who looked like a pirate.
We were nice and early so found good seats. Spent the wait til the trailers started chatting about their holiday on Mallorca and other things. Trailers didn't include Serenity :o( but Batman Begins looks good. Stealth, War of the Worlds and Fantastic Four are missable, Mr and Mrs Smith could be quite fun. No trailer for Sin City but that might have been because of the rating.

And then it started. First off, I liked it, despite the weak acting and some of the glaring canon inconsistencies. However, I also liked quite a few things.
As with Constantine, nice film, shame about the acting.

- it looked very good overall, a few dodgy CGI bits and the Emperor's latex mask was dodgy, too
- it was all very hacked up and didn't quite gel right. Lucas tried to cram far too much into it, less is often more
- I liked how certain visuals and, er, aurals(?) were slowly moving towards what they are in ANH but some things went a bit fast.
- Anakin's move to the Dark Side was far too quick, there should have been a longer period of learning and internal conflict. This is also connected to the quick transition to the Empire, see below.
- Christopher Lee was short changed again, rather short and weak exit for Dooku
- Padme died too early. Leia remembers her mother in RotJ. Luke doesn't although they are exactly the same age. This would have implied that Leia stayed with Padme on Alderaan (which makes sense)
- The blockade runner in ANH is Bail Organa's ship :o)
- "Nooooooooo!"
- Vader's armour was missing the breathing apparatus, the helmet and faceplate were in one piece. Obviously, the design could have been changed in the twentysomething years until ROTJ
- General Grievous: very odd thing. A droid with a human heart? Please!
- I'm still not sure if bouncing Yoda is cool or groanworthy. In EpII, he just eats Dooku's force lighting but Sidious can blast him without any resistance at first.
- Yoda and Mace Windu were the best acted characters. Ewan McGregor seemed to have given up and not bothered making more of the shit lines he got. A bit of a shame, really as he definitely had a few moments where the older Obi Wan came through.
- The fall of the Jedi. They face off alone against hundreds of battle droids and then it only takes a few clone troopers to shoot them and we all know what bad shots the troopers are. Where were their Jedi senses? OK, Conehead bloke had a bit of an army and heavy artillery against him and the one in the fighter was in the midst of a space battle but the others were killed by a few troopers each.
- The duels were generally very well done as were the visuals in general
- As bad as Hayden Christiansen was in delivering his lines, his evil stare from under his cowl was spot on.
- Similarly, the transition from old Republic to Empire. There's no way the Senate should have accepted Palpatine as Emperor wthout protest.
The last two were the weakest points, IMHO. We all know that it happened but it happened far too fast.
- The last shot of the Emperor and Vader watching the Death Star being built. The Death Star is just finished in ANH, it can't have taken that long. Also, where did Tarkin come from (assuming the hollow cheeked man was him)?

Now it has finally cooled down enough so I can sleep.

Comments

[akonken.livejournal.com]

Padme died too early. Leia remembers her mother in RotJ. Luke doesn't although they are exactly the same age. This would have implied that Leia stayed with Padme on Alderaan (which makes sense)

...Or she was talking about her foster mother.

I agreed with you mostly, except it wasn't a nice film. And I think the acting wasn't so bad. It's just really hard to deliver such crap lines with a straight face, no matter how good an actor you are. And Ewan McGregor's Alec Guiness impression still, well, impresses me. It's spooky.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Possibly.

Depends on what you consider being nice. I probably use it differently, not as "pleasant" but as "well done".

[akonken.livejournal.com]

Me too, and I still don't agree with you. :P

Although I will concede that it was more evocative of the originals than the previous two.

[sogoth.livejournal.com]

Leia remembers her mother in RotJ. Luke doesn't although they are exactly the same age. - which to me implies that her foster mother dies when she was young because at that point they don't know they are related so there's no reason to believe that they shared the same mother growing up.

General Grievous: very odd thing. A droid with a human heart? Please! - Grievous wasn't a droid, he was cyborg. His eyes and parts of his face were living flesh. The thing that got to me about him was the wheezing and coughing. If the heart was in the chest, where were the lungs that were obviously needed to cause those.

we all know what bad shots the troopers are - By the time ANH comes around most of the stormtroopers will be actual humans rather than clones given that they were policing the entire galaxy and even clones have to grow old.

There's no way the Senate should have accepted Palpatine as Emperor wthout protest - When he declared himself emperor most people still thought he was looking out for their best interests. I duobt they ever actually got to see his new face. Anyone that opposed him would have to face down the entire clone army as well. There's also a rather big 20 year gap between episodes 3 and 4... so who knows what happens in that time (other than the start of the rebellion that is)

The deathstar being built at the end could have been the experimental one built in the Maw installation, which was overseen by Tarkin before he became a grand moff (according to the books anyway). They can't have gotten it right first time.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

It's still not quite right. Clearly, Luke asks her about her real mother, both knew they were foster children at that point so there wouldn't be much point in asking.

That's another thing about Grievous that bugged me.

Senate: Hm, thinking about it, the Senate probably knew a lot less about what was really going on so could only go by the (false) information they were given.

Death Star: *nods* Or a shot sometime later down the line.

[eryx-uk.livejournal.com]

The whole background to General Grevious is in a couple of expanded universe novels and in the Clone Wars cartoon series.

