Mithrandir

Sorry to bother you haha, I just forgot. There are a lot of options for this shot, though it's a very very hard puzzle to get everything working right and believable

Or maybe just erase the "I am the senate/ Not yet"

So it'd be 

-Youre sooner than I expected (he starts to get up)

- I know who you are... I know what you are. The senate will decide your fate (shot of windu for a sec)

-It's treason then. (P turns on his sabre, and we here Windu does right before he gets on guard to fight)

-------------------------

You know, a sincerement between Jedi and Sith for the first time in many years.

Palpatine tries to keep his mask to the last moment

With your new line windu tells him to stop pretending and challenges him.

Palpatine says cinically "it's treason" and attacks him. Simple.

You could choose who challenges who. It could be like ObiWan vs Grievous, that ObiWan (I know you cutted this) got on guard before his foe.

The dialogue still isn't buying me. Might it be better

P: You're sooner than I expected!

W: I know who you are, I know what you are... (turn on sabre) The senate will decide your fate.

P: I am the Senate

W: Not yet (or maybe here, turn on sabre)

P: It's treason then.

I like it a lot better :)

Then you could just cut the "are you threatening me master Jedi - Not yet" dialogue. And leave it

-You're sooner than I expected

(Sabre igniting) - I know who you are, (Palpatine starts to stand up) I know what you are...

- It's treason then.

Unless of course you are very convinced of the Are you threatening me line. 

There's a thing at the very beg¡nning, windu just apears in a shot from nowhere. Check 0:12 - 0:14

I'd remove the lines "are you threatening me master Jedi? Not yet." It just doesn't work in this edit, nor it doesn't in Bob's or in George Lucas, it just feels to rushed. I think when Palpatine told Anakin he was the Sith, he already knew that eventually the Jedi would be come and overthrow him, so it's pointless that Palpatine was playing his good guy card till the very end.

Besides it's too rushed how he switches from smiling (cinically ofc) to anger in "you're here sooner than I expected - Are you threatening me?". And Mace's answer is just incoherent.

Are you threatening me? Not yet.... that'd be "I'll threat you", while it should be "I'll kill you".

But it's an excellent line what you've found, and by it's own meaning it could be used to imply that Anakin never told him. Or that he told him late.

I'd put it like

Windu enters, switches on his saber.

Palpatine turns in his chair, still smiling and says :

Palpatine: "Master Windu (...) you're here sooner than I expected"

Windu: "I know who you are... I know what you are" 

Palpatine: (laughter) I AM THE SENATE

Windu: Not yet.

Fight.

Cheers

When I did the video (I did it and I deleted it, Vaderios might still have it), I put the dialogue in the shot when the camera starts to get closer to the fighters (and when the music isn't that significant). You know, when we're by here 0:37 taking the following video as a reference.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cU0BYXlTuI

Or maybe a couple of minutes before Anakin's line "General Grievous's ship is directly ahead". 

-------------------------------------

Another idea: considering the camera is constantly getting closer and further from the ships, you could synchronize the dialogue lines everytime the ships get closer to the camera, for example, at

0:37

0:44

0:50 

And I think you could risk a "May the Force be with you, Anakin"... or if possible, "May the force be with us" at 0:22-23, just to preserve the sense of what you were trying to do, and with such a classical phrase as MTFBWY, I think you wouldn't be ruining the music (if it's just that line until the next camera approach at 0:37).

This way you might not need to do a coherent dialogue, since the spectator would get the feeling that the dialogue is still going on (though they can't hear it) while the ships are distant from the camera. I'm not sure if this last tactic could work....

A "may the force be with us all" would rock... again, CloneWars material might be helpful

I like it that you made the dialogue more extensive. It certainly adds to the feeling. Though putting it so at the beginning doesn't feel very star warsy.

I'd put it after we see the jedi fighters, when they're doing all those acrobacies, just to boost the feeling of them feeling comfortable in a war scenario, that they are in a good mood.

The dialogue feels very cutted (maybe some fade in/out FX to solve this?). Apart from that. there seems to be an EQ thing, maybe increase the radio feeling/interference a little more?

Just to increase the feeling of "good mood"....

Obi:  Take a deep breath. May the force be with you (this is like "we're going in")

Annie:  Don't worry... I'm glad that you chose to serve master.

