Basher Sanctuary Episode 4: A New Forum

It's clear to me now that I am a gusher... who likes to bash.

I'm afraid I'm falling into that category. I realize that now I like 2 of 3 Prequels, though flawed, I like them and even love one. 5 of 6 overall.

But until the Empire falls, and the freedom of the Originals is restored - a basher, I will be.


JohnW - I think Ewan was his weakest in this film. Weaker even than Hayden and Natalie. Yes. Really.

 

Ah, at last, an answer I can understand. I understand that bashing can be fun. Fuzzy and I have great fun making Yodaman jokes and what-not.

However, my understand is still not complete


What is it you don't understand ?

g

 

I guess it is in the eye of the beholder then on Ewan's acting this round

 

I liked Ewan's acting, much better than all the others. Not just for ROTS, but in AOTC as well (can't really judge it in TPM, since he had nothing to do). And for me, Kenobi is the only heroic character in the PT.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the pathetic and stupid Padme. Would anyone like to join my "Padme can go to hell!" club, hmmm?

 

I liked Ewan in ROTS. I liked that line "19, that time on .... doesn't count". Does anyone know the line I'm talking about?

He also appears to be enjoying himself unlike in TPM.

 

I detailed in Stryphe's spoiler thread why overall Ewan doesn't do as good a job in ROTS as he does in the other prequels. If it were three hours later, I could post it in here. In a nutshell, when Ewan in ROTS is interacting with another human being, he does a good acting job. But when he is standing in a bluescreened room talking into the air, Ewan doesn't do well. (And I don't blame him. I blame Lucas for wasting Ewan's talent that way.)

As we all know, ROTS has more bluescreen work than do the other prequels. Hence Ewan not doing as well in this photoplay.

 

So fellow bashers, how would you now rate the SW movies after ROTS? Here's mine:

--ESB, still number one

--ANH and ROTJ, I actually can't decide on these two, I like them both equally

--ROTS, as I said it's the best of the PT

--AOTC, still better than TPM





--And the lowly TPM right at the bottom, away from everyone else.

*shrug* That's my ranking for now, I wonder if I'll change my mind if I get the chance to watch all six in the same day. Heh, that probably won't happen, it'll take a lot to make me ever watch TPM ever again!

 

1. SW (best movie ever made!)

2. ESB (a fine film in its own right, but can't touch SW)

3. ROTJ (sloppy compared to the elegant ESB, but still way better than any of the prequels)

4. ROTS (the best of the worst; essentially AOTC with half of a good lightsabre duel and a space battle)

5. AOTC (just a touch worse than ROTS)

6. TPM (a step down from AOTC)

 

Revenge of the Sith: Unexpectedly good in places, expectedly bad in others? best of the Prequels, but doesn?t quite touch the Originals



At last. Here it is, the last of the Star Wars movies by George Lucas and team. In a way, I am happy to see this day come, for these Prequels have been painful for my fandom to endure. As a matter of fact, combined with the beatings in other media venues (i.e., the "Yo Da Man" commercials), I can no longer tell someone that I am a Star Wars fan without giving them some sort of disclaimer. I sometimes catch myself lamenting the lost days when I was proud to call myself a Star Wars fan, when I could smile boldly and exclaim the saga's many virtues and nearly anyone would understand and agree on some level.

The ship that is the Prequels has, by my way of seeing things, taken a sharp nose dive since the opening scenes of the Phantom Menace (TPM). Attack of the Clones (AotC) continued this trend in all the ways that matter, and so I had every expectation that Lucas -- who hasn't appeared to change his formula in how his Star Wars movies are getting made -- would lay another rotten egg and Revenge of the Sith would crash the ship face first into the ground. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this isn't entirely the case for me. There are actually some enjoyments that I am taking away from this movie that I think will last.

The opening crawl is a mess, and I actually got a little bored with it as I read it that first time. "Evil is everywhere"? YUCK. But it was over soon enough and I absolutely dug the opening music. Boom-boom... boom-boom. As with the crawl, I wasn't surprised that the two Jedi Starfighters needlessly twisting in complete synchronicity earned a grimace. ILM has, after all, sold out and must make everything flashy and "kewl" these days. But, like the crawl, it was over soon enough. I remember wondering if the hits would continue, just as I had in complete despair back in May 1999.

