Allo, allo, allo! Davie Portman here requesting your feedback for Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.
Scrump from the PWTCAST
Bang! Bang!
What is up you guys?
I’ve missed feedback on the last two Star Wars reviews so very quickly.
Episode 1 gave us Duel of the Fates which makes me sad that it’s not used more in the newer trilogy.
Episode 2 is SO much better than The Last Jedi. That is the hill I will die on and nothing will change my mind.
I remember Episode 3 vividly because my best friend Ivan and I ditched a day of school in 6th grade to go see it with his older brothers.
It’s clearly the strongest of the prequels and I enjoy it more than any of the original trilogy.
Sorry in advance for being born in ‘93 and enjoying the prequels more.
Every time I rewatch the movie, the scene where Anakin executes order 66 and MURDERS an entire room full of children always reminds me of when I rewatch the end of The Blair Witch Project.
You KNOW what’s coming but you’re still left shocked when it happens.
I only wish it would’ve been done similar to Darth Vader’s scene at the end of Rogue One.
Love you guys and will never stop talking about how proud/happy I am that you two SOLD OUT your first live show.
If you get around to reviewing Rogue One and need someone to come on and cry about what happens on Scariff, I’m you’re man.
Hooooorayyyy!
-Scrump
Ari from Montreal
I remember having goosbumps as a teen for 2 movie moments…when optimus prime first appared in the first transformers…and the first breath of dark vader.
However tht pussy scream of nooo ruined the moment! I understand it was the last part of his “goodness” going away…but come on.
Still i remember the hype of this movie and i truly really liked it. It had some intense moments…and i cant ever rewatch that movie without skipping the ordee 66…just too intense.
One thing thr pissed me off was how samuel jackson just died…pretty random. And how the fuck did padme give birth to twins and name them in 2 secs…i donno tht scene always makes me go wtf
The emperor was really highlight of the movie for me…i can rewatch him talking about darth plagueis to anakin over and over again.
I still have to outrank this as the best prequel movie.
Also i wasnt able to post about the other 2 movies…but about the politics talk and scenes. I have a political science degree and still found it fuckin boring and at times confusing.
Question for you guys: why do tai fighters sound different than any other ship? Ive always wondered…
Branavan From Ajax Ontario:
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
For reals tho, Episode 3 is BY FAR the best of the prequels. While it does have some bad moments (The Anakin and Padme scene at their apartment comes to mind) this movie mitigates most of the bad of the prequels in exchange for a fairly breezy experience.
Positives:
Music, the prequels have great soundtracks that stack up to the greatness of the OG trilogy and this is no different, the battle themes on Mustafar (Anakin vs Obi Wan and Battle of the Heroes) Padme’s Remunitions, Order 66 and The Jedi Purge and others make for some of the most epic and sad of the series. Here is a link to the full soundtrack: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEhIGtOYV1g&list=PLqGhVyOFc2J3Lt23F5b8RctjHYDwxx_QN&index=1]
Action: Even though Anakin and Obi Wan’s battle has that dumb moment where they twirl their blades for like 10 seconds for no reason that battle is friggin great and is my personal fav of the series. All the action scenes are great from the battle of Coracant to the “I AM THE SENATE” scene to the Vader V Obi Wan and Emperor V Yoda duels. Just great shit all around.
Memes: Out of all the prequels this is memed the most, I AM THE SENATE, Hello There!, NOOOOOOO!, Have you heard the tragedy of Darth Plageous the wise, etc. No idea why but I felt like bringing it up.
Ewan McGregor: He’s great. The best part of this movie.
Negatives:
Nothing much but a lot of this movie still suffers from jank, Padme dying from a broken heart. “You’re breaking my heart” is also pretty shit, isn’t a rule of acting "Show don’t tell? And alot of the American actors sound stilted (Sam Jackson comes to mind) Also we should have seen Anakin kill the kids.
All in all this was the best fans could have gotten for the (at the time) last Star Wars movie on the big screen. What do you guys hope for Rise of Skywalker and the future of Star Wars movies in general?
Crazy opinion.
It’s by far the best of the prequels only because the other two are downright horrible. The love story alone in episode 2 makes it unwatchable.
It’s still a bad movie - the abrupt turn of Ani from a Jedi to slaughtering kids seems to be like flipping a switch. It’s not well done at all considering the build up. Yoda losing a fight because he fell. Obi declaring a fight over bc he has high ground. Grievous being essentially a coughing chickenshit heel instead of being fearsome. Palpitine dispatching 2 or 3 jedi knights doing nothing special but just swing a lightsaber with a move a 4 yr old could defend. Padme dying because she lost the will to live with nothing medically wrong with her (I guess the twins aren’t enough reason to live?). Leia remembering that 2 second encounter as her mother being beautiful but sad?
