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How did you think things would play out in episode III?

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Unlike a lot of Star Wars fans, I didn't read any of the books or novels or EU stuff nor did I try to find out what would happen in episode III through other means. So seeing the movie for the first time was a pretty big surprise to me. There were many things in the movie that I was hoping to see happen differently as well as many things that I was hoping would get resolved, but didn't. The first thing that stuck out in my mind was the final battle of Obi Wan against Anakin. I was hoping to see that take place on Degobah. The reason why is I always thought there was more to that scene in "the cave" than what was let on in ESB and there would be a moment sometime either in ROTJ (before I saw ROTJ) or the prequels where they go back to that cave and show more relevance to why Luke had that premonition in there. Before episode III, I thought that cave was the location of Anakin and Obi Wan's duel and just beyond that point where Luke sees ghost Vader was a cavern of flowing lava where Anakin falls to his doom and gets burnt, needing the suit. But then I thought, why would Yoda go into exile there if Anakin had been there? The plot would have to be worked around for that to make sense. Luke sensed a disturbing presence there because he had a subconscious feeling that was where Darth Vader once was and he was linked to him in some way.

The second thing that happened unexpectedly to me is how Vader got the suit. I had theories, some didn't even involve being burnt at all. I thought maybe he loses all his hair and needs the suit due to radiation overexposure. Lucas seems to always like to have lightsaber battles over massive chasms above nuclear reactors. Maybe Anakin falls too close to a nuclear reactor? I actually kind of liked that idea better, because being burnt like that would have made him blind and deaf. I don't know if heavy radiation exposure damages your eyes and hearing?

The third thing is Padme's death. I don't think anybody here liked the idea of her "losing the will to live." Before episode III, I always thought Padme would die a few to several years later after she has the babies and is separated from Anakin. That was the logical idea because Leia remembers her and said she died when she was very young. I think we interpret that as being 4-6 years old. Not right at birth. I thought the jedi would separate Padme from Anakin/Darth Vader when he starts turning to the darkside. The jedi lie to her telling her he died, but Anakin/Darth Vader goes searching for her and finds her years later. When he finally sees her again Padme is shocked to see him in the monstrously Darth Vader suit and she dies of shock. I think that would have been a lot cooler and deep than what we saw on screen. In order to do that though they would have needed another movie almost since the star wars movies traditionally have not jump cut years later and I don't think time jumps are in the style of the movies. That is why I think more of the episode III plot could have been fit into episode II plot making more room for stuff like this in the third movie. And they easily could have moved episode II story material into episode I. While I don't think episode I is as bad of a movie as some people, the movie hardly accomplishes anything worth mentioning in the continuity of the overall story. Like what many people have said, you could have fit episode I's story into the opening crawl of episode II. Hell, episode II too.

I have more to say, but this is all I will post for now. I did briefly search this forum to see if anything was similar enough to this but couldn't find anything specific enough.

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Your statement that you thought some of Episode III's plot should have happened in Episode II really forms the core of my argument for why III may possibly be the worst of the three prequels, despite everyone saying it's the best:

It tries to do everything that all three prequels should have done, in the span of one movie.  I and II are almost entirely unnecessary.  Anakin's turn should have happened at the end of II (or we believe Anakin dies at the end of II), and III should have revolved around the repercussions of this, the rise of Darth Vader, and the beginning of his Jedi extermination campaign.

Instead, we got all the events that should have happened during the course of three films that span many years, happening in two hours over the span of, what, a couple weeks?

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The third episode sucked too much. I definitely was expecting to watch a GOOD movie when I went to the movie theatre, I didn't expect to see colourful garbage full of unrealistic CGI . The moment when Anakin turns to the dark side is probably the worst and the most illogical moment in the history of movie making.

