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 AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, the choice to make Anakin young and Jar Jar portrayed as a Roger Rabbit-like toon was an obvious marketing decision, it was to get a new generation of kids into Star Wars merchandise. It wasn't for the story.

That doesn't mean the product didn't suffer for it as a result.

I love some of these "How I'd fix it." posts. There are so many works of fiction that fall just short because of 1 or 2 mistakes made during the writing or production. Seeing how people would rectify those mistakes in different ways is always fascinating.

Something that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread a lot is Revenge of the Sith. What are peoples thoughts on it? It was always my favorite once I stopped being blinded by my childhood love for the battle of Geonosis in clone wars. Where do you guys feel that one went wrong?

II and III were definitely hampered by the time wasting I.

Did we need to see snotnosed Anakin? Not really.

Would it have made his fall better if it wasn't basically Mum issues? Possibly.

But however you spin it, it definitely wasted a lot of time.

balmong7 wrote:

Something that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread a lot is Revenge of the Sith. What are peoples thoughts on it? It was always my favorite once I stopped being blinded by my childhood love for the battle of Geonosis in clone wars. Where do you guys feel that one went wrong?

I actually watched RotS the other day for the first time since I binged all 6 before TFA released. I ended up coining a new word to describe it, because man, my feelings towards that film are complicated...

It's... Terri-brilliant. It's not 'so bad it's good', because so much of it is genuinely amazing without that qualifier. It's not the good and bad cancelling out to just make it 'meh' (to pick a recent example, that's how I feel about Crimes of Grindlewald). It's not amazing film, and it's not a dreadful film, but it's somehow both.

In some ways, it's the most Star Wars Star Wars has ever been. The writing reaches almost pseudo-Shakespearean at times and reaches levels of melodrama that totally befit the story's status as essentially a mythology for the modern age. Some of the cinematography is genuinely breathtaking, like the opening space battle, the Order 66 scene, the wide-angle shots in the Mustafar scenes. The score is maybe the best Williams has ever composed.

Everything that's great about it is kind of summed up in this shot:


Two wizards fighting with laser swords in an erupting volcanic flow while they shout their feelings at each other over one of the most rousing pieces of music in the franchise... Doesn't get much more bombastic, melodramatic, over-the-top and ludicrous than that, nor more stirring, because that's what Star Wars is at its best: unfettered imagination let loose, not really paying heed to any semblance of reality or reason because, as I mentioned before, it's a myth, and those don't need to be constrained by such petty things.

If Athena can be born by splitting Zeus's skull from the inside, or Thor can cross into the world on a rainbow bridge, or Ra can chase the sun across the sky with a dung beetle, two good-as-brothers Jedi can cross lightsabers in a volcano as one becomes utter and irredeemable evil and the other pure selfless good. They can yell their emotions in nonsensical sentences in the middle of this fight and just tell the audience what they feel about the nature of good or evil or power or love because this isn't a really screenplay, it's a legend.

Sure, that's not to everyone's taste, and I'm grateful that the new and original films have given us movies that genuinely function as screenplays and more nuanced narratives, but it's when they hit this almost Biblical level of bombast that the prequels are at their best, and RotS does this far better than the other two.

On the flip side, though, you have the attempts to make this all seem real and natural, and those are the bum notes to the rousing chorus that is the film at its best. The attempt to inject political manoeuvring or pseudo-international relations or espionage or even military strategy into this just clangs so harshly against the parts where the film isn't pretending to make any sort of sense. Things like Obi-wan's mission to kill Grievous because that'll end the war so Palpatine can get emergency powers so he can turn the Republic into an Empire then send Anakin to kill the people he was playing the whole time are the antithesis of the basis of Star Wars as a grand drama of good versus evil.

All that shuffling of politics and strategy and power dynamics and an attempt to be 'realistic' is so jarring in a story that is essentially 'Good Knights are fooled by the Evil Wizard and cannot stop him from taking over the Kingdom'. It's not even that it doesn't work conceptually, there's plenty of room for a political drama in this narrative, but I wish it had been more Macbeth and less House of Cards. Much like the central conflict of good and evil, this secondary battle doesn't need to bow to realism, and in its attempt to do so it just makes itself needlessly convoluted and actually leads to it making less sense. Accept that it's all made-up nonsense politics and people will just go with it like they did with the Empire, but try and pretend that it actually functions as a society with power structures and extensive laws and checks and balances and all that and it all becomes totally unconvincing.


