Tag: Fixing the Prequels: RotS

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And…we’re back! And in a lot less than ten months, too. Huzzah! In the ‘Credit Where Due’ department, for the purposes of this series I’m referring to the film’s script here.

When we left off last time, our Jedi Heroes had been caught, with Chancellor Palpatine and R2-D2, whilst trying to escape the ship of General Grievous. The space battle is raging on, but our heroes are brought to the bridge of the ship, where they come face to face with Grievous, a fairly bizarre individual who seems to be mostly robot, but with some kind of biological parts, who is hunchbacked, and who is constantly afflicted by a hacking cough. (This cough is actually explained by the final installment of a series of animated shorts called, appropriately enough, The Clone Wars, which aired on one of the cable networks between AotC and RotS, but it’s not really important here…unless one wants to know why a person who is something like ninety percent droid is coughing. I personally, did not.)

As Grievous confronts the Jedi, he refers to Obi Wan as ‘the Negotiator’, a touch that I like because it implies that Kenobi has a kind of reputation that he’s picked up in the course of the Clone Wars, not unlike Erwin Rommel’s ‘nom de war’, ‘the Desert Fox’. When Grievous meets Anakin, he notes that he expected someone of his reputation to be a bit older; Anakin replies: “General Grievous. You’re shorter than I expected.” I’ve always liked this line.

The rest of this plays out pretty much by numbers: R2-D2 creates a diversion, long enough for Obi Wan and Anakin to recover their lightsabers and free themselves from their bonds, at which point they go on yet another Jedi rampage against battle droids. There’s nothing particularly major here that we haven’t seen before in the Prequels, and it flashes by pretty quickly (albeit with an entertaining bit that comes when Obi Wan realizes that a particular model of battle droid can keep right on fighting even after decapitation). Grievous manages to escape yet again, this time by smashing one of the windows open and letting himself get blown out into space; he then uses a grappling hook to get himself to an escape pod while Obi Wan and Anakin have to take the controls of the ship, which is starting a death plunge into the atmosphere.

This whole sequence is really well done:

OBI-WAN and ANAKIN go over to the navigator’s chair.

ANAKIN: All the escape pods have been launched.

OBI-WAN: Grievous. Can you fly a cruiser like this?

ANAKIN: You mean, do I know how to land what’s left of this thing?

ANAKIN sits in the pilot’s chair and sees on a screen the back half of the ship break away. There is a great jolt, and the ship tilts forward.

OBI-WAN: Well?

ANAKIN: Under the circumstances, I’d say the ability to pilot this thing is irrelevant. Strap yourselves in.

OBI-WAN and PALPATINE strap themselves into chairs. ANAKIN struggles with the controls of the ship. The ship starts to glow, and pieces break off. ARTOO moves in on Palpatine ‘s controls and assists in flying the cruiser.

OBI-WAN: Steady . . . Attitude . . . eighteen degrees.

ARTOO beeps.

ANAKIN: Pressure rising. We’ve got to slow this wreck down. Open all hatches, extend all flaps, and drag fins.

OBI-WAN: Temp steady. Hatches open, flaps extended, drag fins . . .

A large part of the ship breaks away.

ANAKIN: We lost something.

OBI-WAN: Not to worry, we’re still flying half the ship.

I love that last line of Obi Wan’s. This whole sequence is fun, tense, and the effects are amazing. This brief shot is one of my favorite sights in all the Star Wars movies:

And all the other visual details are terrific here: the flames of reentry outside the bridge windows, the fireships that come alongside to smother the burning ship in fire retardant, the way the ship flies through a thick cluster of clouds to suddenly emerge above the capital city of the Republic. The ship’s bridge is dominated by yellow and green lighting, which is a color scheme we haven’t seen before. I also like how well-conceived this sequence is, in terms of details. Yeah, they may actually be scientifically implausible, but within the rules of his universe, George Lucas has thought out some stuff. The cruiser has ‘drag fins’, big metal flaps that extend out and provide increased air resistance to slow the ship down when it’s in the atmosphere (and remember, we’ve already established that cruisers of this size can land planetside), and the afore-mentioned firefighting ships.

Of course, Anakin brings the ship in for an impressive crash landing (taking out a control tower in the process…I always wonder if that tower was full of space traffic controllers, maybe one declaring this to be the wrong week to be giving up Death Sticks). The dust is settling, everyone is breathing a sigh of relief, and Obi Wan sums it all up: “Another happy landing!”

At this point, we’re finally done with an action sequence that has taken over twenty minutes of the film’s opening. It’s almost a short film in itself, complete with three acts, and it was an exhilarating way for George Lucas to start the film. Now comes quite a bit of talking and politics. Not that a lot of this bothers me, but the pace slows down quite a bit now.

