So here's a new wrinkle on things....

On a discussion board at TheForce.net, there's a thread devoted to positive articles about the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. And wouldn't you know it! My "Fixing the Prequels" posts get a mention!

And then it gets a little strange. Seems that at least a couple of fans over there don't think I love the Prequel Trilogy enough. I can remember this happening two other times since I started writing those posts, and it always feels a bit odd to encounter folks who take me to task for insufficient Prequel-love. It's almost always the other way 'round, and in all honesty, we're talking about a world in which "You like the Prequels!" is a shorthand for "You're a dummy and you have no idea what you're talking about and we can remove you from any discussion of movies at all!"

So, what's the basis for my insufficient Prequel-love? One person says this:

The Byzantium Shores fella is a bit peculiar, in that he includes the PT in his 50 favorite films list, yet proceeds to eviscerate all three of them via rewrites.

I don't think I'd change a frame of my fifty favorite movies--that's why they're my favorites. They absorb and envelop me, without discernible imperfections. (I've never watched The Maltese Falcon and thought, "Gee, this Bogart/Lorre exchange is a bit on the dry side. I know what'll spice it up!")

And then another replies thusly:

Oh, yes. I find that a bit strange and a little distasteful, as well.

"I love this film, but I'd change this, and this, and this, and this, if I could!"

It's somewhat like saying, "I love my girlfriend, but if this were different, and this, and this, and this, she'd be heaps better."

Some love.

Uh-huh. OK. I see what you're getting at here...but...well, I'm sorry, but this is just dumb.

The idea being expressed here is that if you really really really and truly truly truly love something, that means that you can never think it's flawed in any way. To love something is to be of the belief that it is perfect. I don't think I'm unfairly reading these two quotes, either -- the first person says that his "favorite" films work on his "without discernible imperfections". And then the second person agrees with that goofy bit about "I love my girlfriend but...." nonsense.

First of all, if what I do in those posts can be described as "eviscerating" the movies, then I hope these folks never watch the Red Letter Media guy in action. Or pretty much read any randomly selected article about the Prequel Trilogy, ever. "Eviscerated"? I went out of my way to point out nearly each and every thing I loved about those movies in those posts, some of which were big things and some of which were tiny moments that got ignored by the haters. Many of my tweaks are just that: additional lines of dialog added into scenes I leave otherwise intact. I don't even counsel the removing of the infamous "I don't like sand" line from Attack of the Clones. I said it many times while writing those posts: my goal wasn't just to highlight the bad but to also shine the light on the good, of which there is a lot in those movies.

More importantly, though, is this business of "loving" the movies. I would hope that when we talk about how I "love" my wife and how I "love" a movie, we're talking about two different notions with the word "love", because otherwise, it's just creepy. But let's unpack that a little anyway, shall we? Because the fact is, I love my wife despite some real flaws, and I know that she loves me despite some gaping holes in my character. Love does not render one blind to flaws or imperfections. Love means that the flaws and imperfections are not enough to derail the love itself. That these two don't seem able to grasp this is rather distressing.

I'm reminded of something Leonard Bernstein once wrote, in an essay about Gershwin. He cast this particular essay as a dialog between himself and a friend (a Broadway producer, if memory serves), and at one point, Bernstein lists a lot of flaws in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. He takes the work to task for basically being a collection of tunes stitched together with cadenzas and other kinds of rather unconvincing transitional material, and he sounds rather harsh in doing so, prompting the other guy to remark, "Wait a minute: you've performed the Rhapsody any number of times and have also recorded it on several occasions. Don't you like it?"

"I adore it," Bernstein replies.

"Then how can you take something you adore and riddle it with holes?"

Bernstein then says, of the Rhapsody in Blue, that despite its glaring flaws he adores it because "What's good in it is so good that it's irresistible." And that is generally how I feel about the Prequel films: they are flawed. They are bumpy and uneven. They have moments that fall flat, They even contain scenes that are downright bad. But you know what? I still love them. I love the Prequel Trilogy because what's good in them is so good it's irresistible.

