Burning (Rhetorical) Questions, I Have
- Why, if you are on your way to arrest a Sith Lord, do you only bring 2 other Jedi Masters, who appear totally unprepared for violent resistance?
- Why, if you are attempting to sneak into the heart of a planet that the enemy has taken hostage and surprise the enemy general in his lair, do you choose a huge multi-coloured lizard which regularly emits high-pitched squeals as your stealth vehicle?
- Why, if you use state-of-the-art computer graphics to populate and landscape entire planets and orchestrate massive outer space battles, can you not airbrush the volcano off Ewan MacGregor’s forehead?
But you know, these are better burning rhetorical questions than I had for Attack Of The Clones. Those were:
- Why?
- WHY?
- WHYYYYYYY???!!!!!
yeah, at least this is much better than attack of the clones or the phantom menance which is just dreadful! i wonder if hayden (anakin) ever had botox, he seems unable to move his facial muscles and only has one ‘tortured’ expression throughout the whole film.
LOL. i haven’t seen the 3rd one. The first one had me falling asleep, and the 2nd one had me laughing uncontrollably (my friend had to ask me to be quiet cos it was totally inappropriate for the scene i think. but come on, they were rolling on the grass in an “intimate moment”!! o.0)
and from the looks of the reviews, i seriously don’t know if i’ll bother watching the 3rd one when i get back to singapore..
sigh, the earlier trilogy was so terrific.
*ponder*
Why can they build a cyborg around an alien keeping him alive and even making him a formidable warrior (General Grevious) and yet they cannot cure him of his coughing problem?
This was pretty much on par with the last two if you ask me. No better, no worse. It’s just light saber battle, lightsaber battle, lightsaber battle. Plus, none of them really top the one with Dooku in Attack of the Clones. And they’ve used waaaay too much CGI. You just feel you’re watching a computer animation of two people fighting. I have a feeling it’s going to date badly.
Now that we’ve seen the complete backstory I think it’s also become apparent how unnessary it was telling it at all. Is Darth Vader a more interesting character now you know everything about him? Certainly not.
Good one, Makan Guru.
pumpkineyes: He had one more expression! Vaguely smiling at Padme while spouting sweet nothings! At that point he doesn’t have to look “tortured”, the audience does it for him.
anantya: Actually, I’d still recommend watching this. It’s by no means a complete disaster and, as I said, I did enjoy most of it.
James: I think the first two had substantially more GET A FUCKING GRIP, GEORGE!!! moments than this one, so purely upon the relative (note: RELATIVE) absence of moments that made me want to leave in disgust, ROTS wins.
And although it answered the big questions in characteristically unsubtle style eg. Anakin sinking onto the ground and saying “What have I done?!” one moment and then pledging allegiance to the Dark Side the next, at least I felt the buildup to that moment was credible enough.
I agree with you on the effects, though. I still think Phantom Menace is one of the highest points of movie special effects I’ve seen, but since then they’ve taken it too far. I really hate the way things that really should be heavier seem to move so weightlessly, and the lava fight scenes were horribly rendered.
All you need right now is some Poetics to contra this unmistakable lesson of Rhetoric… i.e. Don’t panic, there are no questions about watching Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this very instant!! :)
I do think ROTS rescued the prequel trilogy to a small extent, but after the whole thing I just wish he hadn’t made these three movies at all. An unimaginable feeling prior to Episode I. “YOU DON’T WANT MORE STAR WARS MOVIES? YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING.”
Does anyone know whether he’s going to cash in some more and make episodes 7, 8 and 9?
Matt: as far as I know, absolutely not, though spin-offs can’t be ruled out at this point.
Everyone: just for the record I thought I’d say that I loved ROTS; that it answered lots of questions and tied things up rather well; and that it’s far more credible and engaging than Ep I and II combined, though as far as FX is concerned, there’s no equalling the clumsy, weary grace of the original trilogy.
i liked The revenge of the Sith,
its got too many lightsaber fights (yes Jol, who’d have thought that was possible)
yes, Anakin’s fall is rather weak, (for all the reasons mentioned above)
and now we have the back history, yes the loose ends were tied up, but mostly in about 6 lines of dialogue,…switch the droid army off, here me and me wife would love a baby girl oh and while your at it, wipe the protocol droids memory,
but really the only thing that bugged me was DArth vader having a nice chat with the emperor after being created, so now we know he can talk, it just turns out he’s not tall, dark (lord) and silent, he’s just sulking for the next three movies.
(don’t tell anyone but i like all of the star wars movies, yes even the one with the ewoks! and the duel of the fates does make up for Jar Jar.)
Brian: ?? Darth Vader speaks like 100 times more in the original trilogy than Ahnuld in all three Terminator movies! If nothing else,
“LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER…”
The answer to your first question:
Understaffing and high cost of labour.
Much of the other Jedis are away dealing with rebellion insurgencies (as evinced by the execution of several of them by the clone army.)
Answer to your second question:
No choice.
Answer to your third question:
It makes him look sexy and is the source of his Jedi power.
Don: Just nitpicking at your words – I’d agree the original trilogy had a certain “clumsy grace”, but there was nothing “weary” about it. Everyone looked as if they were having so much fun, as if they took the same joy out of the corny lines as I did. In contrast, in I-III they look as if they feel trapped by the dumb script, or worse, as if they are incapable of transcending it.
And re: your quote in response to what Brian said about Darth Vader being silent in IV-VI, man, don’t you know how to give spoiler warnings??!! :P
Brian: I was also a little nonplussed by what you said about Darth Vader not speaking. In my memory of IV-VI (which is admittedly hazy, I haven’t seen them for a few years), he speaks quite often, or at least he isn’t noticeably or markedly silent.