PT Should Grievous have been introduced in AOTC

Grievous was completely unnecessary. He was only created to show what Anakin was to become. Instead they should of just injured Dooku to the point he needed a mechanical life support, then kill him near the middle.

Grievous was wasted in TCW. In micro series CW he was just an uber version of Maul with more kills and lines.

No real development.

 

Yes, he should have been on Geonosis, IMO. The Separatists were preparing to overrun the Republic, I think it's fair to assume that Dooku would have already approached military leaders about pledging themselves to the CIS.

Having him on Geonosis would have shown the Commerce Guilds that Dooku was serious and well prepared for war, rather than just asking for a pledge of droid forces without leadership

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Oh, I’m not saying that she’s forgettable. Horribly and laughably miscast, but not forgettable. Oh, and she also led to the worst Bond one-liner of all time: “I thought Christmas comes only once a year.” Ugh!

 

Even physicists need physicality, Mr. Bond.

 

I think the prequels had quite a few roles that could have been consolidated to give fewer characters more to do rather than having important characters appear only for a single episode.

For instance, I think Maul and Dooku could have been combined as either character. Maul could have gone on to organize the Separatists from behind the scenes, or Dooku could have been a double agent for the Sith the whole time and appeared in TPM.

Jango/Grievous. Jango and Grievous both had important roles, but again are relatively short roles. I feel like they could have been combined, though I
think it would work better to ditch Grievous and fold his role into Jango's character.

Jango is a mercenary. Obi-Wan believes a Jedi ordered a clone army and hired Jango as the template. If it appeared that Dooku outbid the Kaminoans into serving as a military leader, it wouldn't raise much suspicion.

When Dooku/Maul dies. The CIS leaders could be heaping money on him in exchange for protection, turning him into a warlord that Obi-Wan defeats in a rematch.

Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan.





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Any rewrite can be imagined, but you need to be aware which one's improving an existent structure, or streamlining it, or adding one - or, changing the entire concept.

The way it stands, Maul is the "shadow assassin" in TPM - he's killed, TF is defeated, and everything seems fine for now, leaving a worrying prospect for the future.
Then, a seemingly unrelated threat appears, in the form of the Separatists, and their ambiguous leader Dooku who seems morally grey, and have his own take on things; at the end, it's revealed/confirmed that this was that same old threat that returned in a new guise (after laying dormant for 10 years).

Putting Dooku into EpI, already as a double agent, would've changed that structure into a different one.
Maul surviving would remove the whole "he's gone - but there must be a second one somewhere", and leave the original threat intact.

I guess since Dooku had gone rogue at some point, he could've been set up in EpI - perhaps off-screen, or alluded to, in some fashion.

This, on the other hand, is a bit different the entire Fett/Sifo plot, was a bit of a blam in the big picture - never picked up again.

To make 1 and 3 fit together better, a lot of 2 would have to be rewritten, and Jango written out.
Maybe putting Grievous there instead - depending on what such a rewrite would end up looking like.

 

The comparison is mostly that Boris was the slimy villain type, rather than someone like Red Grant who was a silent brute until forced to converse with Bond. But as to your post "Goldeneye" commentary, I think it's been said that the series began to focus more on 80's and 90's style action films, over the more traditional spy thriller type storytelling. Hence the diminishing returns on each villain and secondary henchman during that period.

Reminds me of what "Robot Chicken" had to offer on the subject.

 

Meh. My main problem with the Zurg character was just that he was kinda forgettable and didn’t seem like much of a threat. If Lucas wanted to make him slimy, he could’ve gone for something like the Benicio Del Toro character in LICENCE TO KILL (my perennial choice for most underrated Bond film). Now that guy was creepy!

As for post-GOLDENEYE Brosnan, I think you nailed it. They really did feel like they were trying to be these generic 1990s Jerry Bruckheimer action films. Well, OK, DIE ANOTHER DAY didn’t feel like a Bruckheimer film. Watching it today, it almost feels like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. It's so kitschy and has aged so horribly that I could actually kinda see it becoming this weird camp classic. God, that was a depressing time to be a James Bond fan. GOLDENEYE was a really promising start to the Brosnan Age, and it did a pretty good job of updating the series while also modernizing certain aspects of it, but they really dropped the ball with Brosnan after that.

Yeah, that’s kinda funny.

 

On the contrary, I like how all the bad guys of the PT turn out not to be actual bad guys at all... Just puppets, distractions on the road, playing the roles the puppet-master had planned for them... The good guys are constantly trying to catch the bad guys (notice how often they talk about the need to find out "the Queen's attacker", the "bounty-hunter", the need to capture first Dooku and then Grievous to "end this war"...) and are blind to the actual evil, the phantom menace that turns out to be, ultimately, the big bad guy who holds the trilogy together.

