Rate Revenge of the Sith *SPOILERS*

[Captain Tagon]

Damn straight. I will say this though, Hayden Christensen is a good actor. Don't believe me, then go see "Shattered Glass".

::shrug::

Watching that movie was like watching whiney Anakin all over again. Then again, the real Stephen Glass isn't much better.

 

[stevelabny]

AMG and others, myself included, are well versed in the Star Wars... I see little reason to belittle our opinions.

i asked a question, that I still didnt get an answer to.

Before the prequels were released, did you really WANT (or even expect) Anakin to be a whiny brat as opposed to a cool bad guy? I still believe that the vast vast vast majority answers this question NO.

If you think my wording implies that if you DID want him to be a whiny brat that I'm belittling you... youre taking offense at things unsaid.

It wouldn't be belittling, it would be more like utter confusion or maybe some sympathy.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

i asked a question, that I still didnt get an answer to.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you a true answer to that question cause its not an honest question.

Do I have issues with what was on screen? Nope, did I think Anakin was whinny? No, it’s not the word I would use. (I would use headstrong and stubborn.) Do I have issues with Anakin falling because of love? NONE, why cause it was expected in my opinion. How did the ultimate movie villain redeem himself? Out of love.

Hardly a coincidence in my opinion.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Some wonderful moments, some excellent visuals, a good setup for Anakin's fall, and then a massively disappointingly thuddingly clunky script that provoked more unintentional laughs than tears in the theater when I saw it.

This is why I wait and go to matinees with normal people. The geek heavy early crowds laugh too easily and cry not easily enough. And believe it or not, whether the people around you are enjoying it or not is a powerful social cue that lets you know whether you should be enjoying it.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

i asked a question, that I still didnt get an answer to.

Before the prequels were released, did you really WANT (or even expect) Anakin to be a whiny brat as opposed to a cool bad guy?

Well, maybe you're not getting an answer because you're setting up a false dichotomy.

I expected neither of those things. Actually, I expected him to be a powerful, if somewhat sullen kid who Obi-wan arrogantly elected to train against Yoda's wishes. Luckily, I got something a whole lot more interesting than that rather pedestrian story.

Why would anyone expect him to start off as a cool villain? Aside from the fact that it would have made the decision to train him an obvious bad move instead of the iffy one it was, cool villains are not born, they are crafted by circumstance and high drama.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

...disappointing action sequences that involved a lot of baton-twirl routines and fast-cut edits and Anakin swinging his lightsaber at the place Obi Wan was ALREADY EFFING BLOCKING, TWICE.

And this is worse than the several times in tPM where Obi-wan noticeably waits for Maul's block to get into place before swinging?

I fail to understand how someone with martial arts training can prefer that fight to those in Revenge of the Sith. Ultimately, it come back to different strokes for different folks, as martial arts training is apparently telling the two of us very different things about the fights in question. But as you are fond of saying, that's OK.

Personally, I found only 1 moment in the fight that I really didn't like from a technical standpoint (though the whole thing was so fast that it was tough to spot glaring errors, and I'm happy to chalk up the kind of blocks you're complaining about to Obi-wan seeing the attack coming before Anakin launched it). I merely find myself wishing that there had been a bit more conversation between the combatants. The Yoda-Palpy duel was just fine with little conversation. After all, what do those two really have to say to each other after the initial trash talk? But I would have loved to see Obi-wan and Anakin really get into it emotionally. They knew each other Master and Apprentice and as brothers. Obi-wan could have thrown Anakins beliefs about democracy and love in his face, and followed that up with asking him if what he just did to Padme is the act of someone who truly loves her. Ideally, I would have liked to see Anakin's doubts about his course be the reason he lost the duel, not his arrogance about his abilities. But that's just a difference in perspective between me and Lucas, and doesn't really affect my enjoyment of the film as it stands. Now, if someone puts me in charge of a remake in about 20 years....

 

[takyris]

We don't have any equivalent style of combat though. The weightlessness of sabers, coupled with the fact that they can cut someone in half without much application of pressure, would make realistic saber battles mostly uninteresting, from a spectator's point of view.