A shuttle brings the Chancellor, along with his Jedi rescuers, back to the Capital, where Obi Wan and Anakin have another bit of repartee:

ANAKIN: (to Obi-Wan) Are you coming, Master?

OBI-WAN: Oh no. I’m not brave enough for politics. I have to report to the Council. Besides, someone needs to be the poster boy.

ANAKIN: Hold on, this whole operation was your idea. You planned it. You led the rescue operation. You have to be the one to take the bows this time.

OBI-WAN: Sorry, old friend. Let us not forget that you rescued me from the Buzz Droids. And you killed Count Dooku. And you rescued the Chancellor, carrying me unconscious on your back, and you managed to land that bucket of bolts safely . . .

ANAKIN: All because of your training, Master.

OBI-WAN: Anakin, let’s be fair. Today, you are the hero and you deserve your glorious day with the politicians.

ANAKIN: All right. But you owe me . . . and not for saving your skin for the tenth time . . .

OBI-WAN: Ninth time . . . that business on Cato Nemoidia doesn’t count. I’ll see you at the briefing.

I like the bit about keeping score – it’s reminscent of the Original Trilogy, and the friendly rivalry between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Next there’s a brief bit as Palpatine assures Mace Windu that the Senate will insist on continuing the war as long as General Grievous is at large; with Count Dooku dead, Grievous is now the leader of the droid armies. Not much is made of the fact that Dooku wasn’t just a military leader, but a political leader as well – who will rise to lead the Separatist movement?

Of note here is that Palpatine has managed to create an environment of perpetual war in the Republic, a war that has the support of the Senate and is being led by the Jedi. And yet we know there is tension between the Chancellor and the Jedi, so the question arises – never really addressed by the films – as to just what the relationship is between the Jedi and the Chancellor and the Senate. The Jedi seem to be a somewhat independent body, governing themselves, but taking input from the Senate. But they’re starting to not like what they are being required to do; as Mace Windu basically stated in AotC, they are basically policemen, not soldiers or military leaders. And yet that is their new role. Interesting, then, that a key facet of all of Palpatine’s machinations is to manipulate the Jedi into serving a role that they are not well-suited to serve.

Anyway, back to the movie. The Chancellor and the Jedi and the rest of a group of Senators walk off. (In this bunch is one Jar Jar Binks, who is almost unnoticed except that he has his one line of dialogue in the movie, “Excuse me”. What was funny about this is that when I saw the film in the theater back in 2005, as soon as people noticed Jar Jar, there was no booing or hissing – just several people in the theater exclaiming, “Hey, it’s Jar Jar!” and some murmurs of recognition, not all of which sounded angry. Make of that what you will…but sometimes I wonder if Jar Jar isn’t quite as hated as most people think he’s hated. Or maybe I’m just delusional….) Anakin exchanges words with Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits, who had quite the political acting life in the mid-2000s, appearing as a Star Wars Senator and as the successor to President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing), and then he notices someone in the shadows of one of the great pillars. It’s Padme.

Now, why isn’t Padme in the group of dignitaries meeting the Chancellor upon his return? She is one of the most influential political figures in the Senate. Clearly it’s because she needs to meet Anakin in somewhat private. They embrace, and this exchange takes place (material not actually in the final film in red):

ANAKIN: I missed you, Padme.

PADME: There were whispers . . . that you’d been killed.

ANAKIN: I’m all right. It feels like we’ve been apart for a lifetime. And it might have been … If the Chancellor hadn’t been kidnapped. I don’t think they would have ever brought us back from the Outer Rim sieges.

ANAKIN starts to give her another kiss. She steps back.

PADME: Wait, not here . . .

He grabs her again.

ANAKIN: Yes, here! I’m tired of all this deception. I don’t care if they know we’re married.

PADME: Anakin, don’t say things like that. You’re important to the Republic … to ending this war. I love you more than anything, but I won’t let you give up your life as a Jedi for me . . .

ANAKIN: I’ve given my life to the Jedi order, but I’d only give up my life, for you.

PADME: (playfully) I wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like that one bit. Patience, my handsome Jedi . . . Come to me later.

ANAKIN embraces her, then looks at her.

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 . . .

ANAKIN: 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 else?

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.

PADME: I will never stop loving you, Anakin. My only fear is losing you.

ANAKIN: It’s just that I’ve never seen you like this . . .

PADME: Something wonderful has happened.

They look at each other for a long moment.

PADME: (continuing) I’m . . . Annie, I’m pregnant.

ANAKIN is stunned. He thinks through all of the ramifications of this. He takes her in his arms.

ANAKIN: That’s . . . that’s wonderful.

PADME: What are we going to do?

ANAKIN: We’re not going to worry about anything right now, all right? This is a happy moment. The happiest moment of my life.