 

Compare how the early James Bond movies handled SPECTRE. You had Bond facing off against Dr. No, Rosa Klebb, Red Grant, etc. while this shadowy guy stroking his cat was calling the shots. Just because Ernst Stavro Blofeld was Number 1 didn’t mean that Grant had to be boring and forgettable.

 

Considering their popularity (and their singularity compared to each other), it's hard to say that the villains of the PT are "boring or forgettable".
This threat is, if I understand correctly, to discuss the lack of screentime of (one of) those characters, and whether they should have appeared in more episodes or not. Not to discuss their lack of originality.

 

I think the micro-series did a good job of getting people hyped up for General Grievous in Episode 3. But yes, it would've been better to have gotten familiar with him in Ep.2. Alot of people didn't know him when they first saw him in Ep.3. Still, an awesome character just alot of fans didn't identify or understand him at first

 

What do you mean "understand" him? I had never seen Grievous before episode 3 and I had no problem understanding the character.

 

I wouldn't change a think about Grievous or how he is introduced. He has such a good time being a bad guy. He likes to laugh. Even when he is escaping - he has such a glee that he will survive to fight another day. And Grievous doesn't mind cheating either. He's rather unpretentious in that way.

 

Aside from Maul, are they really that popular?

 

First, when making the PT, Lucas had an opportunity that few directors have had before or since.
He knew he could make three films. So I think he didn't take full advantage of this and the opportunity to introduce characters in one film and then develop them in a later film.
He did with people like Bail but I think he could have done it with more characters.

You have three films, make good use of that.

Dooku for ex, I think he could have been in TPM and shown as a Jedi and good friend of Qui-Gon but one that is totally at odds with the council. He could allude to the seps by saying that some worlds are getting frustrated with the corruption in the senate and how the big companies has many senators in their pockets.
He could show up at the end and mourn for Qui-Gon and then say he is leaving the Jedi order to become and independent agent of good and he could even offer Obi-Wan to join him. But Obi-Wan turns it down.

Then in AotC, Dooku and the seps won't be the obvious bad guys from the word go.
I think that AotC tried to blur the line with Dokku and make the audience question whether or not he was a bad guy.
Personally I think the film failed here.
And having AotC be Dooku's introduction then we got the less than great scene where Padme accuses him of trying to kill her. Aside from not making sense based on what she knows and it spoiling the mystery of who is after Padme. It also feels odd, sort of shoehorned in just so that Dooku can get mentioned as he doesn't appear until about half way through the film.

As for Griev, if I had my way I would get rid of him completely as I found him to be a boring waste of time.
He wasn't interesting or threatening, he just hogged screen time that would be better used elsewhere.
To me, RotS felt rushed and I think Lucas tried to squeeze in too many things in one film.
Hence why I think he could have made better use of his three films.
Griev added nothing to me and since so much else was going on, his screen time was wasted in a film that didn't have screen time to waste.

Had the character been better and been in AotC and showed to be a credible threat, then he might have worked.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

A correct statement.

Eh, doesn't sound like a reasonable opinion to me, but okay.

You do realize he's the primary antagonist for the 1st half, though, right? That's when the separatists and the war are the main plot, so he's the main villain....



Your alternate pitch sounds pretty great, I'm not sure in what way it's an "improvement" over the actual one, though.

You should try to avoid the Belated Media mistake: present an alternate pitch, in a more fleshed out / complete form than the actual pitch was done in, and offer it as an "improvement" - cause, see, it's more fleshed out and complete!

No, actual improvement would be to complete / flesh out the one in the movie.


It's the same here, clearly the "good guy leaves good guys at the end of 1 and then returns ambiguous" isn't the thing that was done here - we've got a problem with internal execution (his off-screen presence in the first half is... mishandled), and the "if he was once a Jedi where was he in the first movie" is a bit of an elephant that could've been smoothed over.

Solve this issues, and you won't need an alternate version - though you can pitch one regardless, obviously.

 

What, am I not allowed to have an opinion?
Also what is "unreasonable" with saying that I found Grive to be uninteresting and not very threatening?
The former is about character or what a character does. Griev character is all talk and no delivery. He brags and boasts a lot but mostly he runs away. And that is why I find him unthreatening, he runs and hides a lot and when he does make a stand, Obi-Wan beats him quickly.
Simply having four arms and four lightsabers isn't enough to make a villain good or interesting.

So?
Malekith is the primary villain in Thor 2 and I found him totally uninteresting and a rather bad villain.

That he is the focus is my problem, RotS has so much to do and thus the film ends up feeling rushed.
And since this guy is taking up valuable screen time that would be better used elsewhere, I think the film would be better off without him.

