I couldn't swallow that in the movie, nor the video game-ending.

We're talking about the murder of an entire tribe of sapient beings, here. Padmé's response should've been, "Holy bleep, Anakin!"

Then she runs and calls the cops.

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I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
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When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

If you've ever wondered why so many women seem to be drawn to really nasty men, here's yet a data point for wondering.

A recent Danish example is a psychopath who killed his mother in collaboration with his father and later killed his wife and child, who, while serving the sentence for the latter had an endless stream of would be girlfriends including one waiting when he got out.

Anakin hadn't even killed someone he knew, claimed he did it for love, and declared his great love for her, which implies that he'll also be willing fo kill a ton of people for her sake, what's not to be stupid about?

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I saw it again last weekend, as it happened to be on TV. It was even worse than I remembered it being. The main things that annoyed me seem to be the same complaints others have already raised - not enough Maul, in screen time or characterisation, too much (ie, any at all) Jar Jar, cringe inducing lines delivered woodenly, etc, etc, etc... I found Episode II: Send In The Clowns to be even worse, and Episode III didn't even nearly reach its potential. With the things we know had to happen to get us from II to IV, there was potential for it to have redeemed the prequel story. In my view, although by a long way the best of the three, it still fell well short of acheiving that.

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Yes, but the thing is, that's not a character in a story being directed. We're supposed to sympathize with Anakin, and it's obvious that we're supposed to do so, because of the way the story unfolds.

This is the problem with directly comparing fiction with reality without paying attention to surrounding details. The fact is, I don't want to sympathize with a mass murderer, unless we were operating under a very very specific definition of "mass murderer" that Anakin wouldn't fall under.

The whole "love for Padme" thing has some weight, but ultimately, he made a huge decision that led to the killing of an incredible amount of innocents because... he had a dream. And he decided to trust a Sith, even though the Sith kind of, you know, have a reputation, and none of it is good; sure, he's supposed to be seduced, but it's kind of like "I have a solution." 'Okay!'. Okay, I can accept naivete, I can accept a degree of ruthlessness, but the prequels just go overboard. I was expecting a character that was actually good falling to the dark side, but having room for redemption; it seemed more like a sociopathic, selfish tool that pretty much was looking an excuse to join the dark side. That's how it came off to me.

And yes, the love scenes were bad. They weren't well done. I wasn't interested in the characters, their dialogue, or the scenes in general. I'm called a hypocrite for this, but you know, I liked the developing love story between Han and Leia in the classics, so I'm not sure how that's true. It's not the material itself in this case, it's how it was told. There is a reason why story telling is a skill in and of itself, and in this case, I think Lucas and other developers flopped.

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Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

I agree with you on this one. I can't remember how many times people have said that to my wife.

Besides that, people tend to love others for there faults. Sometimes.

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I think you meant clincher.


A "clencher" is what it would be if you found it really suspenseful.

Agreed. The romance between Anakin and Padme needed to be epic in order for Anakin's pain to tug our heart strings. I don't for a moment wish they'd put more of their romance in the movie (it was painful to watch as it was), but it needed to develop in front of us, not stick itself in as an interlude. It was never believeable.

In a nutshell, the romance development was too short. We would have needed an entire movie to watch it develop. That's why it worked with Han and Leia. There was enough time for us to fall in love with them.

They also had different directors and writers, at least for episodes V (especially) and VI, which probably helped.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

When those "faults" including massacring children and committing small-scale genocide, I'm pretty sure that, as a sympathetic character in a story, you need some more support for it. Yes, sure, we can see women in real life falling in love with serial killers, but as I said, fiction and reality don't always have to match, unless you're making a movie based on a true story. Fiction has to be plausible; reality, not so much.

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There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Some disagreement here...

On point one: In episode two, recall that he told Padme (in the same scene in which he emotionally confessed to exacting revenge against the Tuskan tribe) that someday, he would be the most powerful Jedi (A sith desire) and that he even would be able to prevent people from dying (Again, a sith desire and power).
All three storylines led up in great detail to his strong fears of losing the ones he loved.

