I am going to be interviewed on Winnipeg’s ‘Godtalk‘ radio show tomorrow night — this will be my second appearance, following one on April 24 — and the topic will be Revenge of the Sith, so of course I had to watch it a second time this afternoon. Voici my observations, questions, and other second impressions.
1. First, before I went, I checked yesterday’s box-office figures and discovered that, if the estimates are correct, the Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard was just a hair ahead of this film; what’s more, given how cartoons sometimes do a higher percentage of their weekend business on Saturdays, Madagascar might also have an outside chance of inching past Sith.
If these estimates hold, then Episode III would become the only Star Wars film that was #1 at the box office for just one week. Episode II held the #1 spot quite comfortably for two weeks in 2002, and Episode I was #1 for three weeks in 1999, and presumably none of these films compares to the staying power of the original trilogy. (Box Office Mojo doesn’t have figures for any year earlier than 1982, but in 1983, Episode VI was #1 for six of its first seven weeks, its grip on the top spot interrupted only by Superman III, of all things, during its fourth week.)
And while Episode III did break all sorts of records on its opening day, it merely tied the record for fastest $100 million that was set by Spider-Man (2002) and tied by The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and it just barely tied the record for fastest $200 million that was set by Spider-Man 2 (2004) — which, incidentally, made less money than Spider-Man when all was said and done.
So it remains to be seen just how good a trajectory Episode III will have at the box office. I note that, when figures are adjusted for inflation, Box Office Mojo estimates Episode II made the equivalent of $342.2 million in today’s dollars, which makes it #80 on the all-time list. I suppose it is possible that Episode III will match this, but I highly doubt it will come anywhere close to Episode I, which made the equivalent of $542.9 million and ranks #19 on the all-time list. (Episodes IV, V and VI were released decades ago and rank #2, #12 and #14, respectively.)
2. Turning to the film itself, I noted a few interesting visual motifs, a few of which I had noticed before but never commented on verbally. I don’t think any of these were quite so prominent in the other films, so make what you will of their significance here.
One, the sunset imagery, which of course fits with the galaxy’s going over to the Dark Side. The film ends with the Lars couple looking at Tatooine’s sunset, just as Luke will do in Episode IV. But there are also sunset scenes on Coruscant and on the lava planet, where Anakin broods and sheds a tear over what he has become.
Two, the exploding windows and gusts of wind. Technically, this happens twice — once when General Grievous escapes from his ship in Coruscant’s atmosphere, and again during the duel between Palpatine and Mace Windu — but there is also a hint of this in the scene where Anakin destroys the shield generator on Grievous’s ship, thus forcing the docking bay’s blast doors to slam shut.
Three, the horizontal becoming vertical. This happens twice, once when Grievous’s ship falls into Coruscant’s atmosphere, and again when Anakin and Obi-Wan are fighting on the lava planet and the rig or bridge they’re standing on, cut off from the main station by a blob of molten rock, tilts and falls into the lava flow.
Four, heroes hiding in small cramped spaces. This happens when Yoda gets inside his teeny, tiny ship on Kashyyyk, and again when Obi-Wan stows away on Amidala’s ship.
3. I don’t have any quibble with Chewbacca’s Tarzan yell in Episode III, since he already did that during the Battle of Endor in Episode VI. But I was a bit surprised to hear what sounded like a Tusken Raider’s roar on the soundtrack when Palpatine reminds Anakin of his incident with the Sand People in Episode II.
4. The one time we get a good look at Anakin’s mechanical arm — apart from the scenes of his immolation and reconstruction — is when he is in bed, half-naked, with Amidala.
I was reminded of a remark that Irvin Kershner once made, about how the final scene of Episode V, with Luke’s much more lifelike mechanical hand being poked and tested by a droid, was put there specifically to show that Luke still had the sort of feeling that he would need if he were ever to make love to a woman.
I found myself wondering what Anakin has felt, the past few years, with his seemingly inferior prosthetic limb.
5. Why does the Emperor appear in his Darth Sidious garb when he gives “Order 66” to the cloned troopers? Would they not have expected their orders to come from Chancellor Palpatine?
6. For that matter, at what point between Episodes II and III do the Jedi find out that Count Dooku is a Sith lord?
My recollection is that, in Episode II, as far as the Jedi knew, Dooku was just a renegade Jedi who solicited Obi-Wan’s help to defeat the Sith. Evidently the Jedi have learned major secrets between the films, but the new film never spells out exactly what the Jedi have done with this new knowledge.
