What Didn't You Like About ROTS? — Page 2

Interesting thread. It’s funny, even as a 9 year old (when I first saw ROTS) who loved the film as much as any other (in my mind it was a masterpiece on par with the OT [I never thought TPM or AOTC were]), there were things I didn’t like:

• Some really poor and strange editing choices (I distinctly remember seeing the film opening night and thinking “what the hell?” when Anakin says “General Grievous’s ship is dead ahead” and then it awkwardly cuts to him in obviously another take that doesn’t match at all saying “the one crawling with vulture droids.”
• Stupid battle droid humor and voices.
• Palpatine cheering during the Dooku duel.
• The weird and unnatural balcony scene between Anakin and Padme.
• The lightsaber battle with four-armed Grievous is done as soon as it begins because choreographing it was too hard.
• Palpatine transforms into wrinkly face rather than slowly aging into it.
• Palpatine wrinkly face looks nothing like in ROTJ (and it’s not just different, it’s a lot worse).
• “Unlimited Powah!”
• There’s some really bad dialogue and delivery from Anakin on Mustafar.

As the years passed, I still regarded the film highly, but some other things started to bug me too:

• Visually the film is overwhelmingly CG and simply looks nothing like the much more grounded OT.
• The dialogue, in general, is stiff and overly formal in many places (nothing like the more casual, human, and humorous dialogue in the OT).
• Certain ways in which Lucas came really close to greatness but didn’t quite make it there (The Jedi are not at all perfect and the fact that Anakin doesn’t actually have any ideological differences with them and simply buys Palpatine’s obviously BS “the Jedi are taking over” line, Anakin is never explicitly revealed to have been created by Plagueis and Palpatine which could have been a really compelling part of his seduction, etc.).
• Everyone constantly flipping.
• “It can’t be.” COME ON Ewan. You’re better than this.
• Certain things that just don’t really make sense (Padme losing the will to live).

In recent years, my opinion of the film has really dropped. It’s basically gone from great to alright. Every time I see it again I find more moments that just ring false and don’t work for me. A lot of the dialogue sucks, a lot of the environments feel cheap and unbelievable. The structure of the film is weak, and, most importantly (the main reason I can’t in good conscience say the film succeeds), the whole point of the movie - showing Anakin turning to the dark side - doesn’t work. It’s too sudden and unbelievable. I don’t mind that saving Padme factored into it, but to betray the Jedi the way he does means there should have been some stronger motivation for him. Especially now that I’ve read the excellent novelization of the film (which also isn’t totally perfect but still miles better), it’s really hard for me to take the film and Anakin’s fall seriously. There’s still stuff that I can enjoy, but on the whole, there’s a LOT to dislike.

I listened to this over the weekend (highly recommended, btw) and they made fun of those several times.

They were also the original inspiration for the transitions in my edits.

moviefreakedmind said:

DominicCobb said:

• Stupid battle droid humor and voices.
• Palpatine cheering during the Dooku duel.

Oh yeah those were real bad. I was not quite as young as you but still in my youth, and I didn’t get why there were so many attempts at childish and slapstick humour in the film that was supposed to see the demise of the jedi and the fall of Anakin Skywaltzer

“Skywaltzer” ha I’ll have to remember that one. Yeah the humor was poor and stood out to me in large part because the droids were so much different in ROTS than in the previous two films. Weird that not only was there droid slapstick in the dark ROTS but it was only in that and not TPM and AOTC.

DominicCobb said:

• Palpatine transforms into wrinkly face rather than slowly aging into it.

This was important to me though because I am not capable of comprehending the fact that people age over time. If he hadn’t have turned into a wrinkly old man in ROTS I would’ve sat there perplexed staring at the screen thinking, “why does he look older in Return of the Jedi than in this movie?”

I had always assumed as a kid that the Emperor was just super old in ROTJ. Palpatine’s appearance in AOTC looks like it’s actually working towards Emperor. Then he de-ages in ROTS? I could buy Palpatine turning wrinkly face as if it was his true visage but the film makes it sort of unclear why and implies that the force lightning use caused it. Anyway the big issue is that the make up doesn’t match AT ALL.

DominicCobb said:

moviefreakedmind said:

DominicCobb said:

• Stupid battle droid humor and voices.
• Palpatine cheering during the Dooku duel.

Oh yeah those were real bad. I was not quite as young as you but still in my youth, and I didn’t get why there were so many attempts at childish and slapstick humour in the film that was supposed to see the demise of the jedi and the fall of Anakin Skywaltzer

“Skywaltzer” ha I’ll have to remember that one. Yeah the humor was poor and stood out to me in large part because the droids were so much different in ROTS than in the previous two films. Weird that not only was there droid slapstick in the dark ROTS but it was only in that and not TPM and AOTC.

DominicCobb said:

• Palpatine transforms into wrinkly face rather than slowly aging into it.