Obi:  (Something ObiWansy)

Annie: Hey hey, no wise jokes (?) (from the elevator scene)

Obi:I didn't say anything!

Annie: (suddenly cutting the friendly dialogue) Master, General Grievous's ship is directly ahead. 

-----------------------------------------------

Ok, so what could be defined as a ObiWansy line... Something ironic, sophisticated and british.

Considering it's just an audio line, with the "radio interference effect", I think (though you're the audio expert here), that you could freely use Clone Wars series dialogue (even if it's not E. McGregor), there might be very useful stuff there. (CloneWars fans, help us here!)... or maybe some deleted scene of ObiWan from the cinema saga could be useful too. It's just about researching a little (like it casually happened with the I'm glad that you chose to serve line)

But in case you don't find it, the line always on the move could use... it'd be just ironic with Anakin like "hey there's a war, we all know you (Anakin) wouldn't be sitting at home".

Well, that work I don't know how possible is, but it involves mainly AOTC (the same goes for ObiWan knowing about Anakin's marriage, it's a job that has to be done in AOTC to get a better ROTS).

The idea is to tweak the last scene we have of Yoda, Windu and ObiWan to change its meaning, and put in that scene Windu's line "we're keepers of the peace, not soldiers"... so that by the end of AOTC you leave that possibility in the air.

And when you get to ROTS, it's established in the scroll.

"War! (Blah blah blah). Some Jedi Knights have decided to join the war"

And then you put Anakin's line (I'm glad that you chose to serve) in some part of the battle above Coruscant.

I think, that being mainly audio edits, it's easier to do than if it involved FX shots or so.

I think that the main aim of this isn't giving more depth to Windu, but putting Anakin, ObiWan, and Yoda, as characters who distinguish from the rest in their decissions too. If Windu gains depth with this, excellent of course; but the point is to reinforce 4 characters along the movie, or the PT: Anakin, Palpatine, Padmé and ObiWan (and utterly, Yoda)

OK, I already posted it on the other thread. When I sent this to Ady, the forum cutted my private message because it was too long, so I had to send it to Cutter in 3 parts. I sticked it into a large post in Radical Redux, but it doesn't allow me to see my post, nor what anyone has posted after the user "conilius", so someone please tell me wether the message has been cutted or no.

Its structure it's 3 quotes of myself (the three PMs to Cutter) and then a little text, is that what has been uploaded??

I'm down I won't be able to see your answers until there's another page in the thread (it just stops in conilius)

General Idea: GOING TO A MORE OTISH PLOT in ROTS. (Character centred). I assume that one of the main differences between PT and OT is how cosmopolitan feels the new trilogy when opposed to the OT. So even if some character and situations are necessary, my goal here is to find a way to make the story of ROTS be driven by the main characters. So as far as in the OT we had this "triangle" or characters Luke-Han-Leia, I think that the most close we have to that in the PT is Anakin-ObiWan-Padmé.

"He was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil" - "Annie was a good friend" HOW TO BOND ANAKIN AND OBIWAN:

Well, immaginin' an all-PT-episodes fanedit saga, make it as if Obi Wan was not that impollute Jedi we see in the PT, but someone more in line with the great guy, but yet tricky person we see in the OT, ala Qui Gonn. Someone who we know has great intentions however's a little rogue; a Master who could tolerate Anakin being married. Infact sharing the secret is an implicit way of showing how bonded they are as best friends. This is a process of "Han-izing" ObiWan a little, which I don't have any idea about how could it be pulled out.

Second, they've got to be seen as if they were together in almost everything they do:

      Suggestion 1: ObiWan knows about Padme and Anakin (from the beginning, he even encourages the relationship:

a) in the elevator scene at the start of AOTC, you could edit it in plenty of ways that would make it look like obiwan has no trouble with anakin and padmé being together.

b) in the circus, I think that when some stupid CGI monster appears, Obi says something kinda "I think I can handle this (sarchastic)". Well, you could always put that little shot after Anakin and Padme's kiss before going out to the arena, so it'd look like Kenobi has seen Anakin and Padme making out.

