Quote:So my question is..how do you guys rate the fights in Ep3 (Yoda vs. Emperor, Obi-Won vs. Anakin) - are they nearly as dynamic and intense as the Darth Maul battle?

Better. Well, nothing quite has the kick of that part where they're waiting on the opposite sides of those forcefield things. That was brilliant. The battles will not leave you feeling unfulfilled however, I can promise you that. On the whole, they are another level above anything I've seen before. It's not just one fight scene either; they all really set a high mark.

In the same boat as Nemesis atm due to work and uni issues. This is what I jotted down on my guild messageboard after I got home from seeing Ep 3..
Well didn't mind it at all, think it wrapped things up about as neatly as possible to still leave the 100 episode tv series with room to fill out the story and think that the reduced amount of dialogue compared to 1 and 2 (it seemed) helped it out too some how, though I'm sure those that think Lucas is a hack will give that as the reason.

My thoughts:

1. Interesting to hear Mace give the same reason to kill Emp as Emp gave to Ani to kill Dooku.

2. Almost actual emotion in the love scenes. Think Closer helped Natalie with this, not sure about Hayden though.

3. Fight scenes pretty much kicked ass

4. R2 seriously kicked major ass and was also filling his role as comedy relief

5. Only one scene with Jar Jar and no talking

6. When did the seperatists take over Mt. Doom?

7. Very few glaring cg shots except the opening Jedi Starfighter scene

8. Slightly weak reasoning used for Ani's conversion though I guess a case can be made that he was being truthful in saying Mace tried to assassinate Emp.

9. An explanation given for C3PO not knowing who Obi is in Ep 4.

10. NO ****** EXPLAINATION GIVEN YET AGAIN FOR THE INCONSISTENCY OF OBI WAN NOT KNOWING WHO C3PO OR R2D2 ARE IN EP 4.

Number 10 just pisses me off no end as we know Ani built C3PO, C3PO is Padme's protocol droid and interacts with Obi numerous times in Ep 3 and R2 is Ani's astromech and spend the first 30 odd minutes of the movie being ordered around by Obi and made fun of at the same time. There is just no reasoning for the inconsistency in Ep 4 IF the entire series was originally written as one movie in three acts and just split up into 3 trilogies.

Number 10 is the result of things they buggered up way back in Episode I. They couldn't very well write them out of the story now that they'd already been introduced, so they just played it out. Really, there's no justification they could come up with. The simple fact is that R2D2 and C3PO were not suppost to play any kind of important role pre-episode 4. The whole point of episode 4 was telling the story from the lowliest of characters afterall. Instead, we get one robot built by the ruler of the galaxy, and both of them having been directly involved in key events that led to the existing state of the universe. Yeah, way to be insignificant.

Yeah, understand and agree with you completely there, my problem is that GL has always said that he wrote the entire Star Wars timeline from episode 1 to 9 as one movie and then decided to break each act up into a trilogy. If that was the case then the issue of this major plot fault should never have happened, hell it shouldn't have been able to slip through Ep 1 anyway given the amount of control and lore checking they go through for catching things like this.

A lot of the other inconsistencies I can pass by because they are so minute or only someone like Comic Book Guy would catch them but this one, as soon as someone sees Ep 4 after the first 3 they have to just got WTF. The only explaination that could even be considered is Obi going senile in the cave but then that means that he really shouldn't be consistent on anything else in Ep 4 either and that's not the case.

Quote:Yeah, understand and agree with you completely there, my problem is that GL has always said that he wrote the entire Star Wars timeline from episode 1 to 9 as one movie and then decided to break each act up into a trilogy. If that was the case then the issue of this major plot fault should never have happened, hell it shouldn't have been able to slip through Ep 1 anyway given the amount of control and lore checking they go through for catching things like this.

From what I've heard (total heresay, could be wrong), the original episodes 1-3 were set several hundred years beforehand, and the movies we have now that are episodes 1-3 are nothing like what was originally planned. At any rate, it's obvious that if there was any existing storyline, it's been totally rewritten.

