Sith Talk
Just got back, and if I start typing my thoughts will come out somehow.
In general: Worked for me! The story basically just works ideawise, so even when they can't really put it across it didn't make everything fall apart. I remember spending a lot of PM and AOTC (when I wasn't falling asleep) just saying, huh? But here, even when I didn't think they quite managed to dramatize what the idea was, the idea itself made sense so I could go with that.
For instance, I liked the way "conquering death" was set up as a bad goal--this is, of course, something important to HP's villain too, but I thought this laid it out better. The problem wasn't wanting to conquer death but the way you go about it. Yoda isn't crazy when he tells Anakin he has to learn to let go of everything he fears to lose...he's maybe just Buddhist.:-) But yeah, I mean, it's just that Anakin is just living in fear and clinging to things that are going to disappear because they always do. Everyone dies, people age, people get sick. Obviously that doesn't mean you don't ever intervene--you try to cure the sick and protect people from danger. But the fear that you literally can't live without someone else, or that you can't face death at all...that's just going to make life impossible, imo.
Anakin's thoughts on that reminded me of Leia in ANH: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. That was Anakin all over there, tightening his grip on everyone until it all slipped through his fingers. Meanwhile Yoda announces he's discovered the key to immortality, the very thing Palpatine claimed you *couldn't* learn from a Jedi. It's like any myth, really, the hero always has to "die" in some way before they can move on to the next level. The hero of the Sith legend doesn't just die, he's murdered, and there's no hint that he lives on the way Obi-wan does.
Anakin was also always tightening his grip on the galaxy, wanting peace, order, control. (Or perhaps he just realized that an Evil Empire made for good movies and a messy Republic made for boring ones), which It's funny, because the whole first half of the movie is basically the story of a young man who's good in a fight but just really not very bright when it comes to politics--it's fitting Obi-wan claims to be leaving him to deal with exactly that early on. Unfortunately, Anakin is not the type of guy who just isn't interested in them. He's pulled into this conflict with both sides trying to use him and he's just not really bright enough to see what's going on. It's funny that he spends so much time showing off that Skywalker whine, wondering why he can't be made a Jedi Master when everything he does shows why he's not a Jedi Master--particularly not noticing how blatantly Palpatine flatters him to encourage his sulking against the Jedi. Sulking that he wasn't made a Jedi Master was just pure teenaged idiocy and impatience. Why should he consider it an insult? More importantly, why would he not understand why the Jedi would refuse him just because they didn't like Palpatine telling them what to do? Well, that sort of thing was what made Anakin work, really, that he was a very unsubtle thinker who wanted to do good, surrounded by subtle manipulators.
I didn't quite buy the actual moment of his turning. I liked it when he rejected Palpatine the first time and I could buy him as a confused Jedi who wanted to do the right thing but would later make a mistake. Having him get even more confused when Mace Windu wanted to kill Palpatine was probably a good idea. I guess the big problem was it was hard to really get behind his fears about Padme, because Padme was so not worth it. Like any one with ears, I found their love scenes close to unbearable. They seemed, at best, like two dippy teenagers who liked playing house and were too dumb to use birth control. So now Padme was chattering on about making a nursery while Anakin was all, "Shit, is this going to interfere with my band?"
The one good thing about this was it made it kind of cool that he thought she would die in childbirth. The funny thing about Anakin's visions of Padme was...didn't they just look like normal birth? Honestly, I thought he was just so clueless he mistakenly thought something was wrong when she was just in pain because she was pushing a human being out of her. But given out completely immature Anakin was, it sort of made sense that he'd see the pregnancy as something that would take Padme away from him. He didn't seem at all ready to really be a father, so it was almost like he preferred to go around slaughtering children out of some misguided sense of protectiveness rather than have to deal with the reality of children. Also I have to admit I'd probably prefer slaughtering children and clones on lava planets to having to suffer through another conversation at home with that dialogue.
Other random thoughts: Padme has ropes of pearls on her nightgown that wrap around her shoulders. Is she trying to make sure she never gets a good night's sleep?
I loved the way the movie tied into people from the OT, and while we couldn't get Baby!Han there was one moment I considered a shout out to him anyway. When Obi-wan shoots Grievous with the blaster I thought, "Ha! Hokey religions are no match for a good blaster by your side!" and Obi-wan grumbled, "So uncivilized!" That was Han's moment.
