Sith Happened

[vulgarweed]

Finally saw the damn thing. It's so hard to get The SO away from his WWII submarine patrols these days....

Anyhow



I have to conclude: I really enjoyed it. There is no shortage of good reasons to hate it, but at the end of the day, I'm not feelin' it. It was very, very, very Lucas--which is to say, terrible dialogue, plot holes you can drive an AT-AT through, heavy drama that's often more comical than the intentionally comical parts, geek fetishism writ Wagnerian...and yet it works. No one else could have made this movie (no one else would have). In which it is decisively proven that Anakin was never the brightest lightsaber in the box, that killing unarmed prisoners is the Star Wars-verse equivalent of cheating on your taxes no matter what side you're on, and that watching your former friend horribly twitch to death while he writhes burning without limbs is acceptible to the Jedi code as long as you feel really, really conflicted about it. (Then again, if he'd done the right thing and put him out of his misery quickly, that'd be a plot hole even Lucas couldn't live with). And like Padme is the only woman ever to lose her "will to live" during labor. I think that's normal, not usually fatal.

But it worked. It was grandiose and stirring and pompous and overblown, and it set up the beginning of the originally trilogy beautifully (C'mon, who else got a little misty hearing bits of "Leia's Theme" as Bail Organa and his wife held their baby on Alderaan, and "Luke's Theme" as Beru and Lars watched the sunsets on Tatooine?) and I fell for it like the sucker I am. And just imagine if Lucas had done the films chronologically, and we had to wait three years for Episode IV after a downer ending like that?


Besides, the politics geek in me absolutely loves all the stuff that's like Xtreme C-SPAN.

Comments

[murasaki99.livejournal.com]

Ain't it great? I've seen it three times now and I still come away loving it. And immediately wanting to pop Ep. IV into the DVD player.

From what my child-bearing friends tell me, labor is the only time they are at risk of falling to the Dark Side, not losing the will to live. One of my friends said it was the only time she contemplated having her husband fixed or giving up sex forever. :-D

Yep, killing unarmed combatants gets you many bad karma points. Leaving your best friend to burn to death probably isn't a Good Thing either, but I've got to agree on the plot hole thing if Obi-Wan had done the right thing and put Anakin out of his pain.

And am I the only one to feel *really* bad about the clones and how they were used and abused by Everyone? I mean, manufacturing living being to be used like droids? What happened to free will? Liberty? The Jedi really slipped up when they just took the instant army and asked no questions.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we had that pop Ep.IV impulse in as well. :) I guess for me it all hinged on, was it satisfying? And it was, kind of grimly so in a cheesy, bittersweet sort of way.

No, you're not the only one, on the clones issue. I suppose that was the point where the Jedi lost the higher ground. Note that little moment where one of them returns Obi-Wan's lightsaber to him, right before he gets to the order to kill him. It really highlighted that well, I thought.

[murasaki99.livejournal.com]

Note that little moment where one of them returns Obi-Wan's lightsaber to him, right before he gets to the order to kill him.

Yes, that was Commander Cody, someone who Obi-Wan had worked with for years. Obviously the clones were brainwashed/programmed back when they were manufactured to react without thinking to the Order - but I wonder about their reactions *afterward* when everything sinks in. Would they have any PTSD reactions? Suicides? Desertions? (granted, given their conditioning, that would be very hard for them to do, but even the best conditioning can be broken given the right trigger.) Plot bunny, what plot bunny?

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Oooh, goooood plot bunny. I don't know much about the SW fic scene - is there good clonefic out there? The conditioning itself is even scarier and more upsetting than how they came into being in the first place.

[murasaki99.livejournal.com]

I think there's some fics, and some canonical books that have the clones in them as well as other characters, but I haven't read any yet. I've got one on my to-read pile, guess I'll flip through it and see what it says. First chapter mentioned that the clones were standarized on the anatomical level to make patching them up easier for the surgeons. Aaargh. The casual use of a sentient, sapient being like a lab mouse is just... too awful. And the Caminoans - the ones who built and conditioned the clones - seemed so *nice*. Brr.

I did write a clone fic some years back, based on the later clones commissioned by Grand Admiral Thrawn. They had somewhat more diversity and were 'flash taught' by templates created from their original's memories. Other than that, they weren't messed up too badly and when left on their own, managed to live fairly normally (at least if they didn't think too hard about their 'other selves')

[tinderblast.livejournal.com]

I know! That's pretty much how I felt, too - that I could see all the flaws and yet, for once, they didn't matter. There was just some basically satisying emotional/psychological element to the story that made me want to see it again and again. And who knew? I really didn't expect this.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I want to see it again and again too. And I want snarky Anakin icons!

I had hopes. But then I've been let down before, so I was kind of afraid to have hopes.

[tinderblast.livejournal.com]

I didn't even have hope or expectations, I don't think, after the first two. The only thing I knew was that all the Jedi get wiped out, but given that I'd assumed it was in battle and wasn't this horrible, symbolic systematic destruction, even that was ten times worse than I thought. In terms of making me feel something for the characters, it worked on so many more levels than any of the other films.

I"m really glad that you enjoyed the film - it's been sad to see people on my f-list rant against the film (I mean, I can see why - it's certainly not perfect) but I was hoping that more people would find something they loved in it.

[timebound.livejournal.com]

I thought the movie was great. :)

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I want to see it again. And then maybe again.

[fyrdrakken]

You're not the last -- I'm probably going tonight. (And I scrolled down way fast so as not to read the spoilers, not that I really think there's that much to worry about given we already know the basic plot...)