Happily, with some notable exceptions, I enjoyed much of the movie from that point on.

The exceptions? Most importantly, this movie is still plagued by the legacy left it by TPM and AotC in that many of the characterizations and story situations are all screwed up. But that is a given, and was largely unavoidable, and those of you who know about story design know exactly what I mean. Specifics... I hated the way R2D2 repeatedly pops out of his little bay, and the CGI-powered agility that he has in comparison with his real life analog from the OT & TPM (he rolls around way too fast), and apparently the abominable decision to give him jets is still holding strong. Count Dooku's odd, pointless CGI jump from the landing of the stairs was crap. The lightsaber battle with Dooku was dumb (though it ended way cool) and soulless. "Hold me like you did on Naboo" -- enough said there. The scene where Palpatine gets a new face was utter trash, from the way he gets the new face to the entirely-too-abrupt change of convictions in Anakin. I guess Anakin's Fall to the Dark Side is thanks to being bi-polar, not a gradual but noticeable seduction of Dark Side powers. I still didn't care one whit that Padme was going to die, nor did I change my mind by the time she did (funeral? <yawn>). The belated involvement of Bail Organa in the Prequels bugged me, but that's more of an issue that I have with the Prequels as a whole. And I didn't like the series of events near the end: Obi-wan foolishly (and too obviously) leaves his job unfinished on the lava world, Yoda somehow loses the fight with Palpatine despite showing that he is the superior warrior (to say nothing of my continued dislike of Yoda being turned into a warrior), Padme giving up the will to live for whatever reason (it was made so, just because the story calls for it), and the awkward way that Padme names the children (there was no need to even get into that). And Vader acting and moving like Frankenstein's monster was crap, too -- it just wasn't a Star Wars thing to do.

That's quite the list of

 

Lurking_Around

So fellow bashers, how would you now rate the SW movies after ROTS?

1. TESB -- The virtues have been hashed over before.


2. SW -- Ditto.


3. ROTJ -- There are problems with this film: Luke and Leia as siblings (gross!), the unoriginal Death Star II, the ridiculous "plan" to spring Han Solo, the offensively cute Ewoks. Still, considering the prequel trilogy, I'm able to sort of enjoy this movie as silly, stupid fun.


4. ROTS (tentative) -- I'm torn on this one. It's boring and empty, more so than TPM and AOTC. The difference is that it isn't as embarrassingly bad as the other two PT films. I will probably see it again when it comes out on DVD. Ask me again then.


5. TPM -- The movie that made me ashamed of Star Wars! Liam Neeson made a great Jedi, but Darth Maul was overrated. And Jake Lloyd, Jar Jar, Boss Nass, battle droids, the lame-ass trade federation -- UGGGH! When the movie ended, I thought of that verse from Corinthians: "When I became a man, I put away childish things."


6. AOTC -- I knew we were in for a doozy when they announced the title. Lucas pandered to the fans with Jango Fett. The romance was just awful. And Yoda doesn't need to jump around and fight with a frickin' lightsaber -- he's a master! Oh, if only I could turn down the volume and sync this movie to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," I might rate it higher!

 

Well, I actually liked Revenge of the Sith, but my approval has an asterisk next to it. I liked it because I had such pathetically low expectations for this film going in, and because of that, it surprised me in some scenes. Easily the best of the worst. I'd even say that if you cherrypicked some scenes and refilmed the scenes around them, you would have a salvagable movie on your hands.

Actually though, I don't think I minded the usual prequel cornball and horrible lines this time around. What got me was the plotholes, and they were so massive you could fly a Naboo fighter through them, blow up the reactor, and deactivate a droid army. Not only did it invalidate things in the originals, but also in the previous prequels to the point where you need the EU to patch things up. I'll discuss it more when the spoiler policy has been lifted.

