PT Did Lucas go too far in Revenge of the Sith?

"You learn that Darth Vader isn’t this monster. He’s a pathetic individual who made a pact with the Devil and lost. And he’s trapped. He’s a sad, pathetic character, not a big evil monster. I mean, he’s a monster in that he’s turned to the dark side and he’s serving a bad master and he’s into power and he’s lost a lot of his humanity. In that way, he’s a monster, but beneath that, as Luke says in Return of the Jedi, early on, “I know there’s still good in you, I can sense it.” Only through the love of his children and the compassion of his children, who believe in him, even though he’s a monster, does he redeem himself."

--George Lucas, quoted in J. Windolf, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005

Anakin only redeems himself in that he stops being evil and becomes good again. But in terms of making up for his crimes, he cannot do that since he dies shortly afterwards. People misunderstand redemption. This isn't about righting the wrongs, but about seeing who and what you are and casting it off. Turning away from it and repenting for your crimes.

 

Yeah -- well put.

And unfortunately, people murder children in other ways.

What about the millions working in sweat shops or begging for food around the world at this instant?

What's been done to alleviate their suffering? Are many westerners, through the mechanism of capitalism, not complicit in their plight?

And what about all the bad ideas parents and other guardians and instructors fill childrens' heads with? One generation, so abused and led astray, then become the abusers and corrupters of the next.

I wish people wouldn't be so naive about a concept as broad and as malleable as murder. Anakin isn't so removed from the rest of us. If we broaden our understanding, we also broaden our compassion -- and then, maybe, we change the way we behave; and, finally, we act.

 

Cryogenic well said. We do all sorts of terrible things to each other, especially the weakest among us, especially children, yet somehow doing so with a melée weapon...rather than through apathy, inertia, knowing omission, positive complicity in systemic and often violently fatal exploitation (as the Rana Plaza disaster demonstrates)...is somehow unforgivable.

Indeed. The things he does are stylised representations of human weakness.

 

Thank you -- well said back to you, too!

"A melée weapon". Yes!!!

And to your list: apathy, inertia, knowing omission, positive complicity in systemic and often violently fatal exploitation......

I would add apophasis, censorship, coercion, and willful ignorance.

Absolutely. I've been saying something similar for a while.

Boba Fett is the sort of character people find cool because he is almost totally deindividuated.

(Fascinating that Lucas chose to weave Boba into the prequel storyline).

Anakin is the sort of character -- *the* character -- who makes people uncomfortable because they can't get away from him; he's up there, naked and stumbling on the big screen, for all to see.

Fitting that he begins and remains a slave. The human condition allegorized as one of blind and shackled forces interacting just at or below the level of conscious comprehension ......... not knowing: the ultimate slave state.

 

There's a scene in the Family Guy parody of Star Wars where Peter (Han) threatens some of the Imperial officers inside of the shield generator on Endor. he takes them outside, at gunpoint, and makes them dig their own graves with their helmets. And when one of them begs for his life, tears running down his face, Peter tells him he's going to cut his face off, wear it, visit his family, and see how long it takes them to realize he's an impostor. When Lois (Leia) objects to all of this, Peter tells her there's enough cutesy crap in this movie, and they need something dark.

I think Lucas may have been thinking along these lines about the entire franchise. or perhaps it was to balance out Jar Jar. Who knows.

 

I like the film fine , its my favorite prequal episode even if it has a few flaws, i like the action and some of the drama and even the dark moments give it a unique feel compared to the other episodes. So for me its a decent film not perfect but still good.

 

Other way around. I believe that the lighter tone of TPM was to balance out ROTS.

 

Why not both?


Once Lucas got to Episode III, I think he did start toying with how dark he should make it; what to show, what to imply; just how enveloping a tragedy it would be.

He is very much an experimenter and a tinkerer, after all.

 

No, Lucas did not go to far in ROTS. Anakin went to Mustafar in ROTS.

 

I think that is why ROTS is my favorite movie and you described how I thought of it while I was in theaters perfectly.
Especially the "NOOOOOO-!!!" There will never be a more perfectly tragic ending than that.

 

I didn't necessarily mean that as a compliment. I mean Lucas certainly didn't design the movies to be seen in order.

 

I go with the OT first for viewing.

 

Very nice!! I appreciate you guys' thoughts on this.

And that's absolutely valid, too.


* * *


It's good to be a Star Wars nerd, isn't it?