My main argument is that when you have three films, make use of that. You don't have to introduce new things in every film, make good use of the time you have.

Ex. in Indy 4, the Mac character. The film introduces him as a friend of Indy but he quickly betrays him. This felt rather empty as we didn't know this guy and wasn't very shocking.
Later in the film he tries to pretend that he never really betrayed Indy and it was just a con.
But we see that he is still lying. This also felt flat and empty as we had no reason to think he was sincere and we really didn't see any great friendship between him and Indy.
Now imagine that it was Sallah instead. Or an older Short Round.
That would have made the betrayal much more shocking and it might have made the audience think that the later turnaround was actually real.

Also I do propose an "improvement" of the actual film, get rid of Griev and use Dooku instead.

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Either the film can just ignore trying to pretend that Dooku is anything but a villain and show him do villain things early on.
But that has been done before in SW.
It would probably work but is less inventive.
Having a good guy return and then show that he is bad could create more suspense and surprise.
And you have the opportunity to contrast Dooku with Anakin, to see what choices they made and why they turned bad.

Or you could have Dooku as not a Sith at all.
Dooku leaves at the end of TPM and starts to form the seps. Their goal is just to leave in peace and form their own union. And he is just a ex-Jedi, nothing more.
But due to some on his side being in the employ of Palpatine, the war still happens despite Dooku's wishes. Then in RotS Dooku finds out that Palpatine is a Sith he attacks Coruscant. He breaks into Palpatine's office but Anakin is there. Dooku tries to plead with Anakin and tells him "He is a Sith Lord" but Anakin doesn't listen. And he murders Dooku and this finally turns him.

In closing, I simply think that Lucas could have made better use of the three films he had and he could have introduced more characters earlier.
That he didn't made the films feel a bit disjointed and it also made RotS feel overstuffed with plot.

Bye.
Blackboard Monitor

 

I would have preferred General Grievous be introduced in AOTC. Perhaps he takes part in Arena fight, and slays many Jedi; and leaving after stand off with Mace Windu, Obi-Wan, and Anakin. To see him become known as Jedi Slayer on film, rather than only in Cartoon Network Anime series/Samurai Jack style Clone Wars, would have made his scenes in ROTS more intimidating and you would actually fear for Obi-Wan in their duel, and in opening of ROTS. Grievous could have had his heart condition, caused by Mace Windu in the Clone Wars/Anime in the Arena battle.

 

You are, that's why I said "but okay"

He's samrt.

... and even to the extent that he's "cowardly", or "all talk no walk", what about this makes him, or would make him, uninteresting?

"Delivery", in "interesting character terms", is how he talks and acts and interacts, not whether he "delivers teh fists".

Obiwan almost dies and kills him by surprise - though, on both sides, there are heavy problems with lahgic.

Ob1 seems better with both armed, but "Grive" is superior unarmed.
For some "narrative" reason, Ob1 can't use the force push when he's losing? Anyway

How good then that this isn't what makes him interesting, if he is.

It came off as a typical "he's filler" argument, but okay then.

Used on what, a diffuse war against a non-centralized sep army?

That's a non-argument - there are so many ways of handling "three films", one of them being giving each its distinctive identity, or at least partially?

Yea, but the villains were all new in each movie and no one complained

You didn't get my point then - while you would've preferred that, it would've inherently changed the structure of the movie; you point out "flaws" within the structure and ways to rectify them, not entirely alternate ideas.

There's lots of alternate scenarios that could've been done instead, yes.

If the existing structure would've been smoothened out, by filling in gaps etc., they wouldn't haev been disjointed - and, by the same token, if someon took your proposed ideas instead, they could've executed those in a disjointed fashion as well.

RotS isn't overstuffed with plot - it's UNDERstuffed, in terms of neglecting to show the end of the war, the perspective of the senate at the end, etc.

 

Given the sheer potential Dooku and Grievous possessed as a Jedi who was among the Lost Twenty and a celebrated Kaleesh general who was betrayed by the Count and transformed into a nightmare of flesh and machine (canon Grievous can die in a fire), I think Dooku should have been the antagonist from TPM onwards and Grievous should have been unveiled in AOTC. There was a lot of mileage that came from those characters and their interactions compared to Maul for whom they had to invent a brother and have him be a Dathomirian Zabrak in order to be even the slightest bit interesting.

If anything, the only thing TCW managed to do with Dooku and Grievous is make them less imposing and far less developed.

 

I think either having Grevious on Geonosis with the rest of the seperatists (and fleeing at the first sign of trouble) OR at the meeting with Dooku and Palps at the end of the movie. He didn't have to do much, just be there to tie AOTC and ROTS together a little neater.