Satya's blog - Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith

Saw it. On May 19th, first day, 12 noon -- not the first show. It was good. A little sucky and slow where they tried to work the romance angle. Few in-your-face effects, which is good. Good job of tying all the movies together and yet laaving some stuff to argue over.

This post contains spoilers.

Starts with a rescue attempt on the Chancellor. First off, the Jedi fighters have TiE-style cockpit windows. The X-Wing primitives were cool to see. Palpatine, I see, has a penchant for tall towers. Dooku's murder is typical Anakin -- easily swayed by Sidious.

Okay, landing a Star Destroyer-sized space ship like a broken Cessna? I call BS. It's nice how all these spaceships have an emergency hatch on top -- Grievous got in through one. Luke got into the Falcon through one of those, in ESB.

Irregular Webcomic predicted the Lightsaber Factor Multiplication long before episode 3 came out. Sure enough, Grievous pulls out four sabers.

Let's see... I'm trying to do this in movie order, but it's hard because I left this blog post for over a day since I saw it. Two co-workers saw the 6:30pm show at a different theatre on the same day. I'd say "dorks" but I'm a bigger one.

The scene with Anakin and Palpatine in the opera house was crucial and very interesting. Lots and lots of fore-shadowing, if we didn't already know things. "Not from a Jedi" indeed. Nice echo (pre-echo?) of Obi-wan's words in ROTJ: many of the things we believe in depend greatly on our own point of view. There are many situations like that, echoes of the past/future.

There was much disagreement over this next part, but here's how I see it. A Sith lord discovered immortality, and how to create life straight from midichlorians. He taught his apprentice (unnamed in the movie, but Sidious is a prime candidate) and then the apprentice killed him. Since always there are two, the apprentice is now a master and needs his own apprentice. Hence the creation of Anakin Skywalker. Thus, the "Palpatine: Anakin, *I* am your father!" joke has a kernel of truth. Some disagree, saying the master, not the apprentice, created Anakin.

Everyone was in character, except of course Anakin -- although he's pretty much in character and I'll tell you why later. Ewan McGregor's Obi-wan is close to Sir Alec's, Palpatine is identical, Yoda is more sprightly (but when 900 years old you reach, etc), and Luke is still whiny. Mace Windu was a little off, I think. Still pretty good, though.

Anakin's lightsaber fights on the lava planet reminded me very strongly of Luke's style. That's because the actors had the same instructors, or Luke and Anakin are related. I'm saying I don't know if it was deliberate or not. I wonder why Obi-wan didn't finish Anakin off instead of leaving him to suffer; that just seems wrong. Not Obi-wan's style.

I'm divided on whether Vader's masking process should have been shown -- it was cool -- or if it should have directly cut to a complete encounter suit as shown in the trailers ("previews").

Of course, the whole movie was about Anakin's fall. Starting with the sandpeople's murder back in EpII, here we see the mis-step with Dooku and then a series of unfortunate events -- well, just one really, but it starts an avalanche. When Mace Windu confronts Sidious, Anakin is still not turned. He is this close to going along with Windu and would have, except that he wants to know the Sith secrets. Even after Windu's loss, he still feels remorse but it's too late and he becomes Lord Vader. As both Padme and Luke say, there is still good in him. But the shock of losing everything turns him completely to the Dark Side. Only Luke's pleas on the Death Star turn him back, at the end.

A couple of current political touches. I don't care to mention them here but it was interesting.

Notice the very young Moff Tarkin at the end, on the bridge. The end wraps up a few lose ends, including why C3PO doesn't remember much in EpIV.