PT Grievous was an idiot here

It does make a lot of sense.

In the RoTS novel it's suggested that Kenobi's mastery of the Soresu lightsaber style is what makes him the best candidate for taking Grievous down.

 

Your logic is impossibly backwards here. How is it rational to use less force against what you claim is a greater threat?

 

It's safer because it eliminates stray blaster bolts ricocheting around an enclosed space with a score of friendlies and only one hostile, not to mention rows of parked starfighters with all the attendant fuel and munitions.

 

This issue is being enormously over-played. In the first place, in the seconds immediately preceding this they'd had a huge gun battle in that very hangar bay. Both by the contents of the room and the number of combatants, there was even more danger of an errant shot at that point than the moment we're discussing. If it was honestly such a concern, they would've picked a loss volatile infiltration point.

Further, the blaster bolts would ricochet only once. As not if shots ping-ponged easily about. There are a limited number of angles Maul could even create by any sort of deflection, and it wouldn't have been hard to place Padme outside of that range. This move really didn't make sense.

 

My thoughts;

About Maul on Naboo.
First, it would have made more sense for the Jedi to have sent more than just one master and one padawan to deal with this. 4-5 master/knights would have a better chance of capturing Maul.
Second, about shooting him. Why not use the stun setting on the blasters? If 10-20 guards shot at him with stun blast it is doubtful he could deflect them all, if it is even possible to deflect stun blasts (they look considerably different). And even if he does, it won't kill anyone and won't set off any explosions.
Add to this, you get Maul alive.

About Griev.
Sorry but I found the character to be a pointless waste of time.
He has a character, unlike Maul, but his character is uninteresting and he is never shown as a credible or capable threat.
He is all talk and no delivery. He is a general but he does very little if any leading of armies. He shows no strategic or tactical qualities that makes him stand out.
The other reason I don't much like him is that they killed of the far more interesting Dooku early in the film. Far more could have been done with him but no, bump him off ten minutes in.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

From what I recall, though, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were only sent back to look for clues in regards to the identity of their attacker and to protect the Queen. I don't know that capture was thought to be on the cards. Plus, do we know if the "stun setting" has even been developed by TPM? It shows up in ANH, sure, but that takes place over thirty years later. As far as I can tell, such a setting is never mentioned in the PT, so it may not have been available to the characters at that time. Additionally, I'm not sure how stunning works, but it's possible that too much stunning could kill you -- it's never really been addressed, but it's a possibility.

I kind of agree with you about Grievous. He's a really flat character that could have been expanded to a much more complex role. I see what Lucas was trying to do with him -- he represented another facet of Vader and was Palpatine's pawn to get Obi-Wan off planet -- but I've never found the character of Grievous himself very compelling. Although I did like his scenes with Nute Gunray. And I agree that I wouldn't have minded more Dooku in the film. One thing I do consider possible is that Lucas might have killed Dooku early and minimized Grievous to really emphasize that Palpatine is the villain, especially for this film.

 

I love Grievous as a flat character. This is Star Wars, not the Nolan Dark Knight series.

<--Grievous

----------------->Obi-Wan

Grievous even has a ludicrous cape. I love that!!

 

I think it's fairly easy why Qui-Gon was wise, or at least had a defendable POV, when he decided that he and Obi-Wan should take out Maul alone. Padme and her forces seem to be on a mission that is time contingent, so taking out Maul would've wasted time. If they were about to open fire, Maul could've simply Force-pushed the non-Force-sensitives on their asses and Force speeded himself out of there. Finally, there is an honor in duels between Jedi and Sith, even from the Sith side of things. In ANH, Vader could've told the stormtroopers to open fire on Obi-Wan, but he shows his adversary respect and challenges him to a one-on-one duel. In ROTS, Palpatine could have sent Mas Amedda to get reinforcements, but he chose to take on Yoda himself. If the evil Sith show at least that much honor, then the Jedi definitely show show the same honor in combat.

 

Just because it is Star Wars should not mean we can't have good, interesting and well developed villains.

To me, interesting characters are a good thing no matter the movie, whether it is James Bond, X-Men, Harry Potter or LotR.

Compare with Vader in ANH alone and don't take into account any of the other films.
He and Griev have about the same amount of screen time and both play straight villain roles.
To me, Vader is superior to Griev in almost every way. The only tie is that they both have capes.