OK, quite a good and valid explanation (at least reading it at 5.30am :)) for the comment from Obi but it doesn't negate my comment about the inconsistency that Obi doesn't show any signs of even knowing who R2 is in ANH.

Now given the explanation that no-one pays much attention to droids, and us seeing them used as expendable peices of equipment seeming to show that to be the case, I could accept (and probably will as it's the easiest way to get past this in my mind) if we didn't see the major impact R2 has during the time of Obi and Ani on Grevious's ship in RotS with Obi constantly calling his name (even more so than he uses Ani's name it seems during this section)...hell, I think he has more interaction with R2 during this section than Luke does in all of ANH.

Now C3PO I can tend to agree more with you on the ignoring them thing since thinking back through the movies, and my figures collection case, all protocols droids have the same look with just varying shades of chrome as their colour so it would be easy to just figure C3PO for some other protocol droid given that his memory was wiped by Wedge's dad at the end of RotS and so he would have no memory of Obi or Ani either.

[EDIT]
Weird, this was in response to a message from TAANSTAAFL that disappeared by the time I finsihed typing making some good points on community property and droid ownership amongst others.

Yeah, I actually watched AotC again the other day because of the ign review for RotS stating that it seemed inconsistent that the ST's would just turn so suddenly on the Jedi after fighting alongside them and the betrayal was such a quick flip rather than an intense moment.

Watching it though there is a line where the clone creators state that the clones were built to obey any order given at any time without question..then in RotS when Emp just gives the order number to them it seems reasonable to assume that this was an order imprinted in them at the cloning stage, given how detailed the plan was and over such a period of years to fruition, and thus no inconsistency in that regard....off-topic as it is :)

Oh my god that movie kicked ass. However, to be fair, I enjoyed the first two as well. Episode One had some pretty serious issues with it [was it really necessary for Anakin to save the day?], but the series has only gone up since.

As for the OPs complaints [I'm not going to bother hiding them...if the reader has gotten this far without watching the movie its his own fault for clicking the thread]: I felt his reasoning was quite sound. He tried to stop his mother's death, and failed. Why would he be able to stop this one, especially since the visions imply he is present? That was the whole point to joining the dark side...to stop her death before/as it happens, not bring her back after the fact. Although if it came to that, he likely believed he'd have the power to do that as well. As for her burial, who knows what SOP would be. Presumably, they have the technology neccessary to assertain the status of the babies in the womb more easily than we do. So cutting her open probably wouldn't have been necessary. As to the origin of her child, I've little doubt she developed a cover story...she is a Senator, after all, in a world that apparently has no media, so I doubt too many questions are going to be asked of her. Since you only see her interact with three people in the entire movie, there's really no chance to see what this cover story would be.

I caught two crossovers, besides the big ones like C3P0: Chewie and Wedge. Apparently, Mon Mothma was also there, but I didn't catch that. Seeing as how I was under the impression she was an Ithlorian, this is no surprise. Of the three, I'd say Chewie was the only one that was a distraction that should have been left out. Sending Yoda off planet was a necessary plot move, and Kashyyk is as good a place as any. But throwing Chewbacca in, especially in such a half-assed manner, was unneccessary.

One subtle thing that I especially like is that during the lava fight scene, Vader refers to Obi Wan as his master. Just prior to that it had occured to me that the scene in A New Hope where Vader states that "the student has become the master" doesn't really make sense seeing as how Anakin had made it pretty clear he didn't think Obi Wan had anything left to teach him. Calling him master established that, in his mind at least, Obi Wan was still his superior. Then, when he actually gets defeated, that fact is made official. It all just worked for me.

One subtle thing that I especially disliked was how Anakin is returning from a long tour in the Outer Rim, and Padme isn't showing yet. Sounds to me like Vader wasn't Luke's father after all.

One last thing I need to get cleared up: I know I saw John Rhys-Davies' name on a trailer for this movie in the last day or so. However, I didn't see him in the movie itself, and IMDB would have me believe that not only was he not in the movie, he isn't in any movie that I have seen a trailer for. Am I insane? Survey says yes.

CM