I love a teenage figurehead queen deciding that she's not going to be the easy target for the bullying Trade Federation. I love the slightly rogue quality in Qui Gon Jinn. I love that the Jedi never realize there's even a threat until way too late. I love how Palpatine hides in plain sight and executes his plans almost in full view. I love that Anakin's fall from grace is brought about by his desire to clutch tightly on things he loves, almost echoing what Leia Organa would later say to Grand Moff Tarkin: "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." I love that Anakin's wrong choices will frequently mirror choices his own son will face decades later. I love planetwide cityscapes and battles in the rain with bounty hunters. And I love that a Gungan ne'er-do-well finds redemption on the battlefield, even if his arc is somewhat mishandled by too many trips to the comedic well.

I love a lot of other things about the Prequel Trilogy, and I don't have to pretend that its missteps aren't real to still find them, on balance, to be engaging, fun, and moving films that draw me in emotionally every time I watch them.

Fixing the Prequels: Finale

The Fixing the Prequels series was never, as I’ve noted many times throughout, a project for me to complain about the much-hated films. My goal was always to acknowledge the Prequel Trilogy’s very real problems by suggesting ways they could have been overcome whilst preserving the main story, while also arguing that the films are often much, much better than their reputations have developed. I intended this series to end a long time ago, and my hope was that as time went by, the Prequels would gain a bit in the main estimation of pop culture. I never expected them to become beloved, but I hoped that their many good qualities would look better from a distance, and the angry and often obnoxious rhetoric about them whenever they were brought up would become less toxic.

This, sadly, has not happened.

The tone regarding the Prequel Trilogy has remained as belligerently hostile as ever, with seemingly every discussion of Star Wars that comes up either devolving into, or at least involving a substantial detour, into “Why the Prequels were awful” and “Why George Lucas is the worst thing ever” and all the other boring memes, like “Lucas needed someone to tell him ‘No’” and the always-dreary appeals that all the best thinking about the Prequels was ever done by the noxious Red Letter Media guy. Even the sale of Star Wars to Disney, with the subsequent rejuvenation of the franchise with a new trilogy of films plus a number of spin-off movies, ended up with a lot of cheering that “Hooray! Finally we get Star Wars that has nothing to do with George Lucas!” and “I wonder if they’ll completely ignore the Prequels!” and so on.

To this day, while I understand a lot of the criticism these three films have received, I’ve never understood the outright hatred of them. Their mere existence serves to dredge up a fairly ugly side of fandom every time they arise in conversation. I just end up shrugging and saying “Oh well”, all at the same time avoiding a lot of Star Wars discussion, because I just tire of saying the same things, over and over again.


Anyway, I have some final thoughts on things regarding the Prequels and Star Wars in general, so I thought I’d gather them in one place as an epilogue to this series in general.

Midichlorians

Might as well start here. I touched on the midichlorians in several places throughout the series (here and here, mainly), and my view on them has generally not changed at all. I see the midichlorians as an error on George Lucas’s part, but not from a philosophical standpoint but rather from a storytelling standpoint. I’ve never bought into the notion that by introducing midichlorians as some kind of “mechanism” for the Force, Lucas undermined the mysticism of the original trilogy. The problem is that there just doesn’t seem to have been any story reason to introduce them. The midichlorians add absolutely nothing to the narrative. They’re just kind of “there”, gumming up the works. There’s a very vague implication in Revenge of the Sith, when Palpatine tells Anakin that Darth Plagueis was able to influence the midichlorians to “create life”, that somehow he is responsible for Anakin’s “virgin birth”, but that’s all we have to go on. It’s my understanding that one of the “Expanded Universe” novels actually did something with that concept, but I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter now anyway, as the whole “Expanded Universe” has been swept beneath the rug. The very base suggestion seem to be that the Force somehow noticed that it was out of “balance”, and that it therefore influenced the midichlorians to bring forth a specially powerful being to restore that balance. This, though, also is never really dealt with or stated outright, so the midichlorians remain what they always were: a vexing idea that seemed to have no real reason to be there in the first place.

