aalenfae said:
MrInsaneA said:
Not gonna lie....the Dooku battle is kind of a mess.Like, it seems that you cut out wayyyy too much DURING the fight for it to make sense when I watch it. Like, why would you cut out Anakin catching Dooku's saber? Or placing the saber's around Dooku's neck? That, and the Obi-Wan stuff REALLY stood out to me. It's just visually confusing, imho.
All noted. But it's honestly a very complex issue.
The primary issue with Anakin catching Dooku's saber, and putting the sabers up to Dooku's neck is that it's all set up for Anakin to intend to capture Dooku, but be manipulated into killing him - something he really didn't want to do.
I feel that the exchange between Anakin and Palpatine there weakens the plot, and especially the character of Anakin.
If Anakin really deep-down wanted to kill Dooku, I think he would have just... killed Dooku. He's no stranger to killing people. But instead, he reveals that he's really just a pushover. He's pressured to kill Dooku, so he does. And that sets off the chain reaction, where Anakin is simply pressured into doing things he doesn't want to do, and BAM, he's a power-hungry Sith lord. I think it's evident why this is a problem for both story and character.
What's the solution? The solution is to have Anakin simply kill Dooku. He's mad. Dooku really wiped the floor with Anakin in their last fight, so Anakin's hurt ego comes in here. He's not going to lose this time. And he still has a score to settle. "You're going to pay for all the Jedi that you killed today, Dooku!" That's never been resolve either. Anakin has a lot of reasons to want to kill Dooku. And in real-life combat, swordfights don't typically have happy endings.
So that brings us to Anakin actually KILLING Dooku. Now, as I mentioned before, the scene is filmed in such a way that it sets up Anakin forcing Dooku to surrender. Seeing as the film is originally cut, Anakin obviously WANTS to take Dooku alive. So he's rather calm and collected as he plucks Dooku's saber out of the air and puts it to Dooku's neck. This is all fine if Anakin plans to take Dooku alive. But that gives us the problem... that he still needs to kill Dooku, and he has to be manipulated to do so. That's a big no-no, as I established earlier. Having Anakin force Dooku to surrender, Palpatine say nothing, Anakin say nothing, THEN just randomly chop his head off feels really forced and random (and I've seen several edits that do just that).
There's really only one option if we're going to have Anakin kill Dooku un-manipulated. And that's to do it heat-of-the-moment style. Anakin's just fighting Dooku, and he kills him rather brutally. But the current Anakin-plucks-saber-from-air shots do NOT fit with this mood or flow of events. The solution is to not show it happen.
I readily acknowledge that it's kind of awkward to see that Dooku is suddenly headless, and that Anakin suddenly has Dooku's saber, but it actually fixes a whole bunch of problems at the same time. Our brains can easily fill in the details as to what happened. But we can't so easily justify the original cut, or any other arrangement of the shots.
All that being said, I do agree that the duel is somewhat hacked up and random. But the original duel is full of atrocities that really have to go. The entire first few scenes are some of the messiest in the film (apart from the end), and I'm sure that I'll go through several more iterations of these scenes before I'm happy with it.
Well if that is what your aiming for, I'd say you go this route.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86KjDBhDQoo
It makes Anakin look alot more cocky with the saber catch. He let's him gloat a bit, then does away with him. I think this helps cover alot of what you are looking to go for.
The line Anakin gives also becomes very Darth Vaderish all of a sudden. Double Bonus. lol