By ROTS ObiWan should know about them so as to make it possible some other scenes I have in mind (Obiwan never gets back to the Jedi Building after order 66, he gets straight to Padme's because he's worried about Anakin)

      Suggestion 2:  It's a little invasive in the plot and would require some reference in the crawl, and editing both in ROTS as in an AOTC future edit. The changes needed are rather simple, easily doable and minimal, there's also a nice moral question that would be left in the air at the end of AOTC. Resuming, the idea is: Not all the Jedi agree in joining the clone wars as generals. There's a faction led by Mace windu who don't join the grand army after Geonosis. Though there's never actually a break-up within the order, there are disagreements in what to do. Mace Windu and co. reject joining the war, and want to keep an eye on the senate.

Erase yoda's dialogue in the council season (whith the holograms, when Yoda's on Kasshyk) where they decide throw down palpatine from office. Windu and his gang would be acting on their own when they go to arrest palpatine, without the council's approval. As Windu never directly served palpatine's manipulative objective (he never joined the war), there's a new taste for palpatine in killing him the way he did, isn't it? With all that anger...

 Yoda, Anakin, ObiWan and KiAdiMundi (the latter just because his protagonism in order 66 sequence) join the army, and usually go abroad.This way you would be establishing:.

 a) Anakin/Vader's passion for military operations

b) Anakin and ObiWan being in some way separated from the "rest" of the Jedi, which would make them be more tied for the spectator, as I said, they would be in a way, the Lennon/McCartneys of the order.

c) THE MORAL ISSUE at the end of AOTC regarding the Jedi should fight or stand for peace.

d) THE MORAL ISSUE in the OT of having Vader, ObiWan, and Yoda be responsible of fixing what their former actions did.

  

Another change for implementation: There's a line at a stupid and dense naboo scene of Anakin saying "I'm glad that you chose to serve"... well you put that at the begginning of ROTS in the battle, and then you have "the proof" that not all the Jedi have joined the Clone Wars

I already done that with audacity, and it just fits easily... the two fighters appear at the very begginning of ROTS and one of the first things you hear anakin say when they join the battle of Coruscant is "I'm glad that you chose to serve master". You know, Anakin is thanking Obi wan for giving him some war "action".

      Suggestion 3: ObiWan protects Anakin in the council. When Anakin doesn't get the rank of master and starts whining, in the theatrical release ObiWan makes some gesture of reproval with his head (he nods it to the sides like saying "no").  Tweak it so that when Anakin is about to start whining, ObiWan makes that gesture to Anakin like saying "It isn't convenient", not as a reproval, but as an advice, and inmediately after that, Anakin shuts his ass and sits.

I think these are the kind of things two close friends would do. Obi Wan would be saying with no words "shut up, we're already separated from Windu, don't make this move now...

 

 

Anakin and his wife:

As I said many times before, making Anakin go right to Padmé's after Palpatine confessing he's the Sith Lord would be a hon-ron. By this, you add depth to the marriage relationship, and uncertainty, and perhaps even manipulative intelligence to Anakin's character. The best thing? The actions are speaking; there'd be no wooden dialogue!

To do this and yet not affect the development of the plot, we've to state how would the Jedi realize about Palpatine's identity. I've suggested that as "the dark side clouds everything" it could even be clouding the Jedi's minds so that they don't act specifically as they should. They'd rather be a little jerks here and convey in a council season (the one that there's Windu and almost the rest are holograms, which is not at the council chamber) that the Chancellor will be removed when Grievous is dead. This scene may need a little edition/tweakering to get moving though I suppose it's not a big deal.

POSSIBLE EXPANSION OF THE IDEA:
Once more, the dark side clouds everything, so considering there's a deleted scene that shows almost the same content that "the hologram council scene"; that deleted scene could make it to an edit since it shows only ObiWan, Yoda and Windu, and it'd lead us to think "hey, these are three Jedi that are making decissions as if they were even upper than the council". (This would make some of Anakins suspicions and angers be reasonable, after all he's not that wrong about the Jedi being a little jerks).

PRO of this expansion!:
Showing this "high command" of the Jedi order, even above the rest of the council
Giving more reasons to Anakin (and through him, till this point of the movie, to the spectator) to be unsure about the Jedi.

------------------------------------------

ObiWan gets sent to Utapau to fight Grievous , and in the meanwhile

Anakin turns

-Palp tells Anakin (in his office) what to do... "the sith will rule the galaxy, etc."

- Cut to somewhere else (am I the only one that feels it's too rushed how far Anakin gets to do his "first strike"???