The “Balance” of the Force

This, too, was a vexing concept that was never really discussed. The prophecy was that someone would bring “balance” to the Force, and it was pretty much assumed by everyone that Anakin was the “Chosen One”. Oddly, though, it was never really discussed at all just how the Force was out of “balance” in the first place. The Jedi seemed to assume that “balance” would mean the destruction of the Sith, but...we’re talking balance here, right? Equal measures of yin and yang, not all the way one way or the other. I suspect that what Lucas had in mind here was that a thousand years of the Jedi maintaining peace and justice in the Old Republic led to a calcified, entrenched group of Jedi who were pretty much so set in their ways as to never budge. This is hinted at a number of times in the Prequels, what with the Jedi’s surprise that the Sith could have returned without being noticed and other similar markers along the way. Not until Revenge of the Sith does Yoda note that they might have misread the prophecy all along.

The general implication is that Anakin must play his role, turning to the Dark Side and destroying the Jedi so that they might rise again, stronger and wiser. Metaphorically, Anakin is like the forest fire that clears the forest of dead brush that is choking off new growth, and that “balance” is not restored until Anakin personally destroys Emperor Palpatine, at the cost of his own life. With their deaths, Governor Tarkin’s words from A New Hope come true, as the last remnants of that earlier time are, at last, “swept away”.

All this plays into my notion that Lucas probably should have played more strongly with the angle that the Jedi were not in their prime at the time of their fall, but were actually succumbing to ruin and rot without ever realizing it. For years I’ve thought that the Jedi were roughly analogous to the Knights Templar, who also retreated so far into their own arrogant self-assurance that they too did not realize that their end was at hand almost until the moment the attacks came and they were tied to the stakes and the firewood at their feet lit.

No “signature” ship

Now here’s a criticism of the Prequel Trilogy that does not come up as often as some others, but it’s one that actually does have real resonance with me: there is no single ship that appears throughout the Prequels, no one ship to signify the Prequel era and tie the films together.

In space opera, ships are important. In fact, ships become characters themselves. In Star Trek, each iteration of the Enterprise has been a beloved part of each show or movie. Firefly fans, like myself, can’t imagine the show without Serenity. And in the Original Star Wars trilogy, the Millennium Falcon is as iconic as it gets. When Luke and company defeat Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi, the real moment of triumph is not when Jabba’s sail barge explodes, but rather when we cut to space right after, and the Millennium Falcon soars to space again.

The Prequel Trilogy has no single ship to tie everything together and serve as a backdrop for the adventures within, and that’s a problem that I just couldn’t solve in this series, given my intent on keeping the main story of the Prequels intact. The closest we get is that a chrome-hulled Naboo cruiser appears in each film, but it’s a different ship each time. There isn’t one ship to serve as the backdrop for all the adventures; there’s no single ship that is the scene of victories and heartbreaks. Ships matter in space opera, and while there are a lot of neat ships in the Prequel Trilogy, none of them becomes a home to the story. A great ship is a character in itself, and the absence of one definitely hurt the Prequel Trilogy’s sense of inhabitability. There was never a really strong sense of returning to a familiar place, as there often was in the Original Trilogy when we saw the Falcon, or even Luke’s X-wing or the bridge of a Star Destroyer.

Palpatine’s “Long game”

This is, to me, an underrated aspect of the Prequel Trilogy. I remember after The Phantom Menace, people complaining about the fact that Palpatine/Sidious is exerting all that energy to get a treaty signed to make Naboo subservient to the Trade Federation, and pretty much the exact opposite happens – and yet, Palpatine still wins. Why did he care, then?

