Revenge of the Sith -- Spoilers!

[Dex1138]

Star Wars.com has posted more [link=http://www.starwars.com/episode-iii/bts/production/f20050526/index.html]Easter Eggs[/link] to look for.
Among them, confirmation from Lucas himself that that ship is indeed the Falcon!

[Eagle Prince]

Spriggan, I listened in the commentary for what you were saying about Qui-Gon Jinn oringally supposed to be a ghost instead of voice, but I didn't hear it anywhere.  GL just said that its the first time Yoda hears Qui-Gon's disembodied voice.

[Entsuropi]

So, uh, finally saw this (on DVD on our old widescreen TV with good sound and image quality).

I agree with Osleons and SE's analysis on page 5. Good stuff.

On the film itself...

Acting was abysmal. I nearly laughed at Palpatines hammy enounciation. Anakin just kind of stood there and robot-pretended emotions. Padme had a plastic voice - no power or emotion in it. Windu, Yoda and pretty much everyone else was the same as padme - they just didn't seem to fully care about what they were saying. Obi-wan was about the only well-acted part of the film.

The special effects were nice.

I want me a super lizard, capable of running at 40mph, trained to ignore battle-sounds, knows to dodge enemy gunfire, can survive a drop of 50metres. Must be a jedi lizard.

Anakin didn't fall, he just kind of jumped from 'not very nice' to 'irredemably evil'. Too much, too fast.

How come there is absolutely no-one in the Chancellers quarters? How do you rule thousands of worlds and command a war by sitting on your own with only 2 guards, a random flunky and a red holo-screen for company?

The interior enviroments are far too plastic looking. Obviously Lucas is trying to look modern and sleek, but its mostly reministent of Corporate interior design. I'd have preferred a more stately and aged atmosphere.

The Grievious fight scene just didn't feel right, somehow. Plus, how on earth does a ROBOT have a cough?

Combat Robots with personalities and who make jokes, guh. And that scene in the hanger bay was terrible. Let's set robots on fire! :|

The lightsabre battles were generally really cool. Anakin versus Obi-wan was good, just for the sheer emotion that they (finally) showed. Yoda versus Palpatine was kind of odd - probably due to CGI everything.

In general, I found the film to be entertaining but quite disappointing. It's just... 'here you go, you know whats gonna happen and i'll shove in some cool stuff that doesn''t really make sense'. The original 3 were better, by far, and they are not exactly cinema masterpieces either - they are powerful by exerting an influence on the imagination. In a sense, we don't NEED pretty graphics for episode 4 - 6, because most of the real power isn't being done by the blasters and TIE fighters. And the new films just don't engage like the old ones, and try to cover it up with graphics. Plus, the acting was so terrible.

Serenity was so much better in so many ways it's just not funny.

[Spriggan]

Grevious isn't a robot, he's a Cyborg.

[Fangirl]

Overall, I really liked this move.  However ... my main problem was something I read in my last issue of SW:Insider - RotS was supposed to take place over 9 DAYS.

Wait ... 9 days?  You're telling me that that girl was 9 MONTHS PREGNANT, with TWINS, no less, and Anakin not only had NO IDEA, but could PICK HER UP AND SWING HER AROUND, and she could RUN?  

*BS meter starts going berserk*

Anakin went from agreeing to a Sith in 9 days.  Bail sure put a lot of miles on the Tantive IV, since all of that was supposed to take place on the last day.  *grrrrrrrrrs*  I thoroughly don't buy it.

But ... on to the movie itself.

First, I feel obligated as a chick to mention that there was no way Padme looked like she was pregnant with TWINS.  Don't tell me it was the costumes hiding it, because that last one (on Mustafar) sure as heck (swearing on forums bad??) showed her tummy, and I was bigger than that with my daughter - she only weighed 6 lbs.  And she RAN?!  Mindboggling.  And Anakin, Mr. Uber-Midichlorians (another idea I thought was total crap, BTW), couldn't detect two Force-sensitives?  Or noticed the basketball she apparently ate?  Or her body changing?  That leaves male obliviousness at a whole new level.  And that birth scene ... oh please.  Although a friend of mine on a mailing list did come up with another idea for why the babies were so big - that plastic skirt/privacy guard thing was a "Super-Uber Growth Ray".  