The other point is: According to the storyline between episode 3 and 4, Darth Vader hunted down and killed all the remaining Jedi and was the Ultimate Bad Guy...
Lucas needed some way of making it believable for the good guy to go Ultimate bad.
So he shows a lifelong series of pains and fears. Something we can all relate to. Desires that slowly build up to a breaking point and he finally gives in upon realization of his fears.

Surprise, surprise.

Sorry, but it's too few words for such a big leap for me.

Yes, the "Ultimate Bad Guy", but still with some good in him; enough to justify his redemption in the end. And I'm just not buying this "breaking point" thing. When someone loses his job, his wife, his kids, has downpayments to make on his car that he can't afford, and it's all because of one person, yeah, I can see why he would be motivated to murder. Some guy has a dream and has said a few sentences that he's afraid of losing those he loves, so suddenly he's trusting the Sith wholesale and going around killing kids? Sorry, not buying it. Yeah, sure, his mother died, but several people go through that kind of thing all the time without targeting someone totally unrelated to the real perps, much less children.

It's also a little hard to buy that this guy that snapped so quickly at his mother being killed was the same guy that didn't really seem to think about her all that much in training.

I get the concept; I'm not that stupid. Yes, of course we can all identify with some sort of "breaking point". There's just no believable "breaking point" in the prequels. It's too steep a decline for so little an incline.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Except that he was thinking about his mother the whole time, hence the nightmares in Ep2 and this "fear" as a child in ep1. The thought of his mother was always there.

__________________
Defining science can be difficult. It’s a method, a way of looking at things. It’s a compendium of facts, knowledge, data. It’s a tool, used to investigate the world and to make sure we don’t let our biases, egos, and wishes get in the way of finding what’s real. Science (and skepticism) boil off the dross and leave the pure nugget of reality. ~Phil Plait

A tribe that had kidnapped, tortured and ultimately murdered his mother.

SolusLupus: Yes, that is a major plot hole imo. We recall the little boy who can hardly bear to leave his mother; he turns and goes back to her. She selflessly encourages him to go on and fulfill his destiny.

And in the next film Shmi is all but forgotten it seems. Years have passed and Padme is first/foremost on Anakin's mind. Did he slaughter those Sand People out of guilt for his own failure to help Shmi sooner?

I also don't understand Obi-Wan's ho-hum; he'll outgrow it eventually complacency towards Anakin's ongoing attitude (especially by Eps. III). By this time Anakin is not a teenager; he's a full-grown man. And still he's mildly belligerent, rebellious, etc. After all that Jedi training?

Ah well.

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There in the valley of Scorpio, beneath the Cross of jade
Smoking on the seashell pipe the gypsies had made
We sat and we dreamed a while...in that crystal thought time in Mexico. ~Donovan

Bold mine:
Seems- maybe...
For me, I don't understand where this assumption comes from. Could he have not thought of them both first and foremost? Anakin never went off and visited Padme either...

Jedi training required that he let go of his selfish feelings in order to do his duty.
Anakin tried... But the story makes it clear he never really could let go of Shmi or Padme.
When circumstances thrust Padme and Anakin together- with Anakin Unsupervised...- she encouraged him to finally go see his mother. In addition to this; he had experienced his mothers recent trauma through the force in the form of his dreams. This strengthened his resolve to see her.

At her funeral, it depicts his deepest torment over missing her so fiercely only to only find her 'gone' upon his arrival.
Yes.
Because, again... Jedi are not perfect robots.
They make human mistakes.

In Episode two, Yoda commented to Obi Wan and Windoo that it was a growing trend among the younger jedi to be arrogant. It disturbed him.
Also- Yoda himself, after all his insistence that Dookoo must be stopped at all costs, shows fallible emotional fault in allowing Dookoo to escape in order to save a mere two jedi.
Yodas first duty was to stop Dookoo, even if it meant ObiWan and Anakin had to die. But even Yoda just couldn't do it...