I suspect that he actually didn’t care. Not really. Whether the treaty got signed or not never really mattered; what he was doing was sowing discontent in the very fabric of the Republic. He was creating tension that he could then use to his advantage, giving rise to a notion of the Republic as increasingly faulty and unable to function. Whether or not Naboo fell in line or somehow managed to get off the hook was never of major concern, which suggests that Palpatine was actually a genius at adapting his plans and spotting opportunities while everyone else was merely reacting to day-to-day events. Consider: Palpatine was scheming the creation of the Clone Army a full ten years before a need for such a thing was even recognized. That’s a pretty big thing.

This, in turn, suggests that Palpatine’s eventual fall was due to his eventual failure to keep adapting to circumstances. As Luke Skywalker would eventually say, “Your overconfidence is your weakness,” and this turns out to be exactly right. The Palpatine of the Prequel Trilogy would never let a bunch of sentient teddy bears destroy his precious defense shield! The Palpatine of the Prequel Trilogy was never overconfident.

The nature of the Sith

The films never really make much clear about who the Sith are or what they were doing. The implication is that they are basically the Dark Side equivalent of Jedi, but some history would have been called for at some point. What was the “revenge” they were seeking? What were they trying to accomplish? The films didn’t really address any of this at all, which I always found slightly vexing. Some of this was eventually explored in Expanded Universe stuff, but again, the Expanded Universe has been wiped clean, so...I guess we still don’t know. (Maybe they could take the step of only erasing Expanded Universe stuff past Return of the Jedi, but even then, it’s still disappointing.)

Whither Star Wars?

Where does Star Wars go from here? I expect that Disney is going to try making it into a mega-franchise not unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which will be interesting. Star Wars is going to end up looking very different each time out, I suspect. Will it be too much? Probably not for me, but I do kind-of worry about losing something along the way: the sense that Star Wars was about a single story. I’d hate to see Peter Jackson start making all manner of “Middle Earth” movies, about anything and everything he can think of, once The Hobbit is done. But even so, it’s a big Galaxy, with lots of stories to be told. Maybe one day The Empire Strikes Back will be joined, at long last, by another Star Wars film none of whose action takes place on Tatooine!

I’ll be there, whenever there’s a new Star Wars film to be seen. Will I have the same connection to Star Wars as it continues to unfold? I don’t know. I’ll see the movies, but there’s a very real sense in which my Star Wars ended when Revenge of the Sith came out. What comes now will be fun to watch (I hope), but it really feels like what’s coming is the next generation’s Star Wars, not mine. I hope they play nicely with the old toys. And if they find grand space opera to their liking, I’ve got one for them!

With that, I think I can safely, and finally, call Fixing the Prequels complete. This has been fun, and at long last, I can end with this:

Fixing the Prequels: Revenge of the Sith (part eleven)

Previously:

ten
nine
eight
seven
six
five
four
three
two
one
And now we come to it: the final scenes of Revenge of the Sith.

Most of what I would change here would be to touch up the emotional undercurrent of everything that’s going on, and to address a few issues that have given some people (but not me) pause over the years. Largely, though, I tend to be of the view that the entire second half of this film is extremely good across the board, and close to pitch-perfect in spots.

When we left off, Obi Wan had just confronted Padme with the truth of what’s happening to Anakin. Here Padme decides to try to intercede before things fall apart too badly, and she gets in her ship and flies off to Mustafar. She has a stowaway on board, though: Obi Wan.

The scene that unfolds on the Mustafar landing platform is, to my mind, one of the most underrated scenes in the entire Prequel Trilogy. I suppose that by this point in the film, people’s minds are long made-up about this entire exercise, so it might not even matter how good a scene George Lucas turns in at this point. But anyway, for what it’s worth, I love just about everything about this scene: the hellish red pall over everything, the smoke and ash in the air, Natalie Portman’s capturing of Padme’s desperate attempt to talk Anakin away from his path of hatred, Hayden Christensen’s efforts to make it all sound so reasonable and then his whip-like shift to rage when it fails, and Ewan McGregor’s grounding of Obi Wan, trying to reassert a kind of parental control over Anakin even though he knows it’s going to fail.