So: Padme’s pregnant, and judging by her clothes, she’s somewhat far along. That’s probably why she’s staying the shadows, then; this is not a condition she wants to become common knowledge, for obvious reasons. Someone will ask who the father is, and someone else will figure it out, to the doom of Anakin’s career as a Jedi, even though he says that he wants to just come out with it and let the chips fall where they may. I like Anakin’s reaction to the news of her pregnancy: he’s shocked at first, a bit overwhelmed, and then he manages to return to happiness. So, is he really happy that he’s about to be a father? Or is this something he neither expected nor wanted? I think that the evidence in the film supports both possibilities, and I like the ambiguity of his response to being told and the way he covers it up almost immediately. At the point of the revelation, John Williams’s music does not become lovely or plaintive; instead it churns in the basses, underscoring nicely Anakin’s conflicted emotions about becoming a father.

I do think that Lucas made a wise choice in eliminating the bit about Anakin suspecting Padme of having another suitor. While his loss of trust in Padme will be the final straw in his march toward the Dark Side, it’s much too early to plant that seed. Nevertheless, here is where I would make my first actual change in the film: as they embrace on final time, I’d have someone from the Jedi council see them embracing. The obvious choice here is Mace Windu. Why? Because I think a few seeds need to be planted here for later in the film, and because I think that the film needed to get a reminder in earlier on that Mace Windu has never really been in Anakin’s fan club. He wouldn’t say anything to Anakin and Padme; not now, anyway. But he’d look back and see their embrace and start to recognize it for what it is: a Jedi indulging forbidden love.

Now we cut to General Grievous and his arrival on the planet Utapau. For longtime Star Wars fans, the name of the planet Utapau is exciting (although we don’t hear it for a while yet), as it is one of the very earliest planet names George Lucas tossed around way back in the early 1970s when he was originally cobbling together his notions for a big space adventure epic movie. After Grievous lands, he makes contact with Darth Sidious, who is behind everything; Sidious orders him to move the Separatist leaders to Mustafar and then answers Grievous’s concern about Count Dooku’s death with the revelation that he’s already got his eye on a new apprentice, “one who is far more powerful”. Uh oh….

And then we are whisked back to Coruscant, for a nice quiet scene between Anakin and Padme at night on the balcony of their 800th-floor apartment. Or what’s supposed to be a nice quiet scene, because…well, this is what happens.

PADME: Annie, I want to have our baby back home on Naboo. We could go to the lake country where no one would know . . . where we would be safe. I could go early-and fix up the baby’s room. I know the perfect spot, right by the gardens.

ANAKIN: You are so beautiful!

PADME: It’s only because I’m so in love . . .

ANAKIN: No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.

PADME: So love has blinded you?

ANAKIN: Well, that’s not exactly what I meant . . .

PADME: But it’s probably true!

Yeah…I know. There’s just no way for me to sugarcoat this one, folks: this scene is a stinker. In a movie that so far has been hitting all the right notes, this scene comes along and reminds everyone of their biggest complaints about the last two movies, what with lines about how Padme’s not like sand and how Anakin is tortured by his love for her and so on. I tend to roll my eyes whenever I hear someone trot out the “George Lucas needs someone to tell him when his ideas suck” meme (otherwise known as the “Gary Kurtz Conjecture”, under the notion that it was Gary Kurtz’s steady hand that kept Lucas from doing stupid things that ruined the only two Star Wars movies that anybody likes, or so the story goes), but this scene unfortunately provides some ammunition for that camp. It’s not quite as bad as the Single Worst Scene In Star Wars History, but…well, it’s right up there. I hate hate hate the way this scene ended up.

So, let’s fix it. Here’s what should have happened here:

PADME: Annie, I want to have our baby back home on Naboo. We could go to the lake country where no one would know . . . where we would be safe. I could go early-and fix up the baby’s room. I know the perfect spot, right by the gardens.

ANAKIN: You are so beautiful….

PADME: It’s only because I’m so in love . . .

ANAKIN: No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.

PADME: So love has blinded you?

ANAKIN: No! I mean…uh….

He sees that she is grinning at him.

ANAKIN: You got me again.

PADME: Only because you make it so easy.

ANAKIN: You know that I’m not good at talking about my feelings.

PADME: You’re not so bad at it, when you stop trying to talk like a poet. There aren’t many famous Jedi poets, are there?

ANAKIN: (laughs) No. I tried reading some Jedi poetry, once…hundreds of lines about the Force. An entire book that sounded like Master Yoda…I didn’t understand any of it.

He comes to her side.

PADME: What are we going to do? When the war is over and the baby is born? You can’t be a Jedi and a father.

ANAKIN: I know. So I’ll be a father.

PADME looks at him.

PADME: You’ll give up being a Jedi?

ANAKIN: (smiling) For what I’d be getting in return? Yes.

They embrace.

