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Re-evaluating Revenge of the Sith — Page 2

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I’ve always felt like TMP is the last good movie Lucas did. I don’t think it is quite up to the OT, but I think it is a good view into the world of these characters as they start their journey. Then it fumbles in AOTC and struggles to come back from that in ROTS. I think Lucas’s story of the rise of Palpatine is too subtle. He is behind the Trade Federation blockade and invasion of Naboo, but the connection is hidden. He is behind ordering the clones, but that is hidden. He has been influencing Anakin the entire time and has been planting the seeds for his fall since TMP, but that is hidden. He used the force to bend a vulnerable Anakin to the dark side after Anakin saves him from Mace, but it is not obvious. He uses the force to keep Anakin alive, but again it is not obvious. He is the likely source for Anakin’s nightmares. He may have arranged for Shmi’s kidnappng and may have used to force to kill Padme (my theories). But Lucas chose to make it a mystery and leave so much unrevealed.

In ROTS Palpatine reveals a lot, but not everything. What we see in ROTJ is better revealed. That should have been what we see in ROTS. His plans should have been revealed, but I think Lucas was more focused on showing the story of Anakin, but the story of Palpatne was crucial to that. I do think as a film, ROTS is the best of the three in many ways. But in others is fails. Though not as badly as AOTC.

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An interesting read on the trilogy, maybe Palpatine could have picked up on his involvement with everything that has transpired in his conversation with Grievous.

Other than that I feel like the Jedi are too gullible throughout the movies to pose a threat to Palatines plans. In TPM Qui-Gon senses that there is more behind the Federation invasion but he doesn’t investigate and in AOTC does nobody investigate the mystery behind the creation of the clones. Only in ROTS do the Jedi start to suspect Palpatine after he placed Anakin on the council and thereby openly challenged the Jedi.
This makes the plot feel less like a tense game of chess and more like a GM taking on an amateur.

“Vader! Hologram, now!”

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Peter Pan said:

An interesting read on the trilogy, maybe Palpatine could have picked up on his involvement with everything that has transpired in his conversation with Grievous.

Other than that I feel like the Jedi are too gullible throughout the movies to pose a threat to Palatines plans. In TPM Qui-Gon senses that there is more behind the Federation invasion but he doesn’t investigate and in AOTC does nobody investigate the mystery behind the creation of the clones. Only in ROTS do the Jedi start to suspect Palpatine after he placed Anakin on the council and thereby openly challenged the Jedi.
This makes the plot feel less like a tense game of chess and more like a GM taking on an amateur.

Yeah the Jedi just adopting the Clone Army without any questions is maybe the silliest character decision from the prequels. Even Master Yoda just takes them and jumps into combat with them within hours of finding out about their existence…very off beat for his type of character.

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Fan_edit_fan said:

Peter Pan said:

An interesting read on the trilogy, maybe Palpatine could have picked up on his involvement with everything that has transpired in his conversation with Grievous.

Other than that I feel like the Jedi are too gullible throughout the movies to pose a threat to Palatines plans. In TPM Qui-Gon senses that there is more behind the Federation invasion but he doesn’t investigate and in AOTC does nobody investigate the mystery behind the creation of the clones. Only in ROTS do the Jedi start to suspect Palpatine after he placed Anakin on the council and thereby openly challenged the Jedi.
This makes the plot feel less like a tense game of chess and more like a GM taking on an amateur.

Yeah the Jedi just adopting the Clone Army without any questions is maybe the silliest character decision from the prequels. Even Master Yoda just takes them and jumps into combat with them within hours of finding out about their existence…very off beat for his type of character.

They were ordered by a Jedi Master. In Clone Wars we learn that he was rather paranoid and the while we viewers grow to suspect that Count Dooku might have killed Syfo Dias and played him, it is also possible that he was paranoid and and a premonition and that Dooku and Palpatine took it over and twisted it to suite their plan. Dooku is the one who recruited Jango Fett, so if Syfo Dias did order the clones, he died shortly after. The Jedi never suspected that Palpatine planted order 66. So from their point of view there really wasn’t much to investigate. A nutty one of their own placed the order about the time he died so he couldn’t have told them what he did. How the clones were paid for was never explained.

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 (Edited)

yotsuya said:

Fan_edit_fan said:

Peter Pan said:

An interesting read on the trilogy, maybe Palpatine could have picked up on his involvement with everything that has transpired in his conversation with Grievous.

Other than that I feel like the Jedi are too gullible throughout the movies to pose a threat to Palatines plans. In TPM Qui-Gon senses that there is more behind the Federation invasion but he doesn’t investigate and in AOTC does nobody investigate the mystery behind the creation of the clones. Only in ROTS do the Jedi start to suspect Palpatine after he placed Anakin on the council and thereby openly challenged the Jedi.
This makes the plot feel less like a tense game of chess and more like a GM taking on an amateur.

