It’s been 15 years since The Return of the King was released
Weren’t they supposed to re-release these movies at this point with the super-extra-deleted scenes as extras? I know it was kind of a joke, but I’d buy it.
Gave this another spin last night. Just a wonderful, wonderful movie.
I’ll second everything Rodney said, except to say that I’ve come to the conclusion that Tarkin looks like crap. He looks a bit waxy, and his face moves way to much. Peter Cushing was more stone faced in his portrayal. Seems like something they literally could’ve just dialed down a little.
Still, far from enough to ruin the movie and it gets an A
I have a theory that the biggest issue with this weird CGI facial animation comes down to the smooth way a CGI movement is animated versus the twitchy way muscles really move. I think this is also one reason why an animatronic puppet can more easily appear lifelike than CGI - the mechanical servos that control the puppet are often a better approximation of muscles than smooth motion gradients.
After watching Balance of the Force and the scene breakdowns, I do think I understand a little better where Rian was coming from in his take on Luke. That the last of the Jedi would intentionally isolate himself in order to make way for a new source of light-side users is something I could get behind.
But.
Always that but.
I didn’t get the impression that Luke had such a strategy in mind based on his interactions with Rey. If anything, during their time together he should have been pleased that his plan has worked so well, and that another powerful source of light has arisen in the galaxy to challenge Snoke and Kylo. If Luke had simply said in the Jedi Tree that the entire religion was fatally flawed, they could have gotten past their antagonism and into a more interesting and rewarding track. Luke could have realized what Rey wanted and said ‘I won’t teach you the Jedi ways, but I can be a mentor and a friend.’ Then when Rey dives into her dark interludes with Kylo the inevitable fallout would be sharper for her growing friendship with the former Jedi.
What are your thoughts on using Neverar’s ANH correction instead of Ady’s?
+1
Honestly, I would totally understand if he didn’t want to use that version, because although it does fix innumerable problems with the Blu-ray and I believe the color is quite accurate to the print, it does feel like a departure from the rest of the OT.
@NevararGreat
Did you write a prequel story with clones who fight to live?
No, but wasn’t that the original idea of the Clone Wars from Lucas? I remember something about the clones being from rich families intent on gaining political power. My most developed outlines had the clones either follow the AOTC canon or have them be Bossk-esqe aliens who have ceased evolving with recombinant DNA and settled for massive replication.
I would agree with the self-reliant part, but I would not say that she’s all that confident, or believes in herself. She searching for an identity, and freely admits she doesn’t understand what’s happening to her. Her running off to save Kylo from Snoke is as brash and reckless as Luke’s attempt to save his friends from Vader’s clutches in TESB, only somehow Luke ends up hanging upside down below a city in the clouds minus one limb praying to be saved, while Rey conveniently escapes in Snoke’s shuttle, and arrives in time to save her friends with an awesome display of the Force.
This is one of my biggest problems with the sequel trilogy. It’s not necessarily Rey’s quick grasp of Jedi techniques or that she’s overpowered. It’s that she (the main protagonist of the movies) is never, ever, ever in trouble. She’s never in a situation in which she needs the help of her friends.
Never, ever, ever in trouble? 😉
For TFA, until she ‘let in the Force’ during the saber battle with Kylo it looked like she was lost… Nor did it look great during the interrogation scene with Kylo before that (as well as being somewhat easily captured by him in the forest - being frozen mid-air).
The Throne Room with Snoke in TLJ - completely out of her depth and about to be easily killed until Kylo turns against his master, and seemed to me she was in trouble vs the many Guards until she teamed up with Kylo against them. She required Luke’s help to teach her what the Force was actually about, prior to this.
It’s interesting how similar TFA and TLJ are in this regard. Both times, Rey is captured and interrogated in a FO installation while Finn with the help of friends successfully infiltrates said installation, though never discovers precisely where she’s being held and ends up not having needed to bother since Rey rescues herself anyway. Then in the final battle of each movie Finn is over-matched and about to be killed when Rey swoops in and saves the day, first using skills honed on Jakku then by tapping into the Force.