Something like that…something which would show that Anakin is thinking ahead a bit, and that he has a happy ending right there for the taking, if he just doesn’t screw it up…which we know he’s going to. It would heighten the tragedy of his fall, and like I did in fixing AotC, I’d fix some bad dialogue by actually calling attention to it.

This scene is followed by a brief dream sequence, in which Anakin sees Padme giving birth, but it’s a horrible, painful experience in which she is shrieking in agony. That’s about all we see, before Anakin snaps awake and walks out to the living room. We don’t really see it in his dream, but he interprets it as meaning that Padme is doing to die in childbirth, and the script bears this out by indicating that in the dream, Padme actually dies. Cut to the living room, then:

ANAKIN walks down a flight of stairs onto a large veranda. The vast city planet of Coruscant, smoldering from the battle, is spread out before him. He is distraught. PADME descends the stairs and joins ANAKIN on the veranda. She takes his hand. He doesn’t look at her.

PADME: What’s bothering you?

ANAKIN: Nothing . . .

ANAKIN touches the japor snippet around PADME’S neck, that Anakin gave her when he was a small boy.

ANAKIN: (continuing) I remember when I gave this to you.

PADME: How long is it going to take for us to be honest with each other?

ANAKIN: It was a dream.

PADME: Bad?

ANAKIN: Like the ones I used to have about my mother just before she died.

PADME: And?

ANAKIN: It was about you.

They look at each other. A moment of concern passes between them.

PADME: Tell me.

ANAKIN: It was only a dream.

PADME gives him a long, worried look. ANAKIN takes a deep breath.

ANAKIN: (continuing) You die in childbirth . . .

PADME: And the baby?

ANAKIN: I don’t know.

PADME: It was only a dream.

ANAKIN takes PADME in his arms.

ANAKIN: . . . I won’t let this one become real, Padme.

They embrace, then part.

PADME: Anakin, this baby will change our lives. I doubt the Queen will continue to allow me to serve in the Senate, and if the Council discovers you are the father, you will be expelled from the Jedi Order.

ANAKIN: I know ….

PADME: Anakin, do you think Obi-Wan might be able to help us?

ANAKIN: I don’t need his help . . . Our baby is a blessing.

Obviously, I would have eliminated the bit about Padme worrying about Anakin’s future once the baby is born; I’ve relocated that to the earlier scene. It doesn’t seem to fit naturally in the scene where Anakin is dealing with a new dream about his wife’s death.

The shooting script has a bit of dialogue in there in which Anakin angrily asks if Padme has told Obi Wan anything; I’m glad this is left out, as I still think it’s too early for the jealousy angle to show up. I’ve always liked this, though – that Anakin isn’t just afraid of losing Padme, but that he’s having dreams and visions about it, and he’s already had a similar experience with his dreams of the future dolorous fate of someone he loved – his mother – coming true. He desperately wants to prevent this future, but even though he vows that he won’t let it happen, he is already suspecting that he doesn’t have the power he will need to do so.

And since Palpatine knows about Anakin’s actions against the Sandpeople in AotC, it’s reasonable to assume he knows about the dreams then, too. The wedge is already there, waiting to be driven in.

Oh, and that bit with Padme wearing the Japor snippet around her neck, the one Anakin gave her as a boy way back in TPM? That’s fantastic. It’s a great touch by Lucas, one which will pay off with a gorgeously sad visual late in the film.

Anakin doesn’t want to go to Obi Wan for help, but he does go to someone: he goes to Yoda. In the next scene, Anakin is talking to Yoda and gets some helpful advice:

INT. CORUSCANT-JEDI TEMPLE-YODAS QUARTERS-DAY

YODA and ANAKIN sit in Yoda ‘s room, deep in thought.

YODA: Premonitions . . . premonitions . . . Hmmmm . . . these visions you have . . .

ANAKIN: They are of pain, suffering, death . . .

YODA: Yourself you speak of, or someone you know?

ANAKIN: Someone . . .

YODA: . . . close to you?

ANAKIN: Yes.

YODA: Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the dark side.

ANAKIN: I won’t let these visions come true, Master Yoda.

YODA: Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.

ANAKIN: What must I do, Master Yoda?

YODA: Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

And by the look on Anakin’s face, we see that boy, is that ever not what he’s looking to hear.

This leads to one of the more interesting things about Jedi philosophy, as we hear it from Yoda throughout the Star Wars saga. Anakin is worried about his loved one, but Yoda tells him that the way to deal with his fears for her fate is to let her fate unfold and, basically, ignore it. This is virtually the same advice Yoda will give Luke Skywalker twenty years later, in TESB, when Luke has visions about Han and Leia suffering greatly:

LUKE: And sacrifice Han and Leia?

YODA: If you honor what they fight for…yes!

The advice goes about as well then as it does for Anakin, although Luke’s doesn’t end nearly as badly. The question is: why is this?