Anyway, I did enjoy it, but for the first time, I think the cut scenes would have better served it. It's sloppy the way it is now, and if any Star Wars film should be longer, it's this one.

 

(Note: It's May 23rd where I am, so if you're still hanging out yesterday, please avoid this post for one minor spoiler.)

I returned to the theatre last night and watched REVENGE OF THE SITH one more time. It didn't quite affect me the way it first did.
There is indeed *a lot* to bash in this film, many things have already been mentioned.

What I haven't seen mentioned yet and which annoyed me yesterday, are the small, shall we say, technical flaws - that should be impossible to make with CGI.

Examples:
Anakin and Obi-Wan fighting on the side of a huge falling tower in the lava (what happened to higher ground ). Notice how in at least one of the long shots the flashing lightsabers are just slashing in the air, far from each other; how is it possible to make such a mistake when there are no actors actually missing each other - you're actually making this in a computer?!

Aayla Secura, the hot Jedi, falls dead before she is shot. Must have been a late night at ILM, perhaps they were ALT-Tabbing between finishing the scene and playing World of Warcraft.

**

On a sidenote, I notice some Padmé hate going on, and believe me I hated her with all of my basher's heart in EPI & especially EPII but in EPIII Natalie does a good job; she is one of the few characters expressing emotion - her "Anakin, you're breaking my heart" brings a lump to my throat. The character works much better than the Princess Leia rehash from EPI, or the dumb teenager politician in EPII.

**

OK people favorite lines & least favorite lines?

My fave (at the moment): "Always on the move."
(I love Palpy's dialogue in the opera scene too, but I don't remember the lines)

My least fave (at the moment): Random Yoda line

 

Ree Yees, was it you who made the 'Change OT in light of the PT' thread in the Classic Trilogy forum? You might want to 'up' the thread so that we all can post funny stuff from ROTS!

 

Hi fellow bashers! I'm a long time lurker of the Sanctuary finally deciding to come out of the shadows

I've read the various incarnations of this thread for years now, never daring to post but still reading everything

But now that RotS has finally been released, I feel the urge to post.

I saw it (twice) this week-end and I'm so disappointed. I should have known, of course, but seeing that some esteemed bashers liked it gave me some hope that it would be good. Sadly it isn't.

The plot still feels weak to me, the music (or what is left of it) is the worst of the PT,and CGI is everywhere.
I won't go into details since I don't know if spoilers are already allowed (it's monday 23 here but ...)

I feel sad because, as Stryphe said, this IS the end of Star Wars and I really wanted it to end with a bang, not with a mediocre film


My final rating of the SW movies :

1. SW/ESB
3. ROTJ
4. TPM
5. ROTS
6. AOTC


P.S. : sorry for the bad english

 

No "bad English" there
I agree that the music is the worst in this film, notice how they pull another AoTC-cut-n-paste job in several starships-arriving-at-planet bits. For once I was pleased Burrt amped up the effects volume hehe. But I'm even happier to learn he's left, only three movies too late.

 

I'm living abroad & I saw ROTS in a place that doesn't really have a history with Star Wars. When the fan-fare, galaxy far far away or the crawl appeared there was no cheering. It was as if it was just another Hollywood blockbuster. Rather strange environment to see the last film.

Anyway I didn't like the film. I think there has been some improvements in this film over the others but its still the work of lazy writing, poor directing, & sloppy editing. I will say that the acting is better in certain spots than in AOTC, but its still bad.

What struck me is how many times the film relied on shots from the other films. Yoda getting a lift from Bail was the same as ESB, Yoda leaving the Wookie planet was the same as Luke leaving Dagobah, the twin suns scene, and various other things.

I thought the duels were generally weak. Poor editing in both the Dooku and Mace Windu duels. Dooku not speaking would have not been so blatant had they tightened up the cuts. I think the Mace/Sidious duel would have had much more tension had the shots of Anakin not been intercut. Kenobi using a blaster to kill Grievous wasn't consistent with his character & also was a let down. Finally the final duel was nowhere near as tense or dramatic as what was seen in ESB. I think the show off moves between Obi-Wan & Anakin can be seen as a microcosm for the PT, it doesn't make any sense for both characters to do it in the middle of a duel yet they do because it looks cool. How advantageous is the high ground when Obi-Wan killed Maul from that same position & with no lightsaber to boot?

