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Post #311626

Author
Jonno
Parent topic
I'll give Episode One something...
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/311626/action/topic#311626
Date created
27-Feb-2008, 8:34 AM
The lightsaber duel (truel?) in TPM was epic action cinema, but severely undercut by the insistence on cross-cutting it with THREE other fronts of action. All the same, it's an exhilarating sequence and always a pleasure to watch.

ROTS made the mistake of trying to up the ante, and make the Obi-Wan / Anakin duel even MORE intense and exciting. This was a mistake on two levels - one, you can't just simply ramp up action in the belief that it makes it better - iin this case it became excessive and occasionally incoherent, and the result was to distance the viewer.

The other problem as I see it was that it shouldn't have been played as an 'exciting' scene at all - this sequence has the most forgone conclusion in the entire saga, so why not treat it with mournful inevitability? Long takes, subdued sound effects, scored with music more along the lines of the 'Anakin's Betrayal' cue. This could probably be re-edited quite effectively, now that I think about it - I don't suppose any of the existing fan edits took this approach?