How on Mustafar did Leia remember her mother from those two seconds of contact?  Shouldn't it have been Luke?

And don't even get me started on the whole "Oh, no, he's turned to the Dark Side, I have nothing to live for, *bucket kicks*"  WTF?!  Your kids aren't enough of a reason?  "Well, Danielle, she's not in ANH!"  Fine - have her go to Alderaan for a few years, and then die!  That would tie in what Leia said, and not have the warrior chick that took her palace back by force at 14 go out like a complete punk - like, Boba Fett-level punkage.  (Yes, I know that in the EU, Boba Fett lives.  But in the movie, he's taken out by a blind guy ... on accident.  How sad is that?)

I think that Christensen and Portman could have done a lot better if they'd been allowed to improvise, like the OT cast was.  However, GL has said, "Dialogue is just the background noise to what's happening on the screen," and that explains how we get things like the mind-numbingly painful balcony scene.  "I love you more."  "No, I love you more."  *gags on a spoon*  Please.

However ... beyond all this nitpicking ... I did love this movie:

Anakin ... pardon me, Vader on Mustafar wiping out the Separatists.  Beautiful effects, awesome music.  Loved it.

The execution of Order 66 and the scene with the younglings made me cry.  Yes, I'm a sap, but that poor kid and the look on his face when Vader ignites his lightsaber, and Ki-Adi-Mundi doing the "Come on, guys!" and getting shot in the back ... it's just sad.  I still get kind of choked up.

On the same note ... I did get teary-eyed when Vader burst into flames.  There's nothing like realizing that your entire life, and everything you've held dear - your wife, your kid, your power - has now been taken from you, and you're probably 90% sure you're going to die extra-crispy next to a lava river to really ruin your day.  The music for that was great, as well.

I know everyone has panned the "Noooooo!" ... but it really fit.  He just got all these new prosthetic limbs, there's no way he would have been able to bust out a Fred Astaire tap dance, and the "Noooooo!" was the last in a long line of SW "Noooooo!"s.  

(Wow, this is really long.  I tend to get pendantic when it comes to Star Wars ... probably why I have a Star Wars blog, huh?    )

[Nessa]

How on Mustafar did Leia remember her mother from those two seconds of contact?

I always assumed she was talking about her adoptive mother.

[Entsuropi]

The execution of order 66 was odd. I knew it was meant to be a terrible moment, sadness and all that, but since i'd seen those jedi for all of 3 seconds I just didn't care that much. It was a bunch of randoms getting shot in the middle of a battle. Since there were many battles, any compassion I had was being spread awfully thin

[Fangirl]

That's a good point, there were a lot of competitors for sympathy ....

I think the main one that really got me was Ki-Adi-Mundi.  I really couldn't care less about Aayla Secura - they put her on a flower planet, for heaven's sake! - and didn't bother identifying the one in the fighter or the speeder.  

Gotta admit, the younglings and Anakin getting roasted kind of sapped my sympathy, although Obi-Wan got the last of it, because Ewan McGregor really threw everything into that last speech to Anakin - at least, that's my humble opinion.  

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

How on Mustafar did Leia remember her mother from those two seconds of contact?  Shouldn't it have been Luke?

I swear with God as my witness that the next time I hear this complaint I am going to rip someone's intestines out. It is about the worst complaint I've ever heard in my life and it's the first one always brought up in any conversation about Ep III.

Are you people actually telling me that 3 throwaway lines with absolutely ZERO plot significance in EPVI (the worst of the original trilogy) not being complied with is a major complaint about a movie made 20 years later? This is why people look down on nerds.

Yes, it's an inconsistancy, but considering that we're talkinga bout over 12 hours of film, getting riled over a  rather minor problem like this seems petty, and it annoys me that people keep harping on it.

[Fellfrosch]

Then allow me to annoy you further: it's stupid.

[42]

Yes, it is completely impossible for a grown women to remember her dead mother who died moments after she was born. Partiularly when said woman is filled with mystical energy since birth and has demonstrated psychic prescience over the course of three movies.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

hey, for the record, I deliberately avoided the word "stupid."