I think it’s because Luke is able to do something that Anakin tends to find extremely difficult: he is able to trust his friends, where Anakin only looks inward, to himself, to his own powers and his own abilities. And why is this? Well, I suspect it’s partly because Luke doesn’t grow up – even partially, as Anakin does – inside the sequestered and sheltered bubble that the Jedi put themselves in. The Prequel Trilogy depicts the Jedi as an almost ascetic group who are supposed to be denying their emotional lives in favor of devotion to the Force. Luke later demonstrates that fealty to the Force is not at all incompatible with having love and friendship in one’s life. I wonder if this isn’t part of why the Jedi fall – because they’ve turned so far inward that they genuinely believe that attachment is bad, friendship is bad, love is bad…because under certain circumstances, they can lead to the Dark Side.

From Yoda’s perspective, though, it’s Anakin’s love for Padme that leads him straight to the Dark Side, straight to joining the Sith, and straight to playing a role in the final fall of the Jedi. So when Luke comes along and wants to be trained and then has his own visions of horrible things happening to his loved ones and rushes off to save them, Yoda must clearly be seeing that as “And here we go again.” He thinks everything is about to be undone by the passions of the Skywalkers, again. Once again, I end up admiring the way Lucas has events from the Original Trilogy having echoes and parallels in the Prequel Trilogy.

And there we will stop. Next time, Anakin is drawn into the political world, and his desires for power start to get stroked as well as his fears for Padme. Tune in!

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part one

When last we left our intrepid Jedi – months and months ago – they they had just made their way through an immense space battle to land on General Grievous’s ship, through which they must now make their way to find the captive Chancellor Palpatine. This is pretty standard “infiltrate the enemy ship” stuff, but it’s all pretty fun to watch anyway, because Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen actually have pretty good chemistry together. In this whole sequence, I like how Christensen portrays Anakin as more self-assured, more confident, but less obviously-arrogant than he had been in Attack of the Clones. The effect goes a long way to highlight the tragedy of Anakin’s later fall from grace.

(Before I go on, I should note the very long stall in this series of posts, with an apology for those who actually enjoy reading this stuff. My reasons are the usual whiny “Nobody knows I’m doing this, but that Red Letter Media turd gets all kinds of love whenever he speaks!” stuff. So let’s just stipulate all that and move on, shall we? OK!)

R2-D2 is another part of the puzzle here, and he has his own problems. He is trying to lie low when a couple of battle droids enter the landing bay, but his efforts are stymied by the fact that Obi Wan keeps talking to him, very loudly, via the commlink. Thus R2 is distracted at several points where Obi Wan and Anakin would find having a droid plugged into the computer system fairly convenient.

All of this is pretty standard Star Wars derring-do as Obi Wan and Anakin make their way to the observation deck where they suspect Palpatine is being helped. I find it all a lot of fun to watch, and it could have been even longer, what with some deleted scenes from this sequence that are available on the DVD. In one scene, our two Jedi heroes wind up in the ship’s giant fuel pipes; in another, they are surrounded by droids and communicate with one another with baseball-coach type hand signals. These scenes are fun to watch, and I’m glad they’re on the DVD, but I don’t think they would have added much to the proceedings except for some fun action material. This entire sequence of the film takes an impressive bit of time, though, which is probably a good chunk of why it needed trimming.

Here again, by the way, we see R2 using his rockets that AOTC revealed, and yet another new gizmo: R2 has a supply of oil which he’s able to squirt on the battle droids and all over the ground before setting it on fire. As usual, a lot of Star Wars fans complained about this, but also as usual, I’m fine with it. For one thing, I rather like what is now something of a gag, which is that each time there’s a new Star Wars movie, we see something else that R2 can do. And what’s also nice is that really, none of these particular abilities is particularly outlandish given what an R2 unit essentially is: a robotic space mechanic. You know how, within reason and given the right set of attachments, you can do pretty much anything with a Dremel rotary tool or Multi-Max? Well, that’s what R2 is: a big, intelligent, Dremel tool. (Hmmmm…Dremel’s colors are blue and silver, not unlike a certain droid…hmmmm….)

The other thing that stands out in this entire sequence, once we land on the ship, is that there’s no music at all. We have music and all manner of sound effects when Obi Wan and Anakin are flying their ships through the space battle, but once we’re on General Grievous’s cruiser itself, there is no music at all: just ambient sounds of machines and distant explosions and wind in the elevator shafts and so on.

Our two Jedi reach the observation deck and find Palpatine there, restrained to a chair that looks a lot like the throne he will later use in Return of the Jedi. The room is bounded on all sides by giant windows that are overlooking the space battle. Now Dooku enters, and after a bit of preliminary boasting, the lightsaber battle begins:

OBI-WAN: (bows) Chancellor.

ANAKIN: Are you all right?

PALPATINE: (quietly) Count Dooku.

PALPATINE makes a small gesture with his hand. OBI-WAN and ANAKIN turn around. The elevator DOORS CAN BE HEARD OPENING AND CLOSING as COUNT DOOKU strides into the room. He is above the Jedi, standing on a balcony, with two SUPER BATTLE DROIDS. The Jedi turn to see him. He looks down on the Jedi. 

OBI-WAN: (quietly to Anakin) This time we will do it together.

ANAKIN: I was about to say that.

COUNT DOOKU jumps down to the main level. 

PALPATINE: Get help! You’re no match for him. He’s a Sith Lord.

OBI-WAN: Chancellor Palpatine, Sith Lords are our specialty.

OBI-WAN and ANAKIN throw off their cloaks and ignite their lightsabers. 

COUNT DOOKU: Your swords, please, Master Jedi. We don’t want to make a mess of things in front of the Chancellor.

OBI-WAN and ANAKIN move toward DOOKU.

OBI-WAN: You won’t get away this time, Dooku.

OBI-WAN and ANAKIN charge COUNT DOOKU. A great sword fight ensues.

COUNT DOOKU: I’ve been looking forward to this.

ANAKIN: My powers have doubled since the last time we met, Count.

COUNT DOOKU: Good. Twice the pride, double the fall. 

I really like this scene…all of it. Especially the little reference to their last confrontation with Dooku, at the end of AOTC, when Anakin decided to charge in by himself and got tossed aside for his trouble. They lost that duel because they didn’t work together; this time, Anakin is willing to wait. But he hasn’t grown up too much; he is still willing to boast about the growth of his powers.

What happens next is something of a pitched duel in which it still seems that Dooku is their better; he again manages to toss Anakin aside, and then he again incapacitates Obi Wan. But this time, Anakin is much stronger and holds his own…only merely that, until Dooku says something else:

COUNT DOOKU: (continuing) I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate, you have anger, but you don’t use them.

This goading of Anakin proves ill-advised for Dooku, as he immediately uses his hate and his anger. A minute later, he cuts off Dooku’s hands and takes his saber, now holding two blades at the neck of the helpless Count. He knows that a Jedi is probably supposed to be merciful in such a situation, but Palpatine, laughing, tells Anakin: “Kill him. Kill him now.”

This is a deeply chilling moment. Palpatine’s warmth – feigned though we know it was in the previous two films – disappears instantly as Palpatine says “Kill him.” And when Anakin hesitates, Palpatine allows his coldest, harshest tone to come forth: “Do it.”

And Anakin does. Right there, with Palpatine looking on and with Dooku’s eyes wide as he realizes he’s just been betrayed, Anakin beheads the helpless Count.

Now this dialogue:

PALPATINE: You did well, Anakin. He was too dangerous to be kept alive.

ANAKIN drops COUNT DOOKU’s lightsaber, moving to PALPATINE. 

ANAKIN: Yes, but he was an unarmed prisoner.

ANAKIN raises his hands toward PALPATINE, who is strapped in the Admiral’s Chair. The Chancellor’s restraints pop loose. 

ANAKIN: (continuing) I shouldn’t have done that, Chancellor. It’s not the Jedi way.

PALPATINE stands up, rubbing his wrists. 

PALPATINE: It is only natural. He cut off your arm, and you wanted revenge. It wasn’t the first time, Anakin. Remember what you told me about your mother and the Sand People. Now, we must leave before more security droids arrive. 

Something interesting happens here, something easy to miss. As noted, this scene takes place in an enormous observation room with giant windows on all sides, so that during the entire lightsaber duel, we can see the space battle raging in the sky beyond; and occasionally, we hear the sounds of ships as they fly by very close to the windows. At the moment that Palpatine refers to Anakin’s mother’s fate at the hands of the Sandpeople, there is a sound that could very well be a ship in space outside*, or it could be the cry of one of the Sandpeople. It’s a little aural reminder of what has gone before…and Palpatine is already starting to lay the groundwork for Anakin’s temptation to the Dark Side of the Force.

But what’s really interesting is that Palpatine allows Dooku to start that particular ball rolling, with his line about Anakin having hate, anger, but not using them. I always wonder…has Palpatine already decided to start working on Anakin’s conversion? Or has he just now realized the potential of what he has in Anakin?

In AOTC, Palpatine manipulated the Jedi Council to assign Obi Wan and Anakin to the protection of Padme following the assassination attempt. Was he doing that with the intent of pushing Anakin’s emotions to the fore, with temptation in mind, or was he simply working to sow seeds of dissent and distrust within the Jedi order? I might lean to the latter, except that we know that Palpatine has made good on his word to young Anakin from the end of TPM (“We will watch your career with great interest.”). It’s significant that Anakin has shared the dark secret of what happened to his mother – and what he did after that – with Palpatine.