Padme dyeing because she doesn't want to live ? WTF ? Showing the birth of Luke and Leia and ruining the big surprise of E6 ? Showing that Anakin is Darth Vader and ruining the surprise of E5 ? Showing Yoda, the little philosopher with a lightsaber ? Showing Palpatine with a lightsaber ? The guy who can shoot lightning from his arms ?  Hiring a magnificent actor to play the movie villain and kill him at the beginning of the movie only to introduce a new crappy looking crappy written CGI villain ? A Jedi shooting somebody with a blaster ? Making the powerful OB1 look like a clumsy coward ?

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I agree with almost everything you said, but disagree with pittrek about ruining surprise. First, everyone knows that Vader is Luke's father because it's one of the most famous scenes in the movie history. Second, prequels were made to show the backstory so there is no point to do any "surprise". I think there was room for others surprises - for example Palpatines identity. There was some potential there.

 

 

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after Clones I was on the fence about how good Sith would be. i was certainly into the trailer (i think all the prequel trailers set you up to expect a good movie).

 

however - the opening space battle felt soul-less and less dynamic than stuff in the OT (or, say, Starship Troopers) and i was facepalming by the time artoo was igniting fuel with his jets. the yoda/chewie relationship was getting too much etc.

 

i thought we'd see a lot more around hunting down the jedi, by vader personally rather than the directive 66 montage. the rise - and revenge - of the sith at a more personal level rather than clones doing the dirty work.

the backstory around how yoda arrived at dagobah is disappointing to say the least - was i watching ET for a moment there?!

 

i didn't think padme would die (though by that point in the movie it seems obvious) because leia has memories of her. there could've been a whole other emotional subplot around a mother giving up her babies and killing herself or whatever, but no.

 

the more i think about III the more i wonder how anyone can consider it top of the pile.

 

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maybe Leia can see dead people. That's the only way GL can resolve this plot hole.

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Does anyone else remember all the idiots on TFN who were convinced that Palpatine and Sidious would turn out to be two different people? It was going to prove George's "creative genius," and leave all of us unsophisticated OT types (who were gullible enough to believe Palps = Sidious) with egg on our collective faces.

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This sort of thing (done better naturally) is what I had been waiting for for decades...and I'm still waiting.

Vader Helped The Empire Hunt Down And Destroy The Jedi Knights

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I expected a one-on-one duel between Anakin and Windu and the extermination of the Jedi Council; I never thought we'd get to see the entire Order exterminated in one episode, or exterminated so poorly.

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In my opinion, Anakin's turn to the darkside wasn't absolutely terrible, it could have been worse, but we were expecting a lot more. There's really no feasible logic why Anakin turns to the darkside. His reasons are elementary and that is putting it generously. Why couldn't Anakin see that Palpatine was manipulating him? I was always hoping Anakin's turn to the darkside would be a much more complicated and convincing process.

I mean, out of all the reasons Anakin could have turned to the darkside, Lucas chooses the easiest and most cliche. Saving his wife from death which Palpatine was fabricating in his mind? In how many millenniums of stories told by man has plot points like that been used to justify anger? Getting pissed off at the jedi because they won't let him be a master, whining about it like a little child?

Before the prequels, I imagined Anakin Skywalker as being a smart, strong, mature man with a hint of rebellion and immaturity in him. But what comes off on screen is just unconvincing and amateur. Lucas makes the darkside a pathological on and off switch in one's mind that makes you go from normal to going on killing sprees in a heartbeat for no good reason. I always thought of the darkside as a more subtle thing that doesn't make you pure evil for no reason. Darth Vader in the OT never occurred to me as an out of control man who would be suckered into killing anyone over premonitions of his wife dying and lies. He struck me as a very complicated man with many shades of anger, guilt, and resistance on good inside of him all though the OT.

Padme's death was something that I thought would be partially Anakin's fault as well as the jedi's and Palpatine probably should have not been involved in it. Why would Anakin be loyal to him if he was pulling the strings on Padme's death?