I've heard a lot of people wondering over Leia's line in ROTJ about remember her mother, but I've got no problem with the idea she's talking about Jimmy Smits' wife. She talks about her father more than once in the OT, meaning him.
You could see shades of Luke in Anakin in the whininess and the way he wanted respect, but I saw a lot of Leia in Anakin as well. Thank goodness she didn't take after her mother except for the hairdo, really. But it was kind of interesting the times I thought the two were similar, when I'd think about how Leia was so well-balanced by Han. A few "absolutely, your worship"s might have done Ani some good. This also makes Leia's first scene with Vader pretty awesome, the way she refers to Tarkin holding him on a leash. You could really get a sense of how things would be if Darth Vader had actually been raising teenaged Luke and Leia. Luke would whine a lot and stomp around; Leia would be constantly up in Dad's face, rebelling and staying out late.
R2D2 and Yoda kicked arse, obviosly. I'm so happy for R2--he's always probably been my favorite. I was a little disappointed in my audience, though. They just didn't react much. The only time there was a loud reaction was when Yoda made his badass entrance into the Emperor's chamber. There was a little audience gasp when R2 was kicked over as well.
The fun thing about Star Wars is the way it really just invites you to embrace the cheese, and that was totally on display here. Sometimes it's just really clunky, with Anakin saying, "From my pov, the Jedi are evil!" (I admit when I heard that line I imagined many HP fans hurrying out to build straw men claiming anybody who had a problem with anything a good guy in HP did was Just like Anakin OMG!111! Because it's so stupid to ever think the good guys could be wrong!!11) But anyway, there's times when you just had to go with it. Like when the final battles have the two combatants fighting on large visual symbols: Yoda and Palpatine fight in the senate chamber, and the seats of democracy fall. And Anakin dies because he thinks his speshul new powers can gain him the high ground, literally. Weeee!
Oh, and I didn't mind Anakin's force-choke of Padme, maybe because it seemed brief and like it was more for show than for hurting her. I was also not bothered by Obi-wan leaving Anakin behind at the end. Killing him would have seemed wrong--not just because then he couldn't come back for Episode IV, but just because I think it wouldn't come out right. I took it as Obi-wan having good reason to think he'd be dead very quickly.
Vader's final transformation was really good, I thought. Going back to the heavy-handed symbolism and cheese, why shouldn't we have those two "births" juxtaposed, with Vaders the more painful and unnatural? Also I liked the way James Earl Jones gave a performance very different from his performances in the other movies. He sounded more like Anakin--younger, more human, less confident.
I love Young!Owen and Baroo, though I can't for the life of me remember who they are exactly. We met them before, iirc, but I can't remember exactly who they're related to and how, besides Luke somehow.
Do you put in an order for the chair you want when you get on the council? Because everybody had their own special made-to-order. The person I saw it with suggested you only got to do this when you were a Jedi Master, and that this was why Anakin really turned to the Dark Side. Because he had to sit on a lumpy couch.
I agree with whoever suggested that maybe they should have been looking at Death Star plans at the end. Why does it take that long to build the thing, particularly when they build another one by ROTJ?
For that matter, that desert sun is not good for Obi-wan, is it? Only sixteen years after this he'll have gone from his 30s to his 70s or thereabouts!
So R2D2 didn't have his mind wiped? Did he ever tell Threepio anything about their past, or did he think it not a good idea?
This came up somewhere else and now that I've seen the movie I stand by my thought on it before: I like Obi-wan's saying he doesn't recall ever knowing a droid in ANH. Alec Guiness' reading definitely leaves room for the possibility that there's more to his reaction than just puzzlement.
Late addition: the murdering of the Jedi was really effective. I don't just mean the Younglings, but all of them.
Late addition 2: I forgot to mention this, but when it was said that the Dark Side of the force could create life, I thought that was supposed to explain Anakin's mysterious birth with no father. I have no idea if that's true or not, since the Emperor actually seemed to be working up to claiming he could save Padme, but that's what it made me think of. I had completely forgotten about that line from PM until I read a reference to it recently.
In general, I look forward to watching the OT again. This movie wasn't perfect, but there were enough things in it that worked that I can see it as being backstory for the other movies, and in ways that make them more interesting.