Let’s put it this way. The Jedi knew about Darth Maul (whoever he was) by the end of Episode I, and they learned about Darth Tyrannus (i.e. Dooku) some time after Episode II, and they knew that Tyrannus had already told them about yet another Sith lord controlling the Senate. Did they believe Dooku himself was this mastermind? I doubt it, since he was running the Separatists. Who, then, did they suspect? Or did they think Dooku had just made that story up? Even if they did, surely they should have known that he had either a Sith master or a Sith apprentice? In which case, have they been looking for that other person, and if so, where?
Or let’s put it this way. In Episode II, Dooku tells the Jedi that he is waging his Separatist rebellion because the Sith have gained control of the Senate. By the beginning of Episode III, the Jedi have figured out that the Sith are actually running the Separatist movement itself, through Dooku. Have they figured out that the Sith are running both sides of this show? Or have they given up looking for the Sith lord running the Republic because they assume the Sith are entirely with the Separatists?
7. Yeah, what is up with that scene where Palpatine tells Anakin all about how Darth Plagueis — evidently Palpatine’s former master — had the ability to manipulate the midichlorians so that they could “create life”? Not just prolong it, but create it?
Perhaps he is confirming what many fans have suspected ever since Episode I, which revealed (a) that Anakin has no biological father and (b) that the Force is channeled through midichlorians — a scientifically testable, and therefore manipulable, lifeform in the blood. (Of course, as my wife loves to point out, if midichlorians are a scientifically demonstrable fact, then why is belief in the Force a matter of “faith” in the original trilogy? Why does Han Solo relegate the Force to “hokey religions”? And so on.)
Perhaps Palpatine is confirming that the Sith somehow “created” Anakin. It sounds outlandish — and it has been asked why the Sith would do this on some backwater world — but, well, Tatooine is very close to Palpatine’s homeworld of Naboo, a point that is emphasized in both Episodes I and II.
8. Interesting to see how Yoda describes Anakin as “twisted” to coerce Obi-Wan into killing him, just as Obi-Wan will do when he tries to coerce Luke into killing Anakin in Episode VI.
Note, BTW, how Obi-Wan fails to kill Anakin. We can only wonder how he must have banged his head against the wall over the years, as Darth Vader wreaked havoc hither and yon. I imagine it would also be incredibly disappointing to watch these episodes in numerical order, and to go from the dazzling duel over the lava stream in Episode III to the rather timid clash of sabres in Episode IV. “Your powers are weak, old man.” Yeah, well, yours aren’t much to brag about any more either, now, are they, Darth.
And come to think of it, if Obi-Wan wants Vader dead so badly in the original trilogy, why does he not try all that hard to kill him in Episode IV? Why does he look at Luke, smile mysteriously, and raise his arms and let Vader kill him, just like that?
9. I am impressed, once again, by how lame it is that, when the time finally comes for this film to show us how Darth Vader “helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights,” all it shows (and tells) is Anakin killing a bunch of children.
This point is made at least three times: (1) when Anakin enters the room full of younglings (the blaster sounds in the distance indicate that he is letting the stormtroopers kill the grown-ups in the Jedi temple, just as they are doing everywhere else in the galaxy), (2) when Obi-Wan and Yoda notice that one body — and it happens to be a youngling’s body — has a lightsabre wound and not a blaster wound, and (3) when Obi-Wan tells Amidala about the security camera footage he has seen of Anakin killing younglings.
Meanwhile, all the Jedi Masters are killed by a bunch of cloned stormtroopers. What wimps.
10. I did look closely this time to see if Obi-Wan picks up Anakin’s lightsabre at the end of their duel, which is presumably the same sabre he will later give Luke in Episode IV. Sure enough, he does; in a medium or quasi-wide shot, we see Obi-Wan hang his own sabre on his belt, and then there is a very tight close-up of his hand plucking Anakin’s sabre up from the ground.
Remember, at this point, Anakin knows his wife is pregnant but he has no idea whether she is carrying a boy or a girl (or, for that matter, whether she is carrying one child or two). And Obi-Wan himself has only just discovered that Anakin is the father of those children, and he doesn’t exactly have time to discuss the matter with Anakin before they begin slashing away at each other.
Now, with this in mind, can anyone who regards all six movies as canonical — which I do not — make any sense of the following bit of dialogue that Obi-Wan speaks to Luke in Episode IV?
BEN: I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn’t allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade like your father did.
Let’s skip for now the complicating factor that Obi-Wan seems to be saying that Owen Lars knew Anakin before Anakin joined the other Jedi Knights. (This is more obvious in Obi-Wan’s earlier line to the effect that Owen “didn’t hold with your father’s ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.”)
Instead, let us simply focus on that “Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough” bit.
Is this just another of Obi-Wan’s lies? Or is this just another sign that George Lucas is, um, being less than truthful when he says that the movie currently playing in theatres tells the back-story that he had in mind when he made the original films?
You be the judge.
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