ROTJ vs ROTS - the showdown

[davejames]

As cutesey as Jedi may be, it's still a TON more fun and exciting than Sith, what with the awesome Sarlac, space, ground, and lightsaber battles. And even when just coasting through the movie, Ford is still lightyears more dynamic than anyone in the prequels.

Sith certainly had some very cool sequences in it, but in the end it still felt to me as self-indulgent and mindnumbing as the other prequels.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

They both have their pluses and minuses, but in the end I guess I liked ROTS a little better. Overall,

ROTJ - Started out very lively, got bogged down with the frakkin Ewoks, and the idiotic idea of a second Death Star. Leia being Luke's sister was revealed in a very underdramatized way. Luke seemed "off" overall - probably because his character development happened between ESB and ROTJ, rather than being dramatized, so it was hard to know exactly who he was, by this time. His final confrontation with Vader and the Emperor was handled reasonably well, but the musical chairs with actors depicting Anakin destroyed the emotional impact of Luke taking off the helmet and the ghost scene later.

ROTS - Still had all the fatal flaws of the PT, namely that Anakin was depicted as such a putz, it was impossible to care what happened to him. By the time they got to Mustafar, I was just rooting for Obi-Wan to push the punk in the lava and get it over with. But the action in the last half was okay and it was nice to finally see that Mustafar stuff after having heard about it for eons. Padme's death is the single stupidest thing in the entire franchise, but the final scenes with the twins being delivered to their adoptive families was a nice way to end the movie.

After looking at these synposes, I think I should have voted for ROTJ. Oh well.

 

[Set Harth]

His final confrontation with Vader and the Emperor was handled reasonably well, but the musical chairs with actors depicting Anakin destroyed the emotional impact of Luke taking off the helmet and the ghost scene later.

Yeah, I hated how the lack of a change in actors for the unmasking scene destroyed the emotional impact of the scene. And don't even get me started on the eyebrows.

 

[JarodRussell]

His final confrontation with Vader and the Emperor was handled reasonably well, but the musical chairs with actors depicting Anakin destroyed the emotional impact of Luke taking off the helmet and the ghost scene later.

Yeah, I hated how the lack of a change in actors for the unmasking scene destroyed the emotional impact of the scene. And don't even get me started on the eyebrows.

Were you just... advocating replacing Sebastian Shaw completely with Hayden Christensen in ROTJ?

 

[Set Harth]

No, I was expressing incredulity at the idea that Hayden could ruin a scene he's not even in.

 

[flemm]

ROTJ, easily. Not as good as the first two, and a few elements do foreshadow the horror that was to come. But still much better than anything in the PT.

ROTS does occasionally give us a small taste of how awesome the PT could/should have been, but that is about the highest praise I can give it.

 

[ColeMercury]

RotJ is easily the better movie. It has its flaws, definitely, but it's also got some absolutely brilliant sequences and overall it's good quality. It works well as a movie in itself, and as a Star Wars movie.

RotS... doesn't. It's a bad movie and a bad Star Wars movie. Anakin's turn to the Dark Side was laughably awful, Christopher Lee is wasted as Count Dooku and killed off far too early, our nominal hero Obi-Wan Kenobi does barely anything important, Padme's death makes no sense at all... plus, the plot itself really suffers from having to do too much due to how Lucas dragged his feet in including important plot points in the preceding two movies -- you barely have time to breathe, and stuff just appears out of nowhere to be resolved (like the Force ghost thing at the end -- anyone who hadn't seen the originals would be totally confused).

I will say, though, that I've read the RotS novelisation by Matthew Stover and it is astoundingly better than the movie. It's even a better Star Wars story than the movie, because of how it reworks certain things like Anakin's turn and Dooku's death. It still has its flaws, though (unavoidable given the storyline it has to stick to), so I consider it about on par with RotJ.

 

[Gov Kodos]

ROTJ was much better until it was monkeyed with to put that emo-creep in as Anakin's ghost.

 

[ColeMercury]

I think I've figured out why some people prefer RotS to RotJ. The original trilogy is like you're happily breathing clean air (ANH & ESB) and then someone comes along and farts (RotJ) -- your natural reaction is "Urgh, you befouled my air!". The prequel trilogy is like you're drowning (TPM & AotC) and then you finally surface and breathe in a lungful of air polluted with industrial fumes (RotS) -- your natural reaction is "Oxygen! Sweet, sweet oxygen!" Even though, viewed objectively, the industrial fumes are much worse for you than the fart.