Episode III makes him out like a man with no conscience. Giving him the orange eyes was kind of cool, but it makes him out like a pure evil man. Anakin should never have been seen as a pure evil man. The orange eyes looks cool on Palpatine, but I thought the orange eyes should have remained a characteristic unique to him, just like shooting lightning bolts from his hands. No one else should have had that characteristic, seeing other characters have that characteristic just cheapened his image.

On a unrelated subject, today I saw Back to the Future in a theater! They were showing the movie in limited release at AMC theaters around the USA today and this past Saturday.

http://www.bttf.com/see-back-to-the-future-in-theaters-october-23--25-and-get-an-exclusive-discount-on-bttfcom-products.php

http://www.amctheatres.com/bttf/

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This is a fairly accurate idea of what I was expecting:

Obi-Wan: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force. 

 

 Slaughtering younglings, was a "hunt"? I mean that bit of Obi-Wan dialogue sets certain expectations, some of which were changed in Empire and only partially demonstrated in the prequels.

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Like Ghostbusters I though Anakin would be a more mature character. Luke's age, but more akin to Han Solo in experience and attitude. Though I would have greatly preferred if his background was simply left in the dark, and that Owen was his real brother from the beginning, I like the idea that he was a slave.

Contrary to many people I expected Anakin's turn to be very evil. Not the Shakespearian drama Lucas so ineptly tried to pull off, not some melodramatic twist, just evil. Anakin should have become Vader knowing into what he would turn into. Lust for power? For knowledge of the Force, becoming the ultimate weapon in the Galaxy (hence his attitude in A New Hope about the Death Star being insignificant compared to the Force). Just in my humble opinion his redemption at the end of Jedi would have been more powerful if it was the redemption of an actually evil and not a tragic man.

In short:

- a better space battle with a story and an impact on the plot of the movie - a set up,  beginning, and an end, like Endor. Instead we got a dozen mindless minutes of ILM's CGI prowess.

- Windu finally getting something better to do. I hoped Lucas would pull a reverse of Jedi throne scenes, just sitting there and manipulating Anakin/Vader to destroy Windu. Mace Windu should have been the best Jedi Knight on par with only Obi-Wan, yet Vader in his prime, with the suit, should have crushed him. I think we desperately needed a show of force from him, why is Darth Vader so feared anyway?!

- Obi-Wans vs Anakin handled differently. Preferably at the beginning of the movie (with Anakin's fall being the final of Ep.II), so he can spent most of the time in the costume. Not like people now presume Vader's costume is like an advanced wheelchair that let's him move at all, but rather the suit should have made him even better at annihilating Jedi.

- I didn't like the concept of the imposing Jedi temple on Coruscant, but if it had to be there, at least we should have seen the stormtroopers assaulting it and defeating the actual Jedi, not some children.

- Proper ending for the entire Separatists story line. Entirely wasted throughout the prequels, even though it had a lot of potential (a twist, what if they had been the good guys?)...

Generally less scenes that strive so hard to be visually game-like cool for teens that they end up being stupid.

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Episodes Wun and Too were quite effective at immunizing me against trying to think about Episode Three. I only had one half-hearted expectation, and it was this:

Padme would survive the birth of her children, and live in Alderaan disguised as the royal nursemaid. This was set up so well in the first two episodes: Padme exchanges identities with her handmaidens all the time. It would have been "like poetry, it repeats." It would also demonstrate the theme of falling, as she falls from Senator to servant, albeit for selfless reasons rather than Vader's selfish fall. By her fall, she protects the girl she loves; Vader only used this as an excuse for his fall. Imagine: There is a closed-casket funeral on Naboo, then one final shot on Alderaan. Bail and Brea present their adopted daughter to a cheering crowd, the camera slowly pans around the room and we see Brea's attendants, all of whom are ecstatic, except for one who is "very beautiful, but very sad."

