PT Did operation knightfall deserve a larger and more detailed scene/scenes

I think Vader vs. Obi-Wan was done effectively. Unlike the other Jedi that Vader killed, he did not immediately attack Obi-Wan. It was pretty much their talk before that fired Vader up.

 

SO its bad when anakin kill the younglins but its ok when he killed the tusken raiders?

 

Killing Tuskens in a fit of blind, manic rage because they kidnapped and tortured your mother for months is in no way the same as entering a room full of small, defenseless, innocent, scared children who are asking you for guidance to get them out of this nightmare...only for you to ignite your saber on them.

 

Yea well, the tusken thing still isn't given the gravity it deserves (mostly in the way Padme reacts). He did kill Tusken children, even if his rage was more justifiable, nothing justifies that. I can't see him as any sort of hero after that.

More on-topic, I agree that we should have seen more of Anakin killing jedi and less of the clones doing so, especially when it seems like many jedi could have handled themselves against the clones. And I'm not cool with the younglings scene either, I see it as equally terrible to the tusken thing.

 

This was not Conan the Barbarian, with heads rolling all over the place. They already had really pushed the SW envelope further than ever, and we got the picture of what had happened; this is especially true given all of the children being killed (not only the implied killing by Anakin, but also the kid killed when Organa shows up at the temple). Take it too much further and you get an R rating, which I am sure they didn't want. ( and wasn't really necessary in that story).

Yeah, not to mention Tusken Raiders are a brutal race that steal, kidnap, torture, and kill; that is their way; I don't see anything wrong with snuffing out the adults who not only killed Anakin's mother, but dozens of other people that had gone out looking for Shmi after she was kidnapped. Killing the children in the camp may have been a bit overboard, but certainly nothing like killing the Younglings.

 

Well, that's one way to get them out.

 

Really, the Order 66 montage, by the end goes on a little too long in showing Jedi die that I know nothing about/don't care about.

IMO they should have inter-cut the scenes of Obi-Wan being fired upon, Ki-Adi-Mundi being gunned down, and Aayla's death, with shots of Anakin and the 501st cutting down Jedi in the temple. The deaths of Stass Allie and Plo in particular are just so impersonal IMO vs. seeing clones shooting their generals point blank, and more importantly, showing characters that are important or that we at least have some familiarity with.

Aayla didn't have a speaking role or anything, but her death scene was shot well that I would have kept it anyway.

The montage should have gone something like:

1. Anakin and the 501st marching towards the temple
2. Obi-Wan being fired upon
3. Cut back to Anakin cutting down guards in front of the Temple
4. Ki-Adi-Mundi being gunned down.
5. Anakin and the 501st flooding into the Temple and laying waste to everyone inside.
6. Aayla's death scene.
7. Anakin walking into the Council chambers and finding the younglings
8. Yoda feeling the tremor in the Force and Gree approaching Yoda from behind.

 

That is an awesome idea if only george lucas' brain worked as well as yours haha

 

I found the attack on the temple got the job done. An actual bloodbath would've really screwed the pacing over.

 

I think this is one of the scenes that could have used some expansion. Show Anakin dueling some Knights/Masters at least...

 

Matched with the music, I found that scene disturbingly horrifying and all without the need for blood and gore. (The whole marching on the Temple). We hear, see, and feel the cadence of marching feet and know this is the march to destruction - then when we pan to Yoda and Obi-Wan walking through the eerily silent Temple - no longer the peace of contemplation, but of slaughter - shivers. It's almost Hitchcockian.

As far as the younglings, I feel it shows how far Anakin is willing to go to "save" Padme. "Even" the children - that price is not too high.

And by implying without showing, the scene is far more powerful than just more "guts and gore" would be. Of course, others feel differently, but I feel the menace was all the more horrific for being relatively understated.

 

I love bloody action and horror movies and would have been fine with a more gory Order 66 montage that leaves less to the imagination. But for me, the scene as it stands is powerful. I don't have a problem with it, because it works.

 

I actually think Lucas handled this perfectly. He showed the tragedy of Anakin's betrayal and the genocide of the Jedi. Anakin didn't look like a badass, taking on three Jedi Masters at a time. Instead, he looked like what he actually was -- a butcher and a brutal enforcer of a dictatorship. There were no grand battles -- the Jedi were shot in the back by the very people the had counted as allies. The people we do see Anakin actually kill are pathetic bureaucrats incapable of fighting back and instead pitifully begging for their lives. In my opinion, it was truly the best Lucas could have done.