As this scene ends, Anakin picks up the incapacitated Obi Wan and slings him over his shoulder, over Palpatine’s objections that they don’t have time to dally over him. “His fate will be our own,” says Anakin, and they start making their way back down to the landing bay.

Of course, this is a Star Wars film, so they don’t get there. They encounter some more trouble with elevators, this time when the cruiser they are on takes heavy fire and starts to aim straight down toward the planet, throwing off the perspective. Anakin and Palpatine enter an elevator shaft and start running down the walls, which are now the floors, since the ship is dropping straight down. But then the bridge crew gets things under control again, causing the ship to level back out again…which means that the walls of the elevator shaft are now walls again. Needless to say, they get out of this predicament, just as Obi Wan wakes back up; then they are back in a deserted corridor and trying to get back to the landing bay when they are imprisoned by something called “ray shields”. After Obi Wan protests “How did this happen? We’re smarter than this!”, Anakin suggests that they just patiently wait for R2D2 to come along and release them. Obi Wan is surprised that Anakin is suggesting patience, but the plan goes awry when R2 does, in fact, arrive…with a whole bunch of warrior droids with him. “Do you have a plan B?” Obi Wan asks…and that’s where I’ll stop for this time.

If it seems like I haven’t done much ‘fixing’ in a series called ‘Fixing the Prequels’, well, it’s generally because I think that the entire opening sequence of RotS is as masterfully done as anything in the entire Star Wars saga. There’s just nothing to fix here, but a lot to admire. Don’t worry, though; we’ll start fixing stuff next time out. In that installment we will deal with General Grievous, reunite two young lovers, and start to get hints of Darth Sidious’s plan to lower the shroud of the Dark Side over everything. Tune in! (And it won’t take the better part of a year to get there, either.)

* I know, I know, “Sound can’t travel in space”. For the purposes of Star Wars…actually, for most filmed SF in general…I just don’t care.

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I’ve been meaning to get to this for a while, but various things have distracted me and kept it pushed down the priority list for several months. But now, it really is time to start the final edition of Fixing the Prequels, by turning to the final film in the trilogy, Revenge of the Sith.

Before I begin, it’s worth a reminder of what I’m about here. I love the Prequel Trilogy (abbreviated ‘PT’ hereafter), and have since I saw each individual film on first release. I found them all involving, exciting, and in the case of Revenge, emotionally crushing at times. I know I’m a minority in this, but I’ve never much cared about that. Even so, I must admit that as much as I love the Star Wars prequels, I don’t love them unreservedly, because they are flawed. There are things wrong with them.

That’s not an unusual opinion, but I think that my view as to the degree of that opinion is. Most folks seem to hold the flaws of the PT as fatal flaws, sinking the films to the point where the only appropriate response to them seems to be outright mockery. I don’t believe that. I think that a lot of the flaws in the films are overblown; others arise from misinterpretation or possibly a failure to understand what George Lucas was at times really getting at. And still more perceived flaws in the PT come, I think, not from a sense of genuine error on Lucas’s part but the simple fact that, by the time Lucas made these three films, tastes had changed in a lot of ways.

So when I talk about “fixing” the prequels, I’m not about wholesale rewrites and bagging on the direction of the films in all particulars. I point out flaws along the way, but my goal is also to highlight the things in these films that I find admirable, the things that keep me coming back to them frequently. My approach is to address two kinds of flaws: the ones that I think are real, genuine flaws, and the ones that I’ve heard cited as flaws from other people over the years but which I either don’t see as flaws or as fatal flaws. I’m about credit as much as criticism here, which I think is a more measured response to them than a lot of the people who deeply despise the Prequels would admit. It has long interested me that, in almost all cases of such discussion, the people who hold a negative view of something are the ones who invariably claim to be seeing the thing objectively. My response is to simply point out that having a negative opinion is not seeing something “objectively”; it’s having a negative opinion.

And now, with all that preamble behind us, let’s move on to discussing Revenge of the Sith, a fascinating film that even as I write this I’m not sure about, as to how I’d go about “fixing” it. This is mainly because I’m not entirely sure what I think is wrong with it. But as I work through the film, I expect some thoughts will crystallize. So let’s start at the beginning, which means as it always does in a Star Wars movie, a crawl:

War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.

In a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader, General Grievous, has swept into the Republic capital and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the Galactic Senate.

As the Separatist Droid Army attempts to flee the besieged capital with their valuable hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to rescue the captive Chancellor. . . .

