Revenge of the Sith *spoilers*

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At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi, at last we will have Revenge!

Woot! Enjoy your midnight screening Sir Bel, and any others who are going. I'll see it tommorow night.

 

I have seen it, and it was almost as good as Return of the Jedi, which was the worst of the OT.

 

I have no words. Wow.

It was pretty awesome!!! Everything came together, Lucas linked present to past and it was wonderful!!!!

I can't believe I've seen the last Star Wars movie...I'd put this one even with Empire in terms of coolness.

 

Despite better judgement, I'm going to trust Bel's review over the others *bounces*

Heh - there was a news thingy on how it would give children nightmares or something - cool

 

It's definitely violent. There were a couple of instances during Anakin's turn to the Dark Side where I said "damn, that's cold!" I was shocked.

I'm also getting a little annoyed with how critics always seem to fall back on the wooden acting criticism. I didn't find the acting to be wooden at all - except for maybe Jimi Smits.

In the theater last night, the person sitting next to me said the live action television show Lucas wants to make will supposedly take place in the years between "Sith" and "ANH" I think that may be confirmed because of something Yoda says near the very end of the film. I won't spoil it - you'll know when you hear it.

I'm seeing it again tonight, and I still can't wait!!!!

 

Ok, Big B, you may have had more right than I have given you credit for. I dont agree with all of your blissful praise but after seeing Revenge of the Sith I have seen for myself that Lucas does indeed tie up most if not all knots.

As for darkness, well, I who love dark movies and dark stories in general found it a bit uncomfortable at times. No comic relief, no light, no nothing. Just the implosion of a society and a man. Revenge of the Sith delivered everything I had hoped it would since I first heard these three movies were being made.

There were a few things I thought were not completely right but compared to the big picture they are inconsequential.

 

One day later, all I can (still) say is: oh my...

Twenty-eight years, and it was worth the wait.

Can't wait until Monday when I go with my gaming group to see it.

As for the "kids getting nightmares" thing, my 9-year old daughter saw it with me and she slept really well last night.

 

I'll be seeing it in 9 hours time. First time I have been to a movie in over 12 months. The wife and I are making a rare venture to the cinema and going to make a bit night out of it.

 

It's good, but far from perfect. Am I the only one to miss H.Ford form OT ? Noone in this trilogy acts even half as well...

@Sir Belisarius - it's not wooden acting...in fact it's no acting at all...Obi-Wan is simply ridiculous, especially at later stages.

But it's still good film, with few great moments, order 66 anyone ?

 

Well, he essentially took a medieval morality play and set it in outer space. Almost every device is a cliché, which doesn't seem to bother either the creators or the fans of this rickety old series. Despite the failures of his last two attempts, Lucas has done for sci-fi what Tolkien did for fantasy adventure. And that's still a good thing, IMO. But I would still take Tolkien any day over anything Lucas has cranked out. But then I prefer fantasy adventure over sci-fi anyway. Hell, I haven't even picked up a sci-fi novel in ten years.

 

I don't see the point in highlighting the odd imperfections in these films, because there are no perfect films.

The Star Wars movies rock. Can't wait. 6 hours to go.....

 

And so it ends. I’ve had a full 24 hours to digest Return of the Sith now. Here’s what I think. The best way for me to express it in some sort of rating right now is to compare it to the other SW movies. Overall, the Star Wars loving side of me likes it for the most part, and sees me growing to love it better over time and after initial shock wears off. The movie loving side of me raises my eyebrows at a quite a few times, but it is still enjoyable, if you like action movies. I can say for certain now, that Empire Strikes Back is my most favorite SW movie. It has secured the throne. And this might make you think I’m looney, but I really do like The Phantom Menace (minus a three real annoying Jar Jar moments, I have no qualms about what’s in TPM) as the second best SW movie, and I don’t think that’s going to change. AOTC, ROTS, ANH, and ROTJ are all tied for third (because I could never bring myself to label a SW movie as the worst). Instead with those four, I look at which parts of the movies I like best and which I don’t. Because for those four, they all have segments I really like and segments I’m not as hyped about, whereas TPM (again minus a few blips here and there) is more consistently favorable to me, and ESB is the king of SW with very little that I don’t geek out about every time I watch it. So, back to ROTS, what parts did I like and what parts was I not so geeked out about? And what just absolutely floored me?