This was important to me though because I am not capable of comprehending the fact that people age over time. If he hadn’t have turned into a wrinkly old man in ROTS I would’ve sat there perplexed staring at the screen thinking, “why does he look older in Return of the Jedi than in this movie?”

I had always assumed as a kid that the Emperor was just super old in ROTJ. Palpatine’s appearance in AOTC looks like it’s actually working towards Emperor. Then he de-ages in ROTS? I could buy Palpatine turning wrinkly face as if it was his true visage but the film makes it sort of unclear why and implies that the force lightning use caused it. Anyway the big issue is that the make up doesn’t match AT ALL.

I assumed it was a trick. He was showing Anakin his true self in a way that made him look like he was being harmed by the lightning. I do absolutely hate the make up, however. It looks absolutely nothing like it did in ROTJ.

LuckyGungan2001 said:

similar to The Force Awakens when the Republic planet is destroyed, but that benefitted from Hux’s epic speech.

and Domhnall Gleeson’s great acting. That speech is the only thing about Starkiller Base that doesn’t revolt me.

LuckyGungan2001 said:

The Jedi Purge has some of the greatest music ever written period, but falls short because we haven’t seen enough of these characters to care about their deaths, similar to The Force Awakens when the Republic planet is destroyed, but that benefitted from Hux’s epic speech.

That speech was great, but I cared less about the Republic than the Jedi in ROTS, TBH. It just kind of came out of nowhere and didn’t feel like the stakes were that large.

moviefreakedmind said:

The worst thing about all of ROTS is how Lucas attempted to tie everything into a neat bow to lead into the original trilogy, almost as though Revenge of the Sith ended just a few minutes before A New Hope began. It is pretty insulting to think that the audience wouldn’t be able to understand that maybe Padme died sometime between the two trilogies when Leia was young, but she had to die on screen so dummies wouldn’t wonder why Natalie Portman wasn’t in the OT. Same thing with Obi Wan chatting with Qui Gon’s ghost because apparently everyone needed to know how Obi Wan learned to be a ghost. I could go on and on.

Exactly!

It may be unfair to blame ROTS for the mistakes of the previous two episodes, which caused the majority of the story to be bumped into the third instalment. However, Episode 3’s big mistake is that it doesn’t serve as an ending to the prequel trilogy. The OT was a story with a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. ROTS doesn’t provide an ending. I don’t need a happy ending, really, just an ending of any kind. Instead the film ends mid-air and the story is to be concluded 20 years later, picking up exactly where the PT left off. I mean, even TPM didn’t show us everything that would lead up to AOTC and AOTC didn’t cover the transition to ROTS in great detail, but for some reason ROTS needed to lead straight into ANH. And quite poorly so.

Smithers said: as a child I really liked “Sharkboy and Lavagirl”…

I for one see nothing wrong with this.

ZkinandBonez said:

moviefreakedmind said:

DominicCobb said:

• Palpatine transforms into wrinkly face rather than slowly aging into it.

This was important to me though because I am not capable of comprehending the fact that people age over time. If he hadn’t have turned into a wrinkly old man in ROTS I would’ve sat there perplexed staring at the screen thinking, “why does he look older in Return of the Jedi than in this movie?”

Well, to be devil’s advocate, was Palpatine ever supposed to have aged naturally? His appearance in ROTJ is quite, for the lack of a better word, “alien” looking. That’s not to say that I think ROTS solved it brilliantly, but I never interpreted OT Palpatine’s wrinkles as being natural, and he does look kind of melted. I also remember the novelization (which was Lucas canon) hinting at his unnatural age.

Although I know now that this is not the case, but when I watched ROTS for the first time as a teenager I thought Palpatine’s aging scene was him being transformed back into his true age by the Force lightning. Which made sense to me after all that Plegeuis talk about artificially maintaining life with the Force. In retrospect though, that’s giving the PT too much credit.

No, not aged naturally. Aged unnaturally and deformed by the dark side. But still a gradual process that occurred in part due to aging.

Again I wouldn’t have minded it too much if they made him look like in ROTJ or if there’s was some sort of explanation besides “scars.”

SilverWook said:

That Palpatine himself explains it away as being scarred from the attempt on his life only muddies the issue. The most symmetrical scars ever! Then again, the senate is dumb enough to believe anything at this point. The most powerful guy in the universe apparently never gets plastic surgery either.

What still bugs me to this day, is Palpatine ought to be heavily guarded after the kidnapping attempt. The red guards must be on a coffee break when Mace and the Jedi redshirts show up. That the windows blowing out on Palpatine’s personal office doesn’t immediately bring armed guards is even more silly.

I assumed that Palpatine had foreseen the Jedi council approaching him and had told the royal guard to beg off so he could just kill them instead of them being detained.

There were parts of the Obi-Wan vs. Anakin duel that did not impress. Visually it would have looked better if Anakin’s saber was either red or green.

And when they are standing close to one another and both just twirling their swords around each other very quickly.

Also, when Anakin is stuck on that huge machinery that’s going over the lava falls, and he does a Tarzan rope swing to safety.