Was Dooku miscast?

(very quickly her seemingly helpless look is replaced by a cold stare)

Heh, see, for me, that's one of the problems with Lee's performance. I would MUCH prefer the last line delivered without any change in attitude at all. Just a simple statement of fact without any emotional shift at all. Or just said with truthful earnest. Lee's interpretation, or indeed your re-interpretation here, immediately gives away the fact that Dooku's a villain.

 

Oh, I could've found plenty of people. Denzel Washington. Tom Hanks. Judi Dench. Sara Kestleman. Jayne Seymour. Dennis Miller. A complete unknown.

WTF? Was this an intentional attempt to assassinate your own credibility? Tom Hanks?! Dennis Miller?!

Christopher Lee is fantastic as Dooku.

 

In retrospect, I really overstated my case. Sorry everyone.

sepahrih, what you described wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't really mind that--I guess I'd have to see how well it was acted and things.

In general though, I do think that females should be more often conceived of outside of their sexuality (in film/media specifically). A character should be able to stand on his/her own. After all, I certainly wouldn't want to see someone, for instance, have Palpatine try to "seduce" Padme into calling for the vote of no confidence against Valorum. Just because there are two characters of the opposite sex interacting onscreen, there doesn't always need to be sexual tension.

And as for that final line, I think it's a giveaway that he's a villain no matter how it's said. Because Dooku says it as a response to Obi-wan saying something that he doesn't want to hear, its always going to sound like a threat. If they really wanted to hide that Dooku was a villain, they'd take out the line, or change it to something softer like, "That's unfortunate. I must go now, to continue working on your release." So that it looks like Dooku's efforts are not dependent no Obi-wan doing what he wants. Otherwise it just looks like blackmail, which is a dead giveaway for a bad guy.

But yeah, the "S&M" comment was way overboard. Sorry about that.

 

But Dooku IS morally ambiguous. In the same way Grievous foreshadows what Anakin will become (part man, part machine), Dooku foreshadows what Anakin will come to believe (that the Jedi are dogmatic and oppressive and that the Sith are not evil). Dooku is not a mustache-twirling, capital V villain. But rather someone whose judgement is clouded, and whose desire for power has recently become too much for their own good.

 

Heh, see, for me, that's one of the problems with Lee's performance. I would MUCH prefer the last line delivered without any change in attitude at all. Just a simple statement of fact without any emotional shift at all. Or just said with truthful earnest. Lee's interpretation, or indeed your re-interpretation here, immediately gives away the fact that Dooku's a villain.

It wasn't really intended that way in my version. It was more to show that she realized Obi-wan wouldn't join her, and there for she had no real use for him. Does that make her a villian? Not necesarily. Plus you could also interperet that she was hurt from his response, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Overall it leaves alot of room for intereperiation, and that's good.

What I like about my version is.

1. It talks a little more, not much though, about "how" Dooku knows the sith are in control withought being too obvious.

2. It explains the reason, or not, why Dooku actually left the Jedi in the first place. At the end of EP 3 you could interperet that she was just trying to manipulate Obi-wan, or that she was being sincere and she was reaching out to him, but Obi-wan denied it to her.

3. Unless you've seen where the story winds up you could actually suspend your disbelief for a moment to believe that Obi-wan might actually consider her offer. It was pretty obvious what his answer was going to be in AOTC, even if you hadn't seen the remaining episodes.

4. One way or another it certainly adds more dimension to the character. Even if the motivation is fake, it's still reasonable motivation and it will leave you wondering afterwords what her real intentions are.