I found it very accurate, even with the wierd voice, one of the parts that always confused me was the 'beyond death' thing, in Ep4, when Vader kills Obi-Wan, it's quite apparent that the outcome wasn't expected, especially if you consider the comment 'If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine', that's furthered by the fact that iirc Obi Wan isn't told that his own master has found a way back until after Anakins betrayal. Besides, and no offence to any Catholics here, but the way Vader got forgiven for everything he did simply by saying sorry before he died did remind me a lot of that particular religion, always struck me as the weakest point of the original movies.
It seemed to me more that Vader achieved redemption through
dying, which is pretty much the reverse of Christianity (he dies for his own sins rather than doing it vicariously through a proxy), and in my opinion, far more logical. Keep in mind that it's only Luke who forgave him. As far as everyone else is concerned, he was still a monster, mass murderer, and war criminal and nothing will ever change that.
I suppose for me, the difference is that Vader is the cause of everything he undid, yes he saved the Galaxy after several years under the tyranny of an Emperor that his direct actions caused to be put in power anyway, had he not decapitated Windu, there would have been no Empire.
Yeah, that's true. I'd like to point out though that by helping to found the Empire, he saved the galaxy in a profound way--really he saved all of Star Wars from sucking as much as the prequels. Sure it's sort of retroactive salvation as the actually good movies his actions set up had already been made, but imagine if GL decided that having Anakin go bad was "too dark" and instead remade the original trilogy as a series of buddy cop movies featuring Windu and Skywalker. I think we all know deep down that something like this will actually happen sooner or later.
Christensen: The Trade Federation is hiding something master, I can sense it! Just give me my lightsaber back and I'll find the proof, I promise.
Jackson: You're a loose laser cannon Skywalker. If you don't play by the code, I'll bust you down to Padawan so hard your midichlorians will feel it.
Christensen: Hear me, master. I've had another vague premonition and now we have to run off to a pointless action set piece. I'm sure we'll find the droids we're looking for this time!
Jackson: ****, I'm three weeks from retirement mother****er. I have a bad feeling about this.
I cannot think of two actors who are less appropriate for a Star Wars movie than Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson. You can like Jackson's "mutha****a" schtick if you must, but in Star Wars he had all the presence, gravitas, and acting talent of a two-by-four. As for Christensen, he doesn't even have a history of being a decent actor, he just blows. The last time I watched Episode III I spent most of it waiting for Ian McDiarmid to appear on the set again. Now
there is a good actor. He can do the card-carrying EEEEEEEEVIL villain persona with so much conviction that you can't help but buy it.
Okay, for example he mentions that the droid in the intro shouldn't know that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are Jedi. Both of them are wearing widely recognizable Jedi apparel. And there's the thing with "Jedi Knight". It doesn't refer to the title of Jedi Knight only, but to Jedi overall, so there's nothing wrong with the opening crawl.
The "widely recognizable Jedi apparel" is Tattooinian traditional clothing. In Episode IV
everyone on the whole goddamn planet dresses like that. Obi-Wan was in
hiding, from the context of that movie he wore the robes to blend in because
wearing a Jedi uniform would make him easy to spot and get his ass killed in a New York minute. But then Lucas forgets all about that (early-onset Alzheimer's? That might explain a lot) and turns the Bedouin-like costumes worn by Tattooinian peasants (and which make good sense on a world like Tattooine) into the
official uniform of the Jedi Order based halfway across the galaxy. That is stupid and it was a stupid decision to do that.
I particularly liked his dissection of the lightsaber battles... how you could actually follow the duels in the original trilogy, how they were a reflection of the people that were fighting them, their states of mind--not a huge overly choreographed light show.
I think a lot could be done if the emotional impact and humanity of the OT duels could be combined with the more sophisticated swordfighting techniques of the PT (only less acrobatic and drawn-out and more brutal and direct, with Jedi striking at each other instead of each other's blades, kind of like like...
a real swordfight). They had better stuntmen, they had martial arts experts, and they still couldn't outdo Episode IV with two old men swinging sticks around.
For some reason I find Episode II worse than Episode I. Episode I is more childish (instead of being child-friendly like the OT, it was outright done with a childlike mindset) and contrived (podracing. Stupid, stupid, stupid.), but Episode II had even less sense of storytelling and pacing. Instead of a story you get a whole bunch of scenes tacked together with little sense that there's any sort of unfolding narrative. Terrist attack! Worms! A rehash of the podracing scene with flying cars! A diner! A library! Rain! Grays! Clones! An obvious ripoff of Boba Fett with a half-assed rationalization! Jedi Council! Dogfights! Attention deficit disorder! How many different set pieces can we cram into this movie before the audience walks out?