 

He went too far with the child killing, although it's hinted that Anakin only killed one of them and the clone troopers executed the rest out in the hall. Padme's death was another thing, too. Call it what you will, but having her die that way was just too weird.

 

Blame it on the writing.

 

I don't think so. To me, ROTS is a very consciously dark film, which perhaps makes it less dark, if that makes sense. 'Look, child murder!' To me, TESB is a darker, albeit less graphic, film.

 

It was indeed tragic...

 

This is very true. It's a very good thing too.

Having seen the prequel films first, I can say that, for me, it is definitely a compliment. I think that the way Lucas designed the films means the PT can readily be viewed first and and, indeed, it worked for me spectacularly.

 

If he didn't want it to be seen in order, he wouldn't have put a numbering system on each film. Much less add it to the VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray versions.

"If you see them in order it completely twists things about. A lot of the tricks of IV, V and VI no longer exist. The real struggle of the twins to save their father becomes apparent, whereas it didn't exist at all the first time [audiences saw Episodes IV, V and VI]. Now Darth Vader is a tragic character who's lost everything. He's basically a bitter old man in a suit.

"I am your father" was a real shock. Now it's a real reward. Finally, the son knows what we already know.

It's a really different suspense structure. Part of the fun for me was completely flipping upside down the dramatic track of the original movies. If you watch them the way it was released, IV, V, VI, I, II, III - you get one kind of movie. If you watch I through VI you get a completely different movie. One or two generations have seen it one way, and the next generations will see it in a completely different way.

It's an extremely modern, almost interactive movie making. You take blocks and move them around, and you come out with different emotional states."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith.

"It's a downer, the saving grace is that if you watch the other three movies, then you know everything ends happily ever after. Nevertheless, I now have to make a movie that works by itself but which also works with this six-hour movie and this overall twelve-hour movie. I'll have two six-hour trilogies, and the two will beat against each other: One's the fall, one's the redemption. They have different tonalities but it's meant to be one experience of twelve hours."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith, page 62

There's no hint that Anakin only killed one kid in the Council chambers.

That's because ROTS needed to establish how far Anakin needed to go in order to be written off by the Jedi. TESB didn't require that when it was made. This was also aided by the fact that in 1979-80, there was no PG-13 to fall back on. It's the same way that with ANH, Lucas didn't want the film to be G rated which was part of the reason we saw the charred corpses of the Lars. Especially after his earlier drafts were geared more towards an R rating and he toned it down.

 

what I was saying is, whatever Lucas says afterwards in a making of, the movies are clearly designed around the fact that you know Anakin becomes Darth Vader and Obi Wan becomes Old Ben. You could make the argument that's the only reason why you would care about the characters or anything that's happening. The ending isnt Dark or surreal because that's what these movies were designed to build towards. Everyone knows its coming.
Anyway maybe viewing order is a new thread?

 

We've already got threads on viewing order. Anyway, read what he said. He already addressed that viewing the films in either order is going to bring about different reactions, which is what he likes about what he did. There's also this...

"It'll be a very different experience, because when Darth Vader walks into that spaceship with the princess, they're going to think, 'Oh my God, that's Anakin!' and they're gonna see Luke and think, 'Oh my God, that's his son!' And rather than a surprise when he says, 'I am your father,' it'll be like, 'Oh my God, finally he's told him!'"

--George Lucas

The twist isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. It only worked because it was unexpected when TESB came out. The PT is designed so that you came in from the OT, but it was also designed so that you could go from TPM to ROTJ and see how things go down. How a good boy becomes an evil man and whether his son will kill him or try to save him.

 

Yeah just watch the movies however you want to watch them. I watch them in reverse with the dialogue on Dragonspeak while naked and covered in pudding

 

We must be watching different movies. Vader in the OT has some serious anger management issues. He throws tantrums and tries to choke people around him every time things don't go his way. If anything, it's Tarkin who's meant to be an embodiment of the ruthlessly efficient bureaucratic machine that killed so many people on our own planet.

Again... Vader doesn't mind personal. He chokes a bunch of people himself. He personally tortures Leia. He almost kills Luke even though it might have been more efficient if he let his goons take Luke.

 

And the video game indicates otherwise.

 

Personally, I don't think Lucas went far enough! Make a scene involving enslaving the Wookiees! Have Anakin knocking Mustaffaran workers into the lava while he tears chunks of metal out of the facility to throw at Obi Wan! Show him killing a crippled Jedi in the temple!

Lucas, you could've done even better! Or even worse, I should say.