The whole thing has so much stupidity like that. It’s better than the other two but it’s still a bad movie
The whole thing
Michael from Newfoundland
Star Wars Episode III was more disappointing than my son.
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My issue with Episode 3 is that it feels like you needed to watch the Clone Wars series to really have it make sense. Anakin’s turn seems too fast and forced. Dooku goes from being a chief bad guy in episode 2 to being quickly written off, Grevous seems to be there just for a lightsaber fight without much background.
I think this hones in on one of my major issues with the prequels. Lack of the compelling villain character. The original trilogy had Vader and he was a main antagonist through all 3 films with the backing of the Emperor.
While the “Emperor” is present in the 3 prequel movies, his apprentice role is a revolving door.
Reading some of the other comments about the high ground thing, I just realized how dumb it is. I guess it is good that in Episode 1 Obi Wan didn’t give up with Maul had the high ground as he was hanging in a freaking pit, instead he force jumps over him and cuts him in half. OR maybe he realized that if Maul had just swung at him at that point he would have died…who knows.
Lastly as it seems to me that the story Lucas was trying to tell in the prequels was better suited to the television then it was to a series of movies. The intriguing part of the fall of Anakin is really about his relationships and emotional struggles. We needed to take time to see him undergo his training and struggle with missing his mother, his relationship with Obiwan, his growing romance with Padme, his growing trust in Palpatine, his growing frustration as being treated like a kid etc. All of which comes to a head with his turn. Rather than “hey look at this kid who is strong in the force”, “here he is as an awkward teen”, “and as a tortured adult.”
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Marvin from Berlin
I remember enjoying Episode III as a whole while watching it the first time as a teen. It was a great moviegoing experience and as I had not watched the sequels beforehand and only knowing by word of mouth that Anakin becomes Darth Vader, Order 66 was shocking to me. I enjoyed the back half of the movie more than the first even though despite not really being fleshed out as a character, Grievous alongside Maul is still one of my favorite side villains in the movies. The Emperor/Yoda duel is also my second favorite “duel” behind duel of the fates.
However, today it is a whole different experience after watching the clone wars series and reading a few of the spinoff books. I am now more attached to the side characters and I can’t watch the Order 66 sequences anymore since then. I have to skip them. That being said, I am happy Kit survived the longest out of the three (point to which of you knows who I am mentioning and bonus points if you can name any of the other jedi masters?)
What you mind the Prequels And Sequels being revamped as series or are you like me more of a can of them fleshing out the universe with other standalone series like The Mandalorian?
Macht weiter so!
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This isn’t so much feedback as it is discussion.
I don’t think i’ve seen that “hot take” before and is certainly a hill I will let you die on.
I haven’t seen this take on the saga either. It’s really interesting to me because Clone Wars didn’t come out until years after Episode III and while there is obviously a gap between Ep 2 and 3 I don’t think the story was designed so that you couldn’t watch Ep 3 without Clone Wars.
skip this on the show…no reason to read this
It isn’t so much that you cannot watch it, but rather that it seems rushed and introduces characters that seem like they are supposed to be a big deal, but from the movies alone you have no way of knowing. One issue Lucas had with the prequels was he had this years spanning narrative in his head that he tried to condense to 3 movies with substantial time jumps (the prequels cover 18 years in less than 9 hours) Compare that to the 4 years covered in the original trilogy., and that equates to a lot happening off screen in the prequels which they filled in with Clone Wars. In the original trilogy you had far fewer “important characters” introduced for short sciences. I would also argue Lucas had the basic plot of the Clone Wars written before the third movie, and that comes across in Episode 3.
Greetings,
I forgot how much I didn’t like this movie.
Sure, the pacing is a bit better than the prior two installments, and we get to see the rise of Darth Vader, and those final duel scenes are engrossing enough, and for those of us who saw the originals long ago the final few minutes have great sentimental value… but overall RotS just grates on me.
If I could execute an Order 66 on the whole prequels I would.
Below in an addendum I prattle on about some of my dislikes, more than you’re likely to want to read, but I will mention here one of the common objections to this movie: “politics”. That is actually not a very descriptive word though.
