Star Wars is for children. Adults: Stop being selfish. — Page 3

Vaderisnothayden said:

Whenever I I leave food in the oven too long and let it get burnt badly I say "It's gone all Hayden Christensen." Which puts me right off it.

That dates back to a time when I was studying ROTS on dvd and watching the Mustafarted scene and forgot I had fish fingers cooking and they got all Hayden-ized. I didn't want to eat them after I'd made that association.

 that's pretty good.

One thing that always bugged me was it seemed they put the vader suit on over the burnt Hayden without even removing the burnt clothing off of the skin. I know it is just a fantasy movie, but even for Star Wars burnt Hayden looked a little beyond repair. I wasn't expecting him to get so fucked up. I think I actually liked an EU idea better that Vader gets the suit from radiation exposure. I was expecting Hayden to get a few limbs cut off and then fall into a nuclear reactor before I knew the plot of ROTS. It's also pretty contrived how Anakin and Obi-Wan fight over lava sometimes only inches from it, let alone the splattering of it, for what seems to be 45 minuets. Suddently Obi Wan jumps up on a little hill and says "It's over Anakin, I have the high ground!" What? Why does that matter?!! After all the jumping and flipping you did over lava falls, precise lightsaber fighting,  Anakin suddenly decides to just clumsily jump up in the air over Obi Wan and then gets all cut up. I would've preferred to see a fight to the finish where Anakin slowly gets more and more wounded, until he no longer can fight. In ROTS they fight precisely until the plot needs them to not fight precisely. Then Obi Wan just lets him burn alive after mercelessly trying to kill him. They could've architect the situation to give Obi Wan a legitmate reason not to finish him off.

Janskeet said:

One thing that always bugged me was it seemed they put the vader suit on over the burnt Hayden without even removing the burnt clothing off of the skin. I know it is just a fantasy movie, but even for Star Wars burnt Hayden looked a little beyond repair. I wasn't expecting him to get so fucked up. I think I actually liked an EU idea better that Vader gets the suit from radiation exposure. I was expecting Hayden to get a few limbs cut off and then fall into a nuclear reactor before I knew the plot of ROTS. It's also pretty contrived how Anakin and Obi-Wan fight over lava sometimes only inches from it, let alone the splattering of it, for what seems to be 45 minuets. Suddently Obi Wan jumps up on a little hill and says "It's over Anakin, I have the high ground!" What? Why does that matter?!! After all the jumping and flipping you did over lava falls, precise lightsaber fighting,  Anakin suddenly decides to just clumsily jump up in the air over Obi Wan and then gets all cut up. I would've preferred to see a fight to the finish where Anakin slowly gets more and more wounded, until he no longer can fight. In ROTS they fight precisely until the plot needs them to not fight precisely. Then Obi Wan just lets him burn alive after mercelessly trying to kill him. They could've architect the situation to give Obi Wan a legitmate reason not to finish him off.

Absolutely right. That whole part of the movie seems to be poorly thought-out. They certainly seemed to put Vader into the suit straight out of the lava, which seemed weird. I mean, they could have fixed him up a little first without showing us, but he did seem to go into the suit without much being done to him first (other than the artificial limbs being attached).

And it's ridiculous how Obi Wan and Anakin dance back and forth around the lava and don't get hurt by it. And the fight goes on for ages, with laser swords for god's sakes (easily capable of doing serious harm at the slightest touch), and nobody gets hurt by the swords or the lava, until suddenly three of Anakin's limbs are chopped off in one go. It's very anticlimactic.

And that bullshit about Obi Wan having the high ground. Wtf? They jump so high and far all the time in those movies, Anakin should have been able to jump over Obi Wan's head out of reach of the lightsaber, or at least jump to an area a bit farther down the shore from Obi Wan, out of reach of the saber and then move up the slope. But Obi Wan goes "Na na nan-na na, I have the high ground!" and we're supposed to buy that Anakin can't do anything about it that will work. The whole thing is so damned contrived. But then so is the whole Mustafarted battle.

Gaffer Tape said:

Yeah, I recently thought this could have worked better using an element from the older version of this backstory, or at least a version that Mark Hamill recounted back in the day. 

He said that George told him that Obi-Wan, Father Skywalker, and Darth Vader all get together for a duel (you know, why not?  ^_~), Father Skywalker is killed, and Obi-Wan eventually gets Darth Vader fried, but Obi-Wan is forced to retreat because the Emperor shows up.

Obviously, since the whole duel concept was thought up back when Obi-Wan was avenging Father Skywalker's death at the hand of Darth Vader, Obi-Wan leaving him to die would make a lot more sense.  But this interesting variation with all three characters being present, and then the Emperor showing up... well, that would have worked for this.  Vader gets set on fire, and Obi-Wan's going to put him out of his misery, but then Palpatine shows up and tries to lightning bolt him, so Obi-Wan is forced to flee so Palpatine can do his experiments.

Unfortunately, George wanted to have the Vader/Obi-Wan duel intercut with the Palpatine/Yoda duel, so it's still pretty amazing that Palpatine gets to Mustafar as fast as he does.