- Cut back to Anakin first strike with your amazing new score. After this comes the part when I say we need to see another important character ... ok here's the novelty: that character is Palpatine. The idea would be: "while Anakin is killing people, what is Palpatine doing, sitting in his office??": NO.

SO:

- Cut to Palpatine telling Cody "execute order 66"

- Cut to somewhere that's not Utapau.... maybe Padmé criying when she sees fire in the Jedi's.

- Cut to Utapau. ObiWan reunites with Cody, and then Cody shots him.

 

THE DETAIL: Cody would be giving him his lightsabre! And he says I think you'll be needing this! Left to the viewer's interpretation whether Cody was helping ObiWan or not.... If this is done well, you would have just made another character a little more deep!.

Besides, this way it'd be better, because you'd be generating another tension. You see what happens to Anakin and in the middle of it, you see the emperor telling a clone commander to "execute order 66". So it makes you wander what's gonna happen with ObiWan. There you generate the tension, but again, you put something in the middle: Padmé's scene, and maybe more (the more the better).

And when you come back to Utapau, you see the Clone might have developed some affection (?) for his Jedi General who chose to serve...

  

TILL HERE, THE RADICAL BUT EASILY DOABLE STUFF.

 

NOW...

 

Obi Wan's scape and afterwards.

You might have seen that Bob Garcia replaced the hologram in kenobi's fighter by a radio wave. This allows you to not only replace the hologram, but the whole message.

 

 

The video message of Palpatine's asistant should be replaced with the radio again, and it'd be something like:
"His majesty (HERE is when you insert a quick shot of Obi and Yoda putting their best oh-shit faces) has requested you for a special season of the senate."

(The WTF faces ar mainly due to "his majesty"... Palpatine hasn't even declared the Empire yet. This is just a way to "inform" Yoda and ObiWan what's really happening, without giving it in the mouth, so once again, you make the characters more clever.

 

After the tantive's cockpit scene, you should cut entirely the lame CGI scene of ObiWan and Yoda establishing the emergency signal in Coruscant. Why?

Because in a character-centred plot, we'd be mainly with ObiWan. So I guess Yoda could go and establish the signal on his own, while Obi Wan would be worried about Anakin (it's a tragedy, he's worried about his friend, but he doesn't know he's a killer). And since ObiWan knows about Anakin and Padmé, he'd know exactly where to go in order to find his friend

---- Cut to Mustafar, and end of this suggestion----

POSSIBLE EXPANSION/VARIATION OF THE IDEA:

Even if the "best friends" plot line is a radical change, it came to my mind the idea of another possibility that could enhance or replace what I formerly suggested.

Well besides being worried for his best friend... perhaps ObiWan thinks that Anakin's time has come...
I mean, APART from the friendship preocupation, ObiWan wants to find Anakin because he is considered "the chosen one", "the only one who could destroy the sith".... so they need to find him the same way you need to find a baseball bat when someone's punching you (bad methaphore). They need him as a weapon. And when ObiWan goes to mustafar and sees what happen... well, everything crumbles down.

How to do this??

Right after the Tantive's cockpit scene, cut to the Tantive's corridor scene, and alter the dialogue so that it looks like this (once again with dialogue from the original footage)

ObiWan: Have we received any message from the "temple" (here change "temple" and put ANAKIN)? There's too much at stake master. He must know.
Yoda: (Silence)
ObiWan: With all of your respect master, isn't he the chosen one? We need him
Y: a prophecy that coulda been misunderstood
O: He is my best friend, I know he won't fail me (or something)

 

The way I've immagined this, the message that Kenobi gets from bail's ship should be replaced.First of all, it won't be Bail Organa, bail Organa's a senator, why would he be getting radio mesagges from anyone. Logically, the message should be received by the commander of his ship: Antilles. Plus, this would be a fan service to OT.

 SINCE WE'VE ESTABLISHED OBI WAN AND ANAKIN ARE VERY CLOSE TO EACH OTHER the dialogue could be something like this.

