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the inevitable star wars post III: now that I've had a few beers
Two things:
- More on the Kenobi/Skywalker fight. I can’t really see it ending as it did. Kenobi, thanks to both his own training and his comradeship with Anakin, can’t kill Anakin. But he also can’t knowingly leave him alive, which he does. It would have been far better to have Anakin succumb to an apparently fatal event - e.g. he overbalances on the skiff, Obi-Wan takes off his legs, he falls on the lava, Obi-Wan sighs and leaves - than for the Lucas ending in which, without context, Obi-Wan is walking away from an obviously still-living Darth Vader.
- A lament, I guess, for the timing or constraints of the movie: this film had to peak with Darth Vader’s creation. Unfortunately, that means that from Episode III to Episode IV, there’s a gap of maybe 18 years during which the entire rebel force is created. There is no hint at its founding in RotS, since the Republic has only just been replaced. I find this a little jarring, but I can’t see a way to fix it that would utterly undermine the punchline for Episode III, viz. Vader’s emergence.
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That really, really bugged me. I realize that characterization isn't one of Star Wars's strong points, but it made Obi-Wan seem cruel, and I didn't like that. I could've bought it if he maybe just couldn't bring himself to kill Anakin, but I don't see any hint of that kind of moral struggle going on onscreen.
There is no hint at its founding in RotS, since the Republic has only just been replaced.
Supposedly, there were a few scenes where several people, including Padme and, presumably, Bail, start forming their own little coterie against what they see coming. All of these were cut from the final edit, with the perhaps unintended result of turning Padme into an entirely passive character who spends most of the movie sitting around crying, angsting, unconscious, or all three. (Don't get me started on her death, either.)
Erik's upstairs watching Empire right now and I hung around for a few scenes while pretending to read about prototype effects in music genre categorization (don't ask). It really gets me how much better the character interaction was in the earlier movies: the timing, the humor, even the dialogue is better (I mean it's not Shakespeare, but would you want it to be?). This isn't a rose tint, or anything; there are some fairly obvious flaws, too.
But I really, really wish that Lucas had hired a writer.
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Yeah, I didn't really buy that either—Anakin's conversion, blink and you'll miss it!
You know what would've been cool there? If, after Windu's death, Anakin came to his senses, reported back to the Council, and got spanked for his part in the whole shebang, in some suitably dramatic manner that ultimately tipped the balance for him (though the run-up would still have to have been better—although Palpatine's temptations are the bits of dialogue that did work for me, mostly because Ian McDiarmid is very, very good and Anakin doesn't give the impression of being all that smart). That would've been nicely ironic, if Anakin went back to the Sith because the Jedi wouldn't have him. Believable, too, given how incredibly pompous the Jedi come off.
Sure, it's a plot that's been done before, but what about Star Wars hasn't?
As to your other point, I can accept that that's what was supposed to be going on there, it just didn't come off for me that way.
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I like this.