Remember, ObiWan believed that Anakin was the Salvation of the force. He was supposed to bring balance to the force. So while he may have been exasperated by Anakin and frustrated with his attitude at times, he believed Anakin must be good at his core.
Additionally, Anakin had saved his Masters own life on many occasions.
Time and time again, in spite of arrogant outbursts, Anakin did the right thing in the end and always ended up deferring to his master.
They had a loving bond as if family. It's very reasonable that ObiWan may have been frustrated with Anakin occasionally, but had every reason to believe he was a good man in the end. It was ObiWans (And all the other Jedi masters, it seems) ignorance that 'balancing the force' included eliminating the strong arm of the Jedi.

And in spite of the lead up we had, even already knowing that Anakin was going to turn dark, he still very nearly did the right thing.
Upon learning who the sith lord was- he turned the sith in. In spite of it being yet another person that he loved being lost- by his own hand even.

You could see the torment and struggle within him, and as the scene was leading up, were almost sure he wasn't going to hand in Palpatine. But he did. It wasn't til after that his fears grew and grew- pacing in a chamber thinking and thinking on it that he decided to ensure that Palpatine was not killed.
In interferring he ended up killing Windoo. Something that ruined his life as a Jedi. It was not his intention to kill Windoo, but he needed Palpatine alive.
So now here he was- Screwed...

About the only course of action left to him was to submit to Palpatine, allow Palpatine to do a cover up and try to seize the opportunity to learn the Sith secrets (that he had wanted all along... to be the most powerful Jedi that could even prevent death) and save himself from another and devastating loss (After his mother) - Padme.
It's all shown through the three movies with hints and subtle cues all along.
I admit- it was only at this point I got annoyed at the depiction. Suddenly Anakin could do horrible things and his eyes turned orangy yellow.
The only rationalization I have for it is that Palpatine perverted the force within Anakin upon Anakins opening up in submission.

I apologize for any misspellings; Star Wars names are, frankly, Darth Iculous and I cannot be bothered to go looking them all up...

Hi Neverfly. The crux of the issue for me is the Jedi otherwise show unity and harmony between themselves. Individuality is laid aside in favor of a collective consciousness (Light Side). Obi-Wan was what I'd expect from a padawan, when he was at that stage. Anakin never is; he's always just a bit outside the collective or at least is testing limits.

To our American minds, that's "understandable." We're all Americans but we're also individualists who pride ourselves on being edgy, rebellious, pushing the envelope.

But that's not the Jedi way.

By age 21 Anakin still has un-Jedi-like attitudes? And Obi-Wan's turning a blind eye? The Jedi Council is too?

In their world with its different norms, values, expectations he'd have been dealt with and conformed...or bounced out. And actually that's as I'd expect it to be in that Star Wars Universe.

On a different note, it's a pity imo that George Lucas excluded Cane (spelling?) Starkiller as Anakin's father and went with "a mystical birth." I know that's in connection with "The Chosen One" scenario; but Starkiller as father could have been a fan-fic treasure trove of its own.

__________________
There in the valley of Scorpio, beneath the Cross of jade
Smoking on the seashell pipe the gypsies had made
We sat and we dreamed a while...in that crystal thought time in Mexico. ~Donovan

The infants, children, and mothering women, too? He admitted to hacking them all to bits.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

I've never been a big fan of SW-TPM. Always thought Qui-Gon's death was meaningless.

One experienced and one trained Jedi attack Darth Maul like solo online gamers each wanting the 'kill'. Their attack cooperation and coordination on Maul was terrible. A friend of mine explained it as Maul's 'dark side' powers were clouding the Jedi's concentration. If this were the case, there was no indication of it.

If I had the reigns back then, here is how I would've ended it.

