SW Saga Action Analysis

Chase scenes, shoot-outs, lightsaber duels and more. You can be assured there?s plenty of action all across the SW saga. But how much action does each SW episode contain? How is it distributed throughout the movie? And how does that compare to the other episodes? How are the major battles edited? The purpose of this thread is to look at these questions and many more that arise from the level of action and its pacing throughout the saga.

Before I timed the action sequences in each movie, I had to set out strict guidelines for what exactly constituted as action onscreen. Obviously, the podrace is an action sequence, but what about when Luke gets hassled by the unsavory characters in the cantina? Should the whole cantina sequence be counted, or only the heart of the action? Here are the criteria I used when in doubt beyond obvious action sequences:

1. The scene has a weapon being wielded with intent to harm.
2. Any character onscreen is in discernable danger.
3. Large armies or fleets are shown in their grandeur. Also, war rooms and bases during a battle.
4. Scenes that contain action in them, but only at a certain point, are counted entirely only if they maintain an obvious hostile atmosphere before the action occurs. If not, only the exact action is counted. There is where it gets subjective at times.
5. Since there were a few occasions of subjectivity, although not much, I attempted to keep my decisions across the board. In other words, if I counted it in one movie, I would do the same for a similar situation in another.

I used the special editions of the OT, and the normal PT (no cut scenes). The special editions have little bearing on the length of action sequences as far as I know. It?s more of a quality issue there. And AOTC is unaffected by cut scenes of an action nature. Only TPM is minimally affected by not including the cut scenes (i.e. waterfall, extended podrace, etc.) But after all, they are cut scenes. OK now that we have the legalities out of the way, we can look at the data for each movie, split into thirty-minute blocks, for better comparison.

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[b]The Phantom Menace[/b]

[ul][li]The Republic Cruiser is destroyed through Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan enter the ventilation shaft. (2 min. 10 sec.)[/li]
[li]The Trade Federation lands on Naboo through Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan meet Jar Jar. [color=red]Example[/color] (for future reference to these types of scenes): Start timing when Army lands. Continue timing as Qui-Gon and Jar Jar almost get plowed. Stop timing while they talk and the threat of danger has left. Start timing again when battle droids arrive on STAP?s chasing Obi-Wan. (1 min. 32 sec.)[/li][li]Opee Sea Killer attacks bongo through "There?s always a bigger fish." (49 sec.)[/li][li]Colo Clawfish chases the bongo through the Sando Aqua Monster feasts some more. (35 sec.)[/li][li]Invasion of Theed. (37 sec.)[/li][li]Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan rescue Queen Amidala. (44 sec.)[/li][li]The battle droids in the hangar are cleared. (59 sec.)[/li][li]The Queen?s ship escapes. (1 min. 33 sec.)[/li][/ul]
[color=blue](Thirty-minute mark)[/color] [b]Total for this past half hour: 8 min. 59 sec.[/b]


[ul][li]Sebulba threatens Jar Jar. (28 sec.)[/li][li]"Start your engines!" through flames chasing Anakin?s pod as he flies out of the cave. (First lap) (2 min. 31 sec.)[/li][/ul]
[color=blue](Sixty-minute mark)[/color] [b]Total for this past half hour: 2 min. 59 sec.[/b]


[ul][li]Tuskens camped on the dune turn through Anakin crosses the finish line. (6 min. 22 sec.)[/li][li]Darth Maul attacks Qui-Gon and Anakin. (50 sec.)[/li][/ul]
[color=blue](Ninety-minute mark)[/color] [b]Total for this past half hour: 7 min. 12 sec.[/b]


[ul][li]The Gungan Army emerges from the swamps to face the Trade Federation Army (1 min. 9 sec.)[/li][li]Diversion in the streets through shoot-out in the hangar. (1 min. 32 sec.)[/li][li]Naboo starfighters face the droid starfighters. (17 sec.)[/li][li]Droid Army ceases fire and pulls out the battle droids.

 

Frankly I'm surprised that TESB and ROTJ have more action than TPM.

Secondly, I'd like to talk about the editting of the major battles:

I think the best editting from each movie would have to be:

ANH: Luke and Leia, and Han and Chewbacca trying to escape to the Falcon. The intercutting works perfectly.

TESB: The Battle of Hoth. I think the flow of this battle is incredible. There's always a great flow of action and intercutting between Luke, the other speeders, and Han and Leia inside the base.

ROTJ: The sail barge. As DamonD mentioned in a thread in the AOTC forum, the editing here is great. In a four or five minute sequence, it cuts between Han, Chewbacca, Lando, Luke, Leia, R2 & 3PO, Boba, and Jabba. It was very well done considering how much was involved.

TPM: Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon against the droids on the Trade Federation ship. Fast paced and exciting, and left us with just enough to be satisfied.

AOTC: The rain battle. As Well_Of_Souls mentioned in a thread in the AOTC forum, the editing here is damn near perfect. It's quick paced, crisp, and clear. It gives us just enough action without dissapointing, even though the scene itself is only a minute and a half to two minutes long.


