We went and saw Revenge of the Sith last night, at the Capri Cinema, on Goodwood Road. I’ll begin by saying how cool that building is! Built in 1940, most of it is still the original, or near to it, and I love it.

A shame I can’t say the same about the film.

To be fair, about one minute into the film, I was already hating it, but that was because of the dickhead sitting about 3 seats across from me. Before the movie had even started, he was laughing a stupid, high pitched, inane laugh at things that weren’t funny. Initially, I thought “hey, this guy has just had his mate tell him a really funny joke”, as it was in one of the little ads at the start that weren’t remotely funny.

Then, when the movie began, and he laughed at everything (like each time young jedi were called “younglings”). It made me uncomfortable, and also made me not want to laugh at anything in the film, for fear of being like him. You should be allowed to kill people for this sort of thing. (I must say, at one stage I turned to Jaq and said “Maybe he’s retarded”. But retarded people aren’t this bad…)

So the film began, and like many people have said, it was pretty slow. Sure, the initial battle scene was intense, but it was kind of repetitive. The original trilogy had short combat scenes, sandwiched between sections of real plot and character development.

Oh, and real acting, too. None of this wooden bullshit that Hayden Christiansen seems to only be capable of. Maybe it’s just too hard to act in front of a blue screen.

My biggest hassle (and I saw it coming, as soon as they had R2-D2 and C-3PO in Episode 1) was the need to prepare everything for A New Hope. Tying up all of the little loose ends so that it flowed seamlessly from one movie to the next.

Except it didn’t.

  • R2-D2 obviously still knew about who everyone was - didn’t he ever try to tell C-3PO anything? (Or maybe just Threepio can’t listen…)
  • Can’t R2-D2 still fly? This one had come up on other websites, but I’m sure Captain Antilles would have treated him pretty well.
  • Obi-Wan about Leia from her moment of birth. How convenient he forgot about her until Return of the Jedi.
  • The Death Star took, what 18 years to build? How long did it take them to build number 2? Two years? I guess all of the tradesmen who built it figured out shortcuts on how to make it faster the second time around.
  • Leia somehow remembers what her mother looked like: “My real Mother that is. She died when I was very young.” Yes, Leia, she couldn’t have died when you were much younger, else you would surely have died too. Fact: Babies can’t focus properly, let alone see and recognise, let alone form memories. I think maybe Leia was a victim of some Psychoanalyst, and created some false memories. Was she assaulted by her father too?

And I think that Anakin took out all of the Jedi way to quickly. My thoughts oh how it should have gone:

(Just put the Episode 1 Music on to get me in the mood).

Anakin discovers that Palpatine is Darth Sidious. He tells Mace Windu, who believes he is capable of defeating Sidious, so tries to do it alone. (Like the film). Anakin bursts in, and kills Windu, like in the film, but he and Sidious do not tell anyone, nor does “Order 66″ get transmitted. Instead, Sidious uses his power over Anakin to get him to kill other Jedi on the sly. While still remaining on the Jedi Council, and pretending to be good.

This goes on for some time (years?), as the war continues, and the number of the Jedi fall. Some tricky work by Sidious and Vader make the populace turn against the Jedi, and then they are called traitors. The Council is exiled, many more Jedi killed in the resulting months. Anakin flees with the Jedi, at Sidious’s insistence, so they can still find the Jedi.

Finally, it all comes to a head, and Anakin takes on Obi-Wan, resulting in his disfigurement. I didn’t mind the bit about how he thought he had killed Padme. But, make it so Obi-Wan doesn’t know about the birth of the twins, only Luke. Obi-Wan thinks he has killed Anakin, but figures out that he is Vader, and hides Luke on Tatooine, knowing that Vader is unlikely to go back there.

Oh, and I’ll take my time machine and go back and remake Episodes 1 & 2, and remove any reference to the droids, or anyone other than Obi-Wan, Yoda, Vader and the Emperor from the original trilogy. No Chewbacca, no Captain Antilles, I guess we’d better have the Lars’ family though. Fuck me George Lucas, why didn’t you include Han Solo’s father in this movie?

From what I’d read about the Star Wars universe, the defeat of the Jedi took some time to occur, not overnight. And having them in exile makes it easier for some of them (Obi-Wan, Yoda, perhaps some others?) to slip through Vader’s initial net. There is no reason that Jedi are not still being hunted until just before A New Hope.

Actually, I did have a thought for my NaNoWriMo novel this year - a rewrite of Episode 3. The more I think of it, I might rewrite all of the new trilogy. Yeah! Star Wars the way I want it to be. (And maybe I’ll finish my NaNoWriMo novel this time…)

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