The heroes arrive in the hangar and Darth Maul appears. Qui-Gon tells Obi-Wan to stay with Padme. If I recall correctly, protecting the queen was their primary mission . . not to both abandon her. Obi-Wan, Padme and crew leave. Qui-Gon fights Maul. Anakin hides in the star fighter and ends up flying into battle on autopilot as normal. Being a child unexpectedly thrown into combat, Anakin is understandably afraid and confused. Due to his concern about Anakin's safety, Qui-Gon senses this and uses the Force to calm Anakin. However, the distraction of helping Anakin allows Darth Maul to land a fatal blow. Voila! Not a meaningless death. Now, the climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Maul happens in the throne room. I imagine Maul appears in the door, the Queen's guards let off a volley of blaster fire as Obi-Wan yells at them to hold and Maul, with a twirl of his saber, sends the bolts back into the guards felling them all. Maul force-chokes Padme as he duels Obi-Wan to add urgency to the situation. Obi-Wan wins in the usual 'pulling a win out of a loss' style heroes seem to have down pat.

Its a shame Lucas creates such overall mediocre movies when he has access to pretty much unlimited money and talent.

Bravo!

That would have been an excellent ending.

__________________
There in the valley of Scorpio, beneath the Cross of jade
Smoking on the seashell pipe the gypsies had made
We sat and we dreamed a while...in that crystal thought time in Mexico. ~Donovan

I find it hard to really enjoy the prequels after realizing how Lucas screwed up his own timeline in Return of the Jedi. Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back make perfect sense with what must have been Lucas's original plot, but somehow he get it messed up in his own mind between Empire and RoJ.

See, everything makes sense IF Luke's father was this guy named "Darth Vader", and "Skywalker" is just the name of his so-called father. Does it make sense for Obiwan Kenobi to try to "hide" Luke on his real father's homeworld--not even changing his last name? No.

Instead, Skywalker is just one of many unfortunate Jedi warrior victims of Darth Vader, not that Darth would have remembered him specifically. Thus, Obiwan didn't lie to Luke when he said Darth Vader killed his (adoptive) father Skywalker. Thus, it makes sense for Obiwan to call him "Darth" as if it were Darth Vader's first name--it WAS his first name.

Now watch the climactic scene in ESB where Darth Vader reveals to Luke that he is his father. Go ahead. Rewatch it, and notice how Darth Vader says it:

Luke: He told me you killed him!
Darth Vader: No. I am your father.

Notice the emphasis on I. Darth doesn't deny that he killed Skywalker--he killed a lot of people. He's saying that he is Luke's father, not that guy Skywalker.

After realizing this, I couldn't help but wonder what Return of the Jedi and the prequels REALLY should have been like. It's too late now, but we can still wonder...

I disagree.

Death is often "meaningless."

Wishing for a meaningful death doesn't detract from a story. It only means you wanted more fantasy from the story.

Not in an epic story.

The reason an epic story is told and becomes legend, is because it is meaningful.

I liked Jar-Jar and wish they had done more with him. He doesn't really have much of an arc. He'sa just a bumblin' fool throughout the entire story. The plot is okay, but the depiction leaves something to be desired.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

As far as writing, acting, plot, visual appeal, and entertainment value goes, the second trilogy isn't up to the standards of the original trilogy. Even the "directors cuts" were a step down, adding unnecessary scenes and effects that were cut from the originals for good reason. I've said it before and I'll say it again; Georege Lucas makes much better films when he's broke.

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My interpretation of this is more along these lines:
The Jedi knew all along Skywalker was a loose cannon. They tried to train him as well as possible but being stronger in the Force than most (or possibly all, depending on who you subscribe to) of his teachers AND a natural talent (as opposed to his son) he was just not very impressionable any more when they got him.
Yoda even says as much in one of the prequels.
They try to train him anyway because the alternative, not training him, seems to be even riskier. Having someone that strong without the ability to control his power or without the Jedi indoctrination just wandering around somewhere is not a good option when Sith are around.

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

And even better when he neither writes or directs.

I actually rather liked THX 1138.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Has anyone else noted the origin of the character and place names??? (Lak)smi? Padme Amedala= Amygdala? Curazon? ie: Heart of the Empire, and my favorite "Om mane padme Om...." There is a ton of derivitive stuff in this whole series, and "fuller of" Hindu religious words than a Beatles interview in 1968....

Get some new names next time....create your own connotations..

Dale

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"Ad astra per aspera"

i've always wondered what he was thinking when he named the planet where Yoda was hiding out..

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The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

I wonder where General Grievous's name came from.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis