I have just returned from cinema. Boy, three years of waiting and after two hours

all suddenly ended. I have mixed feelings:

 

ACTING: best of all star wars movies by far. It totally owns ep1-2 and much of OT except Return of the Jedi' Luke-Vader-Palps interaction. Hayden is really good and it's hard to believe that that's the same guy who screwed AOTC. There's greater depth in this movie than in any other SW... especially Hayden-Palps talks.

Even stupid Portman is convincing.

 

DUELS: duels are very energetic but too short and alll that blurb about "longest lightsaber duel" was a lie. And I expected that Mace death scene will be better: his duel is short and Anakin didn't really fight with him. That's not what Vaapad Weapons Master deserved - a little lightning from Palps and Mace dies. There should be a duel Ani vs Mr. Vaapad, similar to duel from ROTS video game.

 

VIOLENCE: not so scary as they were boasting. Jedi Temple massacre that we were waiting for so anxiously, is screwed TOTALLY. Anakin marches and that's all - no duels with Shaak Ti and Cin Drallig, no younglings butchering, no clones vs jedi. Suckage! Most pivotal element of the film - Jedi extermination was very short and unsatysfying.

 

SPECIAL EFFECTS: Lucas boasted that ROTS will overshadow rest of episodes but actually we don't see much of alien climate and explosive action. AOTC is much better in special effects and more dynamic. Still it's quite good.

 

CONCLUSION: movie is best of all except ROTJ. Very good spin off between OT and PT but there's one flaw: great number of interesting scenes were deleted from final version and that's why this movie isn't satysfying. So monumental story that contains fall of democracy, seduce of Anakin, birth of twins, jedi extermination and end of clone wars should be longer cause you are unable to show all these things properly in 140 minutes. Important scenes often are too short (like Mace-Palps confrontation) and several key elements of the plotline are missing. Deleted scenes contained:

 

1 Death of Quinlan Vos on Kashyyk

2 Death of Jedi Master Luminara on Kashyyk

3 Chewbacca-Yoda action in AT-ST

4 Kenobi's star destroyer arriving at Utapau

5 Monster from Utapau caves

6 Scene with Governor Tarkin

7 Dialog of Aayla Secura with commander Bly

8 Duel between Anakin and Cin Drallig and Jedi Padawan Bene

9 Scene with Mon Mothma speaking about totalitarianism

10 many Palpatine cliffhangers on Invisible Hand showing his enormous superhuman dexterity.

11 Obi Wan and Anakin swimming in rocket fuel with super battle droids

12 Many R2 gags on Invisible Hand

13 Mace greets Palpatine after crash of Invisible Hand

14 Yoda, Obi and Mace discuss the dark side and sith history

15 Bail and senators discuss upcoming dictatorship

16 Anakin informs Palpatine that Kenobi will soon have Grievous head

17 Obi-Wan chooses his lizard Boga

18 Mace contacts Yoda on Kashyyk telling him about his plan to arrest Palpatine.

19 Amidala presents to Palpatine Petition of 2000

20 Utapau Windmill

21 Obi and Ani emerging from dispenser on Invisible Hand

22 Yoda lands on Dagobah (can't actually believe that they cut so important scene)

 

Rick MacCallum said that only 5-6 scenes will be on ROTS DVD edition, so imagine how much of EIII wealth we lost!

 

Still it is a very good movie - even incomplete

Incomplete? It reminds me of KotOR2...

 

BTW do you actually know or do you suppose that all of these scenes have been filmed?

Starship fuel, Quinlan Vos and Luminara scenes weren't finished.

I see you are well informed.

Considering that you think RotJ was the best of the films, I'm going to have to take this review with a grain of salt.

 

It doesn't really matter, because my wife and I are going on a lunch date on Saturday and then we're going to watch the film. :D

I've always liked ROTJ for the lightsaber battle at the end, but Empire Strikes Back has long been my choice for the best of the original trilogy, for several reasons.

 

First, from an archetypal viewpoint, I thought it best showed a crucial point in the development of the hero, regarding the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge, especially self-knowledge, is a critical event and one that always comes with a price. Odin gained all the knowledge in the world by hanging from Yggdrasil, but it cost him an eye. Oedipus gained the knowledge of what he had done to his father (and with his mother), and that led to the loss of his eyesight as well, among other things. Knowledge has a price, but acquiring it is inevitable in the development of the hero. This is true in many myths, and you can probably think of others.

 

In Empire, you see Luke acquiring knowledge of where he came from (i.e. Vader), the price being the loss of his hand (symbolic on a couple of levels), and how this colors his development as a character. Yes, despite the wooden dialogue, we actually see character development. Luke no longer whines about picking up power converters, and I found this refreshing.

 

Another reason I like Empire better is that it seemed more in line with life as we know it. No, I don't mean lightsabers and all that jazz. I mean that the ends of Episode IV and ROTJ have these great huge explosions of Death Stars, celebration, complete triumph. I don't know about you guys, but to me life is much more like what happens in Empire. You don't often get the explosion and complete triumph at the end. You don't get closure. Maybe I am pessimistic, but I believe 90% of life is reacting to the stuff that gets thrown at you, and some of it really sucks. Sometimes you learn stuff like Darth Vader is your father, and your hand gets cut off, and your best friend is frozen in carbonite. The best part of Empire, though, is at the end when Luke and Leia are arm-in-arm on the ship and staring into the vastness of space. Despite all the bad stuff that has happened, there is always hope.

 

But really, the important thing to remember is that Empire lacked

1) Jawas

2) Ewoks

3) Gungans

 

The other stuff I mentioned? Just gravy.

 

Cheers,

MadMalachi

Please feel free to add your impressions and ideas in the exisiting thread in the appropriate forum

 

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=34265