PREGAME THOUGHTS

It was 2005. I was going through major senioritis as my final year of high school was drawing to a close. May 25th was a half day, and the Boys wanted to go see this new Star Wars Movie that they had been salivating over for almost a week. I less than politely declined. Fuck Star Wars.

I’ve finally reached the end of my pre-Disney-acquisition Star Wars movie adventure. Some day I’ll hit the sequels and standalones, but that day is not today. Not even close. I’m moving onto bigger and better things! Not really, but those MCU movies are calling to me…

THE 700(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

It’s three years or so after the events of Attack of the Clones. Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) has become even whinier, if you can believe it. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) still trusts him like a fool-ass loony, but the rest of the Jedi Council hates this kid’s guts and are merely trusting Obi-Wan’s fool-ass loony judgment.

Obi-Wan and Anakin are on a mission to save Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) from some robot named General Grievous. Grievous gets away during the scuffle, and Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) gets killed by Anakin after getting pressured by Palpatine. Anakin regrets this, saying that killing their enemies “is not the Jedi way”, but Palpatine is like “the Jedi suck and you’re better than that, so give me a kiss”.

Anakin meets up with Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) back at Coruscant, where she tells him she’s pregnant! Exciting news! I hope they’re twins who don’t know they’re twins and there’s some weird sexual tension between them. Too bad Anakin starts worrying about Padmé dying during childbirth. It seems weird that such a technologically advanced society has this problem, but I’m not here to poke holes into the worldbuilding.

Palpatine decides to appoint Anakin to the Jedi Council, which results in many concerned, furrowed brows from the rest of the Council. They begrudgingly agree the let the kid on, but he is not to have the designation of “Master”. Anakin doesn’t like that shit at all, and his trust in the Jedi dwindles. Anakin is also tasked with spying on Palpatine since he’s in Palpatine’s good graces. All this time spent with Palpatine becomes a big ol’ lesson in the allure of the dark side of the Force. He promises Anakin that knowledge of the dark side will prevent Padmé’s death. Since Anakin is weak and useless, he starts getting swayed, but not before threatening Palpatine’s life on account of him being a Sith Lord masterminding the Clone Wars.

Anakin later reports this to Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), who, after a battle, is an inch away from killing Palpatine. All the energy Windu shoots at him causes his skin to go sallow and gross like the later Emperor Palpatine we all know and love! Anakin intervenes at the last minute by severing Windu’s hand, allowing Palpatine the opportunity to fight back and send Windu flying out of a window to his death. Anakin pledges complete fealty to Palpatine, and in return he knights him as Darth Vader on the spot with as much thought and consideration as John Belushi giving nicknames during frat initiation in Animal House.

Shit hits the fan when Palpatine orders a top-secret protocol to assassinate all Jedi leaders and commanders, which the clone troopers carry out, effectively ending the Republic and forming the Empire. Everyone dies except Obi-Wan and Yoda, so they take it upon themselves to find and destroy Anakin Vader and Palpatine respectively. En route to confront Anakin Vader, Obi-Wan informs Padmé that her dear husband is a jerkface and has officially toppled over into dark side territory. Padmé doesn’t believe him, so she travels with him to some lava planet where Anakin Vader was hanging out killing Separatists. Just whacking the daylights out of ’em. Padmé tries to talk Anakin Vader out of being a dark side jerk, but when he spots Obi-Wan along with her he is paranoid that they are conspiring to kill him. Anakin Vader uses the Force to choke out Padmé. Obi-Wan doesn’t take too kindly to this instance of domestic abuse and starts fighting him lightsaber-style! Master vs. Apprentice! Guess what? Master wins, and Apprentice is left for dead getting burned up by lava. All hell of missing three limbs.

Palpatine finds Anakin Vader barely alive. He whisks him away back to Coruscant where he outfits him with new limbs and a shiny black suit. He asks where Padmé is. Palpatine says he killed her. Vader is like “NOOOOOOO!”, which turned into a famous meme. The “NOOOOOO!” was just as dumb as I had ever hoped.

This is getting long! Padmé gives birth to Luke and Leia and then dies swiftly. Jimmy Smits will take Leia and raise her as his own. Obi-Wan is going to fuck off to Tatooine so that Luke can grow up in the shitty desert. We all know what happens next!

