12/19/2013

And Finally...Revenge of the Plot Device

We saw Revenge of the Sith last night.I liked it better than I anticipated, mainly because I discovered to my surprise that Anikin/Vader had not in fact turned downright evil right away. even after he was deformed and locked inside the iconic Vader suit, he was still at first just the Anikin who had joined the dark side only because he thought Sidious was going to tell him how to make Padme immortal. I also appreciate that this movie explained why Luke and Leia are known by different last names and come from different home planets.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that up until the moment when he refused to kill Sidious, Anikin was still doing everytrhing the Jedis told him even as he got more and more frustrated at them. Even when he massacred all the Padawans he was doing it under the power of Sith hypnosis more than because he wanted to. So long story short I can see why some people like him for his tragic storyline. And anyway, episode six proves that he never entirely lost that spark of goodness he had from the beginning, even after living as the Empire's most dangerous enforcer for 20 years.
But enough about Anikin, except that his scenes alone with Padme still involved the most generic responses they could think of and went on for more than longer than we were willing to accept.
I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more, but I feel that "order 66" the executive order to assassinate all the Jedi, just came straight out of, well, antimatter, because there were exactly zero scenes in either of the two movies that showed the Chancellor/ Lord Sidious installing this order into the clones' programming, either directly or by insinuation. In which case it would be logical to assume at first glance that the clones still think Palpatine is only the leader of the Senate and a supporter of the Jedi by association and so why in the galaxy would he suddenly want them all killed. Coming with no foreshadowing or anything similar, order 66 ranks as one of the biggest and most baffling plot devices I've ever seen, although I will concede that the sequence that came out of it is in my opinion probably one of the great tragic sequences in modern movies.
Other weird things that happened were for instance when Anikin caught fire, sure he was stuck next to a lavabed, but I don't remember seeing any lava get on him and then a second later he was covered in perfectly normal fire. What did the air suddenly spontaneously combust? Since I did not see any logical progression, I decided that the explanation was that he got so angry he couldn't hold it anymore and literally set himself on fire through the power of the force misdirected, The other thing was that there was far too much chopping off of hands. It seemed to happen to everyone and it reached the point where it was ridiculous instead of surprising.


2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear you enjoyed Revenge of Sith for the most part! I agree with you on the majority of your thoughts on the movie.

    That is a good theory as to why burst into flames, probably the best I have heard.

    In response to the lack of a scene that showed Sidious programming Order 66. It can be inferred that Count Dooku probably ordered the Kaminoans (Cloners) to install that contingency order since he was the one that ordered the Clones in the first place. Outside of the movies

    For the majority of the audience that have not really analyzed the previous movies knowing about Order 66, it is an understandable that it would be confusing, because I was at first as well.

    There are actually 150 contingency orders programmed into the Clones, but that is explained in the Expanded Universe.

    Hopefully I did not bore you too much with my Star Wars geekness.

    -James

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    1. Thanks for that explanation. I didn't think of the possibility that it was programmed into them from the beginning. In that case of course their "training" would commit them to doing it no matter who said it. But it stlll stands in my opinion as coming from nowhere.

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