SW blu-rays have changes to the films again
- Thread starter Whofan
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True. I guess fans were expecting a better first act after years of waiting.
Then again, anything trying to follow up the original trilogy was probably doomed to fail.
Exactly. The friendship and brotherhood between Obi-Wan and Anakin is nevershown as he's always seen as a emotional twerp who can't keep his emotions in check. At the end of ROTS when Obi-Wan is reading Anakin the riot act with you were "like a brother to me" and "you were the chosen one" my thoughts were. "Well, glad we got to see THAT character development so that this fall from grace has any weight or meaning to it at all."
Well, I do know of people who see Star Trek as a blueprint of our own future and whatnot... But then again, I also know of people who paint themselves blue and run around forrests, calling each other "Toruk Mackto" and shit, so... Forget I said anything...
Did you miss the chuckling in the elevator in the beginning?
How about the lines when Obi-wan leaves Anakin to the politicians when he goes to report to the Council? That don't add to the history established in the opening line? Would it have helped if they did their secret handshake on screen?
Sounds to me like the the problem was of expectations. The movie put the development of their relationship in the past, between Episodes 2 and 3, and simply tells you it is. From your previous quote, you wanted to see Episode 2.5 or 2.75 and got Episode 3 instead.
That was embarrassing. Obi-Wan and Anakin being best buddies should've been the first thing on the plot outline before the script was even written. Instead, it went all the way to the rough cut before Lucas realized that there was no evidence Anakin and Obi-Wan liked each other at all, and added the elevator scene at the last minute to try and patch over that.
Or one of the episodes couldn't have been wasted spending time with a child character.
Or Episode Two could've spent more time showing the friendship and "bond" between Obi-Wan and Anakin. That's sort of has been the entire argument of Star Wars fans for the last 10 years! The prequels completely wasted and squandered the time they had to expand the story and establish the things we're told in the OT.
The movies pretty much said "Well, everyone was told these two were the bestest of friends so why bother showing it happening?"
Watch through ANH and when you get to ESB you understand the friendship between Luke and Han and why Luke risks so much to save Han in ROTJ.
We see this happening! We connect with the characters, their emotions and their goals.
In the PT we're just told these things.
The occasional hit, smirk, or inside joke doesn't a lasting friendship make.
The PT failed to make the audience connect with the characters and see how they came to entrust so much in each other.
This:
Is precisely the problem.
Or Episode Two could've spent more time showing the friendship and "bond" between Obi-Wan and Anakin. That's sort of has been the entire argument of Star Wars fans for the last 10 years! The prequels completely wasted and squandered the time they had to expand the story and establish the things we're told in the OT.
The movies pretty much said "Well, everyone was told these two were the bestest of friends so why bother showing it happening?"
Watch through ANH and when you get to ESB you understand the friendship between Luke and Han and why Luke risks so much to save Han in ROTJ.
We see this happening! We connect with the characters, their emotions and their goals.
In the PT we're just told these things.
The occasional hit, smirk, or inside joke doesn't a lasting friendship make.
The PT failed to make the audience connect with the characters and see how they came to entrust so much in each other.
This:
Is precisely the problem.
Agreed, I think that ship sailed when they made Anakin a kid in the original movie and introduced Qui-gon.
I think it again comes back to expectations and a lot of people had a lot of ideas and preconceptions about what and how they thought should go and are experiencing cognitive dissonance from what we actually got.
I dunno, I never had the idea they were supposed to be best friends or buddies but went in expecting a mentor/student relationship that I know is going to end badly...
The point of the PT wasn't to show us their friendship or Anakin riding high but his rise and fall. I do think they did way too much foreshadowing on Anakin's fall and way too many steps that anyone cautious would have put the brakes on continuing to enable him. I was expecting to see more parallel between Anakin and Luke and that Anakin went left and Luke went right. I'm a bit disappointed but I still appreciate the prequels.
Well that problem was in your expectations that weren't fulfilled and that lies as much with the preconceptions as with the actual content and execution.
Obi-Wan suggests heavily while talking to Luke in ANH that he and Anakin were close friends/partners when they worked together. Be it a friendship or master/apprentice relationship, eitherway it was suggested the two were close. The prequels do not show us this.
And it failed at showing his "fall" too. In one movie Anakin is a child so neither good nor bad, just a naive, innocent, child. In the other two movies he's a whiny punk who easily murders people at little provocation.