There’s also an interesting call-back to The Phantom Menace. Remember in that film, during the duel at the end, the bit with the cascading force-fields that separated the combatants? Qui Gon Jinn knelt and meditated, while Darth Maul paced back and forth like a caged animal. Here, when Anakin feels Obi Wan’s pressure, he begins doing the same thing. Anyhow, I would only make a few very minor changes to any of this:

PADME: Oh, Anakin!

ANAKIN: It's all right, you're safe now. What are you doing out here?

PADME: I was so worried about you. Obi-Wan told me terrible things.

ANAKIN: What things?

PADME: He said you have turned to the dark side . . . that you killed younglings.

ANAKIN: Obi-Wan is trying to turn you against me.

PADME: He cares about us.

ANAKIN: Us??!

PADME: He knows . . . He wants to help you.

ANAKIN: Is Obi-Wan going to protect you? He can't ... he can't help you. He's not strong enough.

PADME: Anakin, all I want is your love.

ANAKIN: Love won't save you, Padme. Only my new powers can do that.

PADME: At what cost? You are a good person. Don't do this.

ANAKIN: I won't lose you the way I lost my mother! I've become more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of and I've done it for you. To protect you.

PADME: Come away with me. Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can. [An addition here] You wanted to teach our child to use the Force!

She holds up his original lightsaber, his Jedi weapon. ANAKIN ignores it.

ANAKIN: Don't you see, we don't have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him, and together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be.

[Now, this is fascinating right here. Anakin appeals to Padme in a very bizarre way: “Join me and we shall rule the galaxy as husband and wife.” That he thinks this can possibly work at all is a testament to how screw-up Anakin is. There is no way that Padme would ever choose to become a dictatress. The other interesting thing here is that in twenty-whatever years, Anakin will make the same offer to his son: “Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.” It fails then, too. For all the parallels between Anakin’s path and Luke’s, it’s telling that at the key moments, Luke is clearly also his mother’s son.]

PADME: I don't believe what I'm hearing . . . Obi-Wan was right. You've changed.

ANAKIN: I don't want to hear any more about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me. Don't you turn against me.

PADME: I don't know you anymore. Anakin, you're breaking my heart. I'll never stop loving you, but you are going down a path I can't follow.

[Padme’s line here, “You’re breaking my heart”, sometimes comes in for ridicule. I suppose I can kinda-sorta see where that’s coming from, but my general impression here is that Lucas is delving full-bore into his folkloric approach to storytelling. In fairy tales and stories based on them, such as Wagnerian operas, people are always dying of broken hearts.]

ANAKIN: Because of Obi-Wan?

PADME: Because of what you've done . . . what you plan to do. Stop, stop now. Come back! I love you.

ANAKIN: (seeing Obi-Wan) Liar!

PADME turns around and. sees OBI-WAN standing in the doorway of the Naboo Cruiser. 

PADME: No!

ANAKIN: You're with him. You've betrayed me! You brought him here to kill me!

PADME: NO! Anakin. I swear ... I ...

ANAKIN reaches out, and PADME grabs her throat as she starts to choke. 

OBI-WAN: Let her go, Anakin.

ANAKIN: What have you and she been up to?

OBI-WAN: Let her go!

ANAKIN releases his grip on the unconscious PADME and she crumples to the ground. The lightsaber in her hand, his old one, rolls beneath the ship. OBI WAN notes this, and then returns his gaze to ANAKIN. 

[Here I would have played up her choking, made it appear a lot more violent, a lot more visceral, than it appeared in the finished film. Maybe, instead of letting her crumple to the ground, Anakin could even throw her against the ship’s hull. More physical injury here might blunt the “She dies of a broken heart?!” criticisms.]

ANAKIN: You turned her against me.

OBI-WAN: You have done that yourself.

ANAKIN: You will not take her from me.

