Does the Star Wars series have only one good movie?
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You nailed the two best things about the movie. Obi-Wan's assassination plot investigation. And the Battle of Geonosis.
Everything else is either "meh"/so-so or downright bad. I'd mention the Anakin/Padme romance scenes, but I'm sure you'd like to be able to eat later on.
Everything else is either "meh"/so-so or downright bad. I'd mention the Anakin/Padme romance scenes, but I'm sure you'd like to be able to eat later on.
My main problem with the romance scenes in AOTC is that most of it was too long and unnecessary, which is what ends up making the movie the worst in the saga for me.
Han/Leia was never a huge part of ESB, they only got a few romantic scenes together, so even if you didn't like it (I did), it was not a big part of the movie.
I heard that the IMAX version of AOTC cut many of the romantic scenes in the movie so it could be under 2 hours long, and was made much better because of it. Too bad that version has never been released on video.
Han/Leia was never a huge part of ESB, they only got a few romantic scenes together, so even if you didn't like it (I did), it was not a big part of the movie.
I heard that the IMAX version of AOTC cut many of the romantic scenes in the movie so it could be under 2 hours long, and was made much better because of it. Too bad that version has never been released on video.
I like the Phantom Editor's interpretation of the blossoming romance on Naboo. It actually substantially improves the film. Heresy, I know.
They sleep together before the need to leave for Tatooine.
I think Lucas decided to focus so much time on the Anakin-Padme scenes because they were the future parents of Luke and Leia, so he wanted to elaborate on how the two became a couple and spawned the twins. But a huge problem is that Lucas can't direct a romantic dialogue scene worth shit. He doesn't have the storytelling and dialogue skills that Kershner possessed when he gave us those brief but mesmerizing moments between Han and Leia in EMPIRE. Kershner's romantic encounters didn't last long or say much, but they left you without any shadow of a doubt that Han and Leia had feelings for one another even if the Princess was reluctant to admit them. The Anakin-Padme stuff is hampered by horrible and silly dialogue, Hayden Christensen's unconvincing acting and Natalie Portman's unfortunate decision to play Padme so woodenly in those scenes. Correction: Lucas made that decision. Portman earned her paycheck by following his terrible instructions.
Anakin and Padme had a more believable and less wooden relationship in Episode III, but even in that more beloved and clearly superior movie Lucas sneaks in a few lines of insipid love dialogue that make you roll your eyes, gag and wish somebody else had directed the film. The whole Anakin-Padme relationship was one huge missed opportunity.
Anakin and Padme had a more believable and less wooden relationship in Episode III, but even in that more beloved and clearly superior movie Lucas sneaks in a few lines of insipid love dialogue that make you roll your eyes, gag and wish somebody else had directed the film. The whole Anakin-Padme relationship was one huge missed opportunity.
"Wow, you really do have the Force. I'm in."
Padme: "Wow. After all that, I haven't changed my mind.
You're still that little boy I met on Tatooine."
Episode II is my least favorite of the mainline six "episode films" and the only one I do not own, as I am not entranced by it enoygh to ever want to see it again. Oh I gave it its fair dues, but the love story and use of lightsabers let me down. I did like Yoda duelling Dooku but it is way topped by his duel in Ep. III with the Emperor.
The problem with Anakin and Padme is more basic than Lucas' inability to direct or write romance. It's the characters and in Anakin's case, the casting. Padme has no discernible personality other than to be a paragon. Anakin is a creepy, whiny punk. Why would the audience care about either character, much less both?
Compare that with spunky, admirable-if-bitchy Leia and hilariously slippery (but basically decent) Han - even a bad writer and director would have been able to do something worthwhile with their relationship, because they're fun, they're colorful, we like them, and we want to root for them.
Natalie Portman no doubt could have played a far more interesting character if the script had called for it, but Hayden Christensen's other roles show little ability to transcend an essentially puerile quality which I guess is just part of his natural personality, poor guy. I guess that's why his acting career is as dead as Jango Fett. A different actor would have been needed to play Anakin as he's being written and voice-acted on TCW - as a likeable hero who we can root for.
The romance would have been wrecked even if one element had been wrong. In this case, almost everything was wrong. Lucas must have put special effort into frakking things up that badly.