RotJ told us everything else we needed to know. Eventually Leia would learn that her nanny was her mother, and Padme would die. The implied story, the clever girl finding out that she is adopted but her real mother hadn't abandoned her, adds a sort of hidden depth beneath the surface. It's also a clever inversion of the usual fairytale commoner-turns-out-to-be-a-princess story, in that the princess discovers she is the child of the servant. The EU would eventually chronicle the "Young Leia Adventures," but for the movie-only types the relationship between Padme and Leia would be a nice mystery.


Of course, that "hidden depth" adds narrative complexity that George didn't need. Episode III had to end exactly where Episode IV started. There was no Padme in Episode IV, so out the airlock she went.

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I too thought something like what Scruffy has just described would happen.

Killing her so soon was an idiot adult's idea of what an idiot child needs to see.

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Ghostbuster, you should have written Ep.3.  It would have been considerably better than what George pooped.  Your idea for the cave is really clever.

My only expectation was that it was going to be better.  When it came out, all the reviews were pouring in saying "at last! finally! the episode we've been waiting for! it's great! 10 stars!".  But when I saw it, I thought it was the worst installment of the entire saga, and a total unmitigated crapfest.  I had actually enjoyed Ep.1 enough to see it three times, saw Ep.2 once or twice and thought it was kinda fun. But Ep.3, I literally almost walked out of.

Good people turning to evil is an age-old theme that has been done successfully in thousands of movies.  There were so many ways it could have been done.  George managed to find just about the only way to screw it up.

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I expected Anakin to die in the lava. I expected Sidious to bring him back to life using the Dark Side, the catch being that Sidious has to consciously channel the Dark Side for Vader to remain alive. That is Sidious' power over Vader ... the true "Power of the Dark Side" ... the reason Vader "must obey".

Plus, if Anakin really dies, Obi Wan would not have to make the decision to walk away from his dying friend. And he becomes less of a liar in ANH when he tells Luke that Vader murdered his father.

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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One of things conspicuously absent was Anakin being "seduced" by the dark side (as Obiwan put it in SW).  When I think of that, I think of the thrill the emperor seems to get by zapping people.  There should have been some sort of hypnotic appeal or addiction to the dark side -- sort of like the effect of the ring in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.  But in the PT, Anakin never seemed to enjoy anything about the force or its dark side - mostly he was in agony, not being "seduced" by the dark side.

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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Good people turning to evil is an age-old theme that has been done successfully in thousands of movies.  There were so many ways it could have been done.  George managed to find just about the only way to screw it up.

 Can you name some, Puggo?  This is not to challenge what you said, but I have stuggled to put a good list together.  The last time I tried (3 years ago: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Fall-to-the-Dark-Side/topic/8843/ ) I decided that storytellers often tell convincing stories of redemption, and that people are apt to believe them... but it's really hard to tell stories of "the fall" without some kind of trick.  They were poisoned, a dark presence made them evil, they weren't in full control of their mind or actions, etc...

If you can list some well told "good person turns to evil" stories, I'd love to hear them.  King David is one of the only ones I can really think of.

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xhonzi said:

Can you name some, Puggo?

There are many different ways that someone can go bad.  It can be due to addiction, seduction, power, insanity, chemicals, or other reasons. Just off the top of my head, some movies/stories that use a variety of these themes would be The Hobbit, The Godfather, Animal Farm, The Invisible Man, The Fly, Re-animator, Requiem for a Dream, All the King's Men...

By contrast, I still don't know why Anakin went bad.

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A more interesting way for Anakin to have turned to the Dark Side would have been for him to have experienced powerlessness and suffering during the Clone Wars and wanting to end it. He could have also seen ignorance and incompetence causing pain and prolonging the war.

From this, a desire of order and control could have very easily emerged. It would have been easy for Palpatine to then convince him to support his authoritarian ideals, by simply suggesting that the entire conflict was a result of weakness and an excess of liberty ("We can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy!"). Then he offers the emotionally crushed Anakin the ways of the Dark Side to medicate his personal sense of powerlessness and weakness. It becomes hypnotising and seductive, and he loses his sense of who he was completely ("You don't know the power of the Dark Side! I must obey my master!").