Vader is introduced and he looks scary with an intimidating voice. Very soon we see him hold a guy by the neck, using only one hand and later snapping the neck of that person. This makes him both strong and rather ruthless. Later, when talking with an other imperial officer, who tells him that holding Leia poses a risk due to the Senate. Vader quickly orders a fake distress signal sent and that the senate is to be informed that all onboard were killed. Making the whole thing look like and accident. Quite clever. So Vader is quickly established as clever, ruthless and strong.
Later we get a bit of his backstory, that he was a jedi-in-training but betrayed them to the empire and helped the empire to kill them.
He also betrayed and murdered the father of the main hero, Luke, and the good friend to Luke's mentor, Obi-Wan.
Later still we witness some of Vader's powers when he chokes an insolent officer without even touching him.
When the MF lands on the DS, the films starts building for a confrontation between him and Obi-Wan. Vader has been established as very capable and dangerous so, to me, there is real tension here. Will Obi-Wan be able to deal with Vader? Plus their shared back story given more depth to their fight.

When the rebels attack the DS, Vader is the one who shoots down most of them and is close to kill Luke, but he is foiled at the end but survives to fight another day.

In short, even in just one film and with about 15 min of screen time, Vader is established as very credible foe, that could kill with ease and he is given a backstory that ties in with some of the heroes. A good villain, that poses a major threat to the good guys and has an interesting backstory.
Vader isn't extremely deep or complex as a character in ANH, but for the role he is designed to play, he does it very well.

Griev by comparison is given little to no backstory. He and Obi-Wan has apparently met before and Griev, of course, ran away from that.
At no point is he is shown as much of a threat, he runs away most of the time, he an uninteresting character and he never does much of any importance.
His only function seems just to be something Obi-Wan chases after to kill because that will, somehow, end the war. Why?
Griev is killed but that didn't end the war as we still se lots of fighting.

In short, to me, an uninteresting, unthreatening and under-developed villain and as such a waste of time.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

Yeah but you save the development for the important villains. At least in Space Opera. There's always room for toadies and stooges.

 

But their mission was to uncover the identity of "this dark warrior", so a capture would fit that end. They could then ask him questions.
Kind of hard to question a corpse. Qui-Gon also knows that Maul is skilled and dangerous, if he and Obi-Wan are killed then Padme is in big trouble.
And Qui-Gon does know that Maul would move against the queen if he is able.

As for stun weapons, given that hand held weapons in the PT are often shown as more advanced, ex having rapid fire capabilities or shooting blobs that lightsabers can't block, them not being able to stun seems unlikely. Also, the empire is far more ruthless and militaristic than the republic so if any one of them would have stun weapons it would be the republic.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Didn't Palpatine try to run away at first? And soldiers did show up later, so perhaps he did call for help?

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

But Griev is given quite a bit of importance in RotS. Much of what Obi-Wan and the jedi does in the middle of the film revolves around him.
He has several confrontations with the heroes. Developing him would only have benefitted the film.

As I said, Griev role in RotS is about as big as Vader in ANH, but he given much more development and is shown as actually capable.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

The droid general didn't need development in Sith. I see it as one of those immaculate reality pieces in the movies. It's an assumption that expands the story reality by leaving part of it up to your imagination, or to fill it in with EU extrapolations.

Now, a General Grievous spinoff movie I would LOVE to see! He has a very interesting back story. But it would be too much of a sidetrack shoehorned into the story of Anakin's Fall. There's already so much going on.

 

He didn't immediately try to escape. He only tried to escape after seeing how well Yoda survived his Force lightning, and I think GL really staged it that way to set up this exchange. Yoda: "If so powerful you are why leave?" Palpatine: "You will not stop me. Darth Vader will become more powerful than either of us." I think GL makes a point to include these lines because he wants to show that Palpatine's ultimate goal is returning Sith rule and defeating the Jedi, whether he lives to the end or not is secondary, and also to show that when Palpatine really feels in danger, he will leave, which is something he doesn't try to do against Mace. Still, it certainly is part of the film, so it certainly should be interpreted that Palpatine is not living up to the standard of facing Yoda one-on-one when challenged as he should.

