“Master Yoda! I have good news! I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to a gecko!”

Anakin CAN sense Dooku on the other side of an extremely large ship, however in the elevator shaft, Obi-Wan is inexcplicably startled by Anakin, his student of several years, dropping in behind him.

Anakin (along with Yoda and Obi-Wan for that matter) cannot sense the Jedi twins in Padme. A previous poster wondered why Vader didn’t check his brother’s for the twins…well he didn’t know they were alive because he thought Padme died along with their offspring, although he should’ve been able to ’sense’ them if the movie had in flibbin’ continuity at all.

PlotPoint(1/2) – The Jedi Council said that they were ok with Anni and shagging Padme AND him knocking her up

PlotPoint(2/2)[EXCISED] – The manslaughter of Padme by Anakin means that Obiwan delievers the twins by lightsaber-cesarean ….this is now implied

And why do I take pleasure in that? It’s revenge for them ramming this piece of crap down my throat with commercialization — they’ve sold themselves to every product endorsement this side of Sithdouche. They are the ones who tried to build it up as a cultural touchstone. A bad film I can say “Oh well” and go on. But a bad film that’s being trumpeted by product tie-ins from every TV commercial, food product, billboard and magazine as being culturally relevant makes me want to call “bullshit.” It’s their fault I’m watching their crap movie thinking “Ooo, Darth Vader is almost as scary on the big screen as he is on my box of Cheeze-Its.” If it was a well done film maybe I could have looked past that annoyance, but as it is I’ll never know.

Get some popcorn with yellow drizzle on it, sit down, revel in the theme song, get a thrill from the lightsaber fights and the big cool spaceships, sniffle because Anakin turns into Darth Vader and does bad things, then get up and go home with that “I just saw a Star Wars movie for the first time” glow you had when you were 7. That’s all. You people give me weird Napoleon Dynamite vibes with all this “Durrrr, this is too unrealistic” bullshit.

One of biggest the biggest lessons you’ve all missed: Don’t Date The Jedi! Next time: cod pieces for the Padawans!

And then there’s the Jedi massacre, which almost worked. My first thought — and I’m sure it wasn’t an accident — was the operatic massacre montage in Godfather (shout-out to Francis from George), and I was really pulling for it. Hell, for all I know it worked just fine, and the same sequence in a better-shaped movie would have had the impact it deserved. But in the movie as it stands, the massacre is yet another lost moment in the wilderness.

Overall, the most frustrating thing is that there really is a good movie — perhaps two — buried in the clutter. The major plot points (Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side, the collapse of the Republic into dictatorship) ring true in concept, but you don’t feel them on the screen. Nothing approaches the gut-wrenching chill of “I am your father” — imagine a movie where we see Anakin’s Choice as our own, the descent into hell as the price for saving the love of his life, and we leave the theater wondering what we would do in the circumstances. Or imagine a movie where the “freedom dies” line actually has its intended force, a movie that shows how patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

I’d still like to see that movie. Phantom Edit, anyone?

in addition to all the major things mentioned by others,was anyone else disturbed by any of this :
1) Too much going on in the background! Bladerunner and Fifth Element created bustling, hectic cities that were still beautiful to behold. Every city shot in this just looked busy and distracting.

2) Outer space fight scenes were impossible to follow. Again, so much going on that it lost any impact. Battle scenes in Deep Space 9 or the new Battlestar Galactica had dozens of ships but you could still follow and get into the action. Here the scenes just looked insanely crowded and busy.

3) I swear i don’t normally nitpick, but there were so many scenes of ships with glowing thrusters behind them while they moved at an angle. You can only move opposite the direction of your propulsion – normally I don’t notice geek things like this but when I’m watching engines glow from behind while the ship moves in a different direction I notice.

4) It’s a small, small galaxy isn’t it? Padame jumps in her ship and gets to the lava planet in no time at all – Anakin is still hanging out. Wouldn’t you think the planet where the seperatist leaders are hiding might be, oh, slightly far away from the seat of the government???

5)The movie was briefly very cool when they went after the jedi, but that section should have been much, much better. Did anyone else feel cheated by not seeing the epic battle that must have taken place at the Jedi Temple?? The five seconds of that little kid Jedi kicking ass (while Jimmy Smits watched) was better than the entire rest of the film. I could have done without Obi Wan riding the dragon’s back to chase hot-rod Grievous (about as exciting as the droid factory sequence from the last one) and they could have given us more fighting Jedi.

6) The wookie planet – totally useless! Other than a geek nod to the old films, it was nothing exciting (and actually bordered on painful having to listen to the vine-swinging wookies letting out Tarzan yells) Is there anyone who can name one cool moment from that whole sequence? I laughed out loud when the head wookie stood up and let out his war cry.

