Rewatching Revenge of the Sith
Oct. 24th, 2006 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerMy weekly journey through the Star Wars saga has reached the midpoint (even without Clone Wars added to call one movie the middle) with Revenge of the Sith. I have to admit that, beyond the "one step further" feeling each movie gives, I was looking forward to seeing the movie just for its own sake...
...However, as if to prove that hubris will always be clobbered by nemesis, I started wondering partway through if certain performances might be called "subdued" by some... and that adjective, of course, might be replaced by some with less flattering words. Then, towards the end of the movie, the feeling faded and I felt better. I was able to go back to contemplating the one criticism that might hold some real bite to me.
I was finally feeling confident about Star Wars as Revenge of the Sith first rolled around, but that did leave me worried that I was setting myself up at last for the same "it's not the way I wanted it!" fall so many others seemed to have plunged over six years before. I worried that Anakin's inevitable fall to the Dark Side wouldn't "work," worried that he would commit some sin so unforgivable as to wreck all the weight I had managed to work into Darth Vader's existing redemption (I was very concerned that the twins might be born before Padme's final confrontation with her husband), worried that the final duel might start with some silly, obvious ritual, worried that I'd be stuck among cheering fans whooping up Jar Jar Binks's potential demise (actually, the way things worked out left me just a little gleeful at the conclusion)...
When I saw the movie on opening night, though, it all worked really well for me, and I wound up seeing it five times in the theatres... and yet, that personal reaction left me feeling sorry for those who just couldn't accept Padme's death as fitting for her character. What was more, because those people had been positive about the new movies before, something more than welcome to me, it left me thinking of them as "stranded just outside the promised land." My personal reaction to all of it was to discount the diagnosis of the medical droid (perhaps, at last, succumbing to the "well, he's just a droid" dismissal I tend to be very annoyed at when it's directed against Threepio) and conclude that Padme was still linked to Anakin as demonstrated without words, such that his being rebuilt into Darth Vader and her giving birth all at once was just too much for her... even if that does leave me worried matters in the movie are taken even more out of her hands. (When working on a MSTing of a famously faked outline of "Episode III," I tried to vary the Star Wars-positive "riffs" I was trying to sneak in with a comment or two about how Mrs. Skywalker had to be more significant to the story than just having babies. Perhaps that makes me a little more sensitive to the possibility of Padme not having as much to do...)
And yet... if she had survived the end of the movie so that we could all continue to assume Leia had picked up memories of her mother without having to invoke the Force... wouldn't the official explanation of what had happened to Padme have been just "she faded away?" Wouldn't that have made the "gave up" complaints that much harder yet to deny? Of course, it would have continued to be easier to keep making up alternative explanations that she had gone into hiding or been imprisoned or something (and I was quite pleased to see one of them beforehand), and yet that would seem to remove her from any responsibility for the redemption of Darth Vader, or even to say that she failed (instead of never quite having a chance) where her son managed to succeed on what might even seem less of a footing. She would have become a loose end to be picked up, even if that would manage to torpedo the Expanded Universe... In the end, perhaps it's my additional "out" to suggest that just about everyone is shattered in some way by the end of the movie, whether they survive or not.
In any case, I'm at or past the halfway mark. I can make that complicated jump at once forwards and backwards in time, and start watching things be put back together again.
...However, as if to prove that hubris will always be clobbered by nemesis, I started wondering partway through if certain performances might be called "subdued" by some... and that adjective, of course, might be replaced by some with less flattering words. Then, towards the end of the movie, the feeling faded and I felt better. I was able to go back to contemplating the one criticism that might hold some real bite to me.
I was finally feeling confident about Star Wars as Revenge of the Sith first rolled around, but that did leave me worried that I was setting myself up at last for the same "it's not the way I wanted it!" fall so many others seemed to have plunged over six years before. I worried that Anakin's inevitable fall to the Dark Side wouldn't "work," worried that he would commit some sin so unforgivable as to wreck all the weight I had managed to work into Darth Vader's existing redemption (I was very concerned that the twins might be born before Padme's final confrontation with her husband), worried that the final duel might start with some silly, obvious ritual, worried that I'd be stuck among cheering fans whooping up Jar Jar Binks's potential demise (actually, the way things worked out left me just a little gleeful at the conclusion)...
When I saw the movie on opening night, though, it all worked really well for me, and I wound up seeing it five times in the theatres... and yet, that personal reaction left me feeling sorry for those who just couldn't accept Padme's death as fitting for her character. What was more, because those people had been positive about the new movies before, something more than welcome to me, it left me thinking of them as "stranded just outside the promised land." My personal reaction to all of it was to discount the diagnosis of the medical droid (perhaps, at last, succumbing to the "well, he's just a droid" dismissal I tend to be very annoyed at when it's directed against Threepio) and conclude that Padme was still linked to Anakin as demonstrated without words, such that his being rebuilt into Darth Vader and her giving birth all at once was just too much for her... even if that does leave me worried matters in the movie are taken even more out of her hands. (When working on a MSTing of a famously faked outline of "Episode III," I tried to vary the Star Wars-positive "riffs" I was trying to sneak in with a comment or two about how Mrs. Skywalker had to be more significant to the story than just having babies. Perhaps that makes me a little more sensitive to the possibility of Padme not having as much to do...)
And yet... if she had survived the end of the movie so that we could all continue to assume Leia had picked up memories of her mother without having to invoke the Force... wouldn't the official explanation of what had happened to Padme have been just "she faded away?" Wouldn't that have made the "gave up" complaints that much harder yet to deny? Of course, it would have continued to be easier to keep making up alternative explanations that she had gone into hiding or been imprisoned or something (and I was quite pleased to see one of them beforehand), and yet that would seem to remove her from any responsibility for the redemption of Darth Vader, or even to say that she failed (instead of never quite having a chance) where her son managed to succeed on what might even seem less of a footing. She would have become a loose end to be picked up, even if that would manage to torpedo the Expanded Universe... In the end, perhaps it's my additional "out" to suggest that just about everyone is shattered in some way by the end of the movie, whether they survive or not.
In any case, I'm at or past the halfway mark. I can make that complicated jump at once forwards and backwards in time, and start watching things be put back together again.
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Date: 2006-10-25 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 10:07 pm (UTC)(In what little "Episode 3" speculation I permitted myself after Attack of the Clones, I actually considered that the action might pick up as little as nine months afterwards, and that Padme and Anakin wouldn't meet at all in the movie... and of course, I've got to add that I did not contemplate this because of any reaction to Hayden and Natalie's scenes together, but out of the line from the RotJ novelisation where it was said that Anakin didn't know his wife was pregnant. Still, this might have made the bold plans of some to create alternative worlds where "Owen and Obi-Wan are still brothers!" seem even more pathetic to me.)
I'm also thinking back to the concept art that tried to suggest Padme trying to kill an Anakin turned to the Dark Side because "that's the best thing she can do for him." It might have given her "something more to do" ...but, again, it seems to imply she can't see in her husband what Luke did in his father.