Captain:"Captain Antilles here. This is Senator Organa's ship"
ObiWan: "Captain my clonetrooper fired at me...."
Captain:"...it seems that there's been a Jedi rebellion sir. The jedi are being hunted. We'll send you our cordenades"
(Comunication off)
OBI WAN (face gesture of "dammit"): ANAKIN!! (worried about him being murdered as the rest of the Jedi). ( this is the tricky line to do)

----well, obiwan reaches the tantive, Yoda does it too, and in the cockpit----

 

So here it is for those who asked for it. I know I said I had some ideas for makin anakin look like the great guy of the clone wars... and I posted what I got. However, those ideas are chained with others, if you wanna make some character be distinguished, you just have to make him do things the others don't, or wouldn't do. Saving obiwan in the Invisible hand, for example is something we already got. I propose to pull this even further and, as I said, make Kenobi and Skywalker be "the Lennon/McCartneys" be doing mostly on their own (along with Yoda, and Ki) something the other Jedis don't do.

In collaboration with Vaderios, we've got some ideas about how to give the sensation that both anakin and obiwan are great figures in the clone wars. PM'ed them to The Cutter, Bob, and Ady casually, however any improvement would be welcome. I could PM them to you if you want, to polish them a little more ;). Don't get me wrong, I don't post it here just because it's an atrociously long text

Nice to see you're back bob... ;)

Wow Angel you got the bionic eye... is that glow thing something very repetitive along the scene?

46 minutes for the PT, how much do we already have doing the addition of the three PT dvd deleted scenes?

double pst, delete it please

Another idea:

The way it is now, Cody is just a robot that blindly obbeys everything he is told by Palpatine.

In my last post I criticized the pacing of the movi right after Anakin turns. Said that right after Anakin's first strike you just need to see what happening withe the other characters (for a matter of contrast... "okay, Anakin fell, but what's up with the others?").

So this is my suggestion:

-Palp tells Anakin (in his office) what to do... "the sith will rule the galaxy, etc."

- Cut to somewhere else (am I the only one that feels it's too rushed how far Anakin gets to do his "first strike"???

- Cut back to Anakin first strike with your amazing new score. After this comes the part when I say we need to see another important character ... ok here's the novelty: that character is Palpatine. The idea would be: "while Anakin is killing people, what is Palpatine doing, sitting in his office??": NO.

SO:

- Cut to Palpatine telling Cody "execute order 66"

- Cut to somewhere that's not Utapau.... maybe Padmé criying when she sees fire in the Jedi's.

- Cut to Utapau. ObiWan reunites with Cody, and then Cody shots him.

THE DETAIL: Cody would be giving him his lightsabre! And he says I think you'll be needing this! Left to the viewer's interpretation whether Cody was helping ObiWan or not.... If this is done well, you would have just made another character a little more deep!.

Besides, this way it'd be better, because you'd be generating another tension. You see what happens to Anakin and in the middle of it, you see the emperor telling a clone commander to "execute order 66". So it makes you wander what's gonna happen with ObiWan. There you generate the tension, but again, you put something in the middle: Padmé's scene, and maybe more (the more the better).

And when you come back to Utapau, you see the Clone might have developed some affection (?) for his Jedi General...

Maybe they developed such an affection because he chose to serve? ;)

Wow, it sounds good. I like it that until the shot from the roof, it has some drama in it, like you sketched a little of the force theme too, am I wrong? It'd be awsome if you made that drama thing a little more present in the score for that scene. But just a little, I mean, it mustn't cover Vader's theme at all.

Apart from that, I like the new change in music you're doing lately; it certainly adds to the movie and the story; with your new score, while using the leitmotiv, you constantly remember us that not everything that's related to the empire must be militaristic, or the Jedi= heroic, etc. I like it.

Suggestion that comes to mind: While you reinforce with music the moments that have a strong meaning to the plot, I always felt (specially with the original score) that some parts in ROTS are pointlessly scored. The clone troopers shot that comes inmediately after Anakin's strike is one of them. Is it possible to leave it un-scored just with ambient noise and dialogues? Like in Anh, inside the DS, you hear all the war-noises but no score...

It just doesn't fit the way it is, not because of the music but because of the visual edit. After Anakin's strike, it's like other protagonist should be shown, another paralel story (ObiWan, or Padmé's), not regular FX shot of clone troopers. However doing that would screw the pacing, so, if possible, leave that shot un scored.

