Veknoid_Outcast said:
I think you pretty much nailed it. I'm still not a big fan of Sith but I agree it's an improvement over the first two. What really hurts it for me is Anakin's turn to the dark side, which is less a seduction and more of a trick. The greatest movie villain ever being tricked into murdering children based on a vague promise of immortality? Never sat right with me. Also, that fight scene on Mustafar went on like 20 minutes too long. I'd rather take the poorly choreographed fight on the first Death Star between Ben and Anakin 18 years later. Jedi is a worthy conclusion to the original trilogy for sure. I just think it loses its way a bit on the sanctuary moon. I totallty agree on the greatness of the final duel between Luke and Vader. Luke losing his shit and attacking Vader when he feels Leia is threatened. And then the look down at the mechanical hand, the throwing away of the saber, and the line that gives me goosebumps every time: "I am a Jedi, like my father before me." So good. I agree that TFA's greatest sin is its cribbing of the story from Episode IV, but the journey was so fun and the characters so engaging that I was able to look past the similarities. Finally, I agree on Rogue One. For me, it was boring. The characters and conflicts were unbelievable or uninteresting. Great action, for sure. |
I definitely think Anakin's transition to the dark side should have involved a better climactic moment than just turning on Windu. I actually find that many people who watched it didn't even catch that his main concern was keeping Padme alive after receiving the vision of her dying, and two scenes would have been far more powerful in my opinion:
1. Sidious actually demonstrates the life-prolonging capabilities of the dark side of the force at some point earlier
2. Later, Padme is clearly heading for death due to pregnancy complications and he desperately runs to Sidious begging him to help her, he promises to do so, and then Windu shows up and (despite having the situation explained to him by Anakin) tells Anakin that such use of the force is forbidden and attempts to kill Sidious.
To me, adding just those two scenes (which honestly only requires a few minutes) would have made Anakin's actions and descent totally understandable, and given further weight to the death of his mother and his desperate desire to not fail Padme the same way. Desperation is the key motive for turning to the "dark side" after all (which is why Jedi are not allowed to develop these relationships in the first place), and a man of his age, talents, late-schooling, and history would almost inevitably fall to temptation even if he had indeed been a great guy for most of his life.
Of course, Padme wouldn't be there on Mustafar for that one confrontation were she already ill, but that scene was far less important than providing the clear and reasonable motive for Anakin's transition into Vader. Why such scenes weren't included perplexes me... even in the original trilogy Vader had a sense of regret about him, as if he'd accepted his situation but a part of him wished he could go back and change his path; I don't feel the route they went with Anakin really matched his later personality.
Otherwise, Luke's denial of the dark side of the force is kind of funny in retrospect as it's an example of exactly how you shoot a scene like that; you don't need much dialogue if you've built it up properly, and it's strange that Lucas didn't attempt to provide a similarly moving scene for Anakin. Seriously, I haven't seen that movie in years and I think I could still quote all of the dialogue from that fight between Luke and Vader; those original movies were akin to listening to Beethoven in that their character-driven-dialogue was perfect in its simplicity, each word carrying weight (at least through the meaningful scenes). The prequels were almost all exposition to the point that when something important was said or stated people often missed it (it's amazing how many people, including my younger self, didn't even catch the motives for the civil war and such as it was SO boring despite them dedicating 90% of the script to it).
Outside of that, I still enjoy the moon scene; to me the balance between the Space battle, Luke's encounter, and the battle on Endor was actually executed rather expertly. When you see that the assault in space is failing as the shields are still up and the Death Star takes out one of those massive Rebel ships it just builds so much tension, and I always feel a desperate need for them to get that damn shield down lol; once they finally do, it's almost cathartic to see the rebels finally attack the damn Death Star. Granted the Ewoks fighting the Empire was a little silly, but given the very limited presence of Imperial soldiers (who didn't expect an Ewok uprising) it wasn't that outlandish that it would at least cause a major distraction, and the Ewoks DO get their asses kicked at times. All of that aside, it gave me the speeder bike scene, so it's a positive experience overall in my book lol
Finally, The Force Awakens "cribbed" much more than episode 4 lol... I whipped this up when I got home from the theaters just for fun and entirely from memory of having seen it once, so chances are there's even more similarities than these... because the images are rather large I'll just link to them here:
Story Comparison
Character Comparison