Spoiler warning!:

The intensity of two scenes floored my semi-spoiled self because I never imagined they would be as intense as they were. The first was Mace redirecting Palps’ lightning back at him and the actual length of time their stand-off occurred was mind-blowing. I never would have guessed that was how Palps turned ugly. I had always assumed it was a gradual dark side poisoning. Then when I knew his face would change in ROTS, I still thought it would be like Palps had been holding it in all this time, like severely burying his dark side secrets into himself every time he was anywhere near a Jedi and finally he was going to let it all out and as a result it would contort his face as if a sudden pressure had been released. But it was not that way at all. I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised to see that it was a combination of Palps actually trying to save his own @$$, or put on the biggest helpless act of all time, and Mace being strong and focused enough to redirect his lightning, and finally with Anakin’s excruciatingly long indecision about who to help. That was actually a really good idea. And I don’t believe the nonsense about it seeming that Anakin made his decision too join the dark side to quick...a) because that was an intense scene and it made it seem like it was taking him forever to decide who he would help and b) TPM, AOTC, and the beginning of ROTS all do their part in showing that Anakin is primed and ready to turn to the dark side, he only needs a shove, and the shove comes in this scene. And I do have to say that up to now I had always thought of the Emperor as the shiz bad guy of all time. There was nothing to hate about him, or at least the hate against him was diluted by Luke and Anakin’s victory over him. But now, after his actions in ROTS, and especially during this scene with Anakin and Mace, I can’t help but hate him personally. And I mean downright hate him. Don’t get me wrong, I still like him as a character in these movies, but it is different now. I feel he will be a character that most people will love to hate.

The second, and even more intense scene, was Obi-Wan’s defeat of Anakin in the duel. Or did Anakin defeat himself? I’ve got to see this again. One second Anakin’s still floating on some kind of hover droid over the lava and Obi-Wan has “the higher ground”. And it all happened so fast (like so much of this movie, more on that later) and the next thing I knew Anakin had all of his limbs but his one arm cut off and was literally sliding through the dirt, slowly into the lava. I mean hot #$!@. I know we all knew Anakin would “fall into lava” during his fight with Obi-Wan. We didn’t know he would actually slide down into it with only his torso, head, and one arm, screaming at Obi-Wan, and gripping pitifully at the dirt as his “body” slid into lava, erupting in flames. I mean, that was INSANE! I never would have thought Lucas would ever make something that intense. Man, anyone who balked at George for making TPM “too kiddie”, better start eating crow like there’s no tomorrow. Whew, I’m still shocked. That’s all I can say.

OK, so that is what shocked/floored me, ever more than another “I am your father” revelation could. Under a chronological viewing, Lucas may have taken that mystery away from ESB (which does not hurt it all, that’s how great that movie is, in fact, I think it enhances it within the context of the saga), but at least he replaced it with those things above. And now for some good stuff. The opening space battle was great, but the true stars were R2 and Palps. They had me laughing and rolling. R2 and his comlink escapades. R2's failed attempt to save Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palps from Greivous’ battle droid round-up. And even, Palps was cracking me up. Watch him when Anakin and Obi-Wan are trying to get him to safety after Dooku is killed, and the Invisible Hand is blowing apart and crashing. His performance is wickedly humorous if you catch it. Here he is, a powerful Sith Lord, pretending to be falling all over the place and scared out of his wits, as he acts like a politician who is entirely out of his element. I mean, his act is flawless and it’s lmao hilarious too if you know the truth. That was probably my favorite thing about Palp’s character in this one.

