Sith thoughts...

[lithera]

So, I saw Revenge of the Sith last night.

I liked it. I really liked it. It wasn't my favorite movie ever but it was worth seeing and I know I'll buy this one when it comes out.

It did, for me, what a Star Wars movie should do. Inspire conversation. Sean and I talked for a good amount of time about it last night and some of the implications and possible meanings...

1 - I didn't think Anakin's turn was too fast. They've only been building up to it for years now (in the movies..). The thing was, it wasn't a gradual choice. It was a gradual build up to the choice. Once he's actually saying the words he's already made the choice and it is one situations where the only thing holding Anaking back (from either side) was that /choice/. He made the choice and everything came tumbling after.

2 - Imprinting happens in the first 3 minutes after birth. It is any freaking wonder that Leia goes looking for Obi-Wan when things look bad? Is it any wonder that Luke trust him implicitly and doesn't seem to know why?

3 - Alderaan is so very pretty.

4 - The only hero I have left at the end of that movie is Bail Organa. Everyone else fell into shades of grey. And Bail just seems to come out of no where, which is a freaking shame.

5 - Yoda looked awesome. There were places where the CGI wasn't so strong, when dealing with people, but Yoda was amazing.

And.... Those are my thoughts on that for now.

I'm feeling very melancholy this morning. It's a lot of things combined together but... Yeah.

Comments

[crispengray.livejournal.com]

The only part that really stood out as CGI to me was Dooku's flip over the railing at the beginning.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

There was that one. That one bugged me most. There were a few moments of how Grevious moved that just didn't blend in with the things around him when there were people present. There was a time or two where for some reason, things didn't mesh quite right.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

Same here.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I liked the lizard!

[grocible.livejournal.com]

Anakin riding his little droid over the lava - probably the worst of the CGI to me. Of course, none of the lava looked right.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Agreed about Yoda's CGI effect; I should have mentioned that among the good in my review because it was a standout.

Other than be philosophically inconsistent, what did Obi Wan do that was grey?

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I know he tried with Anakin but just walking away from him at the end and leaving him to die? That's not a hero to me. I don't know what choice would be heroic there and I know we're working within the contraints of a story but... He just walked away.

[foxfyre.livejournal.com]

I agree. That bothered me, because it seemed very out of character for Obi Wan to just leave his "little brother" there in pain.

If they'd even made it look like he ATTEMPTED to end it mercifully, that would have been better.

As it is, he ended up looking cruel and stupid (he didn't even finish what he was sent to do, when he had a perfectly good chance).

[crispengray.livejournal.com]

I don't think he could bring himself to kill Vader at that point.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I didn't think about that. Still though, I would cut him some slack because he was suddenly placed in a horrific situation and came very close to doing the right thing. I don't expect my heroes to be perfect, only to try past where they could have easily given up.

Btw, as for the move to the dark side happening too quickly, I just didn't get the sense of there being enough foreshadowing. Perhaps the best example I can think of this being done right was Thelma and Louise. The murder in the movie was about equivalent to the worst that Anakin had done if you factor in the differing standards for a Jedi in wartime. The rest of the movie is a slow push where more and more bad things happen to them so they're forced into taking some action. What happened here would be like if Louise killed the guy, they got away with no further incidents, drove to Mexico, and a few months later Thelma said, "Hey, you know, we killed that one guy, why not kill all men?"

There's a far cry from killing someone who was trying to kill you a second ago and killing dozens of kids because someone told you to. Even the massacre in Clones was obviously a crime of passion. The previous events showed that he had potential to lose control, but not that he would actively choose evil.

Prior to pledging allegiance, Anakin was basically a good person who lost control every now and then and did something wrong. Afterwards, he was a force for evil. I would have preferred a slower descent, have the line between acceptable and unacceptable keep shifting and shifting until he's suddenly a murderer and isn't quite sure how he got there.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I am giving Obi Wan some slack. He's close. He's the least grey of them and I know he was in a horrible situation but I just couldn't get over the fact that he just... walked away.

See, I see Anakin as someone who was very confused and had been continually presented with a choice, over and over and over and over and kept on not actually making a commitment to one side or the other. He was never really dedicated to the Jedi in the first place, he was never entirely against them either.

I think that is why it takes him so long, in a situation like that, to step in and save Palpatine. /That's/ the choice. Right there. Anakin chooses his side right there and he's the sort of person that once that decision is made, there is not swerving from it.

Does that make sense?

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Well the only thing that I could really see Obi Wan doing there would be to kill Darth Vader, and killing an unarmed enemy was presented early in the movie as being against the Jedi code (although that wasn't exactly a mercy killing).

As for Anakin, the choice I kept on seeing him have to make was between being a Jedi or settling down. Maybe if he were also told a story about Sith (it's its own plural right?) not having to follow the rules about families, it would make some more sense. As I saw it, he was thinking, Jedi, Padme, Jedi, Padme, Jedi, Padme, and then he blew both of them off to see what was behind curtain number 3.

Yeah though, it does make some sense, just not sure I buy it.

I will say that this conversation is making me more likely to go see the flick again.

Aside 1: If Obi had killed Vader, is there anyone who could have killed the Emperor ever? He did have a story handy about a Sith who could perserve life.

Aside 2: Do you think that Lucas thought that Yoda was an ambigious figure in this movie? It's me reading into directorial choices mind you, but I felt like it was more of a failed attempt to have heroes and villians rather than a successful attempt to have shades of grey.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I was saying that I didn't see any other choices preesnted but just walking away from him at that point seemed colder and harsher than anything else he could have done. It speaks to me as an appropriate response from Obi-Wan, who has had his world tumbling down around him and that was just... the last bit.

See, not only is it Jedi/Padme, it is also Jedi/Senate and Jedi/Palpatine. Earlier on they establish why Anakin is with Palpatine on this. He thinks that having a strong leader with all the power is the only way to protect everyone. So everything in his life is set against each other. He's not just making the choice for Padme, he's also choosing Palpatine, choosing the Empire... In choosing to save him, he makes a lot of decisions.

1 - I don't know. I really don't.

2 - I don't think that there was really meant to be any heroes in this movie. I don't know what Lucas intended but I know I just didn't see any after about the halfway mark. I think Yoda saw what was coming, to an extent and was... well.. As was pointed out, arrogant.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

It's very hard for me to relate to that kind of decision making since I'm the kind of person who endlessly agonizes over everything.

Sithiness

[physphilo.livejournal.com]

As is pointed out in the book version of the movie, and later by Obi Wan in New Hope, we need to keep something in mind:

When the choice is made, when he swears himself to Palpatine, the man he thinks can save Padme, save the Republic, save lives, and stop the galactic war, he is not just given the name Darth Vader, but he actually becomes Darth Vader. It is then that Vader comes out, stabs Anakin in the heart, and leaves him for dead (we later find out that he lives, weeee!). That is why he could walk into the room with the kids and just... just kill them. He wasn't Anakin any longer, he was Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.

And, frankly, the Jedi are just as much to blame for his fall. They really weren't being honest with him, they were making him do things they should have known he would have been too conflicted to accomplish, and they were being pretty sneaky, just not realizing that he was bright enough to notice the sneakiness, but not bright enough to see it for the good it was supposed to accomplish. Sure, Palpatine pushed him into the situation, but the Jedi could have done better with it.

Re: Sithiness

[kara-fm-krypton.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm sensing a Guardian Council/Hal Jordan 'Emerald Twighlight' thing at work...