Yeah the Jedi just adopting the Clone Army without any questions is maybe the silliest character decision from the prequels. Even Master Yoda just takes them and jumps into combat with them within hours of finding out about their existence…very off beat for his type of character.

They were ordered by a Jedi Master. In Clone Wars we learn that he was rather paranoid and the while we viewers grow to suspect that Count Dooku might have killed Syfo Dias and played him, it is also possible that he was paranoid and and a premonition and that Dooku and Palpatine took it over and twisted it to suite their plan. Dooku is the one who recruited Jango Fett, so if Syfo Dias did order the clones, he died shortly after. The Jedi never suspected that Palpatine planted order 66. So from their point of view there really wasn’t much to investigate. A nutty one of their own placed the order about the time he died so he couldn’t have told them what he did. How the clones were paid for was never explained.

But there are still numerous questions attached to the clones. Who paid the Kaminoans? Who is this Tyranus, that recruited Jango? Who deleted all of the information about Kamino from the archives? Was Syfo Dias death connected to the order?

And there is another huge problem with how the clones are rediscovered by the Jedi. Obi-Wan finds them by accident, because someone did everything to hide this army from the Jedi. However they are of upmost important to Palpatines plan. That doesn’t make sense, Sidious big plan hinges on the sheer coincidence that Obi-Wan stumbles upon the clones AND that nobody ask any question ensuring from this discovery, because any digging into this matter would surely bust his plans.

“Vader! Hologram, now!”

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I guess Yoda was lying. The Force is Palpatine’s ally.

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 (Edited)

Peter Pan said:

An interesting read on the trilogy, maybe Palpatine could have picked up on his involvement with everything that has transpired in his conversation with Grievous.

Other than that I feel like the Jedi are too gullible throughout the movies to pose a threat to Palatines plans. In TPM Qui-Gon senses that there is more behind the Federation invasion but he doesn’t investigate and in AOTC does nobody investigate the mystery behind the creation of the clones. Only in ROTS do the Jedi start to suspect Palpatine after he placed Anakin on the council and thereby openly challenged the Jedi.
This makes the plot feel less like a tense game of chess and more like a GM taking on an amateur.

100%

This is where a lot of people nowadays get it twisted. Oh the Jedi were corrupt and blinded by hypocrisy and dogmatism, that was their downfall! Palpatine was such a brilliant manipulator!

Actually no, as depicted their downfall was stupidity, as in not doing basic stuff that you would see on any hack cop procedural. Hey who paid for these clones? Who was building all these ships and landing craft for them? Why did Sifo Dyas order an army? Why didn’t the Kaminoans contact anybody in the Republic for 10 whole years to give them a status update or collect payments? Was it all in cash up front? (remember one of the only things we know about the Kaminoans is that they care about “how big your pocketbook is,” so it’s not like the money trail isn’t explicitly important) Were there senators that did know about the army and were hiding it? If there were, why didn’t the Jedi question them? Why was Jango Fett, the template of the clone army literally still living on the same planet where they’re still making the clones, sent to assassinate Padme on behalf of Count Dooku and the Trade Federation? Why does the trail lead straight from Kamino, the center point of the new Republic army, to Geonosis, the center point of the new Separatist army? Anyone care to examine any of this for more than 2 seconds?

All this gets waved away as “the dark side clouding their vision.” Which you would think is supposed to mean their ability to see the future, not their basic intelligence unrelated to the Force.

As for Clone Wars, we shouldn’t be reliant on an extra show for information that should have been in the movie. That’s assuming it actually explains everything in the movie, which it doesn’t.

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Even though it was retconned. I still think Sifo Dyas was Palpatine. Sido Dyas. Sidious. Posing as a Jedi. It makes far more sense than what the Clone Wars story came up with. The Jedi never authorized a Clone Army. The Kaminoans never verified the Jedi contacts story. Only waited for someone to eventually show up for their delivery to the Republic.

Jango must know Dooku is Tyrannus but its never specified he does. He could have been lying to OBI-Wan.

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I remember, that Syfo Dias originally was meant to be Sidious, but George changed that during production. But even then the main problem remains, that the Jedi buy into this far to easily.
I feel like a plausible cover up story for the creation of the army would have helped the plot immensely.

“Vader! Hologram, now!”

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 (Edited)

Wasn’t Obi Wan aware of a Jedi Master Syfo Dias that “was killed nearly ten years ago”? Seems to be implied he was a known Jedi Master and not some random pseudonym for Sidious while he’s posing as a Jedi. Either way… convoluted, it is.

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You are right, maybe I‘m misremembering that bit.

“Vader! Hologram, now!”

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The biggest failure of ROTS is General Grievous who is just a godawful mess of a character.
It’s “Ewoks with Jar Jar Binks on their shoulders running around in armor” level bad.
My cut of ROTS removes every visual scene with GG and reduces him to an offscreen McGuffin whose only purpose is to pull away Obi Wan Kenobi to isolate Anakin so that Palpy can mess with his head.