Of course the Vader turn doesn't really satisfy either. The now infamous "nooooo" is the kind of thing spoofed on "The Simpson's" & "Futurama". In fact Calculon gives the same delivery but its supposed to be because he's a terrible actor & its played for laughs.

But what really sticks out is how Lucas sold out the idea of midicholorians. The whole point is supposed to be that Anakin was created by Darth Plagueis (sp?) yet that detail was cut out. This was alluded to in TPM with a music cue no less & when it came time to deliver Lucas dropped it, thus making the whole point of midis pointless.

 

I posted this opinion in another thread, but I'm too lazy to retype it:

I thought it was stupid how Nute confesses he was in league with Sidious the entire time, and Anakin believes Palpatine is a good man. It doesn't dawn on him when Gunray says "But Lord Sidious promised us peace!" that Sidious was the one trying to kill Padme the entire time. He knew Dooku was a Sith, he knew Dooku was trying to assassinate her in AOTC, that's why he was assigned to protect her. He knew the Trade Federation were after her in TPM, that was why they went to Tatooine, and all this, he doesn't once think that Palpatine was the biggest threat to Padme? If he was so protective of her, why did he join in league with someone who's tried to kill her for the past thirteen years? Anakin fought to protect "democracy" and felt the Republic was crumbling under the weight of war, but it didn't dawn on him that his master was in league with the opposition? That his new master WAS the reason there was a war, that his master CONTROLLED the Separtist forces that tried to kill his beloved Padme? Things like that are what make me see just how bad a movie ROTS is and how poorly concieved the characters are, ESPECIALLY Anakin.

Basically, for this film to even work, you have to assume all the characters are complete morons. They have to suspend any form of logic, cease being intelligent and become incapable of thought. That's the only way it seems for the action of the "drama" to work, the only way the story can progress.

 

Anakin's turn really was one of the dumbest things in the movie. A pity really, since I thought Hayden tried his best.

 

Django: "Of course the Vader turn doesn't really satisfy either. The now infamous "nooooo" is the kind of thing spoofed on "The Simpson's" & "Futurama". In fact Calculon gives the same delivery but its supposed to be because he's a terrible actor & its played for laughs."

It's not a surprise Lucas would let that awful line reading in. I don't know if he directed it himself or hired a second-unit director, but it's just bad, and shows how how mediocre and bad lines are allowed to pass unchecked in the prequels. No one seems to suggest to Lucas that the take really could use some improvement. This was supposed to be an important scene, and now some people will remember it for laughs. Wasn't ROTS filmed at a much faster pace than the previous two? It feels like a breezy two-take movie. After reading about how many scenes in ESB took up to 25 takes, I doubt any scene in ROTS took more than three to four. And yet I bet CG Yoda or Genereal Grievous or a Clonetrooper went through 20 different versions to polish its virtual performance.

That little youngling that asked Anakin a question was pretty bad too.

Rees Yees: Must have been a late night at ILM, perhaps they were ALT-Tabbing between finishing the scene and playing World of Warcraft.



Lurking, I agree with your dislike of Padme. Anytime there was an establishing shot of her, sitting melancholy in that sunlight, I knew I was in store for another boring five minute scene. I don't sympathize with her or even understand her completely. She seems fog-headed and is a nuisance to me in these movies, and I just wanted her off-screen as soon as possible. During her funeral....I had no feeling at all. During Vader's funeral in ROTJ I was swelling with emotions. Pretty much sums up the PT/OT difference for me.

Like Loco for Lucas said, a lot of the characters, even the main heroes, are just dim-witted and it takes them forever to figure out the obvious, sort of like Mace mentioning that annoying prophecy thing for the fifth time. I know these are the prequels, and most of what we should know has already been mapped out beforehand, but Lucas could've really worked harder to make these characters a little smarter, to keep us viewers on our toes and engaged.