A better way to understand RotS has to do with social commentary especially in the post 9/11 world, where G.W. Bush and his underlings convinced the US Congress (note in the movie the use of the word “Congress” a few times as a synonym for the Senate of the Republic) to support a war in Iraq while RotS was in production. While the previous movies were only generically interested in commentary on the modern military state, RotS is definitely referencing what happened in the US and the war in Iraq.
This movie is crucial in tying together the original trilogy with the backstory started in the first two prequels, so it is a must-watch for completists.
Ahoy!
———
Let me prattle:
So let’s start with the immorality of the Jedi.
Opening scene is an upper-atmosphere battle between two large forces. Many people (and droids) involved, all killing each other. And what does Anakin do? He smiles, and calls it “fun”. “This is where the fun begins” he says with a grin.
Death and destruction are fun to Anakin. How did no one see that he’s fundamentally bad? Or do all Jedi glory in death in war?
Another example: Obi says with a smile “Another happy landing” when they crash land and take out a tower. How many people died in that tower?
Later in the movie, Yoda says to Anakin: “Death is a natural part of life” “Mourn them [the dead] not.” Well that sounds all woo-y, and probably explains the sociopathy that the Jedi have, about not caring about how many people die in their escapades.
The Jedi are a death cult.
This always bugged me about these prequels: For being all preachy about empires and evil, the lead protagonists are immoral, or at least amoral.
Anakin later, when talking to the Chancellor: “The Jedi are selfless, they only care about others”. Except of course the Jedi don’t care if people die, and even tell you to not mourn for them.
The story around Jedi is so confused. Example: in that opening sky battle, there are missiles launched at Anakin and Obi, and those two have to do fancy air maneuvers to avoid the missiles. But why? Did we not see Anakin in the last episode float pears around a room as if they were made of nothing? Certainly all he has to do with a missile is nudge it a bit off course using the force, and the missile’s own momentum will make it hard for it to reacquire the target.
So much of Star Wars never makes sense, if you stop to think about it. Almost any scene is full of contradictions compared to some other scene in the series.
For example: Anakin is afraid that Padme is going to die in childbirth. Yet the Republic is full of such advanced medicine that no one ever seems ill, and limbs are replaced easily with android-like capabilities, and there is an entire planet that is dedicated to cloning, etc. Certainly when labor comes near there is a medical facility to attend to Padme, would there not be? How would anyone in Padme’s position (of being the Senator for an entire planet) not have access to the best medical care, and why wouldn’t Anakin know this?
Another example: Obi uses the security hologram system in the Jedi temple, to play a video of Anakin pledging himself to the Chancellor, in the Chancellor’s chambers. If the Jedi have such an extensive security system, how is it they never detected the Chancellor setting up his henchmen throughout the clone army hierarchy?
The other common problem with all of Star Wars is that just throws out all of physics and common sense on how the universe works. There are so many examples of this, but one particularly striking example is in the early scenes, where Anakin is trying to crash land half of rebel command ship. Now, in an atmosphere similar to Earth’s the terminal velocity for an object the shape of that ship is about 200mph. The ship is on fire, and so flying fire vehicles meet the ship in the air and dowse liquid (water?) on this ship while all vessels are falling/flying. And the liquid stream comes out like a fire-hose stationary at ground level.
But here’s a question for you: have you every poured water out of a bottle, while riding in a car going a high velocity? If so what happens to the water stream?
Yes, Lucas doesn’t care at all about how the universe works in the real world.
And this is the bottom line with the Star Wars prequels in general - the characters, dialogues, and situations are just so out of touch with how people and things actually work.
————
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What’s up, brothers!
To quote noted thespian, scholar, & lyricist Natalie Portman; “Say something ‘bout the
motherfuckin’ prequels, bitch! Say something fuckin’ nice about Jar-Jar Binks!”.
This film is truly the “Starrcade '97” of the Star Wars franchise. While financially successful & incredibly important from a storyline perspective, it ultimately ended up being a confirmation to many that the franchise had lost it’s way, & dark days were ahead.
This film had some cool fights & even a few really powerful dramatic scenes, but it all feels undercut by the time the credits roll. The script is probably the best of the prequel trilogy, but even with that Lucas’ dialogue feels clunky at times. For years, I couldn’t pinpoint why a lot of the prequels don’t work for me…And I think the crew over at “School Of Movies” sum it up best: The Jedi are dicks. They’re not the overmatched scrappy Samurai of the original trilogy, here they’re stubborn, pompous, & emotionally stunted…And they’re the babyfaces!