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 (Edited)

I really never liked the idea of Palpatine manipulating both sides like a puppet master. I would have preferred a more straightforward plot to the Prequels, rather than the “mystery” plot framework we got. The fundamental problem is that so many of the plot details and on-screen actions revolve around Palpatine’s behind-the-scenes machinations, but we never explicitly see how Palpatine does any of this, so everything is presented in very broad strokes and the outcomes often seem arbitrary.

I think The Phantom Menace is probably the worst in this regard. The entire plot is about an evil mega-corporation (the Trade Federation) invading a defenseless planet. This is a pretty straightforward sci-fi plot setup, but we never really know how individual plot developments map to goals/motivations of the Trade Federation beyond extremely fuzzy, broad strokes. They want lower taxes, so they blockade a planet, then invade the planet, then deny they invaded the planet, then try to force the local monarch to sign a treaty to legalize their invasion. At no point does any of this cleanly map to some clear goal like getting lower taxes. And it’s not clear to me if any of these actions make sense from the perspective of the Trade Federation as logical steps towards achieving their goals, or if they have no clue why they’re doing any of this and just blindly trust the mysterious shadowy hologram that tells them to do crazy things like invade planets.

I think the plot would have worked better if it was framed as a simple land-grab: evil mega-corporation invades peaceful planet to strip it of valuable resources, while Senate fails to do anything due to corruption, so Palpatine rides in as the hero standing up for Naboo. We don’t even need the Darth Sidious persona - let the Trade Federation have their own clear motives instead of obeying the whims of some shadowy hologram all the time.

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Channel72 said:

I really never liked the idea of Palpatine manipulating both sides like a puppet master. I would have preferred a more straightforward plot to the Prequels, rather than the “mystery” plot framework we got. The fundamental problem is that so many of the plot details and on-screen actions revolve around Palpatine’s behind-the-scenes machinations, but we never explicitly see how Palpatine does any of this, so everything is presented in very broad strokes and the outcomes often seem arbitrary.

I think The Phantom Menace is probably the worst in this regard. The entire plot is about an evil mega-corporation (the Trade Federation) invading a defenseless planet. This is a pretty straightforward sci-fi plot setup, but we never really know how individual plot developments map to goals/motivations of the Trade Federation beyond extremely fuzzy, broad strokes. They want lower taxes, so they blockade a planet, then invade the planet, then deny they invaded the planet, then try to force the local monarch to sign a treaty to legalize their invasion. At no point does any of this cleanly map to some clear goal like getting lower taxes. And it’s not clear to me if any of these actions make sense from the perspective of the Trade Federation as logical steps towards achieving their goals, or if they have no clue why they’re doing any of this and just blindly trust the mysterious shadowy hologram that tells them to do crazy things like invade planets.

I think the plot would have worked better if it was framed as a simple land-grab: evil mega-corporation invades peaceful planet to strip it of valuable resources, while Senate fails to do anything due to corruption, so Palpatine rides in as the hero standing up for Naboo. We don’t even need the Darth Sidious persona - let the Trade Federation have their own clear motives instead of obeying the whims of some shadowy hologram all the time.

I agree with you, but I still think Palpatine as a puppet master is a cool idea. In some ways, and I think what you said goes along with this, it would have been better with less dialogue and appearances around it rather than more. They give just enough to make it sound like there’s actually some logic behind it, but there isn’t.

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 (Edited)

Having Palpatine’s machinations is cool, but it shouldn’t be an infinitely complex game of mouse trap while the Jedi sit on their butts.

I like the idea that Palpatine is, as well as a Senator, the intermediary between the Senate and the Jedi. In Episode 1, the Jedi will seek the power to act militarily without the Senate’s authorization because of what the Trade Federation’s doing. In Episode 2, the Jedi aren’t able to handle the conflict they got themselves into and they need an army to defend the Republic as it turns into a full-on galactic war. By Episode 3, Palpatine’s the middle man to this huge vortex of power the Jedi are accruing, and all he has to do to take it for himself is get the Jedi out of the way.

There can be tons of manipulation and Palpatining but the central steps from Senator Palpatine to Emperor Palpatine should be more clear.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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Its not a great movie but it works in places. The cgi cartoon stuff is really bad though. And the lightsaber duel is inexcusably of poor quality. I think the Palpatine and Anakin scenes work well, the problem is Anakin’s motivation for doing all these really bad things makes no sense, if we are to believe he is this good person and then 5 minutes later he is killing younglings. I wanted a slow seduction to evil. Learn the darkside to save Padme from dying just doesn’t work for me. Especially when by choking her he probably killed her, Anakin most likely was responsible for her death. It makes no sense.

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I think ROTS is what most people wanted to see from the Prequels a more mature Anakin and not him being a Kid or a Teen like the other two movies its sad we only saw that Anakin in Live Action in only one movie at least TCW fixed Anakin character from the movies i would also have changed the ending and make Padme survived and raise Leia