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

This one is the obvious winner of the prequel trilogy. I wasn’t expecting most of the movie to document the lead-in to A New Hope, what with Anakin’s literal transition to Darth Vader, Padmé giving birth to Luke and Leia, and Obi-Wan fucking off to Tatooine to watch over the boy. In fact, I didn’t really know what this movie was about at all going in. I had no idea that I was going to see Anakin whine his way into the full-on dark side. It’s funny seeing the similarities in Luke. Petulance runs in the family

It’s fascinating to see Palpatine groom Anakin as his protégé. Their father/son relationship is more compelling than Anakin and Padmé’s cheesy, annoying marriage. And I never believed for a second that Obi-Wan and Anakin had much of a bond anyway, as much as Obi-Wan would tell you otherwise. “I LOVED YOU, ANAKIN! WAAHH!” Give me a fucking break, nerd.

A movie like this suffers by being a movie, though. With the right writing and pacing, a lot of this could have been fleshed out as a six-episode miniseries. I want to see more of Anakin’s ever-growing mistrust of the Jedi. I want to see more conflict that leads him to make his decisions. Killing Samuel L. Jackson is all well and good, but there wasn’t enough lead up to this moment. I wanted to get more inside Anakin’s head. I wanted to know what really motivated him beyond something as shallow as “save muh Padmé”, which, by the way, obviously wasn’t important to him anymore by the movie’s end. I wanted to see exactly why Obi-Wan actually cared about this kid. I never understood what Obi-Wan saw in him. I was on the Jedi Council’s side the whole time with this!

Back to Palpatine, though. That guy’s a real cocksucker. In the original trilogy, you see Darth Vader command an intimidating presence and be a completely submissive loser around Emperor Palpatine. To me, that submission always undermined the intimidation. In the prequels, you see Anakin slowly get swayed by Palpatine. He plays him like a fiddle. He takes advantage of his many, many, many, many weaknesses as a human being and barely needs to put much effort into it. I never had much sympathy for the kid, mostly because both Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen were punchable, but to see how pathetic his decline was in real time is almost funny. It’s actually really funny. It makes you really wonder what both Obi-Wan and Padmé saw in him at all.

In the end, Anakin wasn’t the great Jedi ever known. He was just the most easily manipulated. Not a good look, sir.

TOPIC 2 — And Another Thing…

Seriously, though. Fuck Anakin Skywalker. Elevating him above a pissant Tatooine slave was all Qui-Gon Jinn’s fault, and the dead guy isn’t even not-dead enough to stick around to see how much havoc he caused the Republic.

Topic over.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

The images of the volcanic eruption on Mustafar is real footage of Mt. Etna in Italy, which was erupting at the time of production.
900 interns died during shooting, as George Lucas would send these kids to the volcano in droves with nothing but camcorders and little handheld fans.

The volcanic world of Mustafar was designed to look like George Lucas’s vision of hell.
My vision of hell is having to do arts and crafts for sixteen hours every single day. My vision of hell wouldn’t make a good movie.

Hayden Christensen gained twenty-four pounds for this movie. He did so by eating six meals a day.
Can’t go full-on Vader without fattening up, I always say. The Dark Lord likes his Quarter Pounders.

All shots of C-3PO had the entire greenscreen set reflecting in his shiny gold armor, so digital effects artists, in post-production, had to digitally repaint C-3PO’s armor frame by frame to remove any traces of the set.
Never mind. Being the part of the team involved with this is my vision of hell.

Total number of screen wipes: 40.
Yeah, no shit. It was getting distracting. They did every shape that’s available on my Spider-Man Cartoon Maker CD Rom from 1994.

The second highest-grossing movie of 2005.
Narrowly beat out, of course, by Pooh’s Heffalump Movie.

George Lucas initially said that no characters from the original movies would appear in this movie apart from a baby Luke and Leia. However, the final movie also has Yoda, Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Palpatine, Chewbacca, Grand Moff Tarkin, Mon Mothma, R2-D2, C-3PO, Owen Lars, and Beru Whitesun/Lars.
Dingus.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Yes. A fine wrap-up to the prequel trilogy, and I enjoy how it nicely ties everything up as a proper lead-in to the original trilogy. Anybody who suggests watching the prequels first is a dummy who should not be listened to. Revenge of the Sith is more interesting going in with original trilogy knowledge.

I hear the the novelization of the movie is even better. Maybe if I start reading the books I’ll have to look into that. Someday. In another lifetime. And that’s my two cents. Live long and prosper.