Finally, that “Big No” scene deserves all of the smoke. Much like the Sting-Hogan match, it took a foolproof story & leaves the viewers underwhelmed at the end. It’s a short scene, but it’s arguably one of the most important in the entire franchise. This is the moment that connects everything, the moment where an iconic villain is created, and they pulled a Shockmaster & tripped over themselves.
Oh well, at least Jimmy Smits got some “Bail” money out of this thing! 6 muddled midichlorians out of 10 for ROTS, & 3.5 “Meesa Want Me Moneys Back” out of 10 for the prequels as a whole. May the force be with you, boys! 
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Imran from Huddersfield
This is a bad, bad movie… people often try and tell you it’s the best of the prequel - as if that is a compliment - but really, it’s complete garbage.
Where do I start. How about the crap dialogue, with great exchanges such as “It’s only because I’m so in love” … “NO! it’s because I’m so in love with you” . This is just one of the great exchanges between Padme and Anakin, a relationship with all the chemistry of spatula. These two morons are so worried about their secret relationship, they happily just get their PDA on in the corner of a giant public building… because their so in love evidently.
Then you have side characters, like the stupidly named General Grevous - who presumably reports into Admiral Stabby Stab - an asthmatic robot who is apparently “trained in the jedi arts” , which in actuality just means swinging lightsabres around really really fast… which makes me question the credentials of that training academy to be honest.
I could go on, but this is a film just filled with absolute nonsense. From Palpatine turning into a giant green apple and falling ass over tit over an office chair, to Anakin’s rushed turn the dark side by killing a bunch of kids and wearing a hoody and eyeliner… because Sith’s are emo apparently.
The worst of it for me however is the end fight seen between Anakin and Obi Wan… which was meant to be a grand showdown for the ages, but instead is just flat. The story should have been so good, you could have them fight in an empty room and it would have weight, but instead we get them waving their lightsabres at each over - often whilst at very different heights - across a ridiculous CGI background, and then it all ends because one has the higher ground - which was seemingly never an issue for the previous 10 minutes or so. This is a moment that you feel should have been seeded earlier in the film, but isn’t, because this film is garbage.
Finally, one of the worst things the prequels did was make being a Jedi seem about 99% less fun then you thought it would be when you were a kid. From having to have midichlorians, to Yoda telling Anakin in this film that “fear of losing etc. leads to the dark side” and “learn to let go of everything you fear to lose” … so basically don’t care about anything, be a robot, and you too can be a Jedi. Urgh.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO out of 10.
That may have been true about WCW, but I think ROTS was a turning point for the franchise for the better. Since ROTS we got:
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Clone Wars tv series which many love and introduced a lot of great characters and has already been mentioned several times in this thread as being really important at expanding the Star Wars saga between the prequels. And after the Disney sale Rebels which I think is even better.
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Excellent video games like Battlefront, Republic Comandos, Force Unleashed, etc
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Great comics by Dark Horse and then by Marvel.
All of which continued to expand the fan base for Disney to see it worth buying lucasfilm for $2billion and creating more movies and tv series.
Jesse from the 6
I once read that there’s a great story in the prequels, and in RotS especially, but George Lucas didn’t bother telling it. Lucas focused on Anakin’s turn to the dark side, which could be a great story if the dialogue wasn’t terrible, the acting sub par, and the storytelling so divergent.
But perhaps the better story is that of how the Jedi Council got complacent and failed. There’s a compelling and relatable story in there about how institutions get too comfortable and so convinced of their own self-worth that they become offended when anybody else dares to question them. This builds up resentment among the populace and the tide can turn quickly. It’s something we’re seeing in our current time in our present galaxy with the rise of populists all over the world spewing vitriol at institutions that were once trusted. “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause", is a line that has proved sadly prescient.
Take Care
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I found this to be the worst of the prequels. I was so disappointed with the first 2 that I didn’t even see this one when it was released but years later on TBS. I made the right decision.
Gaurav from India.
Just watched the movie.
The acting and dialogues were horrible.
The guy who played Anikan was so bad.
Other than some action sequences not much worked for me.
Enjoyed it more than Attack of the clones tho.
Take care.
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Chris Thunder from Down Under.
(Watching SW-ROTS later tonight) …
Question:
Of the three following “The Chosen One” which ended up worst for their respective stories/careers:
- Anikin Skywalker (Star Wars - 1999)
- Drew McIntyre (WWE - 2009)
- David Moyes (Manchester United - 2013)
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