Revenge of the Sith question (Yes, there will be spoilers)

Ok, my friend and I had a discussion about a plotline in Revenge of the Sith. Our disagreement was about Anakin's visions of Padme dying in childbirth.

My thoughts are this - Palpatine/Sidious, using the powers of the dark side projected those visions on to Anakin so he would freak out and think that Padme was going to die. Getting Anakin in this awkward position of being a Jedi Knight, illegally married and now with a pregnant wife, would make it easier for ANakin to turn to Palpatine/Sidious for help. Then Palpatine/Sidious mentions that the dark side has been used to save others and that he, Palpatine/Sidious, could teach Anakin how to save Padme. In a nutshell - Padme wasn't ever a threat to die, it was just something created and used by Palpatine/Sidious in order to convert Anakin finally over to the darkside.

My friend disagreed though - he felt that the visions that Anakin had of Padme's death were his own and that once Palpatine/Sidious found out about it used those visions to his advantage to sway Anakin over to the dark side.

Discuss!

I think her death was inevitable, but Anakin made it his quest to try and stop it, one that eventually led to his turn to evil. I guess the moral is that, no matter how hard we try to stop it, bad things happen to the people we love, and it's one unpleasantry of life we have to accept. Vader couldn't.

EDIT- that is an interesting theory, LS.

Ep. I: :puke: :puke: :puke:
Ep. II: :puke: :nuke: :puke:
Ep. III: :puke: :puke: :nuke: :puke:

Oh and I think Palp was sending him the visions, another idiotic turn in a horrific prequel.

poor poor humanity.

david

:eyes:

I'm a whale biologist!



Edited out some infamitory stuff, that doesn't really belong here.

david

"I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid"

is that prenatal and post-natal health care in teh Star Wars universe appears to be provided by the same HMO that provides dental care to the Sith.

Even in the days before ultrasound, folks knew when they were pregnant with twins.

(Fashion note: Mini-skirts are NOT the best apparel for pregnant women, epsecially late-term pregnant women.)

We're not dealing with the US in the 1600 but some very advance technology that probably has good health and OB/GYN care. And also, in the beginning of the movie, when Anakin & Padme first unite, she mentioned he had been away for awhile

your friend.

The visions were his (since he WAS going over to the dark side). The "good" senator Fris....er...Palpatine just used it to his advantage.

To me it's sort of a to-keep-it-from-happening-you-do-that-but-that-causes-it-to-happen kind of thing.

Remember from Episode Two where he was having the same visions of his mother?

:puke:

david

...could some of us who did please have a discussion without the negative comments. I try to have the same courtesy when I see others post about movies, books or music that I know I don't like!

Okay, okay, I'll play nice.

Incidentally I think Ep II was the best of the three. The highs were pretty good (Bobba Fett)

david

I think Lucas could go back to both Phanton & Clone and tighten up both of those movies and try a re-release. Phanton obviously needs Jar-Jar removed as much as possible and Clone just needs that romance cleaned up.

Other than that, I & II were both pretty decent movies!

You'd enjoy them, I think. They were both way too conservative, IMO, in their cuts, but made Ep I almost (IMO) watchable.

Personally, not to hijack the thread anymore, I think there was about 45 minutes worth of really great footage in Ep I, 45 or so in Ep II and maybe 60 minutes in Ep III. I think Lucas could have put those three together and made one really kick-ass movie. I'm hyper critical though, I just loved Star Wars so much that I can't stand to see the original triliogy's legacy sullied.

david

But as someone who enjoys well-acted movies - outside of Alec Guiness and Ian Diarmid, there wasn't a whole lot of great acting in these movies, in fact some of the dialogue was cheesy at best. But the orignal Star Wars had limited technology for the special effects whereas the newer ones had no limits on technology and an overload of special affects.

But I still think you have 3 movies there.

With Phantom you need to cut about 20 minutes of Jar-Jar and then get different voices for Watto (yes, the Jewish accent on the junkyard trader was almost borderline racist!).

Clone is tougher because when it was good, it was really good but when it was bad it was just purely unwatchable. And even though Lucas cut back immensely on Jar-Jar (btw, it was Jar-Jar that destroyed the Jedi since Jar-Jar was the one that brought Palpatine's nomination to the senate floor) but then he built the worst romance between Anakin and Padme. I've seen Hayden Christiansen in other movies and the guy has skills, but you can only do so much with a poor script. Plus they wanted Hayden to taken on characteristics that started with Jake Lloyd (the young Anakin in Phanton) but instead they should have just let Hayden make Anakin his own.

