the official website of jon madsen - everything is everything

flashback:

21 May 2000

Right now I can live without affection, but I'll see how I feel after the sun goes down.

Somehow, I was the last person in North America to see Episode III of Star Wars. Even all the people who hate Star Wars were dragged to it on Friday. At church a very pivotal plot point was revealed to me (that Anakin becomes Darth Vader (... I guess I should have seen that one coming)). The cycle is complete. A few hours ago, I was but the learner, but now I am the master... and I only found THREE things seriously wrong with the plot!

So anyway, a while back I posted what I felt would be the storyline of Revenge of the Sith. I have it archived on the site here (read it and realize how close I was!).

I thought I did pretty well. I'm most proud of my predictions that...

(***spoilers!!!***)

...Anakin kills Count Dooku as a step in continuing his path to the dark side, Anakin's feelings for Padme are used to manipulate him, C3-PO's memory was erased and finally that Bail Organa and Padme begin the seeds of a rebellion in the senate. As I surmised, Lucas threw a few morsels into the plot to make it a bit more interesting than I could guess. I liked the conflict created by Anakin joining the dark side in order to save the woman he loves (such sacrifice reminded me as a Mormon of some of the reasons they tell us not to date outside the faith). I knew the film would be dark, but after seeing Episode II, I felt that Anakin was already gone and there wouldn't be much conflict left to push him over. The only thing my friend Joe told about the movie before I saw it was that even though we know Anakin is going to succomb, we still are pulling for him. Lucas made Anakin more humble, human and tragic which makes for good watchin'. Also, the reason this movie is better than the other two prequels is because there was hardly any Tatooine, officially the "lamest planet in the galaxy."

Now on to some of the story elements I would have changed. Okay, these things aren't seriously wrong, but they are for a nitpicker like me. To set things straight, I never really considered myself a Star Wars geek. I was born the year the first one came out, so I've just sort of grown up with it. I never made it into anything other than movies. I didn't read the books or study any of the extracurricular Star Wars material, so I don't know timelines, alien races, technical specs and other minutiae handled by the nerds waiting in line Wednesday night. All I know are the movies. I know the movies hard. One summer I watched the original every day. The Empire Strikes Back is my second favorite movie of all time. Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in the theater more than once. I don't know the culture, but I know the movies, so here are my bickerings with the plot:

***more spoilers!!!***

The addition of Chewbacca was a nice gesture to the fans, but unnecessary, even with the heavy inclusion of the wookies. He was set up as an honorable warrior who believed in fighting for democracy. in the later movies he's Han Solo's yatch who cares too much about winning and shadows Solo's mercenary attitude. Although Chewie is totally b.a., his character in Episode III has too much disparity from his character in the original trilogy.

Going back to the original three movies, we never heard from Darth Vader or the Emperor of their wariness of Yoda. Toward the end of Revenge of the Sith, the Emperor had an intense battle with Yoda and was quite aware that Yoda escaped. For some reason, the Emperor is never concerned with this through the rest of the series. Even stranger, in my opinion, is that Vader always assumes that Obi-Wan trained Luke as a Jedi even though Darth Vader himself killed Obi-Wan before Luke began his training. YES, I know this is nitpicky and Yoda's status doesn't need to be mentioned by Palpatine and Vader. BUT, I think Lucas missed a great opportunity to detail how Yoda managed to make the dark side think he was gone.

The most disturbing hole I found in the movie was the actual death of Padme. Perhaps Lucas realized that killing her would be necessary for the complete transformation of Darth Vader, but as it happens, according to the other movies, Padme doesn't die. In Return of the Jedi, Luke asks Leia if she remembers her mother, her real mother. Leia responds that she does remember. Her mother was very young and beautiful, but sad. Lucas thought ahead when he made Return of the Jedi. I have no doubt that Leia was describing the woman once married to Anakin Skywalker, but it is very unlikely that Leia remembered her as an infant. Even though the guy thought ahead, in hindsight he needed to kill Padme off earlier to ensure that Anakin would stay dark. I feel he could have worked the "facts" a little better.

Also, Obi-Wan Kenobi missed a great opportunity for a good line. At the end, when he gets into the ship with a delirious Padme, she asks him, "How is Anakin? Is he alright?" Obi-Wan didn't say anything, but he should have said, "He's fine, except that I cut off all his limbs and set him on fire." Anyway, I thought it would have ranked right up there with Han Solo's "I know" in humorous Star Wars lines.

Has anyone played the video game called Star Wars Battlefront? The Wookie homeworld appears in the game and it looks like they took it directly from the game and put it in the movie. It's like they filmed a bunch of kids playing the Wookie level. Serious. It looks exactly the same.

There were a few more "little things" I liked (I'm all about the little things). It was nice to see Obi-Wan finally pulling out the blaster. One thing we learned from the original trilogy is that Han Solo was partially right when he said that "there's nothing like a good blaster at your side." Because Obi-Wan refuted Han in that philosophy, it was especially nice to see the snobby jedi actually putting the primitive weapon to good use. Toward the end there were many fun "foreshadowings" to future events: the appearance of the death star, characters like a young Grand Moff Tarkin and the father of Wedge Antilles, Leia Organa's ambassador ship, uniforms of the Empire and the Imperial ship designs of star destroyers and TIE fighters. None of the other movies "spoiled" the "next" movie quite so much. This was only cool because it tied the circle up. A year from now I might actually watch all six movies back-to-back to realize the whole story. I think, however, that we were meant to see these films in the order they were presented. The glances of Episode IV images are to bookend the series. They're not necessarily needed explain what's going on.

One more major thing I liked: the good guys finally see that Palpatine played both sides. Funnily enough, last month I read the book Angels and Demons in order to study up on the process of electing a new pope. Both works brought to my mind a very disturbing trend in society today, which is to invent enemies. Armies don't fight when there is no threat. Enemies are needed for powermongers. It's classic misdirection.

Anyway, really good. The saga that began the year I was born has finally come to an end. Maybe now I can get a life.

Oh, and I still like models and stop-motion animation more than computer generated images... hard.

(23may05)