PT Was Grievous a good villain?

He was an absolutely terrible character. The contrast with bit players like Jabba and Jango Fett (or even Zam Wesel) reveal how poorly thought out and executed this whole thing was. We never once get a sense of how Grievous thinks, or what his motives are. Is he just a fighter, does he have grudge against the Jedi, or does he really believe in the ideals of the CIS? Who knows. Is he enthusiastic about the violence, detached, or regretful? Again, no idea. Nor do we ever get any real information establishing how he's thought of in-universe. The only people we see obey him are robots, who are literally programmed to obey. Then he's openly disrespected by Anakin, which is the sort of banter we would largely expect that character to direct at his enemies. So where does that leave us? Was he revered by his troop? Feared by the Republic? Despised as a bumbling, incompetent leader? One too gun shy or too much a glory hog that disregarded the lives of his troops? Somewhere in-between? No clues here either. What about his skills? We literally never see him do anything that would qualify him as an exceptional warrior or strategist. Nor, to be fair, do we see him do things that would mark him as especially bad, either.

He's just sort of their. He literally just takes up space onscreen. He's a crude, poorly written plot device with nothing memorable or exceptional about him at all. It's almost impressive the extent to which they went out of their way to avoid giving us any way to evaluate who this guy was or what he was supposed to be.

 

i enjoyed him. was a nice change of pace i think. Of course like most other villians he was just a pawn.

 

I can see where some of the criticisms are coming from, but personally I enjoyed him. I loved seeing him wield four lightsabers at a time, skittering around with those crab-like movements (when he was walking on his arms and legs together) and trying to get away in his visually interesting "wheel" vehicle. I even like that stupid coughing!

So I didn't take him all that seriously, but I liked not taking him seriously

 

Grievous was a terrible villain. Maybe the epitome of everything wrong with the prequel trilogy.

With Grievous, you barely see him. I think he only made an appearance in the last film in which his death was supposed to be a big deal -- except he hadn't been in the previous two films. So he dies and it's supposed to be a big deal?

I think the big mistake that Lucas made in the prequels was killing Darth Maul waaaay too early. Darth Maul was a very good villain and he should have been Anakin's opponent up until Revenge of the Sith, where Anakin fights him, kills him, and then falls to the dark side as a result.

 

GG had a lot of potential, but he was terribly underused in ROTS. He was a cool character but he definitely needed character development and more scenes. I mean how much scenes does he have in ROTS? 4? Sidious, Maul and Jango Fett are all better, IMO.

 

Except ... his death can have symbolic overtones.

I love the character. He wouldn't be in my Top Three, let's say, but he ranks high.

And I don't think a character needs to have a lot of dialogue, or depth, in order to be memorable.

Grievous, to me, is a fun schemer with a slightly twisted sense of humour, and I think he's the most openly "serial-like" baddie in the saga.

I like how he is interwoven in the fabric of Episode III. He's kind of a dark-hearted version of Jar Jar: more mechanical and messed-up. There are visual similarities between the two. He's like Jar Jar with roid rage.

He can be regarded as a "hero" or "saviour" character given that he leads a huge army in open revolt against the profane Galactic Republic. And he does so while being wrecked inside. In some ways, this is the ultimate "hero": a person with much to be bitter about, but he has managed to rise to the top and simply gets on with it.

References to the "sacred heart" of Jesus, Lord Shiva, and other deistic figures abound in Grievous' wheel bike and his fiery death, as well. Obviously, there is also an allusion to Obi-Wan destroying the "heart" of Anakin, too. In fact, where Anakin is concerned...

Grievous can clearly be seen as the living mirror of Anakin. And apart from one brief encounter where Grievous escapes, Anakin is denied the chance to face his mirror. Why Anakin? Take a second look at Grievous. He doesn't merely prefigure Anakin's terrible transformation into Darth Vader, he *is* Anakin at that moment in time: a life in terrible transition.

The fact that Grievous and Anakin both run to greet Sidious/Palpatine, arriving in kneeling positions, genuflecting at the altar of the Emperor, barely with their breath back, is key. Grievous is an excellent satire of Anakin's life at this critical juncture: twisted, ruined, hunched, struggling for breath; a parody of the masculine creative force in overdrive, stuck chasing its own tail.

GG also represents something in the best tradition of Star Wars: an exotic design sparked into being from simple, everyday origins. In this case, it was the handle/nozzle from a standard household spray bottle as seen from above that marked the genesis of the character. Much fleshing out was then done on this design, but the simplicity of that initial design spark can still be seen in the finished work.