But there isn't much I'd change about Revenge. I've enjoyed it and I'll see it again. And Revenge now makes me want to purchase Phantom & Clone, which I had refused to do because of how bad those 2 movies got.

out - I'm that much of an addict, and I thought hat TPM, in partucular, sucked ass out loud! But still I bought the DVD almost immediately.

As far as editing, I think most of the stuff in TPM could have gone, particularly the 45 minutes relating to the pod race, anything having to do with Jar-Jar, anything having to do with Anakin's mother, anything having to do with that flying guy with the Jewish accent and anything having to do with huge fish. The real downfall of TPM, though, was the acting and the dialogue. If you can't get Sam Jackson to deal a good line, you can't direct a film - period. The kid was HORIFFIC and his mother was worse.

In AotC, I liked the Clones plot line and the Bobba Fett stuff, but I'd trash the silly jedi gladiator match, the video game advertisement in the droid making facility, all the romance stuff, and a bunch of other stuff I've blocked out.

Sith had some good stuff, but as you mentioned, it was unfettered visually and it just got soooooo much CGI slathered all over it that it was rediculous. Personally, I think that the limitations that Lucas had in Star Wars was probably what made it a great film - you're right though, that some of the acting there was horrible, and with Lucas directing, what can you expect? Hammill and many of the smaller parts were pretty weak, but, in addition to Peter Cushing and Alec Guiness (who really carried the film), I think that Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford did well, and C3PO and R2D2 were both interesting characters as well.

I think the whole cast grew up well and got more skilled in the next two films.

And didn't we *all* think that Bobba Fett was instrumental in the destruction of the jedi? What happened to that????

david

So basically it was both Jar-Jar and Bobba's fault.

I forgot about Peter Cushings - he was great too and I think at the very end of Sith when Vadar was looking at the building of the Death Star there was a guy next to him that had the same creepy cheekbone structures that Peter Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin had:



I thought the pod race was well done and fit into the plot. The Pod race freed Anakin and his mother from Watto and also proved that Anakin was Jedi material since the course was difficult to manuever

technically they were Bobba's brothers - and I guess his fathers too! Weird.

Anyway, no I had thought that the mythology included Bobba actually helping Vader hunt down all the jedi over an extended period of time. Maybe that was just a weird myth that grew out of fan fiction or something.

I don't remember the scene you mention in Sith with a possible Tarkin, but I bet you're right and that's what they intended. That's pretty cool.

I hated the pod race and thought it was a gratuitous use of special effects and really low humor. But I was most disturbed because I felt there was a lot of serious ground to cover in TPM and Lucas was dorking around for 1/3 of the movie on something that didn't need to be there.

I think it's mostly just wishing for something more serious and concrete for the past 20 years.

david

He looks like Tarkin but with jet black hair (Tarkin was gray haired in Hope). The only reason I thought of Tarkin was because this guy standing next to Vadar at the end of Sith had really pronounced cheekbones and that was a trademark of Peter Cushings.

Palpatine had known about the visions. Since he was also the Sith Lord Sidious, he could easily use the force in a dark way to create similiar visions that would make Anakin think that Padme could die. And remember, Anakin didn't have anyone he could turn to since it was illegal for Jedi's to marry

s and then all of a sudden the Emperor starts mentioning them and his ability to forestall death?

Plus why would he have the ability to see Anakin's visions? I'm of the belief that he was sending them. Either that or maybe he put a camera in Anakin's room and overheard him telling her about the visions. I doubt he had the ability to eavesdrop on the visions himself.

david

he was seeing the future, but he didn't see that he was the cause of her death. He saw the death but not the cause, so....when he tried to prevent it, he was only working to make sure that it happened.

he turned to the dark side to save padme.
his turning to the dark side is what killed padme.

that's just my opinion and all that.

If you honor what they fight for, yes.

How close Luke was to the Dark side...

david

he couLd have saved her.

with the force.

He did make mention of how his mentor (Plagius) could create life using the force.

before his master was killed.

You gotta figure that Plagius was Sidius's master. The question is whether it was Plagius or Sidius who caused the Immaculate Conception, and why the hell did they do it? What was so special about some random slave on Tatooine?

david

...with the remoteness of the Planet. In Phantom, Qui-Jong even said that Tatootine was outside the realm of where they look for Jedis. Perhaps Sidious/Plagius picked someone from Tatooine in hopes that the Jedi would not get ahold of him and that they could train him themselves as a Sith.