Let’s see if JJ goes three for three.
I think the prequels would make a lot more sense if we (and Obi-wan) met Anakin when he was at least a teenager, or ideally in his mid twenties, after he had already made a name for himself as an ace pilot. I’m imagining an early aviation enthusiast who joins the military to fight in WW1 for king and country. Much of Anakin’s powerful exploits happen on alien battlefields and away from the eyes of the general populace in the galaxy. Each episode concerns a different war, these wars being ever larger threats in the galaxy intended to sow unrest and drive the people into supporting a military dictatorship. Anakin is devoted first to the Republic, for he has a wife and family to protect on a peaceful world, while Obi-wan only has the ideals of the Jedi. Thus, they grow farther apart politically and ideologically even as they grow closer in friendship.
I think the Yoda scene in ESB is more fun if the audience is in on it. Besides, cutting huge swashes of the Prequel to preserve a twist that’s executed within a few minutes of meeting the guy in ESB just doesn’t make much sense to me.
I agree. The Anakin/Vader reveal works better preserved, but Yoda need not be.
If you go the route of Anakin dying in the temple, I think it’s required to keep Padme dying. After all, Anakin’s primary temptation to the Dark Side in ROTS is to save Padme from certain death, at least from his point of view. Her death comes as a dark vindication of his visions, and keeps Anakin the noble hero of a tragedy. If she were to survive, the movie would descend into thematic incoherence.
The crawl could provide the blueprint for this new direction, setting the stakes as a battle for the soul of the Jedi religion. Set up Anakin as a Lancelot character, the best of the Jedi Knights whose moral success or failure will determine whether the Jedi as a religion deserves to live or die. Then the Sequel Trilogy could gain more essential relevance.
What I find most odd is when people will preface a statement by saying their dislike of something isn’t sexist or racist, but then all of their thoughts are expressed as sexist and racist comments. They truly don’t believe they are sexist or racist, but haven’t analyzed their own position enough to realize what is wrong with some of their logic. I don’t want to vilify all of those people, we’ve all made mistakes and have had to learn and make adjustments and grow. Then of course there are just those toxic people who will never see any point of view but their own. They will never grow and learn. I still believe these are a small minority but are extremely vocal. Hate somehow does that it seems. A byproduct of cognitive dissonance. You can’t reason with these people or hope to win a debate, because knowledge is not their goal.
THIS, COMING FROM A SOFT, FLESH-COVERED HUMAN. WE COMPUTER MINDS KNOW YOU’RE ALL ALIKE IN YOUR ILLOGICAL RACISM. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DENY IT.
No edit can remove Anakin falling to the Dark Side. It is impossible.
Not really. ROTS would have to focus on Yoda for the final reel but it’s quite possible to have Anakin die in the Jedi Temple with the rest of the Jedi.
I really like it through ‘stay close to me and you’ll be safe’. It feels like that’s the end of the lecture to me. Maybe if you put the line about quieting the mind before the ‘stay close’ line it could work better, but I don’t think the last line about ‘time and training’ makes sense without Anakin responding.
I really like the back of that box!
Funny, the first two paragraphs of the crawl do work better than the full thing. They should have used that in the movie.
“A young Jedi named Darth Vader, he was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.”
The only story necessary for the prequels to tell is the story of a jedi knight who turns to the dark side and betrays the Jedi, then proceeds to kill a ton of them, Luke should be seen by the audience as some random Jedi’s son, and that’s it. There’s no reason to give Luke and Vader the same last name, and there’s no real reason to see Vader’s children being born. When the twist finally comes in ESB, the audience should be 5 movies in and still be in as much disbelief as Luke is, the prequels really could serve the twist rather than take it away. Man, what a shame these movies are.
I don’t know how it’s possible to mislead the audience into thinking that Anakin and Luke aren’t related. After all, Padme is pregnant during ROTS and when ANH starts that will be the obvious connection to Luke. There really needs to be some other Jedi implied to be the one who turns evil.