ANAKIN throws off his cloak. 

OBI-WAN: Your anger and your lust for power have already done that.

OBI-WAN flings off his cloak.

OBI-WAN: (continuing) You have allowed this Dark Lord to twist your mind until now . . . until now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy.

They circle each other until OBI-WAN is near PADME. He places his hand on her. 

ANAKIN: Don't lecture me, Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new Empire.

OBI-WAN: Your new Empire?

ANAKIN: Don't make me kill you.

OBI-WAN: Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic ... to democracy.

[Here is where I would add something.]

ANAKIN: Your allegiance will destroy you.

OBI-WAN: Anakin, this isn’t how it has to be! Come back with me! It’s not too late for you. Help me destroy Palpatine and make things right!

ANAKIN: You don’t understand--

OBI-WAN: Anakin, I’ve raised you, taught you! This isn’t who you are, this can’t be who you are! Come with me! It’s the only way.

ANAKIN turns to face him, and there is real pain, real conflict on his face. But then he looks at the slumped form of PADME and hardens again.

ANAKIN: You don’t know the power of the Dark Side...the true nature of the Force. Palpatine is my master now.

OBI-WAN’s face falls. He knows what is about to happen.

OBI-WAN: My allegiance is to the Republic, Anakin.

ANAKIN: If you're not with me, you're my enemy.

OBI-WAN: Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes. I will do what I must.

(ignites his lightsaber)

ANAKIN: You will try.

And with that, the last battle begins. The duel between Obi Wan and Anakin really must be watched multiple times to see all its subtleties, the bits of strategy involved, and the way the setting itself plays into the duel. As they fight through the mining installation, they have to contend with the radiating heat, chunks of lava flying every place, and eventually, they wind up on the rivers of lava themselves. All of this is very intense, and it’s quite simply the most emotionally involving action sequence in the entire Prequel Trilogy. There is literally nothing I don’t love about this fight – well, maybe “love” is the wrong word, I “admire” it – from the intense look of business on Anakin’s face as he tries to kill Obi Wan when he has him pinned to the table, to the way Obi Wan barely keeps his balance as he crosses a thin length of pipe, to the way their fight disrupts the installation’s functioning in the first place.

What surprised me, though, when the film came out was that George Lucas intercuts the Obi Wan versus Anakin fight with a battle between Yoda and Palpatine. When I first saw this, it felt slightly wrong to me, but I got used to it over successive viewings. Obi Wan’s duel with Anakin is the Main Event of the Prequel Trilogy, so why intercut it with something else? Well, in terms of storytelling, I don’t think that Lucas had a choice. Palpatine is the main villain, after all, the big one, and Yoda is known to be one of the greatest of all Jedi. The notion that they would not confront one another simply doesn’t stand up, so confront one another they must. Lucas wisely doesn’t provide nearly as much footage of their battle as he does of Obi Wan’s, but he knows that there is simply no way that Yoda can vanish from the scene in the Old Republic era without at least attempting to deal with things.

And frankly, I wouldn’t change much of anything there, either. It’s interesting to me that the battle starts in a nondescript-looking room, a boring office, which then turns out to be a chamber underneath the great Republic Senate itself, as their battle takes to the central rostrum as it begins to rise up into the larger chamber. When Palpatine begins using the Force to hurl Senate debate pods at Yoda, the symbolism is hard to miss: he is quite literally destroying the mechanism of the Republic’s government.

The main change here that I would make is that I would make clear, in the end, that Palpatine has defeated Yoda. Yoda holds his own for most of the fight, and then when he flees, it needs to feel like he has been truly defeated, that he simply was not strong enough to win this fight. I would have Palpatine take control, landing blow after blow after blow, even as he gleefully cackles his way through the fight. That is one touch I love, the sheer glee that Palpatine shows as he finally unmasks himself in front of Yoda, his hatred of whom he has been burying for years.