She inexplicably falls in love with a good-looking Jedi with a revolting personality who she knows is a mass murderer and in dire need of psychological help, yet she makes no effort to get him that help or even warn the Jedi that their screening procedures, whatever they may be, are in desperate need of serious review.
I guess you could play Padme this way: her bizarre upbringing has rendered her psychotic, which explains her incomprehensible taste in men. Or, the continual pressures on her from an absurdly young age has made her poisonously angry at the universe, so she deliberately hooks up with the most inappropriate guy imaginable as a giant FUCK YOU to the Republic and secretly gloats as it all goes up in flames.
...wow, I just figured out how to make that romance work after all!
Compare that with spunky, admirable-if-bitchy Leia and hilariously slippery (but basically decent) Han - even a bad writer and director would have been able to do something worthwhile with their relationship, because they're fun, they're colorful, we like them, and we want to root for them.
Natalie Portman no doubt could have played a far more interesting character if the script had called for it, but Hayden Christensen's other roles show little ability to transcend an essentially puerile quality which I guess is just part of his natural personality, poor guy. I guess that's why his acting career is as dead as Jango Fett. A different actor would have been needed to play Anakin as he's being written and voice-acted on TCW - as a likeable hero who we can root for.
The romance would have been wrecked even if one element had been wrong. In this case, almost everything was wrong. Lucas must have put special effort into frakking things up that badly.
Not noticeably. Anakin's still a freak and Padme's still a bore.
Given the character's dialogue and actions, how else was the poor girl supposed to play the character? There's nothing for her to work with! Here's what we have, a kid who is groomed for a political career and never has the chance to be a regular child. She's constantly expected to be a paragon of virtue while surrounded by a society crumbling under the weight of its own decadence and corruption.
She inexplicably falls in love with a good-looking Jedi with a revolting personality who she knows is a mass murderer and in dire need of psychological help, yet she makes no effort to get him that help or even warn the Jedi that their screening procedures, whatever they may be, are in desperate need of serious review.
I guess you could play Padme this way: her bizarre upbringing has rendered her psychotic, which explains her incomprehensible taste in men. Or, the continual pressures on her from an absurdly young age has made her poisonously angry at the universe, so she deliberately hooks up with the most inappropriate guy imaginable as a giant FUCK YOU to the Republic and secretly gloats as it all goes up in flames.
...wow, I just figured out how to make that romance work after all!
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Good points, Temis. Padme was just incoherently written from Day One. And it didn't help that Anakin Skywalker was revealed to be a petulant, whiny little punk who was never satisfied with anything. You can always conjecture that his whininess and other flaws were the result of his very conception, since we were all but told in the opera house sequence in Episode III that Palpatine/Darth Sidious used the midichlorians to create Anakin. He was genetically destined to fail and turn to the Dark Side so that Sidious would have the kind of apprentice he had always wanted but failed to achieve in Darths Maul or Tyranus(Dooku).
Still...even if you factor that into the equation it doesn't help that Hayden Christensen is such a poor actor and that the dialogue Lucas wrote was so bad. Hayden made his character more annoying and wooden than he ever should have been.
Still...even if you factor that into the equation it doesn't help that Hayden Christensen is such a poor actor and that the dialogue Lucas wrote was so bad. Hayden made his character more annoying and wooden than he ever should have been.
No, he wasn't. He just had a high midichlorian count. Whether created by the Force or the Sith, he is the same end result in either case. A high midichlorian count isn't genetic predestination to fall. Yoda apparently had the next highest count, at least among the Jedi, and he didn't fall. Anakin doesn't have evilchlorians or whinichlorians, just a lot of midichlorians. Part of the point of TPM is that he was not some kind of demon child or evil by nature.
In the EU, Palpatine was not aware of Anakin's existence until TPM.
Temis the Vorta said:
We know what their screening procedures are. They take in children at an extremely young age. Anakin was an exception to this. As a result he was initially rejected. This changed after the Battle of Naboo, but even then Yoda had reservations due to sensing the danger.
They didn't miss it. They just went ahead anyway, whether for the sake of the prophecy, Qui-Gon, or whatever.