I'm sad to see the Star Wars triology end but geez, there is so much more that they could do with this whole storyline that I keep hoping Lucas (or someone) does more. And no, I don't read the books

to continue the story. (I read this in Entertainment Weekly, I think).

He also has said ***HOORAY***

:party:

:party:

:party:

that by 2007 (I *THINK*) he wants to release the three Star Wars movies and the three prequels in 3-D

Now THAT would be uber cool.

Lucas has such a cool way of advancing technology by using the phenomenon of his films. Will this be the first time a non-3D movie was made 3D? I can't think of any others. What a huge undertaking that'll be.

Back to the topic, though:

Why would Sith be so interested in making a new pupil. Either Sidius or Plaguis, you would think wouldn't want a new potential Sith running around, as it means one of them has to die.

david

My assumption is that Anakin's power in the force was greater than any other Sith out there. And although Siths always come in pairs, I would assume there are more than 2 Siths in the world at any given time. I mean, we had Sidious, Dooku and Grevious all in this movie (and eventually Vadar)

In TPM Yoda and Sam Jackson say there are always only two - a Servant and a master. In TPM it was Sidius and Darth Maul, in AotC it was Sidius and Dooku, in RotS, it was, so far as I know, Dooku and Anakin. But never a new pupil until the last one was dead.

I could be wrong, though. I never really cared for the 2 thing anyway.

david

Dooku had him trained in the Jedi arts so he could use lightsabers in combat, but he was not a Jedi nor a Sith.

After all, there ware some organic components to the "Robo-slicer-dicer"

so to be honest, I am confused. I mean you're right about there only being 2, but could there be several sets of 2 out there or are we only allowed 2 Sith Lords at a time.

And remember in Empire/Jedi, Vadar said he could turn Luke to the Dark Side but nothing was ever mentioned that Sidious was going to die. (Yes, Vadar did kill him but only because he finally found the good in himself)

He wanted Luke to destroy the Emperor so they could rule the galaxy together. Palpatine wanted Luke to destroy Vader, because Vader, who was now more machine than man, was no longer a perfect specimen.

It makes perfect sense, unless their secrets are so secret that they don't want them to get out. But I can't imagine some pupils just deciding to take off and get their own pupil rather than killing their master.

As far as Luke/Vader/Sidus - In Empire when Vader is talking to Luke, he does say that Luke can destroy the Emperor - he has forseen this, and then they will rule the galaxy as father and son.

In Jedi the Emperor does try to coerce Luke to kill Vader "...and take your father's place at my side."

So I don't think in any scenario there were likely to be 3 of them.

Still, I guess Vader and Luke coulda started up a new Sith line on their own.

david

Why would Anakin believe Palpatine on this line of crap when he had good and honorable friends who opposed Palpatine. Do you, when you have loyal friends who have helped you and saved your life a few times over the years, just start listening to someone else who wants these same friends dead? I thought this whole thing was really lame

....but remember in the opening dialogue and even mentioned in the movie, Palpatine held on to his position long after his term was overwith (guess the Republic has term limits). So I guess the people who once trusted him were basically getting fedup with the war and was ready to get the guy out of there.

Anakin resented the Jedi's a lot. He resented that he didn't have as much power as he thought he should have.

He was tempted by the dark side for the reason that he thought Padme would die and that Palpatine would save her, but also by the fact that Palpatine would offer him power.


In the end I think Anakin was just a cocky punk, who was super spoiled. He wanted what he wanted. He wanted Padme and he wanted power.

Two things he couldn't have as a Jedi.

...but he wasn't getting the recognition for it. LIke when Palpatine had Anakin put on the Jedi Council but the Council refused to grant him the title of 'Master'

and by having less training, he was losing out on the wisdom that comes with training and working, and thus he was ripe for the Dark Side - the quick and easy route.

david

strikes me even as the little kid 2 episodes back and then the last and this episode.

Anakin heard what he wanted to hear and ignored the rest.

He was probably very attracted to Palpatine's power. Shows that he really was primed for a fall, as he cozied up to power rather than his (mostly) honorable friends.

david

It's over, I have the high ground

Visions of Padme's death triggered Anakin's fall to the Dark Side, and this fall actually caused Padme's death.