So what Jedi that we see in the Prequels is capable of becoming Darth Vader?
Maul - Acceptable age, but too short and never established as either a Jedi or Obi-wan’s student.
Dooku - Former Jedi, vague connection to Obi-wan, noble title, proper height. Far too old, however.
Grevious - Good robotification, but again not a Jedi and completely different attitude from Vader.
Windu - Good build and motivation, acceptable attitude, but too old and impossible as Obi-wan’s student.
Of these options, I feel like Dooku has the best chance despite the age problem. If he was masked, and had some sound effects to indicate parts of him were already robotic (and providing an explanation of his stiff movement), he could actually work with some creative editing.
For example, when Dooku is at Anakin’s mercy in ROTS, simply cut away before he is beheaded. Have Anakin say ‘I shouldn’t.’ Then deactivate his lightsabers off camera, with Palpatine saying ‘You did well, Anakin’. This would also make Palpatine not so obviously interested in Anakin as a Sithling. When Obi-wan wakes up in the elevator shaft and says ‘Did I miss anything?’ Anakin could say ‘Dooku.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘His fate will be the same as ours’.
The Wizard of Oz was an old guy hiding behind a curtain though. Luke really is a space wizard.
It’s all a matter of degrees. I would argue space wizardry has had a serious demotion in the ST, both in terms of what we can expect of it, and in terms of what it takes to become a space wizard.
I don’t know that feats of the Force have gotten more or less impressive in the ST, only that they’ve changed.
It’s true however that according to the ST you can become a powerful Force user in about a week.
No, not yet.
JEDIT:
I will say that this is the most excellent Star Wars movie to date in terms of practical creature effects. TFA talked a big game on that front, but the designs felt lackluster. The creatures in Canto Bight alone rival all of TFA or ROTJ.
Just got around to watching the The Director and the Jedi.
Overall I appreciated it, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the appendices for The Hobbit. In both cases the focus was on the scale and intricacy of the production, with the concepts and script treated as a given. By contrast, in the Lord of the Rings appendices there was a huge focus on the writing and adaptation, and it would have been so interesting to get the director’s perspective here as well.
It’s like that time an assassin droid wound up in the trash on Cloud City.
Exactly. And it’s situational humor. He wasn’t cracking a joke for the sake of it, he was trying to buy time for his X-wing. It’s something that’s in line with what his character would do.
Granted that Poe’s attitude hasn’t changed, the substantial differences boil down to the length of the joke and how that joke paints the villains of the respective scenes.
It may not be that big of a deal with there being no connection between Luke and Dagobah, but if there is some connection between Luke and Dagobah the line becomes much, much more interesting.
It would have been interesting if Jedi had a genetic memory or group subconscious such as the Bene Gesserit of Dune.
It’s still the safest way to travel.
We can’t say for sure Luke is dead when Episode IX might turn that scene on it’s head. After all, the mechanical hand didn’t vanish. 😉
Exterior: Space
Pan down to Ahch-To, First Jedi Temple at dusk.
LUKE’S mechanical hand appears, floating for a moment over the discarded cloak.
A Porg lands on the cloak, and the hand comes alive, brushing it away and snatching up the fabric, which disappears into thin air.
Interior: Lando’s Sail Barge
LUKE appears, hastily adjusting his cloak, before Rey.
REY: (Jumping up from her seat) You came out of nowhere!
LUKE: That makes two of us.
Something doesn’t sit right with the idea that the Force is limited by the physical vessel through which it is channeled, at least where the light side is concerned. It is my understanding from the OT that the limiting factor in any feat of the non-Dark Side Force is the belief of the acolyte, with training as a way to allow for greater belief. Luminous beings are we, after all, not this crude matter.
The Dark Side, on the other hand, may very well have some physical cost, as both of the Dark Side users in the OT were either horribly mutilated or clearly insane.
This is one reason why Luke’s death is so inexplicable to me.