OK, so now I’ll talk about something I did not like in the opening space battle. Voices. Specifically, the battle droids and the one Neomoidian on the bridge of the Invisible Hand. What the heck? Where are the classic battle droid voices? Why were they changed? A pox on all you battle droid voice haters! Lucas actually caved in to your whining and changed their voices for this one. It’s horrible. They sound pathetic! Lol, ok seriously. I am a bit upset over the voice change, but I was joking about that pox business, so calm down, ok? And then there is that one Neomoidian who also has a “cooler” more “normal” voice. Pah! I like it when they talk in bad Chinese accents. That’s classic Star Wars cheese! Too many vocal lactose intolerant fans I suppose. Grumble, grumble. One more voice thing: Greivous. I won’t say I hate his voice, but it’s definitely going to take some getting used to.

Anyways, the best part of the space battle: the crash landing of the Invisible Hand, with Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palps at the helm. Just think how differently the galaxy would have been had they failed to land that ship? That was great, I loved it. Now, something I didn’t really care for were the buzz droids, the little things that tore the ships apart. The idea is cool, but the design was a little too silly even for my TPM loving tastes. The rest of the battle I am neutral on. IMO, all the SW space battles have their ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses, and they all balance out. No single one is better than the other. They are diverse, and yet all good, and each one has their place in the saga.

Then the movie slows down, but not really. Always on the move, Obi-Wan says, and so true in this episode of SW. There is no respite. There is no breather. Wipes are used like craZy in this one. There are so many quick edits. Part of me thinks this is cool and leads to the floor is falling out from under you and there is nothing you can do about it feeling which is very appropriate for a movie like ROTS, yet at the same time there were a few scenes that would have benefitted from a slower transition to the next. They end in such a chopped off way, that make some of the slow dialogue scenes seem flat, pointless, or irrelevant as what has just been said has no time to sink in. I don’t have specific examples, I’ve only seen it once, but I know there were several scene transitions like this in the second quarter of the movie, and I think the editing should have been chilled just a tad in a few places.

Now’s a good time to talk about Anakin and Padme romance scenes. If you’ll remember I had no problems with the romance scenes in AOTC and explained many reasons why in my after the movie review. And I have no problems with their romance scenes in this one, save for one. Finally I have found a romance scene between the two that I will give you Anakin and Padme romance dissenters some credit for. A scene that can be complained about with merit, and that would be the second Anakin and Padme scene in ROTS, the one where she is combing her curly hair on the top of what I assume is her own personal skyscraper on Coruscant and Anakin leans on the balcony grinning like a sex crazed hound dog at her. I’ll give you credit when you say that Anakin’s lines to her in this scene are spoiled bologna with cheese. I mean he tell’s her she is beautiful and my gosh, for the first time in one of these SW movies, Padme does not look beautiful. I don’t know if it was the lighting, or the curly hair, her costume, or what. But she did not look beautiful. And during a strange pause in the dialogue, I was thinking in my head. Don’t call her beautiful Anakin, say something better. Something that will reveal your character more or drive the plot further, but what did he do? Call her beautiful. And that was it. That was about the gist of the scene. I’m voting it the most pointless scene in the prequels, possible the entire saga ever. At least the futility of C-3PO and R2 wandering in the desert and splitting up, only to both be caught by the same Jawas, in back to back scenes, had some thematic merit as it is cool to muse about the Death Star plans being handled by Jawas in the middle of a desert on a remote planet in the Outer Rim. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, or is it one man’s treasure is another man’s different kind of treasure. Anyways, back to ROTS...I’ll try to look for it in subsequent viewings, but this scene did not seem to have much merit, and should have something more important to say, or be edited out. The rest of the Anakin and Padme romance scenes were on par with what you can expect from SW and were just fine.

