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<- Back to 2005.05.21.2.


-- Consistency --

The new films connect to the early ones pretty well, methinks.
Most things are consistent, and most inconsistencies can be
explained away.

But when Luke goes to Yoda for Jedi training, Yoda is reluctant.
The Yoda of Episode 3, however, is waiting anxiously for the
chance to revive the order.

-- Comparing force skill --

It seems the outcome of single fight doesn't give a great picture
of relative force abilities.  Factors like global currents in the
force, having a bad day, and random events in the vicinity of the
fight all seem significant.

I thought Grievous sucked.  YAAC (Yet Another Animated
Character), the cough, his inextricable restraint from using his
force powers in the first face-off, his lame-ass spinning light
sabers, and then his move away again from force skills/weapons in
the second half of the second face-off.

The actor playing Dooku is just too old to do a convincing job.
All of his fight scenes are done with a double, so they can't
show his face.  And close up, he looks like he's exhausted from
shooting.

Anakin vs. Obi Wan was the best fight of the movie, I think, but
I don't think any of the fights in any of the movies are on par
with those in Episode 1.

Windu seemed to have better luck against Sideous than Yoda.  I
can think of two (not mutually exclusive) explanations:

() Sideous had become stronger by the time Yoda faced him.  The
tide of the force was starting to turn, he had a new apprentice,
etc.

() Sideous was faking weakness to get Anakin to kill Windu, thus
furthering the latter's collapse to the Dark Side.

-- Anakin's oath to Sideous --

He had just killed one of the top Jedi, though he knew Sideous
was Sith.  That's pretty bad -- enough to cause him to change
sides, I think.  He'd made up his mind he wanted to learn the
dark techniques, and he knew he had to apprentice himself to
Sideous to do it.  As a Jedi, he was used to being an apprentice,
so the kneeling bit wasn't foreign to him.  He was just switching
teams.

I actually thought the dialog between Sideous and Anakin was
good.  Anakin's later bad faith about the nature of his actions
in his dialog with Padme was less satisfying, but shows the kind
of cognitive dissonance often experienced by people in his
position -- the Milgram shock experiments, for example.

In general, it's hard to make tragic things happen to reasonable
characters.  Anakin has to go from a cute little boy to Darth
Vader in three movies.  Even Shakespeare's tragedy is often
unbelievable -- Othello, for example.  MacBeth is better.  Clint
Eastwood's Unforgiven is one of the most convincing tragedies
I've seen.

Sideous may be lying when he tells Vader, "It seems that in your
anger, you killed her", but this statement is not untrue.  That's
good irony.


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                                                 clumma@gmail.com