Random Revenge of the Sith musings

[wordinista]

Do you suppose Revenge of the Sith is so problematic because no one had the balls to tell George Lucas when his ideas were bad?

I mean, yeah, the lava planet is visually cool, but why the heck would you want to mine lava?

Padme?  Don't get me started.  Just don't.

Anakin's dialogue?  Good lord.  "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!"  Said in the heat of battle, on a floating thingummy, on a river of lava.  It's just not... natural dialogue, yaknow?

And as we're watching all the deleted scenes it's dawning on me that they cut out a lot of really good parts.  I mean, all we get is wussy, teary Padme in impractical nightgowns and full makeup.  They cut out all of the bits where she actually gets to DO stuff.

Anakin's fall is too rushed.  He's not sympathetic enough.  The urge to bitch-slap the Dark Side out of him is strong.  There's no... pull.  He's too fucking gullible by half.  TOO gullible.

I also hate the word "younglings."  HATE it.

It's a visually stunning film.  But there needs to be more than just aesthetic brilliance.

Finally, a snippet of conversation between Bunneh and Tora-kun during our RotS viewing:

Bunneh:  "So, apparently the Dark Side does  not believe in shampoo."
Tora-kun:  "Oh, they have shampoo.  But they only have low-flow showerheads.  The Empire won't spring for the high-flow ones."
Bunneh:  "Low-flow showerheads and red light-sabers.  True evil."

Ah well.  At least John Williams didn't let me down.  Or Ewan.  Oh, Ewan.  *happysigh*  Ewan, Ewan, Ewan.  Best part of the movie, right there.  (And Yoda.  Teh bunneh has much love for teh Yoda.)

Comments

[hyanan.livejournal.com]

I mean, yeah, the lava planet is visually cool, but why the heck would you want to mine lava?

Pumice. Everyone knows Sith lords have terrible feet. XD

The Mystery of Star Wars

[hecallaghan.livejournal.com]

And when you consider that ROTS was definitely the best in the series for my money, it boggles the mind.

I think SW is so infuriating because there are moments when it is really good, and then something happens that is so teeth-grindingly amateur and retarded that you just want to storm out in a rage. If it were consistently shit, you could just get over it and carry on with your life.

The bottom line is that it should have been written by someone else and the actors should have been directed by someone else. The visual elements are great, the writing is atrocious and getting worse instead of better. I suspect that Lucas has real problems with emotions, either writing or filming them, but has fantastic story ideas and in terms of visuals is a genius, no question. To have problems with people showing emotions is an enormous impediment when the whole film depends on people being led by their emotions.

I agree that Anakin's fall is unbelievable (it's like, literally, "You're under arrest!" to "Yeah, sure, I'll murder cute kids for you!" in about two minutes of screen time.) But I could have put up with that because my expectations were so low anyway, if it weren't for the final scene with Darth Vader, and the "Noooooooo" and the fucking *dry ice* wafting about and Haydn Christensen wriggling his skinny body about awkwardly in that fucking enormous suit.

I don't know what happened there. It was so ill-judged. It was like Lucas decided:

"Whoops! This movie looks like it's working on some level! Quickly, undermine everything we achieved in the climax!"

"Noooooooooooo!"

"Whew, that's better. Wow. That was a close one."

This is the problem with doing everything yourself, particularly if you haven't directed anything for the last 20 years, and you can afford to make movies independently. You don't have studio suits to stand behind you and tell you what to do. This is normally perceived as a good thing. Clearly however, it's a double-edged sword since anyone with any way to lean on Lucas would have had that scene cut.

[karit.livejournal.com]

Do you suppose Revenge of the Sith is so problematic because no one had the balls to tell George Lucas when his ideas were bad?

I think that's the general understanding, yes. :D I always have low expectations (or rather, high expectations that, to anyone else, would be low expectations), so I didn't mind the problems much at all, but... looking at the movie closely, it is hard to really understand what he was thinking.

[hyanan.livejournal.com]

Do you suppose Revenge of the Sith is so problematic because no one had the balls to tell George Lucas when his ideas were bad?

I think every one but The Empire Strikes Back was problematic in some way because Lucas couldn't deal with the fact that Irvin Kershner did a better job at directing the films than he did. :P

[mishakatt.livejournal.com]

We have some of the exact same complaints about the movie: Padme, Anakin's fall happening too fast, the deleted scenes. Some of those should have been in the movie, dangit. And I have to say that "NOOOOOOOOO!" at the end just, yeah. *shakes head* Is it bad that I laughed there?

I still enjoyed the movie, however. Especially once Anakin did fall. That in itself needed more explanation though, but I'm repeating myself. And I really enjoyed watching Obi-Wan and Anakin go at it with light sabers.

[evilpuppy.livejournal.com]

You can be my Youngling, baaaaaaaybee!

XD