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

[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).