When did Hamill say this? Because what's curious about this is it's clearly before Vader became Luke's father but the Emperor seems to already be a dangerous character. My impression is that the Emperor was originally supposed to be this "Nixonian bureaucrat", just a nasty politician who gets himself made emperor, rather than a powerful force user, but I don't know when he would have been changed into the emperor we know.

captainsolo said:

If there hadn't been a tale of the fight taking place on a lava planet then we would have no Mustafar. Obi-Wan and Anakin are shown fighting-completely impervious to the lava. Just from their close proximity they would be in pain just from the intense heat! the intercutting with the Palpatine/Yoda fight is annoying and lessens both encounters. The Yoda battle suffers as it is cut short and the epic battle of the masters is left pointless.

On this subject, Palpatine should never have fought. He constantly makes little funny faces and looks pathetic. If he didn't fight in ROTJ why does he all of a sudden have to flip around like Yoda?

I wish the battle had not been intercut, and been more confrontational. As it stands we see two guys in a massive overkill of CGI doing the same fighting repeatedly. It is not epic: it is monotonous! We waited to see this for years, and all we get is this one thing? Anakin becoming extra crispy fried?

Hopefully George will come to his senses and repent for his sins by making a film entitled:

Obi-Wan's Damn Fool Idealistic Crusade

The Yoda-Palpy battle was awful. Yoda making macho faces/poses, the Emperor cackling his head off and filpping around the place. Awful. Skyjedi compared it to Loony Toons. The Annie/Kenobi battle was as monotonous as they come. Intercutting the two scenes maximizes the torture.

Where's my old post on the topic? ::rummages around:: Here it is! You father wanted you to have this... -wait, sorry, wrong film.  

Post:

See, I think the Mustafar duel was atrocious. In the prequels they got to doing this thing with lightsaber duels wherein the characters go on and on and on repeating pretty much the same action endlessly with nothing really happening. If you look at the OT lightsaber battles that doesn't happen. It's all meaningful action. Whereas in the Mustafar duel you feel you could could go away from the screen for a while and come back nothing important would have happened in the time you were gone. It makes the action meaningless and boring. The Mustafar duel stretches on endlessly and is boring as hell. And the music is way overdone. In OT battles the music is generally a background thing. In the Mustafar duel the music is damn near the main star of the scene. It's overpowering. And the tone of the music is as if to say "You MUST feel strongly here. This is an EPIC and TRAGIC moment. Feel!" The OT made you feel rather than telling you to feel like that. The Mustafar music is not only pushy, it adds to the pomposity and overdone showiness of the scene.

And we don't just have guys standing on droids. They're swinging back and forth on ropes while fighting each other over the lava. Maybe that's where they got the tarzan swinging around idea for Indy 4. Give me the Indy 4 version any day over the Mustafar version. It's seriously overdone. See, all this is while they're dancing around in the lava without getting burnt and we're being asked to buy that as plausible. It's just ridiculous and overdone. The whole thing is done up way too grand. The OT managed so much more involving fights with so much less show and pomposity and buildup. The Mustafar scene bludgeons you with how grand it's supposed to be. Way too heavy handed. It's shouting at you "This is a GRAND moment!" and I just want to say "I got that. Stop fucking shouting already!"

And then we have Anakin's ranting. When he rants about how from his point of view the Jedi are evil he looks like he's about to burst into tears like a little kid. When he screams "You underestimate my power!" the lameness factor is mind-boggling. And then later after he's been chopped up and fried he screams at Kenobi "I hate you!" like a little kid who's been denied a treat. I half expect to shout "If you don't say I won, I'll hold my breath until  you do!" Between the script and the talents of Hayden Christensen the character of Darth Vader is totally rubbed in the shit in this scene.

Also, Anakin's defeat is seriously anticlimatic. After all that fighting going on forever with nothing really happening, suddenly Anakin makes a stupid jump and Kenobi cuts off three of his limbs in one go and Annie falls flat on his face and get fried up. It doesn't work. And it's almost slapstick.

Also not helping is you have no real connection with either of these characters. Ewan McGregor is a good actor but if you compare his Kenobi to Alec Guinness's or to Han, Luke and Leia, you can see how he fails to make that close connection with the audience that the OT characters do. Plus it doesn't help that Ewan's Kenobi comes across vaguely like he's a pretentious poser. As for Anakin, between the writing and the acting this character is made unlikable and unrelatable and pathetic in a totally non-endearing way. So, watching this fight, I really didn't give a fuck what happened to either character. Which doesn't help the scene. 

And the artificiality of the scene doesn't help you get genuine emotion out of it either. This scene should have great feeling, but mostly it just TELLS you to have great feeling rather than actually making you feel it. A classic example of the prequels failing at depth of feeling.

Overall I think the scene is one big load of meaningless pompous overdone show and one of the worst scenes I've ever seen in any film ever.

The Emperor and Yoda fight was awful. Horrible overacting for the Emperor. Annoying CGI Yoda with his macho posing that's so totally inappropriate for the character. It was hard to decide which character was more annoying. I wanted to flush both of them down the toilet. And that was intercut with the Mustafar scene, for maximum lameness.

Vader's nooooooo was a terrible moment. Between it being so totally unnecessary and cheesy and poorly judged and James Earl Jones's voice acting being uncharacteristically bad there. It was a real cringe moment. And let's not forget it was Hayden Christensen in the Darth Vader suit.