However, Palpatine says nothing to Mas Amedda as he leaves the room, and he faces Yoda in a good 5-minute battle, and you'd think if a head-of-state asked for security help, he'd have help there in seconds. Instead, it seems Palpatine has purposely cleared the area (whole Senate chamber is empty) just so that he can battle Yoda on his own.

BTW, just curious, why the new sign off? Are you not Old Stone Face anymore? And where did the moniker Old Stone Face come from anyway?

 

It could, but again, they didn't really know much about this guy. I think the Jedi would have wanted to gather more information before taking any definitive action, especially since they don't know how he fits into the situation with the Trade Federation. Additionally, while Qui-Gon certainly did think that Maul was a Sith, the Jedi Council didn't really buy into that, and they are the ones who decides which Jedi will be assigned to missions at this point. They also had no way of knowing if Maul would be on Naboo or not -- don't forget that they only encountered him on Tatooine.

I don't really agree that a faster firing rate automatically means that they have stunning capabilities -- those are two completely separate properties. The weapons in the PT might shoot faster, but they certainly don't hit any harder. Anyway, you have to presume that they do have stunning capabilities, which we have no evidence for and even if they did, as I pointed out earlier, combination stunning might be enough to kill a person depending on how exactly the stunning process works. If one blow is enough to knock you out, five hits might kill you.

Either way, the only people we ever see stun anyone is the Empire in ANH.

 

But why would they do that? The guard's job was to get into the Throne Room and contront Gunray.Qui-Gon said it was the Jedi's business and he was right.
And just as PiettHat says, we don't know if the "stun technology" already exists. I never understood why Vader didn't ask the Stormtroopers to "stun" Luke in TESB though, as that technology was clearly available at that time (given ANH's use of it).

I also disagree about your notion concerning Vader and Grievous. Vader was written as a character in a standalone film and - given the context of the film and the information we got about him - the main villain (Tarkin never got any personal background or attention). Grievous, however, was clearly designed as a minor villain who was used as another pawn in Palpatine's game (getting Obi-Wan away from Anakin) while Palpatine himself was the main villain of that film. So I don't think that comparison works.
Besides, ROTS was made as the last part of a six-film saga, so the approach was different by nature.

That said, I'm not too fond of Grievous myself. I loved Dooku and it would have been cool to see him longer. On the other hand, we probably would have missed Anakin taking revenge on Dooku then, which was an important moment imo.
I can live him, thus.

 

It's late where I am, and I'm tired so please excuse my asking but when in TESB are you talking about? Like what scene? Cause maybe Vader was stunned (no pun intended) to see Luke or a Rebel and automatically told his troops to fire on him?

 

Tarkin was brilliant - Peter Cushing doesn't do anything else does he? But still his character was as developed as Grievous. Or Boba Fett (before the PT)

Grievous twirled his figurative mustache. Tarkin was the smiling gentlemanly evil, the kind that chuckles and smells of lavender. And Boba was Clint.

No need to add anything to them. We got more with Fett and it was gravy, loved it. But it never was necessary.

 

The Jedi Council say that they will use ALL their resources to uncover the identity of Qui-Gons attacker. Later, they talk about Padme going back to Naboo and how this could draw out the queens attacker. Then they tell Qui-Gon to go with the queen and discover the identity of this dark warrior and this would be the clue they need to unravel the mystery of the Sith.
So even without knowing for sure that Maul was a Sith, the JC say they will use ALL their resources, which apparently is one master and one padawan. Qui-Gon is ordered to with Padme again because the JC think that is their best chance of drawing out Maul. Without that, Qui-Gon would probably have stayed home. So Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are sent with mostly one mission, find out who Maul is, and that is a lot easier to do if they take Maul alive as opposed to killing him.

Of course, given that the Jedi know that the TF have declared war on the republic, even if the senate refuses to see it, they would have other reasons to involve themselves. To stop the TF from attacking any more planets and liberate Naboo. Remember the Senate has just proved itself incapable to act in this dire crisis, so it would make sense for the Jedi to act to protect the republic.

[/QUOTE]

Also in ESB, Vader orders soldiers to set their weapons to stun when they are about to capture the MF.

We don't see hyperspace rings until AotC, does that mean they didn't exist in TPM?
We don't see missiles used until AotC, does that mean no one had them in TPM?
We don't see those scout bikers until RotJ, does that mean they didn't exist until then?