Oh, and there's a pattern I noticed with both TPM and AOTC. In TPM the pod race starts as the first hour passes. In AOTC the rain battle starts as the first hour passes. I'm not sure about the other movies.

I love SW action

 

Damn, this must've taken an absolute age.

It's interesting how both ANH and TPM took more time to set up story and new characters, and therefore had reduced 'action time'. There's a lot of destruction to go around in Ep3, so I wouldn't be suprised if that tops the list.

The TPM count is almost a little suprising, when you bear in mind the huge 4-way battle at the end, and the podrace. You'd expect it to be higher. AOTC and ROTJ were always gonna do well, due to the half-hour (roughly) final battle sequences in those films.

And here are the rough main lightsabre duel lengths.

Total lightsabre duel time in TPM - 4m44
Total lightsabre duel time in AOTC - 5m12
Total lightsabre duel time in ANH - 2m2
Total lightsabre duel time in ESB - 6m25
Total lightsabre duel time in ROTJ - 4m56

It's rough, because most of the TPM is filled with combat, wheras there are some gaps during fighting in the ESB duel, for example.

 

Thanks for your input.

ST-TPM-ASF-TNEwrote: "Oh, and there's a pattern I noticed with both TPM and AOTC. In TPM the pod race starts as the first hour passes. In AOTC the rain battle starts as the first hour passes. I'm not sure about the other movies."

Well at the sixty-minute mark in ROTJ, it finds itself in the midst of a large action sequence, the speeder bike chase.

DamonD wrote: "It's interesting how both ANH and TPM took more time to set up story and new characters, and therefore had reduced 'action time'. There's a lot of destruction to go around in Ep3, so I wouldn't be suprised if that tops the list."

Agreed. And the converse of this is, TPM and ANH have more exposition. And Episode III will porbably fall in around AOTC's total because that's what ROTJ did with ESB.

One thing I've noticed is that ANH gets off to a relatively slow start in terms of action in the first half of the movie, giving it in small spurts, and then really going heavy-handed with it in the last half. Meanwhile, TPM starts off with the small spurts of action, but then tapers off for quite awhile. Then you get a solid action sequence, the pod race, then you taper off again. It ends with the large final battle.

ESB layers on the action in the first hour, tapers off for the next half hour, and then concludes fantastically. Thanks to the speeder chase in AOTC, we have a predominant action sequence for the first hour. Imagine AOTC without it. The heavy action doesn't come until the last forty minutes.

So which goes over better? Having multiple smaller action sequences in bursts (think Death Star in ANH) or solid action sequences surrounded by areas of little to no action (think pod race). I'd say they both are effective. We don't want action in SW to be cookie-cutter. I'm glad different approaches have been taken. It may make sequences like the pod race and the chase scene on Coruscant seem longer, but in truth they are shorter than the amount of action that takes place in the early half of ESB with the Battle of Hoth, directly followed by the Asteroid Field Chase.

Which style do your prefer? Or are both styles fine? Do the spurts of action lend better to wittier one-liners? What effect does the level of action have on the dialogue?

 

I think it depends on the movies in whether actions sequences should be long or cut-up. The Battle of Yavin was filmed pretty well, ESB with its long running sequences are just awesome. RoTJ has shorter cut up sequences, however it worked wonders. TPM, however, failed miserably in this area. 4 indvidual stories that, quite franky, I couldn't care less about aside from Duel of the Fates. I think it would have been better to have longer sequences. It also takes away from ROTJ. The end of the saga ending in a awesome 3 way battle. AOTC was pretty good by having only 2 battles, and I felt that the scenes interchanged at the right time.

 

I have to say this is one of the most brilliant threads I have read so far. Thank you for putting so much time into this research.

 

First off, excellent job.

Second off, TPM didn't really have that much action. The only thing that was really a good action scene was the Duel of the Fates, the Podrace, and possibly the war at the end.

AOTC's entire basis was a war backdrop. It's going to have more action than any other, including ROTJ, although that action was pretty much contained.

I though ROTJ was also going to have more action. It should. It surprises me, now that I think about it, it does. It's more thrilling than ESB, but that's just what I count as action.

 

The podrace is in syncrinicity with Ben-Hers chariat race. Ive put them on at the same time and they are exactly the same. You should see it.

 

Really? I'm suprised, I thought the Ben-Hur race was a lot longer. Interesting

 

I asked these questions many months ago (in my latest post in this thread), and I am still wandering:

"Which style do your prefer? Or are both styles fine? Do the spurts of action lend better to wittier one-liners? What effect does the level of action have on the dialogue?"

Have action sequences become bigger than themselves? Do sequences such as the Podrace or the Speeder Chase not mesh with the overall film as well as the Death Star action sequences do for ANH? Does the dialogue and flow of the film work out better in ANH (excluding the Battle of Yavin, because that is one big action sequence) when action is spread out rather then in five or eight minutes blocks?

 

I still seriously wonder the answers to these questions. Any insights?