As I've said countless times Anakin should have been portrayed as Jesus. He should have been the pinnacle of virtue, perfection, and The Light Side. He should have taken the death of his mother as the "Will of The Force" and shrugged it off. He should have been the epitome of perfection, healing people with his touch, able to use the Light Side of the force to do things no one thought possible. The first to use the "Mind Trick", all of that.
Nope. He whines, pouts and cries the whole time, gets mad at Ob-Wan holding him back and then easily murders and entire group of people including women and children.
So the movies failed at even their own intent at showing Anakin's "fall from Grace."
No, the movie fails at it's own expectations and goals. We're told in ANH that Obi-Wan and Anakin worked closely together and had a strong bond. We're told that Anakin was a great pilot in the Clone Wars or was a good man who was destroyed by Darth Vader/The Dark Side. It fails at doing or showing any of this.
Anakin and Obi-Wan are constantly butting heads with Anakin feeling oppressed by Obi-Wan, they're not shown to be all that good of friends/partners or master/apprentice and Anakin is shown to be anything but a good man.
The movie didn't fail to meet my own expectations, I had little going into them. It failed to meet it's won goals of what it was trying to do. We're told how good of friends Anakin and Obi-Wan are. We never see it.
We're told how great of pilot Anakin was. We never, really, see it.
We're told how great Anakin is with The Force. We never see it.
We're told how Anakin fell from the Light Side to the Dark Side, we never really see it. (As Anakin is never really shown to be much on the Light Side to begin with.)
So, Lucas failed at meeting the very expectations he himself laid out for us to expect.
Heck, you understand why Luke skipped out on his training to go to Cloud City in TESB.
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I disagree. In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan says "He is like my brother" and "You were my brother". That demands the depiction of an intimate bond (of the brotherly kind, you slash fiction pervs). It was, by the film's own admission, a part of what was supposed to have made Anakin's fall so devastating to Obi-Wan personally.
Heck, in A New Hope, Ben says "he was a good friend" before giving Luke his father's lightsaber.
Eh? Guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Where did you get that idea? That's pretty interesting. I never imagined him as a saintly Aragorn-type of Star Wars but that he should have been a lot more like Luke. Growing up on the armpit of the galaxy craving adventure, but generally good natured. Boy did Lucas turn that one on it's head.
Lucas' biggest error was not in making him a kid, but making him a slave. Otherwise, even his mother's death has analogy to Luke with Owen & Beru's murder, which was much more abrupt than Anakin's loss.
Direct parallel should have had Dooku kidnap and torture Obi-wan and maybe Padme to lure Anakin out but end result of AOTC should be roughly the same. Luke didn't go dark at his thrashing, either. The biggest difference is Anakin went nuts at his mother's death and stayed towards redline the rest of the way. He's a bit petulant before his mother dies but not off his rocker as he is after and he never quite recovers but transposes that trauma on Padme.
I guess Luke took Owen and Beru's death far lighter than I think he should when I put it like that.
1) Win at Pod-racing as the 'only human that can do it.'
2) Intuitive understanding of the controls on the Queen's ship
3) Single-handedly destroying the Trade Federation battleship
4) Navigating through Coruscant traffic in a way to make Corbin & Leelo "multipass" Dallas proud.
5) Saving Obi-wan and getting them to belly land in Grevious' Ship
He can super jump, hit some poisonous slugs with his lightsaber without touching Padme, move things with his mind, see things before they happen, and defend himself more than adequately.
I kind of agree with you here, at least to a degree in that they foreshadowed his fall way too much and made him way too conflicted.
I agree, he failed to meet your expectations. :dunno:
I considered him on the dark side in all but name from the point he slaughtered the Sandpeople.
First comment said it for me:
"I see what you're getting at, but you are being as manipulative in your editing as Obi-wan could have been in explaining. Ex: He was a great pilot (he was in the later prequels and in the pod-race, as in that one scene he was unaware of how to operate that particular vessel); he was a great warrior (he was except for the two parts where he lost his limb(s) because of anger); he was a great friend (it's pretty clear he was a great friend, and that made it harder when it came to"
Exactly, and he was already on the edge at that point anyway. But slaughtering the Sand People should have pushed him completely off the edge.
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