In general: Worked for me! The story basically just works ideawise, so even when they can't really put it across it didn't make everything fall apart. I remember spending a lot of PM and AOTC (when I wasn't falling asleep) just saying, huh? But here, even when I didn't think they quite managed to dramatize what the idea was, the idea itself made sense so I could go with that.
For instance, I liked the way "conquering death" was set up as a bad goal--this is, of course, something important to HP's villain too, but I thought this laid it out better. The problem wasn't wanting to conquer death but the way you go about it. Yoda isn't crazy when he tells Anakin he has to learn to let go of everything he fears to lose...he's maybe just Buddhist.:-) But yeah, I mean, it's just that Anakin is just living in fear and clinging to things that are going to disappear because they always do. Everyone dies, people age, people get sick. Obviously that doesn't mean you don't ever intervene--you try to cure the sick and protect people from danger. But the fear that you literally can't live without someone else, or that you can't face death at all...that's just going to make life impossible, imo.
Anakin's thoughts on that reminded me of Leia in ANH: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. That was Anakin all over there, tightening his grip on everyone until it all slipped through his fingers. Meanwhile Yoda announces he's discovered the key to immortality, the very thing Palpatine claimed you *couldn't* learn from a Jedi. It's like any myth, really, the hero always has to "die" in some way before they can move on to the next level. The hero of the Sith legend doesn't just die, he's murdered, and there's no hint that he lives on the way Obi-wan does.
Anakin was also always tightening his grip on the galaxy, wanting peace, order, control. (Or perhaps he just realized that an Evil Empire made for good movies and a messy Republic made for boring ones), which It's funny, because the whole first half of the movie is basically the story of a young man who's good in a fight but just really not very bright when it comes to politics--it's fitting Obi-wan claims to be leaving him to deal with exactly that early on. Unfortunately, Anakin is not the type of guy who just isn't interested in them. He's pulled into this conflict with both sides trying to use him and he's just not really bright enough to see what's going on. It's funny that he spends so much time showing off that Skywalker whine, wondering why he can't be made a Jedi Master when everything he does shows why he's not a Jedi Master--particularly not noticing how blatantly Palpatine flatters him to encourage his sulking against the Jedi. Sulking that he wasn't made a Jedi Master was just pure teenaged idiocy and impatience. Why should he consider it an insult? More importantly, why would he not understand why the Jedi would refuse him just because they didn't like Palpatine telling them what to do? Well, that sort of thing was what made Anakin work, really, that he was a very unsubtle thinker who wanted to do good, surrounded by subtle manipulators.
I didn't quite buy the actual moment of his turning. I liked it when he rejected Palpatine the first time and I could buy him as a confused Jedi who wanted to do the right thing but would later make a mistake. Having him get even more confused when Mace Windu wanted to kill Palpatine was probably a good idea. I guess the big problem was it was hard to really get behind his fears about Padme, because Padme was so not worth it. Like any one with ears, I found their love scenes close to unbearable. They seemed, at best, like two dippy teenagers who liked playing house and were too dumb to use birth control. So now Padme was chattering on about making a nursery while Anakin was all, "Shit, is this going to interfere with my band?"
The one good thing about this was it made it kind of cool that he thought she would die in childbirth. The funny thing about Anakin's visions of Padme was...didn't they just look like normal birth? Honestly, I thought he was just so clueless he mistakenly thought something was wrong when she was just in pain because she was pushing a human being out of her. But given out completely immature Anakin was, it sort of made sense that he'd see the pregnancy as something that would take Padme away from him. He didn't seem at all ready to really be a father, so it was almost like he preferred to go around slaughtering children out of some misguided sense of protectiveness rather than have to deal with the reality of children. Also I have to admit I'd probably prefer slaughtering children and clones on lava planets to having to suffer through another conversation at home with that dialogue.
Other random thoughts: Padme has ropes of pearls on her nightgown that wrap around her shoulders. Is she trying to make sure she never gets a good night's sleep?
I loved the way the movie tied into people from the OT, and while we couldn't get Baby!Han there was one moment I considered a shout out to him anyway. When Obi-wan shoots Grievous with the blaster I thought, "Ha! Hokey religions are no match for a good blaster by your side!" and Obi-wan grumbled, "So uncivilized!" That was Han's moment.