The other common prequel complaint that I will finally have to concede to (but only for ROTS! Don’t get cocky kid) is the overuse of CGI. Specifically, during the space battle, the design of the aforementioned buzz droids, and something else, that I honestly cannot recall right now. There was too much to remember, but there was some other aspect of the space battle that was pushing it. The other main overuse of CGI came on Utapu with all that business between Obi-Wan and Grievous. That chase where Obi-Wan rides the lizard (it’s called the Boga) and sets off after Grievous’ wheel bike was probably the most flat SW action sequence ever. It was not built up enough. Oh sure it looked cool, but there was little story merit for it. At least the awesome (IMHO) droid factory conveyor belt scene from AOTC may have looked like a video game, but it had numerous thematic points told through action and was beautiful. But this Boga, wheelbike, and Obi-Wan’s encounter with General Greivous on Utapu in general were the lowest of lows as far as meaningful action in the saga. I’ll explain more on my problems with Utapu and Greivous in the next reply. This one is getting so long, I got to rest up before I can finish all I need and want to say. But I will end on a positive note. The greatest special effect in this movie, was not an overloaded movie frame of droid mayhem or leaping lizards up mountain sides for no apparent reason, but the glass window that shatters in Palp’s headquarters on Coruscant during his fight with Mace. It was awesome, simple, yet effective. It harkened back to something you would see in the originals. It was simply great. Surprising and enjoyable. Sometimes the most simple things can be the most vocal.

Well, like I said. There is tons more to say. Now that the saga is complete I think it is fair to criticize the prequels and their sequels to complete capacity, because now there is no more final puzzle piece we are waiting on to fall into place. Now that the cards are all laid out on the table, you can look at the big picture and fairly criticize. There is no more jumping the gun now. In this light it may seem like all the sudden I am less praising of the prequels and more critical. And in one sense that is true. Up to now, I gave Lucas the benefit of the doubt, he had not laid all his cards on the table. But now that he has, all is fair game. I think he has done a good job. And I do like ROTS both as a SW movie and as a movie in general, but more so as a SW movie. But now I can look back at the whole saga and see that while it is good, it is not perfect. I’ll elaborate more on that and some more on ROTS in my next reply.

Until then, May the Force be with you and make sure you watch a SW movie this weekend. Any one, just pick one. Even if you aren’t hip with these prequels, the least you could do is pull out the originals and give them a run.

 

The moment I found strongest in the movie was when Bail Organa arrives at the Jedi temple while it is under attack and we see a young padawan, cant be over 14, run through the clone troops cutting them down until he himself is blasted to pieces. I find that scene outright uncomfortable, I was afraid that Lucas wouldnt have the guts to show us uncomfortable things but he did not save on the despair but uses bucketfuls of it. The whole Jedi extermination sequence was more disturbing and better than I would have ever dared to hope.

Big B, yoiu brought up my main criticism, Anakin's turning. To me it felt like he resisted, he resisted, he resisted all he could, while still moving towards the darkside but slowly and a long way to go when we come to the window scene. The jump from turning Palpatine in as a sith and to killing younglings is a bit too sharp for me. Not that I want him less evil at that point more that I would ahve wanted him more evil before that point. As I have said, minor point and it works decent enough as it is.

I also wonder why you have droids fiddle with things on a ship if you have got them, why fight astro droids and not just blow up? I also wonder why droids communicate with each other with sound at all, especially the battle droids, droids of the same army ought to have a joint computer network, same as to why druids press buttons on a ship, cant they command it through the system directly? If the can build robots to drive a ship couldnt they have built such a robot mind into th ship in the first place? Small stupid things but which I pondered during the first part of the movie.

I also wonder if Obi Wan used hair wax or gel

Anyone ponder the connections between Palpatine and the victor Viktor in Ukraine? Palpatine's mask look like crap without the hood.

 

This contains spoliers, so if you don't want to be spoiled, DO NOT READ FURTHER...
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My two favorite scenes were probably the quietest:

1) When Palps tells Anakin the story of Darth Plagus the Wise, and he smiles when he says Plagus' apprentice killed him in his sleep - YOU CAN TELL PALPS WAS THE APPRENTICE THAT KILLED HIM!!

2) When Anakin is in the Council Chamber at the Temple waiting for Mace and Padme is in her apartment. No words, but the scene is powerful, he's fighting internally about whether to save Palps or remain loyal to the Jedi - Padme looks oout to the Temple and you can tell she feels the conflict - Powerful stuff!

Other things I liked:

Mace almost turns to the Dark Side - He moves to strike an unarmed Palps down with his blade and Anakin blocks him...Bittersweet. He saves Mace from succumbing to the Dark Side and betrays the Jedi order in one move!!!