With respect, I don't think this is exactly accurate. You seem to be implying that Lucas was trying for a hard-science look at how lightsabers would really work in a fight, which would be pretty silly for him to do after five earlier movies in which they were pretty obviously treated as swords that glowed and were light enough to make the cool fast swings possible.

I think Ep III actually had the first realistic use of sabers so far in all of Star Wars, which was when Anakin cut off Dooku's hands, and then later when Obi-wan similarly removed one of Grevious'. They're light, they're fast, and you don't need strength to use them to maximum effect.

I didn't mind either of those bits -- in fact, I quite enjoyed parts of the Obi-wan/Grievous fight and chuckled at the pragmatism of getting Grievous down to a reasonable number of lightsabers. Those scenes would also work well for me with movie-katanas, however (which are different from regular katanas in that they are infinitely sharp and can cut through anything if you swing correctly, even if you're not a muscled powerhouse).

So I can buy the objection to some of the choreography I guess (swinging at a defense that's already been raised and all), but if you really want to stake out that position why not go all the way and force the saber battles to be totally uninteresting? Realistically, you'd never see an exaggerated movement from a Jedi because they don't need to gather any momentum to do lethal damage, so a real saber fight wouldn't have anything in the way of broad swinging at all; it should stay mostly centered and consist of quick searching movements toward the other guy's hands.

Because that's silly, from a swashbuckling space opera standpoint. I don't want realistic saber fights. I want cinematic and exciting saber fights. As I said earlier:

I don't care about realism -- realism can go hang when I'm looking for swashbuckling adventure -- but I do care about plausible choreography. I don't care if you do lots of flashy twirls between attacks, provided that your attacks make sense -- and there were enough times when the attacks didn't make sense here that it irked me.

And:

But I do like cinematic fights. I loved the fights in "Pirates of the Caribbean", and I loved the the big Darth Maul/Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan fight in Ep1. Heck, it was awhile ago, so I might not like it today, but I even remember liking the fights in the Kevin Costner Robin-Hood movie. I don't remember thinking that the man was going to be a fighting legend, but I remember thinking that he really wanted to kill the bad guy.

I'm quite content to chalk it up to different strokes (and Canis, I only watched Ep1 once, and that was in a theater, so it's very possible that I'd be bothered by the things you mentioned, but I like it just fine in my memory ), but I did want to correct the misconception that what I wanted was realism and that thinking about the differences between lightsabers and ordinary movie-swords would make it better for me.

Realism is highly overrated in almost any action movie, and even more so in Star Wars.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Realism is highly overrated in almost any action movie, and even more so in Star Wars.

You can see why we might be confused, though, considering you did bring your martial arts training into it.

 

[Wayside]

With respect, I don't think this is exactly accurate. You seem to be implying that Lucas was trying for a hard-science look at how lightsabers would really work in a fight, which would be pretty silly for him to do after five earlier movies in which they were pretty obviously treated as swords that glowed and were light enough to make the cool fast swings possible.

Nono, I'm implying that the whole style of lightsabers doesn't work to begin with, so why get antsy over Obi-Wan swinging at the same spot he just attacked while Anakin's guard is still there? (I assume that's one of the shots you took issue with, in the final Obi-wan/Vader battle, where Obi-wan swings, Anakin deflects, Obi-Wan swings at the exact same place again, Anakin doesn't even move his saber.) My point was only that this could be explained in any number of ways consistent with lightsaber fighting in general and/or use of the force in lightsaber fighting. Although, it's interesting, now that you mention the earlier films, that the Obi-wan/Vader fight in Ep IV, which was the first lightsaber battle we were treated to, is, if memory serves, actually the most realistic of them all.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Although, it's interesting, now that you mention the earlier films, that the Obi-wan/Vader fight in Ep IV, which was the first lightsaber battle we were treated to, is, if memory serves, actually the most realistic of them all.

And how many people have commented on how boring that scene now?