The rendering and animation of Grievous throughout are spectacular, too. And that voice. I mean, just when you think you've seen and heard it all, George Lucas and his people come up with that. This character was insane fun at the cinema seeing ROTS on my two separate viewings and he remains insane fun to this very day.

So, erm, what's not to love?

 

Just re watched ROTS, it had been a while. Yeah he was totally underused, there really isn't anything that great about him. He's much better in TCW.

 

Overall, he was fine. I wish he had been portrayed as a little more overtly menacing, but other than that he was great. I didn't bemoan the fact that he was underdeveloped in the film because, really, the true villains of the film are Palpatine and (eventually) Anakin. I don't think he ever needed to be develped. He's just a cog in the machine that leads to the fall of the Republic. The fact that the film never takes him too seriously lends him a fun, James Bond-ish "villian of the week" feel, and I think he played well enough off of Obi Wan to highlight Kenobi as a suave, but relatable hero. Their brawl is really the last bit of classic, lighthearted Star Wars fun before the film makes a full plunge into darkness.

I'll admit the asthma was a little much. Oh well.

 

No, not really.

 

Grievous was an excellent villain in the book, good but underdeveloped in the movie. I was debating this recently in another thread; I believe quite strongly ROTS would have been much more satisfying for the masses as a 3 hour movie like LOTR; this is YET ANOTHER reason why. You just need it to understand the whole story and all of the characters.

Grievous was a Jedi killer, and that was why he had a collection of light sabers; he just never had run into a master like Obi-Wan (killed a lot of lesser Jedi). He was a vicious killer, and his underlings lived in fear. In the book, he smashed his officers' heads in for one wrong move. There is a back story of how Dooku (another character that needed the development they gave him in the book) hated him, but was just biding his time with him because he was needed for the war (eventually intending to kill him or let him be killed).

 

I think we just needed to see why he was an actual threat, and ROTS accomplished this well IMO. He coordinated a massive attack on Coruscant and was still able to run the war effectively after the death of Dooku. Also 4 lightsabers

 

I think he could hav ebeen had he gotten some proper character development.

 

RotS didn't need to be 3 hours long, Lucas just needed to have more of plan for the trilogy as a whole. There is more then enough time in a 6 hour trilogy to give your villains the proper amount of character development etc... but Lucas didn't plan far enough a head and kept killing off and re-introducing villains so it never really happened.

 

To tell the whole story from AOTC on, including developing the villains and explaining Anakin's turn, it really did need to be 3 hours long. True that Lucas could have told a different story from the start of the trilogy, but that story really did need 3 hours.

 

No it doesn't, the storytelling before the start of RotS just needed to be better and more focused.

 

Yes, if you were to make ROTS a different or altered story, I would agree. However, with the characters and story that we have, no. Many agree that the ROTS novel is the best of all novels in the expanded universe, it really is a good story as is. It fills in the details that are missing in the movie, the 3 hours would properly fill out THAT story, which was basically the one Lucas told in the movie minus the development details. Long movies can successful, as evidenced by LOTR.

Anyway, I don't want this to turn into an extended, off-topic debate (especially since I had this debate already ).

 

Nope, they never met face to face.

 

Which was exactly the point! He was used as a tool by Sidious to distract Obi Wan and the republic...

 

I didn't read the book or see the micro series before ROTS but thought Grievous was a great villian and a fun character to watch. Alot of things about his past were pretty easy to work out....I mean hes talking about getting rid of Obi-Wan and Anakin and opens his cloak to show he has a collection Light Sabres, its not hard to see hes letting the audience know hes killed Jedi before...well at least it was to me.

I liked that the Prequels had a new villian in all three films, it showed Obi-Wans and Anakins powers were getting stronger leading upto their duel in ROTS.

I don't want to be bogged down with long drawn out back stories that tell you every detail about the character because one of the things that I liked about ANH when I first saw it was the fact I could make up my own little backstories for characters like R5 and GG was great for that.

To me General Grievous is a great villian in the prequels but like a lot of things in the SW universe he gets overly picked apart instead of just being enjoyed.

 

You know, a lot of these ideas can still be added into the films, especially the Dooku in TPM and Grievous in AOTC ideas.

But time's running out.

 

If his story had been more fleshed out on the screen, I think he could have been a better villain.

 

Sure they did.

 

I meant just Anakin...

 

He trivialises the skill level required to wield a lightsabre effectively. He would have to be one of my least favourite SW characters.

 

exactly. Grievous is the worst SW villain ever.

It's as ridiculous as "wars not make one great" Yoda flipping around with a lightsaber.