Cutter, you've got 3 Private Messages though it's a trilogy and I ask you to take them as one (very, very) long message

SilverWook said:

Mithrandir said:

 

The way I see it from this corner of the world, is Hollywood has declined because (don't take it personal here) the north-americans have culturally declined. Ofc, speaking in a general way

 When you have someone to compare (culturally), you've got to tell out the deep differences you got with those ones you are being compared with. When you're lonely in the cultural run, you just don't have to prove you're better than the other, 'cause there's no other. Pretty much the same thing that happens when you have no competition in the market.... you're not forced to make good products since you're the only offer. Now immagine this in a even bigger sphere, the cultural one.

That's a point where the cold war was useful. American culture (and capitalism btw) had to show its best image to the world, as well as the soviets did (or intended to). And what's more, they had to convince people that their respective sides were the "good" ones, so the culture in some way manifested that. From 1990 to 2008 (before the 2008 crisis), with only one global superpower, everything's more "light" haven't you noticed? (music, cinema, fictional literature, society, the union's struggles were quieter and even the perspective on life, love, etc.) As if there was nothing to discuss anymore.

I just can't believe from here how is it that a cheesy, repeated to death in sitcoms story such as the hangover gets more press than the king's speech had (at least that's what north-american TV channels show here) when there was a time you used to make many excellent movies every year.

Ofc there still are excellent (I really mean excellent) american movies (and about TV series, well you're the fricking kings of it), like someone said up here Chris Nolan's movies are very good. The guy even managed to make of a comic (Batman TDK) a deep enough story about moral values, instead the plain good vs bad guy.

Another thing that I see is that hollywood has developed an excesive taste for war or fight, rarely seen years before. And in war movies things often are presented in a very light way, while in a good drama you actually get to make that catharsis with the characters or the situation. And that makes a movie or play good, we know it from Aristotle.

 

From the commercials or movie trailers that reach these shores, it's like everything that's thought to be good is instantely adectivized as "epic". But epic is stupid, epic feels like nothing, unless there's a good quote of drama in it. Unless you see and feel they're fighting for something you yourself would fight for; not for a country nor a flag, but for a moral value.  Again, good epic movies are the ones that have deep stories, and since today "deep" is a weird word in storytelling... Even the PT suffers from this.

I think that Thirteen Days for instance is a deeper, and more epic movie from a certain point of view, than Troy. And it's far from being an actual superproduction.

Another epic movie that worked in part because it had a deep story? The Lord of The Rings. When was it written? 1953.

Besides there's always a lot of militarist people that are so in favor of killing people or invading just because "my country's better than yours" or the classic "we're the freedom" that if you expose in a screen that phrase of Tolkien:

"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace-all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind"

Well, some people wouldn't agree with that, some others would see the flaw of their own simple, lineal thoughts on that paragraph and would reject  the whole movie, arguing that it's "not entertaining" while inside they don't like it because loosing the "general", the "national" sense of war to a more particular, human, sense of war (involving every fallen personal story, interests and name, etc) would just be too hard.

Even Lucas could have used this perspective. Showing Anakin as a "great warrior", a great general of the clone wars, just to show it as Yoda said, was don't make one great

 

In the U.S., The King's Speech was impossible to escape hearing about, especially at Oscar time.

Plenty of movies showing the dark underbelly of the American dream were made during the Cold War. Whether they were shown overseas I have no idea.

Hollywood's decline has been pinned down to everything from the end of the studios system in the 50's, the popularity of television, to blaming Spielberg and Lucas for inventing the blockbuster. ;)

I said I was speaking in a general way. Cinema is both an art and a cultural industry. I was speaking about the industrial side, never said there hasn't ever been any Woody Allen or Michael Moore here or there...

"Plenty of movies showing the dark underbelly of the american dream were made during the Cold War."

 This is still what I said; putting aside what the cultural industry was making; the situation of the Cold War per se made you think, or reflect about values, economy, etc, just because you had to "choose" a side. And that was reflected in some movies that showed the pros or cons of the western culture.

What I mean is, it doesn't matter whether the movies showed the dark underbelly of the american society or the best of american society. The fact is that some movies brought to consideration some aspects of society that today aren't so often questioned.

Before 1990 it was:

"USA does it like this. URSS does it like that. Why does USA do it like this, or why does URSS do it like that? We better? They better? Why? How?".

(It doesn't matter what personal answers you had to those questions, but I think everybody questioned that at least once during the Cold War. Just like padmé in EPIII (?)) 

The 90's and early 2000's it was:

"We all do it like this. No questions."