It sets things up nicely. I especially like that opening: “War!” This crawl is pretty blunt, with none of the “politics” stuff that many claim to have been bored by in the first two Prequels. (How they could be “bored” by a couple of lines of text is something I’ve never figured out, but no matter.) What stands out to me in this crawl, however, is that second sentence in the first paragraph: “There are heroes on both sides.” That’s an interesting line, there; it seems out of place, but I think it works in an interesting way: it calls to attention the ambiguous nature of the Clone War, the War to Preserve the Republic: we know that it’s basically a fake war, started for no other reason than to trick the Republic into destroying itself.

Revenge opens with a massive space battle, of which I’ve heard many differing opinions over the years. Detractors say that it plays like a video game on the big screen, and is impossible to follow. This has always struck me as odd, because it’s always seemed to me that George Lucas goes out of his way to make this incredibly frenetic space battle as easy to follow as possible.

After the crawl, we have our traditional pan down to a planet and a spaceship. (AOTC, remember, actually followed its crawl with a pan up.) The planet is Coruscant, and the ship is a Republic attack cruiser. The music dies away almost completely at this point; all we hear for about thirty seconds is a steady, but off-kilter (because it’s in 5-4 time), beat of drums. The camera starts to zoom in on the cruiser, when two new ships enter from behind: small fighter craft. Only two. We follow these two ships as they skim over the surface of the cruiser, out into space beyond it, and then back and dive. The camera follows over the edge of the cruiser, and there – spread out before us – is the enormous space battle.

As soon as the two Jedi starfighters come into view, the music starts in again, with the famous “Force theme”. We don’t need any dialogue or to even look into the cockpits to know that our two Jedi are flying these ships. Also, of all the ships coming and going in the skies above Coruscant, these are the only two ships of this type. This isn’t like A New Hope, when Luke Skywalker was only one of a bunch of X-wings. Even more, the Jedi starfighters are, by design, similar to what will eventually become TIE fighters, and those ships’ thrusters emit cone-shaped blasts of exhaust (presumably because the battle is taking place high in Coruscant’s atmosphere, as opposed to in the vacuum of outer space).

Another thing that interests me about this space battle is that we see almost none of it. Really. This battle clearly involves several times as many ships and combatants as the big battle at the end of Return of the Jedi (of course, a one-to-one comparison there isn’t easy because that one has a Death Star in it), but aside from lingering shots that quickly flash by, we are shown nothing of the battle itself. Nothing of the strategy, nothing of which side is winning and which is losing, nothing of tactics. All we see of this battle is what Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi see as they fly through it, on their way to General Grievous’s flagship. The battle is frenetic, and there is a lot happening onscreen, but it’s not at all hard to follow, so far as I can tell. The battle is entirely secondary to their main concern: getting through it alive to land on General Grievous’s ship and find the Chancellor.

So, after quite a bit of space derring-do that involves flying directly through a cloud of attacking fighters, evading missiles, and dealing with a bunch of small droids who get onto a fighter’s hull and then scuttle about taking the ship apart, our two Jedi heroes land on Grievous’s ship. I like a lot of the dialogue through here: at one point, Obi Wan notes “This is why I hate flying!”, echoing two lines from Attack of the Clones. I also like how when Obi Wan’s ship is infested by the buzz droids, Anakin’s first notion is to blast them off, which has Obi Wan screaming in protest, at which point Anakin says, “I agree. Bad idea.” So he comes up with something else.

What I also like about this whole sequence is John Williams’s music, which is full of interesting things like quotes from the “Force Theme”, sections in 5/4, and one heroic quote of the Rebel Spaceship Fanfare when R2-D2 dispatches the last buzz droid. This was a musical touch that I liked immensely.

Anyway, back to the General’s ship, where Obi Wan and Anakin have just landed. There’s an interesting touch here as the two Jedi take on a typically large number of battle droids: Obi Wan leaps out of his ship and ignites his lightsaber before his ship has even slid to a stop; Anakin, however, waits until he’s stopped completely before grabbing his saber and hopping out to join the melee. I like that. It’s the kind of tiny detail that gets lost amidst a lot of the melee, the kind of blink-and-you-miss-it thing that nevertheless illustrates something about the story and our characters.

Now Obi Wan and Anakin must make their way to the observation deck where the Chancellor is being held captive. This involves more run-ins with battle droids, malfunctioning elevators, and relying on R2-D2 when R2 is dealing with his own problems. (He has to hide from a couple of battle droids when Obi Wan starts talking to him through his comm-link.) I wouldn’t change any of this material, because the banter and chemistry between Obi Wan and Anakin really works pretty well, in my opinion:

ANAKIN: I sense Count Dooku.

OBI WAN: I sense a trap.

ANAKIN: Next move?

OBI WAN: (grins) Spring the trap!

And this, the transition from the space battle to the derring-do aboard General Grievous’s ship, is a good place to stop. Next time we’ll rescue the Chancellor, land half a ship, and find out that Anakin isn’t always shooting blanks. Excelsior!

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