Artoo is awesome!!

Obi-Wan's foolhardy arrogance...He truly was one of the greatest Jedi warriors...You can say what you want, I thought Ewan nailed his role this time!

I'll stop here...I think this one is my favorite, or at least tied with Star Wars (ANH) as my number 1!!!

 

I never thought of the Palpatine vs. Mace scene like that. Mace didn't redirect anything there as far as I'm concerned, the lightsaber can in fact hold back the lightning, Obi-Wan did that in AoTC as well. As has been said in the Expanded Universe as well as some comics, the dark side of the force corrupts its user. What we can understand from here is that the use of force normally doesn't do that, no matter which side of the force it was. It's when you draw too much of it. Palpatine gave it all who could, it was the last thing he could do or face certain death at the hands of the Jedi. He poured in every ounce of his mental and physical power to buy a few more seconds, and as a result his body and health was drained to fuel the force.

I agree that the time does make the memories golden however. To me, at first, this was the best of the first 3 movies (as in SW 1-3, not talking about the order in which they were produced here), but not better than any of the last 3. Now after a little while, this is very much starting to seem equal to the 3 classic first SW films. I went to see it at 9 in the morning so it's no wonder I wasn't exactly focused or as perked up as I should have been.

The most disturbing things to me were the overabundance of pure action and effects. SW3 is much like Matrix in a SW world, really. The force that was a mystical and preserved power in SW 4-6, something that was used sparingly and seemed to be more difficult to handle, was completely Elminsterized here. I mean the level of the force was brought up even in 1-2, but in RoTS it's like taken out of a game. Palpatine is laughing and not even really bothering to wave his hands while throwing huge blocks at Yoda that must weigh several tons each by the looks of those things. Obi-Wan is smacked around in a manner that reminds me of how easy it was to kill the Dark Jedi in JA2, where you could just Grip 3 them above you and Force Push 3 them 100 meters up in the air so they'd fall down and be crushed instantly, effectively saving you the bother of using any lightsaber at all. To put it bluntly, SW 3's main problem was that it was not as much about Star Wars, the universe and what's happening there, as it was about showing off how 1337 roxxorz the Jedi are with their über force. R2 also was a real Jet Li compared to the slow, helpless box that he was in 4-6. He just swoops and races around, catching objects from mid-air and doing zapper melee with enemies, burning up several droids at a time etc. Since when did R2 become a multi-purpose combat-droid anyway? Modern, everything just too modern.

It's not that all that was necessarily bad, it just doesn't fit in to the continuity in my opinion. The Luke that swung his sword like a heavy crowbar and didn't use any additional force powers at all (save Jump in EsB) seems like a poor match for these guys indeed.

Although I too am glad that pretty much all of the "holes" were filled in here making a perfect end to the first 3 leading to AnH, even they left me with something lacking. As if they were forced in somehow. Like Padmé just somehow losing her will to live and refusing to react to the super-advanced medical technology they have available. How the naming of Leia and Luke came so quickly and bluntly as if the director was in a hurry somewhere else. How Obi-Wan obviously saw Leia's birth even though he was surprised when Yoda told him of her later in EsB (well ok, no-one ever said Obi-Wan didn't know that... it could well be that he just didn't understand who Yoda was referring to at the time, though that seems out of place to me).

I'm very tired and a wee bit sick today so this is all just a stream of consciousness once again. My conclusion: SW 3 was a good movie. All 6 of them were very good, and this was right there on the better side of the average. But for some reason I just had to ask myself "is that it?" after the movie. Somehow it covered too much of what I already knew, and did too little anything surprising or new. Perhaps the reason is that I was expecting to see the actions of Darth Vader, he was supposed to hunt the Jedi afterall. Sadly, there is none of that. There is just the birth of Darth Vader, and that dark era that follows is still left in the darkness. And now I know that unless the SW series Lucas is developing shed more light on all that, I will never see the 20 years of rule of the Emperor and Darth Vader in particular, that I was always looking so forward to.