7) Why were the clones killing all the wookies?? I thought they were going to do a great analogy to Stalin killing all the anti-Nazi underground leaders after WW II (because they obviously would have opposed him as well) but no explanation given.

I can suspend disbelief to a point, but how far was Yoda going to get in a ship the size of a refrigerator?? If Obi Wan’s ship needed to attach to that round space-drive to get lightspeed then how do Yoda escape in a Yugo??

Again…all of these were minor details compared to the lack of likeable characters, etc

I tried. I really tried. I wanted to like this movie. We are trying hard to come up with logical explanations, and there just aren’t any to be found because George just didn’t think that far ahead.

I don’t buy the “we’re not kids anymore” argument – the kids I talked to were equally as confused – as well they should be!

The original series may not be scientifically accurate, but that’s really not the point at all, because it is, however, mostly internally self-consistent. There’s a world there that’s cohesive, and when something new shows up, you think “Hey, that sort of makes sense” instead of “Whua? Where did that come from?”. That, and it has dialogue that, while corny in places, didn’t have the entire theater laughing during the tense, dramatic scenes.

To answer why he never went looking for his family. It is possible he never wanted to. If you were told the one person you loved had died due to your anger, what would make you imagine that she had given birth to children before then? He would bury himself in his work, spending the next 20 years putting down the rebellion. In his mind, the Jedi are destroyed, and Yoda and Obi Won don’t make an appearance during this time period. Why bother going down to a planet that would obviously cause you emotional stress (remember his mother died there).

I think Obi Won doesnt kill him because he doesn’t have to, Boxin Ani proves the point completely. Maybe Vadar doesn’t go looking for him because he is scared S%$#less about what Obi Won would do to him next. If somebody gimped me, I wouldn’t go looking for a rematch.

The most dangerous place to be in the galaxy is on the right hand side of Vadar (the first obviously being in front of him) He is obviously not completely sold on the whold Dark Side Ideal, and when given the oppurtunity of seeing his son make the decision he could never do,( walking away from his anger, and suffering for it), He reclaims his humanity by casting aside the Dark Side of the Force.

Now, if Lucas could have hired a couple of good writers to really work the dialogue, this story would have the epic feel it is supposed to, and not Jar-Jar and “Hold me like you did at the lake on Naboo”. Someone should have gotten a restraining order against his kids for giving script ideas.

The worst thing about these last three movies is not that they were awful. But that THEY COULD HAVE BEEN JUST AS GOOD AS THE FIRST THREE.

Oh, and saying that “Sith is better than Phantom or Clones” is like saying “the original Police Academy was WAY WAY better than Citizens on Patrol or Mission to Moscow.” That bar has not been raised that high by Lucas.

And what a commanding rush it was: a buzz of excitement as the first ships rush by, then jaw-dropping awe as the big ship floats overhead. This must have been what it felt like to watch Wizard of Oz in 1939.

Plot holes? Sure, of course, and who cared? It was a wild and witty ride, a grand homage to the serials it referenced. Outstanding, clever fun.

I could say similar things about Empire (which added depth to the story), but all I remember of Jedi is that cursed Ewok Boogie at the end, and all I can say about the prequels is that Joseph Campbell has a lot to answer for.

All of which to say: For those of us who didn’t grow up with the series — who came to the movies as adults — what was compelling about the first two films has been sadly lacking in the final four. They haven’t been fun, they haven’t been clever, they haven’t been entertaining. They’ve been tiresome. (So why spend the bucks? Well, a geek’s just gotta see them through, despite it all…)

And George Lucas’s lasting achievement as a filmmaker? He must be the only director on the planet who can make Samuel L. Jackson dull.

Am I watching an ILM demo reel?!? NO! I’m watching the 20 year culmination of a STORY, and one that started out compelling and mythical, and devolved into stilted, patchy, and, in some cases, goofy.

I don’t feel that George Lucas owes me a good movie, but on the other hand, I don’t owe him a good review, either.

1) Propolsion Systems: Do you mean to tell me that all these flying machines, both planetary personal craft and giant space monsters run on liquid fuel? I assume this liquid is combustable, like petroleum. Where did it come from in such endless quantities, and how is it stored? And most importantly, how do they deal with emmissions, which were prominently ejected from every craft?

2) The planet where all the real action comes home to roost is one big urban downtown, not a speck of plant or animal life in sight. Assuming everybody breathes oxygen, where does it come from? Not only are billions or perhaps trillions of English-speaking humans consuming O2, there’s all those vehicles burning combustable fuel. So, where does the O2 come from?