I've heard a lot of people wondering over Leia's line in ROTJ about remember her mother, but I've got no problem with the idea she's talking about Jimmy Smits' wife. She talks about her father more than once in the OT, meaning him.
You could see shades of Luke in Anakin in the whininess and the way he wanted respect, but I saw a lot of Leia in Anakin as well. Thank goodness she didn't take after her mother except for the hairdo, really. But it was kind of interesting the times I thought the two were similar, when I'd think about how Leia was so well-balanced by Han. A few "absolutely, your worship"s might have done Ani some good. This also makes Leia's first scene with Vader pretty awesome, the way she refers to Tarkin holding him on a leash. You could really get a sense of how things would be if Darth Vader had actually been raising teenaged Luke and Leia. Luke would whine a lot and stomp around; Leia would be constantly up in Dad's face, rebelling and staying out late.
R2D2 and Yoda kicked arse, obviosly. I'm so happy for R2--he's always probably been my favorite. I was a little disappointed in my audience, though. They just didn't react much. The only time there was a loud reaction was when Yoda made his badass entrance into the Emperor's chamber. There was a little audience gasp when R2 was kicked over as well.
The fun thing about Star Wars is the way it really just invites you to embrace the cheese, and that was totally on display here. Sometimes it's just really clunky, with Anakin saying, "From my pov, the Jedi are evil!" (I admit when I heard that line I imagined many HP fans hurrying out to build straw men claiming anybody who had a problem with anything a good guy in HP did was Just like Anakin OMG!111! Because it's so stupid to ever think the good guys could be wrong!!11) But anyway, there's times when you just had to go with it. Like when the final battles have the two combatants fighting on large visual symbols: Yoda and Palpatine fight in the senate chamber, and the seats of democracy fall. And Anakin dies because he thinks his speshul new powers can gain him the high ground, literally. Weeee!
Oh, and I didn't mind Anakin's force-choke of Padme, maybe because it seemed brief and like it was more for show than for hurting her. I was also not bothered by Obi-wan leaving Anakin behind at the end. Killing him would have seemed wrong--not just because then he couldn't come back for Episode IV, but just because I think it wouldn't come out right. I took it as Obi-wan having good reason to think he'd be dead very quickly.
Vader's final transformation was really good, I thought. Going back to the heavy-handed symbolism and cheese, why shouldn't we have those two "births" juxtaposed, with Vaders the more painful and unnatural? Also I liked the way James Earl Jones gave a performance very different from his performances in the other movies. He sounded more like Anakin--younger, more human, less confident.
I love Young!Owen and Baroo, though I can't for the life of me remember who they are exactly. We met them before, iirc, but I can't remember exactly who they're related to and how, besides Luke somehow.
Do you put in an order for the chair you want when you get on the council? Because everybody had their own special made-to-order. The person I saw it with suggested you only got to do this when you were a Jedi Master, and that this was why Anakin really turned to the Dark Side. Because he had to sit on a lumpy couch.
I agree with whoever suggested that maybe they should have been looking at Death Star plans at the end. Why does it take that long to build the thing, particularly when they build another one by ROTJ?
For that matter, that desert sun is not good for Obi-wan, is it? Only sixteen years after this he'll have gone from his 30s to his 70s or thereabouts!
So R2D2 didn't have his mind wiped? Did he ever tell Threepio anything about their past, or did he think it not a good idea?
This came up somewhere else and now that I've seen the movie I stand by my thought on it before: I like Obi-wan's saying he doesn't recall ever knowing a droid in ANH. Alec Guiness' reading definitely leaves room for the possibility that there's more to his reaction than just puzzlement.
Late addition: the murdering of the Jedi was really effective. I don't just mean the Younglings, but all of them.
Late addition 2: I forgot to mention this, but when it was said that the Dark Side of the force could create life, I thought that was supposed to explain Anakin's mysterious birth with no father. I have no idea if that's true or not, since the Emperor actually seemed to be working up to claiming he could save Padme, but that's what it made me think of. I had completely forgotten about that line from PM until I read a reference to it recently.
In general, I look forward to watching the OT again. This movie wasn't perfect, but there were enough things in it that worked that I can see it as being backstory for the other movies, and in ways that make them more interesting.