Try telling that to this kid (and the millions of others) as we sat through it in awe over and over again in the theaters in '77. And btw, in '77 it was STAR WARS. This A New Hope that you speak of came later.
Unfortunately there are conflicting mindsets on this. Some say he wasn't destined to fail. Others that he was, in small part because Yoda and other members of the Jedi Council in Episode I saw a clouded or even dangerous future if Anakin became a padawan apprentice. If we accept that Palpatine/Sidious used the midichlorians to create Anakin to be his ideal apprentice at some point down the road, then Palpatine knew Anakin would slowly but surely succumb to his inherent weaknesses and patiently waited for the day that he would finally convert to the Dark Side and become a Sith. Under pressure Anakin was prone to extreme anger and fear, even as a nine-year-old boy. That's why Yoda lectured him about "fear leading to anger, anger leading to hate, etc." in the first prequel. He and the others could sense that Anakin was a fearful individual who probably shouldn't have been allowed to become a Jedi.
So there's still debate within the fanbase about Anakin being destined to fall to the Dark Side in order that the Jedi prophecy of "the Chosen One" would be fulfilled (when Vader saved his son by destroying the Emperor/Sidious at the end of JEDI and redeeming himself in the process). There's no easy answer, but I'm inclined to believe that Palpatine stacked the deck when he created Anakin to set the right series of events into motion.
And by the way? The spoiler from Darth Plagueis doesn't mean that Palpatine didn't create Anakin. It just means that Palpatine didn't know who Anakin was at first and never knew what his mother named him when he was born. When he met Anakin on Naboo at the end of Episode I he probably realized through a tremor in the Force that it was the child he had created.
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^
I'm very much in line on this way of thinking. The one thing that I have alway found interesting is not one of the Jedi, or Palpatine himself, realized that in order for Anakin to bring balance to the Force, he would be require to wipe out or sacrifice every single Jedi and Sith, with the exception of Luke. The Force must have been really outta whack.
I'm very much in line on this way of thinking. The one thing that I have alway found interesting is not one of the Jedi, or Palpatine himself, realized that in order for Anakin to bring balance to the Force, he would be require to wipe out or sacrifice every single Jedi and Sith, with the exception of Luke. The Force must have been really outta whack.
"Balance" isn't meant in the literal sense. Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith and eradicating the dark side's disruptive influence on the Force.
Which he did at the end of his life, when he destroyed Palpatine and redeemed himself. He ceased to be Darth Vader and a Sith Lord at the moment he realized he couldn't allow the Emperor to kill Luke.
His son. Padme's son.
And in throwing Palpatine to his death he fulfilled the prophecy and proved once and for all that he WAS the Chosen One. He brought 2,000 years of continuous Sith existence to an end.
My point is. Palpatine thought it would be the other way around, the eradication of all Jedi...which it almost was. In all of his manipulation, he seemed to miss the posibility that Anakin could turn the tables at the very last second.
Just like Luke, which was the point. Anakin and Luke mirrored each other and each step of their Hero's Journey was essentially the same except that when Palpatine said turning to the Dark Side was the only way to save those he loved, Anakin bought that line while Luke rejected it.
I know a lot of people wanted Anakin to be some cocksure little punk who wasn't afraid of anything and who ran around with a bad attitude all the time and would turn to the Dark Side in between kicking puppies and stealing lollipops from orphans, but the story wouldn't work as a tragedy then. Anakin's road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Like I said, there are different mindsets. And to be fair, both sides make a least some sense and some good points. I just side with the argument that Palpatine created Anakin to suffer, fall to the Dark Side and become his apprentice. I know you don't jibe with that theory, but in light of so many of the events in Anakin Skywalker's life from his birth into slavery to the death of his mother to his massacres of the Jedi Temple and the Separatist leadership it makes a hell of a lot of sense.
And even if Palpatine himself didn't create Anakin? If Darth Plageuis did before he was killed? Then that just means that Sidious knew about the child's conception and took over the responsibility of waiting for the child to be revealed to the galaxy at some future, unspecified date. He took his Master's work, claimed it as his own and the rest of the story still unfolds the same way. Palpatine didn't know who Anakin was until he met the boy for the first time, and a disturbance in the Force let him know that Anakin was indeed the child conceived by the midichlorians.
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