I can't really remember any lines in ROTS except for the bad ones. I think I actually liked TPM's script more than ROTS.

 

Anakin seems as slow as the rest of the Jedi. It's funny when Palpatine tells him about Darth-Whatshisname and about the history of the sith and lil' Ani still doesn't put 1 and 1 together. "Well I suppose the good chanselor is merely intrested in old sith legends. As good a hobby as any I suppose.." And later in Palpatines office it takes painfully long before Ani finally realises that Palps is indeed a sith.

before I forget. One of the most amusing moments in ROTS is, when Mace gets his hand cut of and screams like a little girl. It feels so real and raw because of it. And it's funny to hear Samuel scream like that. I bet that hurt. "Yeaarghhh"

 

before I forget. One of the most amusing moments in ROTS is, when Mace gets his hand cut of and screams like a little girl. It feels so real and raw because of it. And it's funny to hear Samuel scream like that. I bet that hurt. "Yeaarghhh

Hah! In all my bashing of Padme, I forgot to bash Mace! Thanks!

Mace's brilliant plan: "Let's just go in there and arrest the head of the Republic! Yeeehaw!"

Oh brilliant...

Also, didn't Yoda tell him how hard it was to defeat Count Dooku, the apprentice!!! Mace should have brought waaaay more Jedi with him! 'Course, knowing Mace, if he did that they'd all march in plain sight and allow Palpatine to prepare himself...

Sigh...I'm glad he's dead. But not as glad as Padme's death! Mwahahahaha!

It's also possible Mace died from laughing so hard after hearing Palpatine make his impersonation of Skeletor from 'Masters of the Universe'.

"Poweeer....UNLIMITED!!!!"

 

I'm sorry to break this to you, Lurking, but it is "Unlimited.....POWER!!!!" (which incidentally is this film's George Lucas signature line, like "Greed can be a powerful ally" from EPI)

Chastise me if I'm wrong though

 

I could have sworn it was "Poweer...UNLIMITED!!!" but eitehr way, the whole thing sounded like Skeletor from the 'Masters of the Universe' movie.

Does anyone have the script online?

 

I think it's "unlimited power!" as well.


Not nearly enough bashing of Mace Windu goes on here. He's without a doubt the worst character in the prequels.

And again... the Jedi keep saying there's a Sith Lord out there, but are making no visible effort to track him down.

Another thing that gets me is when Anakin talks about his new powers... what new powers? The Dark Side has only given him a new name, yellow eyes, and a mean streak (which he already had).

And therein lies my biggest problem with Anakin's turn. I didn't see him ever actually joining the Dark Side. Sure, he teams up with a Sith Lord, and kills a bunch of no-name Jedi but he isn't full of hate or anger but is doing it for love... and there I am in the cinema thinking eh? What happened to the seduction?

The prophecy thing is rather stupid too. Are none of the characters paying attention to the actual words being used? Why did the Jedi ever feel like it was going to be fufilled when according to them, the Sith were extinct? And when the chosen did turn up, and these wise masters did believe in it, did they firstly not realise that the Sith must therefore be alive, and then that Anakin would bring balance to the Force and therefore wipe them down to two to balance the Sith (that they somehow knew only
came in twos)? And how does Anakin fulfil this prophecy when he eventually unbalances the Force by getting rid of the Sith in ROTJ?

So the Force goes UNBALANCED-BALANCED-UNBALANCED. Methinks someone didn't really think about the prophecy/chosen one properly.

 

Not nearly enough bashing of Mace Windu goes on here. He's without a doubt the worst character in the prequels.

[Yoda]No, there is another[/Yoda]

Hint 1: This character just spends all her time in ROTS crying/nagging/whining

Hint 2: This character has the dumbest death ever ("She lost her will to live...")

Hint 3: This character refused to believe what Kenobi said, despite already knowing that Anakin is capable of murdering children

Hint 4:This character had the worst performance in the whole PT

That's enough hints, hmmm?