 

I think the "Elminsterized" use of the Force was needed because Master's of both the Dark Side and the Light Side were using it, they were the last of old school Force knowledge.

When ANH comes around, Vader is whittled down to a machine...An battered shell of his former self taking orders from that fossil Tarkin, Yoda and Kenobi are in exile and can't use the Force as much because it will reveal them to the Emperor. Which leaves Luke...A whiny boy with no true knowledge of the Force and the power he can posess.

Think about it. In AotC, Yoda is teaching 5 year olds to reflect blaster fire while blind folded, and they never missed! Luke was 20 when he learned the same technique from Obi-Wan and he could barely do it...It's like going from the Renaissance to the Dark Ages, a grand society lost...and all its secrets and knoiwledge with it.

The other thing I liked about RotS is the parallels to the political climate in America today. I sometimes feel the Great Experiment in Democracy has fallen to an Empire built on Capitalism and Marketing. As Padme says..."This is how Democracy ends - with Thunderous Applause."

I think it's happening here right now. Individual freedoms are being whittled away and more laws regualting behavior are put on the books...Uh oh! I just made this an Alley thread - I'll stop now!

May the Force Be With You!

 

That's just it, I don't believe it works like that. In the end with that force wave it's made very apparent that Anakin isn't significantly weakened even being part machine. Even the emperor goes down the shaft like some clumsy old fool when Vader simply picks him up and throws him down. Yoda clearly has to concentrate when he pulls the X-Wing up from the swamp in ESB, far more than in any of these 3 first films.

Furthermore, SW lore claims that Darth Vader is one of the most powerful Sith there have been for quite some time. He single-handedly hunted down and slaughtered tens if not hundreds of Jedi. He was every bit a master in the use of force.

In fact, the only thing supporting that thought is the midichlorian theory, which basically tells us that the more machine there is in a body, the less "flesh" there is to house the midichlorians. Meaning that a cyborg would indeed be far less attuned to the force. But considering all the other evidence - the least of which is not the fact that all franchises are victims to this modernization, and this overflowing increase in the power of the force was easily predicted even before SW 1 came out -, I personally don't give too much credibility to that idea. Especially since R2-D2 followed the same pattern, and there is certainly no excuse as to why he would be so much more clumsier in the future.

But I do agree with that the political aspect was good. Even if it was clearly leading to just that many years back when the first part came out (it would hardly have been logical for one person to capture the control of an entire galaxy without gaining its support first), when none of this Bush garbage was still apparent.

In any case, it's a great movie.. no doubt about it. Definitely Star Wars, not just some stupid ripoff. They all were.

 

Wow - Big B - that's a long post.

Anyway, saw it last night and loved it. The destruction of the Jedi was pretty powerful stuff.

Yoda rules.

I see we finally got the explanation of how come no Jedi before Obi Wan ever seemed to be able to talk from beyond the grave.

Only thing that was still never resolved in my mind: how come Yoda thinks that Tatooine could possibly be the best place to hide Luke - given Anakin's attachment to the planet. Oh well, it worked, I suppose.

Lightsabres rule.

 

Absolutely brilliant - I didn't think that George Lucas would have it in him to make such a powerful dark movie. Total downward spiral without any likeable characters winning out - very, very oomphy.

With the excessive Force thing - I think it fits it perfectly (even if it is just a product of modernisation). Here we have a golden age, the original trilogy is a dark age - even if it makes no logical sense (and let's face it: Star Wars is not about making logical sense, it's about being dramatic) it totally fits in with the atmosphere of the thing for them to be able to do this stuff.

The erradication of the Jedi was ... amazing. Actually - I think this whole movie was amazing. Very, very Star Wars, regardless of it being inconsistant with whatever else. If I start nit-picking it, I know I'll start to dislike it over things which really don't matter. Anyone who doesn't see this is missing out on something brilliant. Anyone who nit-picks it to bits is also missing out on something brilliant.

 

I was surprised at how the Jedi were wiped out. Obi-wan tells Luke that Darth Vader hunted down and killed the Jedi, but really it was Palpatine's clones who did most of the hunting down.

Time to watch A New Hope again, I think.