Where this all intersects, and for me the most disappointing part of the film, is Anakin's turn. The film takes its time to establish a really simple, clear, motive for Anakin to turn to the Dark Side: The woman he loves will die, and through the Dark Side Palapatine offers him a chance to stop this. Show us that Anakin's love for Padme is even more powerful than his love for the Republic and its ideals, and you have the perfect fall for this type of film. Simple, believable, and running on emotional drama rather than any semblance of realism...

But then you have Palpatine mutter to Anakin that the Jedi are attempting a coup, and Windu essentially proving this by refusing to let him stand trial, and suddenly there's a whole other, dissonant motive that makes far less sense. Anakin literally just told Windu that Palpatine was the Sith Lord, he knows this isn't a takeover attempt, Hell, he wants to be on that mission. He steps over the body of 3 dead Jedi to get there, and watches Palpatine annihilate Windu with evil magic... At that point, the film wants us to believe that he's turning not just for selfish ends but because of some greater loyalty to the Republic and thus objection to the Jedi's role in trying to remove the chancellor, except that's just not believable.

"Man does evil thing for selfish and overwhelming love" is far more plausible and dramatic a narrative than "Man does evil thing for selfish and overwhelming love but also because of a mission to assassinate the ruler that he literally just set in motion by providing them the necessary information about that ruler being objectively evil and a sudden petty hatred of an organisation who slightly annoyed him"... It's unnecessary, and just makes Anakin come across as a whiny child who's pretending to care about the ideals of the Republic but actually just wants to save his wife (hammered brutally home by the lines "He must stand trial" and "I NEED HIM" following one another directly...

Again, that story could work. If you wanted to tell the fall of the Jedi as a tale of one of their own realising their hypocrisy and becoming disillusioned over the course of a long and pointless war and ultimately committing himself to a greater ideal, which then leads to his own manipulation and fall, you absolutely could. But what you can't do is tell that story in the same film that has the aforementioned wizard/volcano/feeling-shouting/sword fight or a principal character dying of a broken heart...


The necessary corollary to this line of thought is a brief mention of Clone Wars, because while that is far more brilliant and far less terrible, it is ultimately very complicit in the terribrilliance of RotS. On one hand, it makes the best notes even better. Anakin and Obi-wan's relationship being more fleshed out and believable lends their battle a greater context and emotional weight that feeds nicely into the bombastic melodrama (and it's a pity CW never really managed the same for Anakin and Padme). On the other, it also leans into the story of Anakin, Hero of the Republic, the greatest of his age, the most devoted servant of those ideals. Which would then feed into the second-strand motivation of him favouring the Republic law over the Jedi, except that strand is crap and shouldn't be in the darn film; it makes it more believable, but also highlights how dissonant it is with a more simplistic tale of the good man being driven to evil by his own flaws.

Ultimately, then, and I might be the first person ever to say this, RotS needs to be more ridiculous. The best version of that film is the one that embraces wholeheartedly its place in a mythology rather than a narrative, and gives up any pretence of realism which just weighs it down (trade negotiations, anyone?). Of course, there are also plenty of technical problems with it which are for another time (great first and third acts, plods like a sauropod in the middle, cinematography and performances that are just as often awful as amazing, the complete lack of anything physical for any of the cast to really act around...), but thematically, I think that's probably enough for now. I'm sure a lot of people are going to immediately disagree with all of this, but at the very least it sums up how I feel about Revenge of the Sith, and as the credits roll, I shall always find myself yelling BOOOO while vigorously applauding...

You say they're shouting their feelings at each other as they're fighting.

I may be incorrect but I recall no dialogue during the actual fight. They talk before it with Padme then say nothing until "It's over Anakin, I have the high ground!"

Which is what ruins the fight for me. It ties into the problems of the prequels telling us that Anakin and Obi-Wan had this great friendship but not doing anything to show it on the screen outside of references to events we don't get to see. They barely interact throughout most of Episode 2, are again separated for lots of episode 3 and then when Obi-Wan is having to fight his best friend, he barely speaks to him.

That's fair. I was including those bits as part of the overall confrontation, but you're correct, while the sabers are out there's very little dialogue (apart from the 'From my point of view' exchange just before Obi-wan leaps to the land from those mining droids). I was just highlighting how pretty much every line spoken on Mustafar is so wonderfully over-the-top, and in this film that works as a climax so much better than it would in most (especially with the context of Clone Wars).