 

[JarodRussell]

No, I was expressing incredulity at the idea that Hayden could ruin a scene he's not even in.

The point was that the emotional impact is reduced because the ghost isn't Sebastian Shaw anymore. And I agree with that.

 

[Mr Light]

our nominal hero Obi-Wan Kenobi does barely anything important

He kills General Grievous and defeats and cripples the Chosen One

 

[ColeMercury]

our nominal hero Obi-Wan Kenobi does barely anything important

He kills General Grievous and defeats and cripples the Chosen One

And what did either of those things ultimately accomplish? Nothing, really. Did he hurt Palpatine's schemes in any way? No -- in fact, killing Grievous aided Palpatine if anything (just like the rest of the Separatist leadership, he would've had to have been eliminated later anyway). And crippling Anakin & leaving him confined in the suit just made it easier for him to lose himself in the alter ego of Darth Vader.

Talking of General Grievous, he is such a contrived character. He was only invented because they decided they'd have a new secondary villain in every prequel movie -- Maul in TPM, Dooku in AotC, Grievous in RotS. His only real function in the movie is to have someone for Obi-Wan to fight and defeat so our hero doesn't look completely useless.

 

[Mr Light]

Wrong! The real reason of General Grevious is to sell toys

If Obi-Wan hadn't crippled Anakin things would have been much worse. Rather than being a lame Frankenstein monster stomping around he would have actually been a physical threat. Not to mention it GREATLY reduced Anakin's Force strength. If Luke had gone up against an older Anakin in full health he wouldn't have lasted a second.

One interesting twist on it, though. If Anakin was at full strength he would have turned on Sidious almost immediately; would he have won? What if Anakin was ruling the Empire?

 

[Mach5]

If Luke had gone up against an

All those midichorians in arms and legs, forever gone...

 

[Mr Light]

Precisely! Force power comes from your body mass. The m-c count is a measuring of your strength; this is why Yoda is so powerful despite his small size because his count is ridiculously high. Anakin's count was what higher than Yoda's, but he lost about 50% of his body mass, so he's at half strength, not to mention physically slow and stiff. Hell, he can't even make Force Lightning!

 

[Chang]

I prefer ROTJ over ROTS. Both movies have their flaws. With a little tweaking and better dialogue ROTS could have been a great movie. As it stands it's just okay.

 

[C_Miller]

Which one is Batman involved with and did he have enough time to prepare?

+1. The one thing I miss about no longer being a part of the comic book community is being able to end any argument with "Batman with prep time can put God in a cage."

 

[Set Harth]

The point was that the emotional impact is reduced because the ghost isn't Sebastian Shaw anymore. And I agree with that.

I'm talking about the unmasking scene. Hayden isn't even in that scene. If Hayden has the power to "reduce the emotional impact" of prior scenes he wasn't even in, then you might as well say the mere presence of Hayden retroactively ruins every scene in the film. Also, not everyone agrees that the emotional impact of the ghost scene is reduced. Some people find that it is enhanced due to the PT connection.

Not to mention it GREATLY reduced Anakin's Force strength.

Not according to the evidence on screen in the film. We don't see anything unusually impressive in Anakin's Force use during the PT. After Mustafar, he is still able to Force crush/implode everything in the rehab center that isn't Sidious. Then there's his Force ability in the OT, which does not seem noticeably weaker or more limited than what he did with the Force in the PT. ( Also, going beyond the films, in TFU 2 he displays Force ability tantamount to that of Sidious in the Senate chamber in ROTS, while EU such as Coruscant Nights portrays him as extremely powerful after ROTS. )

Force power comes from your body mass. The m-c count is a measuring of your strength; this is why Yoda is so powerful despite his small size because his count is ridiculously high. Anakin's count was what higher than Yoda's, but he lost about 50% of his body mass, so he's at half strength, not to mention physically slow and stiff.

Wrong. This is just the usual tired rewrite of midichlorian count to a revisionist definition which ignores the one used in the films. It's not the total amount of midichlorians in the body, and was never said to be. It's a cell concentration as explained by TPM. In the OT, Anakin has the same midichlorian count that he had in TPM. Severing arms or legs does not affect the concentration of the remaining cells.

 

[Mr Light]

The level of concentration would be the same (in the remaining body parts), but he would have half as many m-cs in his body now because he lost half his body.

 

[BillJ]

God I hate midi-chlorians. Lucas should have been shot out of a cannon... into the sun for that one.