So it was rather weird to see a strong critic to society during those days; since western culture proved to be better than the other option; thus we all believed the dream everything was perfect. And stopped questioning (culturally) whether we were right or wrong; and that's the kind of lightness I see in cinema (as a cultural massive industry).

The lack of depth in characters in most of movies about good vs. evil

The way I see it from this corner of the world, is Hollywood has declined because (don't take it personal here) the north-americans have culturally declined. Ofc, speaking in a general way

 When you have someone to compare (culturally), you've got to tell out the deep differences you got with those ones you are being compared with. When you're lonely in the cultural run, you just don't have to prove you're better than the other, 'cause there's no other. Pretty much the same thing that happens when you have no competition in the market.... you're not forced to make good products since you're the only offer. Now immagine this in a even bigger sphere, the cultural one.

That's a point where the cold war was useful. American culture (and capitalism btw) had to show its best image to the world, as well as the soviets did (or intended to). And what's more, they had to convince people that their respective sides were the "good" ones, so the culture in some way manifested that. From 1990 to 2008 (before the 2008 crisis), with only one global superpower, everything's more "light" haven't you noticed? (music, cinema, fictional literature, society, the union's struggles were quieter and even the perspective on life, love, etc.) As if there was nothing to discuss anymore.

I just can't believe from here how is it that a cheesy, repeated to death in sitcoms story such as the hangover gets more press than the king's speech had (at least that's what north-american TV channels show here) when there was a time you used to make many excellent movies every year.

Ofc there still are excellent (I really mean excellent) american movies (and about TV series, well you're the fricking kings of it), like someone said up here Chris Nolan's movies are very good. The guy even managed to make of a comic (Batman TDK) a deep enough story about moral values, instead the plain good vs bad guy.

Another thing that I see is that hollywood has developed an excesive taste for war or fight, rarely seen years before. And in war movies things often are presented in a very light way, while in a good drama you actually get to make that catharsis with the characters or the situation. And that makes a movie or play good, we know it from Aristotle.

From the commercials or movie trailers that reach these shores, it's like everything that's thought to be good is instantely adectivized as "epic". But epic is stupid, epic feels like nothing, unless there's a good quote of drama in it. Unless you see and feel they're fighting for something you yourself would fight for; not for a country nor a flag, but for a moral value.  Again, good epic movies are the ones that have deep stories, and since today "deep" is a weird word in storytelling... Even the PT suffers from this.

I think that Thirteen Days for instance is a deeper, and more epic movie from a certain point of view, than Troy. And it's far from being an actual superproduction.

Another epic movie that worked in part because it had a deep story? The Lord of The Rings. When was it written? 1953.

Besides there's always a lot of militarist people that are so in favor of killing people or invading just because "my country's better than yours" or the classic "we're the freedom" that if you expose in a screen that phrase of Tolkien:

"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace-all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind"

Well, some people wouldn't agree with that, some others would see the flaw of their own simple, lineal thoughts on that paragraph and would reject  the whole movie, arguing that it's "not entertaining" while inside they don't like it because loosing the "general", the "national" sense of war to a more particular, human, sense of war (involving every fallen personal story, interests and name, etc) would just be too hard.

Even Lucas could have used this perspective. Showing Anakin as a "great warrior", a great general of the clone wars, just to show it as Yoda said, was don't make one great

I think that's doable with heavy rotoscoping. As for the as you wish, well,  we're screwed there. But yes, I always liked the idea of Vaderizing anakin's gestures.

One idea I had was to make him stare at the space the same way Vader does all throughout ESB (if we got a scene of Anakin onboard a cruiser). But well, that scene doesn't exist, and the only thing that mirrors it is Anakin staring at the Naboo landscape when he dreams about his mother

Cutter here's a musical thought I had in the past. It's completely from ROTS OST, though the mix is rough, some things are in different tones. It tries to be an alternative to anywhere you need to generate tension and release it with Darth Vader's theme. I guess if you like it, you could make it into something more subtle, or even re write it with your own home orchestra (?).

http://www.tempfiles.net/download/201106/159608/Star-Wars-3-Revenge-of-the-Sith-Soundtrack-part-1.html

(The link shows up with an icon of an .EXE file, though it's just a regular wav. I already downloaded it and had no trouble)

Hope you like it, or at least that it provides you some sort of inspiration for a new SW related musical piece you had in mind.

Mithrandir