Though you do also raise another good point, some of the best moments in the film are those without any dialogue where the cinematography does the talking. Order 66 and the Temple March, the scene preceding that where Anakin and Padme stare across Coruscant in parallel to a great piece of music, some of the fight choreography doing a lot more storytelling that people give it credit for ect. (though the Obi-wan/Grievous duel is a travesty of composition and choreography.)

I think that almost goes for the prequels as a whole... The shooting of the Anakin/Padme scenes on Naboo in AtoC make their relationship far more convincing than anything that either of them actually say, for instance...

That was an amazing write-up and I think it sums of my views of the prequels pretty well.

Thanks, I've had those ideas going round my head for about a week now and just needed to write them down somewhere! I do kind of want to test it with the other prequels at some point, see if I can find the same notes of brilliance in those (though I think they're probably fewer and further between).

If I had to guess, having not seen them in nearly 5 years now, TPM probably suffers the worst because it's so heavily tied up in those attempted realistic aspects for most of its run time. I still think the pod racing is great, and at the time was a probably pretty landmark moment in terms of extensive CGI spectacle sequences. The final duel is obviously brilliant and needs no excusing at all.

AotC is more of a mixed bag, and probably closer to just being a bit mediocre. I do like all the stuff with Obi-wan a great deal, his scene with Dooku in the prison is 5 minutes of some of the best acting in all of Star Wars and the fight on Kamino with Jango is great. On the other hand, the Anakin/Padme stuff is mostly just so stilted and bizarrely put together. The droid factory scene is kind of fun, and the Sand People massacre is again one of those moments where the cinematography and score come together perfectly. The last 20 minutes or so is all great, the arena battle might look a bit dated but is still good fun and the following saber duels are neat (though Yoda and Dooku's force battle is the real highlight). On the whole, it likely fairs better than TPM just because it's actually starting to be about something, and some of that subtext at least is rather fascinating.

balmong7 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, the choice to make Anakin young and Jar Jar portrayed as a Roger Rabbit-like toon was an obvious marketing decision, it was to get a new generation of kids into Star Wars merchandise. It wasn't for the story.

That doesn't mean the product didn't suffer for it as a result.

I love some of these "How I'd fix it." posts. There are so many works of fiction that fall just short because of 1 or 2 mistakes made during the writing or production. Seeing how people would rectify those mistakes in different ways is always fascinating.

Something that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread a lot is Revenge of the Sith. What are peoples thoughts on it? It was always my favorite once I stopped being blinded by my childhood love for the battle of Geonosis in clone wars. Where do you guys feel that one went wrong?

Buzz droids. I remember seeing them about five minutes into the movie and just sinking into my seat muttering "oh no". After that, I couldn't take the film seriously at all, and literally every other scene in the movie from that point on--even your favorite scene, whichever that is--became hilariously awful after the buzz droids set the tone. There were no right decisions made in the filming of that movie.

"oh no"

Surely you mean "noooooo!?"

That aside, I subscribe to the "TPM doesn't need to exist" school of thought.

Given the existence of the OT, there is literally no new and necessary information presented in TPM that couldn't be handled with some simple exposition in another film. Starting the story somewhere around Ep2 and having a whole extra to explore Anakins fall and the whole Clone Wars era would have improved the Prequels immeasurably without any increase in acting, writing or other creative elements, just because I think the story would have been more arresting.

 Paradigm wrote:
... the scene preceding [the arrest] where Anakin and Padme stare across Coruscant in parallel to a great piece of music,

This, hands down, is my favourite bit of the prequels, it’s an amazing scene, full of tension and pathos. That’s one of the reasons the prequels feel so disappointing, not so much because they’re bad per se, but because there a hints of how great they could have been. Similarly, the scene after the sand people massacre, back in the Lars garage, where Hayden Christensen sells the hell out of a young man who knows he has something deeply wrong with him but no idea how to fix it.

My only REAL issue with RotS is the “nooooooooo!!!” moment. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be Anakin’s release of his last bits of humanity, the purging of his soul, and after that yell of pain, he snuffs out his humanity. Unfortunately, the sound is utterly ridiculous and did not translate from thought to screen.

I had zero issue with his turn when he helps Palpatine vs Mace. He knew Palpatine was what he was taught to hate. But Palpatine played him, offered help, and Anakin came in to see an old man getting his ass kicked by the best Jedi swordsman. He says he needs to stand by the rules of the Republic (a trial), and Mace tells him off, after insulting him repeatedly and telling him he isn’t good enough. What a shock that Anakin decides the man he has been told is evil all along is seen having evil done to him; regardless of the dead bodies.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
My only REAL issue with RotS is the “nooooooooo!!!” moment. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be Anakin’s release of his last bits of humanity, the purging of his soul, and after that yell of pain, he snuffs out his humanity. Unfortunately, the sound is utterly ridiculous and did not translate from thought to screen.