 

YES, MORE BLOOD, MORE VIOLENCE, I WANNA SEE THE JEDI SLAUGHTERED!!!!!! In all seriousness, though, it'd of been nice to actually see Anakin dueling some jedi.

 

Good point, never thought of it that way, although it makes sense storywise, the assault on the temple wasn't some epic battle between Anakin and the other jedi, it was a swift and brutal slaughter of his unsuspecting friends. I think the Revenge of the Sith novel handles it well, the novel only shows the first death, with Anakin killing the gatemaster to the temple, but it's not some battle, it's just a swift and brutal killing.

 

Anakin or Vader can't kill anyone straight. Like all cowards, he needs to take them at their weakest.

 

For whatever reason, this gets me more than the younglings

 

I thought the scene itself was fine (minus the aforementioned qualms about the younglings). What Order 66 needed, really, was more setup.

Order 66 shows us a cinematically beautiful sequence of the systematic killing of a bunch of cool-looking extras. Not characters, extras. Any feeling we have for them is merely because they carry the label of "Jedi". Ki-Adi-Mundi? He's spoken maybe two lines. Aayla Secura? Oh I remember her, she's the hot twilek we saw for five seconds in AOTC. And who the hell is Plo Koon? Nobody who dies in this scene is anyone we have any serious attachment to, not unless you're well-read on EU novels or watched TCW. That's a major problem. John Williams completely carries that scene. If Order 66 makes you feel adequately heartbroken, it's because John Williams is a damn genius.

We needed a Yoda-equivalent to die during Order 66. A hugely sympathetic Jedi that we had gotten a considerable amount of time to get to know as an audience, that we would watch in horror as he is senselessly gunned down by his own troops. As it stands, the scene works less each time I see it.

 

I can see your point, but don't Mace Windu and Yoda play that role? Mace is the first Jedi to die and we've known him quite a bit.

Point of the Order 66 sequence was, imo, that Jedi all over the galaxy are being killed from behind. In the movie universe (not sure about the EU), only Obi-Wan and Yoda survived. So I find they needed to make that clear by showing the deaths of (seemingly random) Jedi we have never seen before (at least not to a considerable extent). There is an underlying tragedy to that: There a characters seen that didn't play a large role in the ovrall scheme of things and they are killed nontheless simply for that fact that they're Jedi. They were innocent.

So while I certainly understand your thinking, I find the sequence extremely satisfying as it is.
Mace Windu's death (the initial point) is part of it for me and the cut to Yoda's breakdown and his falling stick has always been the emotional climax of the Order 66 sequence for me. Even though Yoda doesn't die, we feel the pain through his portrayal. I do, at least.

 

"If I'd taken the prequel trilogy to a marketing company, Episode I would've started here [III] and Episodes II and III would've been about Darth Vader killing people. But in the end, I wouldn't be able to write movies like that."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith.

So in his own way, it makes sense that he didn't show too much since that didn't fit what he wanted to do. Going by his other interviews and the story meetings on ROTJ, Lucas wasn't comfortable showing the good guys dying. He did script that Anakin had killed other Jedi for quite some time, but I don't think he had intended in 81, to show as much as some fans wanted to see. Though he doesn't elaborate, it seems to me that had he filmed anything back then, it would be more like the Tusken Slaughter in AOTC.

You're not supposed to forgive him. Only Luke, Obi-wan and Yoda do that. The audience is supposed to see why he went down the road that he did and what it meant to get there.

 

Should've cut down a lot of the other parts of the film, to specifically show this! I agree, it needed more screen time.

 

That's not actually stated outright. And thanks to Rebels, in the "Lucasverse" some Jedi survived, not just the "Legendsverse".

 

Showing Operation Knightfall would've:

A) resulted in the film having a more mature rating.

B) heavily undermined the pathetic nature of Anakin's character; we're meant to take pity on him.

C) Vader killing Shaak ti scene was deemed to brutal by George.

I recall watching the bonus content of RoTS and the feature on Vader; in the original plans, George did not intend Vader to be that evil and brutal. Bizarrely, he is taken back by the cultural influence of Darth Vader and his personification as the greatest movie villain of all time after ESB. But, hey, that's the problem with starting a story right in the middle and not at the beginning.