Stun weapons exist in the SW-galaxy and nothing indicate that they are new tech or some recent discovery.
Given this and give that the empire is a great deal more ruthless than the republic, I find it unlikely that they would spend time and money to develop stun weapons. Add to that the overall tech regression from PT to OT.

To me, you need more than just the lack of use to say they don't exist.

But this is very minor, my only comment was that if involving the Naboo guards in the Maul fight, stun weapons might have been useful.
I do think the Jedi should have sent more than two Jedi deal with Maul, esp given the seriousness of the situation and that they said they will use all their resources.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

To the first, Palpatine seemed surprised that Yoda was still alive, he had done order 66 a while ago. Why the senate was empty, it was not in session, so why would there be anyone there? Unless Palpatine has a squadron just outside the building, five minutes isn't implausible for the troopers to arrive.
Most of them seemed to be at the Jedi temple.

To the second, Samuel Vimes has many titles and nick-names.
Old Stoneface (really his ancestor)
Commander, Duke of Ankh (using them would make me seem far too pretentious)
Blackboard Monitor (a title he got in school, which some dwarves consider a horrible crime)
The Guarding Dark(the name of the policeman in his head, that keeps the darkness in.)

And there are others.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

About ESB, Vader DID tell Admiral Piett to order the soldiers to set their weapons to stun when they are about to capture the MF right at the end of the film.
If you are talking about earlier in the film, remember Vader wanted to test Luke, to see how powerful he is. At first he most plays with Luke and when throwing him into the freezer, Vader is disappointed "All too easy." Vader had his own plans for Luke, that the two of them would overthrow the emperor. But for that to work, Luke has to be fairly powerful, a weak Luke is of no use to Vader.

I used Vader as he an Griev has about the same screen time and both play minor villain roles. But Vader was shown as someone competent and deadly, Griev was just a bag full of hot air, all talk and no delivery. So even with just one film, Vader made a far bigger impression to me, than Griev did.
Also he was more interesting and was presented as much more of a threat. Griev just runs away most of the time. Really he is best compared with Sir Robin "When danger reared it's ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled."
Lastly, Lucas knew he was making three films so why not spend more time on the villains? Have Dooku introduced in TPM as a Jedi, this would make his actions in AotC more powerful. Introduce Griev in AotC and show him as capable and deadly.

All three PT films have a villain that the heroes deal with and Sidious behind the scenes. Sidious behind the scenes works well, no problem.
But the three direct villains, Maul, Dooku and Griev, I think, all suffer from lack of development.
Maul is just there to look cool and fight well but he has not much of a character.
Dooku is much better, but he is introduced rather late in the film and killed off far too soon.
Griev is a waste of time, as I have already explained.

But given that he had three films Lucas could have done more with these three and this would, to me, have improved on the films.
There is a saying "A hero is only as good as his/her villain." Since the heroes mostly deal with Maul, Dooku or Griev, if they are weak villains then it makes the conflict weaker and affects the heroes.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

The problem with evaluating Grievous on power and intelligence is: which Grievous? The one we see in the Genndy series, the Stover RoTS novel, and the Nightsisters arc of TCW? Or the Grievous we see in RoTS itself and a lot of other TCW episodes? The first of these is fierce, remorseless, calculating, powerful, and terrifying. The second is a mustache-twirling doofus just barely over the level of comic relief. The problem is that there's no consistency between the two.

 

Oh, I'm not familiar with Discworld, but I'm guessing you're a big fan!

I didn't really mean that clone troopers would be stationed right in the Senate building, but I'm imagining like all state buildings, they'd have security personnel, but the Senate seems completely empty. Even if the interior Senate chamber happened to be empty, you'd think security personnel would rush in when they hear the commotion or see on the security cameras that a big ruckus is going down. Also, while in our world, it would be security personnel, but in the GFFA, there seems to be less divisions of labor. In ANH, virtually anyone who's doing anything related to the military -- guards, security, soldiers, etc. are stormtroopers. In ATOC and ROTS, virtually everyone in those roles in a clonetrooper, so in GL's sort of simplified hierarchy maybe clone troopers would serve as the security personnel for the Senate (which would be kind of weird since they just got on the scene 3 years earlier).

 

he killed tons of jedi on his own.