I had zero issue with his turn when he helps Palpatine vs Mace. He knew Palpatine was what he was taught to hate. But Palpatine played him, offered help, and Anakin came in to see an old man getting his ass kicked by the best Jedi swordsman. He says he needs to stand by the rules of the Republic (a trial), and Mace tells him off, after insulting him repeatedly and telling him he isn’t good enough. What a shock that Anakin decides the man he has been told is evil all along is seen having evil done to him; regardless of the dead bodies.

The "Noooooooooooooooooo!" is so bad its good. Love it! Had more issue when they re-used it in ROTJ - totally ruined the moment. I really wished George had left that movie alone....

 timetowaste85 wrote:
My only REAL issue with RotS is the “nooooooooo!!!” moment. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be Anakin’s release of his last bits of humanity, the purging of his soul, and after that yell of pain, he snuffs out his humanity. Unfortunately, the sound is utterly ridiculous and did not translate from thought to screen.

No, the last bits of humanity was when he murdered children for no reason. (Again, but apparently sand people don't count).

The 'noooo!' was just reacting to his wife's death. With extremely bad acting.

Voss wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
My only REAL issue with RotS is the “nooooooooo!!!” moment. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be Anakin’s release of his last bits of humanity, the purging of his soul, and after that yell of pain, he snuffs out his humanity. Unfortunately, the sound is utterly ridiculous and did not translate from thought to screen.

No, the last bits of humanity was when he murdered children for no reason. (Again, but apparently sand people don't count).

The 'noooo!' was just reacting to his wife's death. With extremely bad acting.

That's not fair, no one can count sand people. They die single file, to hide their numbers.

 Jadenim wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
... the scene preceding [the arrest] where Anakin and Padme stare across Coruscant in parallel to a great piece of music,

This, hands down, is my favourite bit of the prequels, it’s an amazing scene, full of tension and pathos. That’s one of the reasons the prequels feel so disappointing, not so much because they’re bad per se, but because there a hints of how great they could have been. Similarly, the scene after the sand people massacre, back in the Lars garage, where Hayden Christensen sells the hell out of a young man who knows he has something deeply wrong with him but no idea how to fix it.

I actually got the reverse impression from that scene. That he didn't see anything wrong with it, and Natalie Portman was told by Lucas that this was the crux of their love story- that Amidala would see this as something she could 'fix' with her love, so she'd just blithely ignore the fact that Anakin was a murderous psychopath, a bawling man-child who truly believed that autocratic rule and ultimate power was the fix for everything, despite the fact that such a person would absolutely disgust her character..

Nothing about that scene makes any kind of sense if you had stuck real people in it. It's a moment of sheer crazy by a writer/director with increasingly little idea of how people actually behave.

 Gitzbitah wrote:

That's not fair, no one can count sand people. They die single file, to hide their numbers.

Lol, have an exalt for that one, good sir.


Though. . . because of this thread, and it was on my mind, went back and put TLJ on in the background. . . Surprised no one has mentioned the meme-worthy shot that is "wide angle" Ben Solo (ya know. . . . the scene where he's got no shirt on, force talking to Rey, and he just looks, well, wide)

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Surprised no one has mentioned the meme-worthy shot that is "wide angle" Ben Solo (ya know. . . . the scene where he's got no shirt on, force talking to Rey, and he just looks, well, wide)

What so you mean by not 'mentioned?' Ben Swolo is a meme unto himself.

balmong7 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, the choice to make Anakin young and Jar Jar portrayed as a Roger Rabbit-like toon was an obvious marketing decision, it was to get a new generation of kids into Star Wars merchandise. It wasn't for the story.

That doesn't mean the product didn't suffer for it as a result.

I love some of these "How I'd fix it." posts. There are so many works of fiction that fall just short because of 1 or 2 mistakes made during the writing or production. Seeing how people would rectify those mistakes in different ways is always fascinating.

Something that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread a lot is Revenge of the Sith. What are peoples thoughts on it? It was always my favorite once I stopped being blinded by my childhood love for the battle of Geonosis in clone wars. Where do you guys feel that one went wrong?