3) OK, annikin gets burned. Badly. We low tech neanderthals in this time and space are on the verge of some amazing techniques for building human tissue, or life-like substitutes. Did these technologically advanced people abandon reconstructive surgery? Does darth Vader really have to cover his face with a helmet so that we aren’t upset with his burns?

4) Those replacement limbs that everybody seems to sport. Granted, perhaps the mechanical ones are better than the real thing, although in that case everybody would be volutarily having their limbs lopped off. But couldn’t they look a little more attractive, maybe covered with human tissue (see number 3 above) or maybe even entire limbs grown from your own stem cells and completely indistinguishable from the lost limbs?

To expect these technological advances is not unreasonable in our day and age. As for availability, I might remind you that this tale involves the elites of society, people and robots fighting for control. You can be sure that all the resources of society are at the fingetips of these folks.

As for the plot holes, I couldn’t give a damn. But these lapses are just plain stupid.

-dwvr

Good movie anyway ^^

Spoiler things below.

No one’s commented on the fact that Palpatine, in talking about how he killed his own dark lord, Darth something or other, essentially admitted that the dark lord created Anakin.

Palpy said his lord could coax midichlorians into creating life. Annie’s mother said to Qui-jon that there was no father in Annie’s conception. The Jedi council wonders if the midichlorians created Annie.

So Annie’s father was (sort of) the dark lord that Palpatine killed. So Annie’s mother could have known that dark lord, and perhaps knew Palpatine as well.

Does it have any real bearing on the story? It does if anyone cared about how Annie came to be.

Big John, in Episode I or II the Jedi mentioned their powers were weakening. It was difficult for them to see the Dark Side.

That Jedi Youngling who came out to warn/save the senator was awesome.

Anakin: Are you all right? You’re trembling. What’s going on?
Padme: I’m just excited to see you.
Anakin: That’s not it. I sense more … what is it?
Padme: Nothing… nothing…
Anakain: You’re frightened. (a little angry) Tell me what’s going on!
PADME begins to cry
Padme: You’ve been gone five months…it’s been very hard for me. I’ve never felt so alone. There’s…
Anakin:…Is there someone esle?
Padme:(peeved angry) No! Why do you think that? Your jealousy upsets me so much, Anakin. I do nothing to betray you, yet you still don’t trust me. Nothing has changed.
Anakin:(sheepish) I’m afraid of losing you, Padme…that’s all

Later on when Anakin visits her place and asks angerly if Obi-won has been here recently it’s because of his previous talk with palpatine.

Palpatine: There are rumors in the Senate about Master Kenobi. Many believe he is not fit for this assignment
Anakin: Not fit? Why would anyone think that?
Palpatine: They say his mind become fogged by the influence of a certain female senator.
Anakin: That’s ridiculous. Who?!?
Palpatine:(slyly) no one knows who she is…only that she is a Senator
Anakin: That’s impossible. I would know.
Palpatine: Sometimes the closet are the ones who cannot see.

Hopefully the footage will come out in the directors cut. There are probably more examples but I’m not hardcore enough to pick out all of them.

Star Wars sucks.

And this is coming from someone who saw SW and ESB in the movie theater multipe times as a kid.

Then this pile of Sith comes along. Of course you have hope that the mere connection between this last of the prequels and the first of the real films will compensate. Man, I could not have been more wrong.

All the connections to the original trilogy seem forced at best. Brought to a point when Obi Wan and Yoda are talking over expository plot points at the end of the film “Hey, I should go into exile… Yo, Bail you want a kid? And hey, who is going to be the one to say C3P0’s brain needs to be erased… Don’t forget to get a shot of a Pre-Grand Moff Tarkin…”

What a piece of junk.

And I’ve been affected by some of the hokiness in the past, but Vader’s ‘birth’ and screaming ‘Noooooo!’ at the end of the film brough me to tears of laughter. Holy crap was that the lamest thing I have ever seen! It was like an SNL parody of the film. And that is the most important moment in the film????!?!?!?!? Good lord! Vader was as scary as the guys in Vader costumes waiting in line.

Lost the will to live is the reason for the death of Padme? Fsyking hell! Whoi wrote this garbage?!?!?

But I will give the film props for one of the best/worst lines EVER spoken in the who Star Wars films.

“Go I will. Good relations with the Wookies, I have.”

Thanks Yoda. Are you now going to tell us that housing Chewbacca’s cat you have?

Thanks for ending this saga George Lucas. Now please leave movies alone.

Star Wars I, II, and III fail because they solemnly suffer under the weight of their own mythology. The years between the two trilogys saw the rise of “Star Wars” as a cultural institution. By the time “A New Hope” came out, there was no chance it could have the lightness and fun of the earlier epic. Too bad.