In this way, Anakin's fall could have been initially driven by an understandable desire to end suffering in the galaxy before it was perverted into a lust for control and power. This would mirror nicely with Luke's desire to end the suffering of his firends in Cloud City and the obvious risk this posed for his training.

(This doesn't happen in the prequels. Anakin's mother's death was not a result of the Clone Wars in Episode II or any political conflict, and therefore couldn't reasonably be taken to have effected him a political way - especially since it is even before his mother's death that he expresses sympathy for fascism.)

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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

xhonzi said:

Can you name some, Puggo?

There are many different ways that someone can go bad.  It can be due to addiction, seduction, power, insanity, chemicals, or other reasons.

Just for arguments sake, would you agree that most of those are external factors, and somewhat are not the choice of the character in question... therefore making him a tragic victim rather than a powerful villain?

Just off the top of my head, some movies/stories that use a variety of these themes would be The Hobbit, The Godfather, Animal Farm, The Invisible Man, The Fly, Re-animator, Requiem for a Dream, All the King's Men...

None of those (which I have seen/read) really present a fallen hero, right?  Maybe some normal people gone bad...  which is also a good thing, but still in something of a different class than what we'd expect from Star Wars.  Or am I wrong?

By contrast, I still don't know why Anakin went bad.

The shcript told him to?  ;)

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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TheoOdo said:

<snip>

 Good post.  I agree with most (if not all) of what you wrote.

Palpatine's appeal to Anakin/Vader has to be something that Vader can dedicate his life to.  He chooses to be Vader every morning when he gets out of bed.  If it was based on a fleeting emotion, he would have lived a very different life.  The attorcities of the Clone Wars leading the galaxy at large, and Anakin personally down a path of accepting the Empire as a neccessary evil seems to be a very important part of a PT story working.  Too bad a war fought by robots and clones would never generate the kind of response for that to work.  *shrug*

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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Erikstormtrooper said:

I expected Anakin to die in the lava. I expected Sidious to bring him back to life using the Dark Side, the catch being that Sidious has to consciously channel the Dark Side for Vader to remain alive. That is Sidious' power over Vader ... the true "Power of the Dark Side" ... the reason Vader "must obey".

Plus, if Anakin really dies, Obi Wan would not have to make the decision to walk away from his dying friend. And he becomes less of a liar in ANH when he tells Luke that Vader murdered his father.

This would have changed the nature of the OT more than anything that was in the Prequels. If Vader is literally an unwilling slave to Empy, then there is no redemption for him as he's being actively coereced to do evil by a very real threat.

And how does it make Obi less of a liar?

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That change makes Ben Kenobi less of someone who was speaking from a 'certain point of view' in Star Wars and makes Ben a liar in RotJ.

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xhonzi said:

Just for arguments sake, would you agree that most of those are external factors, and somewhat are not the choice of the character in question... therefore making him a tragic victim rather than a powerful villain?

Right. And that's what was said in the OT... Vader was "seduced" by the dark side of the force. Like Bilbo was seduced and ultimately addicted to and changed by the Ring (and Gollum too).  It didn't have to be completely a choice.

xhonzi said:

None of those (which I have seen/read) really present a fallen hero, right?  Maybe some normal people gone bad...  which is also a good thing, but still in something of a different class than what we'd expect from Star Wars.  Or am I wrong?

I don't think the OT ever painted Anakin as a hero.  Obiwan called him the "best starfighter in the galaxy, and a good friend."  So he was a nice guy with first class skills.  He didn't have to be "the chosen one", he could have just been one of the guys.  And I never thought of his portrayal in the PT as being consistent with "a good friend". I always thought a better Anakin character would have been a nice, mild-mannered, kind, well-intentioned and highly skilled young man who unfortunately was also a little gullible and ended up being seduced by and ultimately controlled and changed by dark forces.  That way, it would be scarier because it would show that anyone could end up on the dark side, if you're not careful.

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