I'm generally of the opinion TPM is both the best movie and biggest problem with the trilogy. It's structure is really great, but the details don't set up the characters for the sequels. I think most wishlisting turns into a desire to write out AotC more than anything, and two that end, there's really only 2 major changes I'd like to make:

1. Hayden Christensen is Anakin from the beginning. Introduced as a likeable rogue along the lines of Han. Lets his relationship with Padme start from the beginning and lets their discussion about the Republic's failures to protect people carry some weight. Lots of things can change from there as it also sets up a less fatherly relationship with Obi-wan. Arguably, its more interesting if he's not allowed to be a Jedi but his friendship with Obi-wan leads to the latter mentoring him throughout the remaining adventures.

2. The Clone army is a known thing available to the Republic and the argument on the Senate is whether to deploy troops to break the blockade on Naboo with Palpatine posed as the hero to save his home. Sets up the clones as the heroes who save the planet at the end of the movie. The second movie makes it clear that this also incites the separatist movement when force is used to settle a diplomatic issue.

I think those are the two biggest elements that are missing from the TPM that make it awkward in the trilogy. Move those two bits up and you free up the second movie to be something significantly more interesting and things connect a lot easier from there.

I personally love the meme where the entire prequel trilogy is summed up by Obi Wan saying "Calm down Anakin".

High midichlorians be damned, that happy boy grinning abut his podracer turned into a seriously unhinged young adult, and the relationship with Anakin and Padme on-screen was seriously weird.

Them meeting as adults would have made a better movie, especially as it would have given longer for their relationship to be "normal" before the loss drives him over the edge, rather than just being two or three edges past the initial edge he fell off of. Maybe if they ended up falling in love as they defended a droid-besieged Naboo alongside Obi-Wan and Qui-Gonn, rather than kid and handmaid/politician.

So rumor has it that they screened some Rise of the Skywalker footage at D23 and Rey is going to be using a double-bladed lightsaber.

Didn't someone on this thread say they were hoping for that?

Not the whole picture. She is pictured wielding a double sabre, but the blades are red and she's wearing black robes.

It's a pretty obvious fake out, IMO, as if she were truly going to fall then it'd be dumb to reveal it this soon.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Not the whole picture. She is pictured wielding a double sabre, but the blades are red and she's wearing black robes.

It's a pretty obvious fake out, IMO, as if she were truly going to fall then it'd be dumb to reveal it this soon.

Sure, but having her use a double bladed sabre also makes a lot of sense. So even if the red is a fakeout, it doesn't mean that she isn't going to use one.

but aren't they all for subverting expectations and slinging all the lightside / darkside nonsense cos the Wars is like serious beeswax and not a fairytale in space

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
but aren't they all for subverting expectations and slinging all the lightside / darkside nonsense cos the Wars is like serious beeswax and not a fairytale in space

Nah, serious Dad Rian lost the custody battle and now we are being sent back to fun dad JJ Abrams.

Lost it so hard he’s got a trilogy to himself.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Lost it so hard he’s got a trilogy to himself.

Hopefully he'll meet us half-way this time, although if Rise underperforms I can see the Mouse scaling way back on the Wars for the safer bet of Capes and telly stuff

At this point I can see it all staying quiet for at least another year, then when asked in some press conference/con panel Kennedy will be all like "what trilogy?"

If Johnsons trilogy ever gets made I hope it's set in such a far time gap away from anything else we've seen that it won't be of consequence. I feel like what he did in TLJ was he wanted to do his own thing, with little regard for it being a middle act and how it altered the groundwork laid out in the first movie in a negative way.

 Thargrim wrote:
If Johnsons trilogy ever gets made I hope it's set in such a far time gap away from anything else we've seen that it won't be of consequence.

That's pretty much how they described it when it was announced. Not that it won't be 'of consequence' obviously, but that it will not be connected to the original films, and will explore some different facet of the background.

I feel like what he did in TLJ was he wanted to do his own thing, with little regard for it being a middle act and how it altered the groundwork laid out in the first movie in a negative way.

His stated goal was to avoid just retreading over ground that had already been covered in previous films, and to do something new. Which, after Abrahms copped so much flak for TFA 'copying' ANH, seemed like a reasonable goal, really.

I'm still intrigued by Ep 9, in a morbidly curious kinda way, but now I care even more about the TV stuff thanks to the Obi-Wan announcement.

 Compel wrote:
I hated Rebels, until the kids tv tropey Inept Comedy Relief Bad Guys got a lightsabre through the skull.

Then I was *in* to it.

Same thing happened with me. I gave up, and someone told me that it gets good when Tarkin shows up. So I gave it another go, and watched the Inquisitor decapitate the SW version of Bulk and Skull, and was instantly back into it again.