I do agree that the film felt rushed but for me that was because it bounced around all over the place.

[chrisvenus]

Ooh... I'd be interested to see more of the originas of Greivous. Which novels was it in (I saw the clone wars stuff which explained the wheezing at least).

[eryx-uk.livejournal.com]

I'll try and find out the names again, and let you know.

[astatine210.livejournal.com]

Padme died too early. Leia remembers her mother in RotJ. Luke doesn't although they are exactly the same age. This would have implied that Leia stayed with Padme on Alderaan (which makes sense)

I thought that for a bit, but realised there's a plausible get-out for it: Leia's strong in The Force, and might have flashes of postcognition, especially if it's something she's concerned about (say, if she finds a brother she never knew she had, and is asked).

[ua-meruti.livejournal.com]

OK let's hope this posts this time.

The linking of visuals and sounds to ANH was brilliant I felt, right down to the Skywalker theme when Kenobi delivers the little (whinging) bundle of joy to Beru and Owen Lars.

Anakin's fall has been happening since EpII, he now has fear for his wife and their child, fear leads to the dark side. Sidious didn't corrupt him, he simply gave him a little push in the wrong direction.

Leia is more powerful in the Force than her brother, hence she can remember Padme. This I suspect is also why Leia was hidden with Bail Organa, and Luke was oh so brilliantly "hidden" with Anakin's step-brother (cause he'll never think of looking there will he).

Vader's headpiece was, from what I could tell, the same as it was in RotJ.

Bouncing Yoda (and indeed bouncing Sidious) was good, it reflects how someone who is an ultimate power in something like the Force would fight. I especially liked the slinging his lightsaber through a droid before casually calling it back and killing something else.

The Jedi fell because they were taken by surprise. Yoda had a warning because he sensed the other masters becoming one with the Force, and Kenobi was lucky.

The first Death Star took a while to construct, plus also there's nothing to necessarily suggest that the shot of the Emperor and Vader with Tarkin is straight after the fall of the Jedi.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Or the first time the fully developed Vader theme/Imperial March came on when Sidious made Anakin his new apprentice.

Yes, Anakin's fall was a longer process but he learned dark side powers like the choke rather quickly. They say the Dark Side is quicker and easier but that was within a couple of days or even less.
That wasn't worded properly in the original post, I admit.

In RotJ, Vader's mask is the helmet (i.e. the top bit with the shield in the back, then there's the face mask that hugs the whole skull and finally there's the breathing apparatus that covers the lower face from the lower lip down.
I just remembered something, in Ep V we see Vader's head from the back in his chamber, just before his helmet is put on and there's no wrap-around bit on the skull, just on the neck. It might well have been a later addition or just Lucas wanting to show off more stuff in ROTJ.
Anakin with his helmet off in ROTJ (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Anakinold.jpg)
Darth Vader helmet page that seems to prove the above (http://momentin.com/david/darthec/helmet.htm)

I especially liked the slinging his lightsaber through a droid
That was one of the most impressive Force uses in the whole film as a lightsabre switches off when it leaves the hand, meaning Yoda had to keep it activated by using the Force all the time.
His spinning and chucking of one of the senate seat things was cool, too.

Some of those Jedi were masters. They were in a war situation, all their senses should have been up.

*nods*
There were very early versions of Tie Fighters and the Star Destroyer, though.

[ua-meruti.livejournal.com]

OK yeah, he did learn the gooby powerz of the Dark Side a bit quick, maybe he got a load of XP for slaughtering younglings and thus went up a level.

I think when it comes to Vaders mask, you have to apply the "it's only a film" logic, and thus when they made the costume 30 years ago, they didn't have the same materials or budget available as they did this time. The chances of it being exactly the same is pretty slim. As for the bit covering the face, if it had gone right around the face, it would have been tricky to get the shot of the mask descending towards camera. It's artistic license, similar to that which allows Sidious to conveniently have two lightsabers, but doesn't go for the either handed advantage.

They were in a war situation, all their senses should have been up.
They would have been, but they would have been focused on the enemy. The point I think that was trying to be shown is that the Jedi were, in fact, prideful and thus effectively destroyed themselves. Thus they wouldn't have assumed that their well conditioned clone army would turn on them.

There were early TIE fighters, and also Palpy floats around in a Lambda class shuttle prototype.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, sometimes it's easier to explain things in films in game mechanics, isn't it? ;o)

*nods*

"Palpy"'s shuttle wasn't actually that much different to the one the rebels use on their way to Endor.

[ua-meruti.livejournal.com]

The shuttle that Palpy (and also Vader for that matter) used in RotJ is a Lambda class (Tyderian) shuttle. Though I suspect his one is a little bit souped up with a quicker hyperdrive, better shields and so forth. I think the one in EpIII is a prototype, probably made by the same company (which if memory serves was SFS - I know faaaarrr too much about Star Wars).

[akonken.livejournal.com]

I would like to point out that Vader could have been wounded or sick or something in the interim 20 years.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

That's another possibility.
In ROTJ, he has a nasty gash on the top of his head but no scar down his right eye so he might have had various injuries and operations.

Gods, we are anoraks...

[ua-meruti.livejournal.com]

Very true, he did after all get belted twice in the chest with a lightsaber in Empire.