Here’s what I think should have happened at the end of Yoda’s battle with Palpatine: Not only does he lose, but he loses very badly. Maybe he even takes a lightsaber blow...but when he flees, there is no question that he has to flee. Only by scurrying through a Star Wars equivalent of a Jeffries Tube can he survive. He has to look worn out, devastated.

And I would not have him rescued by Bail Organa. I would have Yoda flee Coruscant alone somehow. He could flee somehow to the Jedi Temple, dark and abandoned and smoldering, and wander alone through its halls, before finding a ship and flying away from Coruscant himself. Why? Because the Yoda at the end of Revenge of the Sith doesn’t quite match up to the Yoda we meet in The Empire Strikes Back. That Yoda doesn’t hold out much hope for things. He doesn’t think that Luke is going to be worth anything, he seems to have pretty much given up and has to be talked into training Luke by Obi Wan’s ghost. So in my view, Revenge of the Sith must end with Yoda almost broken. So he would fly away from Coruscant unseen by anyone at all, his destination unknown.

Back to Obi Wan and Anakin. Lucas wisely keeps this fight going, and going, and going. This fight isn’t shown in short bursts, like the Luke-versus-Vader battles of the Original Trilogy, or like Qui Gon and Obi Wan versus Darth Maul. There is nothing exhilarating about this fight, nothing exciting in the sense of an exciting action sequence. Instead, this fight will end everything and set the stage for everything to come in the Original Trilogy. It’s a deeply sad battle, as every single attack, every blow, every moment just cements the fact that these two men, friends for years, will be enemies for the rest of their lives. The two fight with differing styles: Obi Wan is trying to figure out the landscape, how to use it to his advantage, how to keep the fight going until he can spot a serious advantage. Anakin, on the other hand, is relentless. In this moment he just keeps coming and coming and coming, never questioning the need to fight, never backing away. There are moments when Anakin seems on the verge of defeat, only to manage another gigantic Force-leap, another acrobatic moment of evading doom. Thus we come to their final exchanges before the end:

OBI WAN: I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you.

ANAKIN: I should have known the Jedi were planning to take over!

OBI WAN: Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!

ANAKIN: From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!

OBI WAN: Then you are lost!

Simple, brutal dialogue there. Words shouted in anger over flumes of molten rock as these two onetime friends prepare to find out which one is going to kill the other. I’d change the dialogue a bit, though:

OBI WAN: I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you.

[Before I continue, I really like this line and the sad way that Ewan McGregor delivers it. You can hear his sadness, but even more, his resignation that it’s over. Anakin is gone, his friend is now a Sith, and only one course remains. Here is when all thought of redeeming Anakin dies, and when Obi Wan realizes that in some way, he has played a role in allowing all of this to come to pass.]

ANAKIN: I should have known the Jedi were plotting against the Republic!

OBI WAN: Anakin, look around you! The Jedi are all dead, and the Republic fell because of Palpatine!

ANAKIN: He did what he had to do to save everyone. And I will serve my master.

OBI WAN: Then you are lost!

Anakin’s inability to recognize that the thing he swore to protect has now been destroyed, with a great deal of help from himself, just might be the key tragedy in Anakin’s conversion to the Sith. That’s how far gone he is at this point.

At this point in the battle, both Obi Wan and Anakin are tired and spent. Obi Wan is desperate for one more move, and he makes it, finally being able to leap to high ground on the side of a river of lava, and there he warns Anakin that he has the high ground and thus stands at a significant advantage right now. It might be hard to figure out, but this is actually a pretty interesting callback to Obi Wan’s battle with Darth Maul, when he managed to use the Force to propel himself up and over Darth Maul. He sees Anakin about to attempt the same thing, so he knows what move to make, and when Anakin leaps, he makes the move, dropping down and slicing Anakin’s legs off. Ouch. I’m not sure what result Obi Wan expected by warning Anakin not to attempt anything; was his plan to capture Anakin? Let Anakin commit the Star Wars version of seppuku? Not sure, but it’s not that big a deal.

Anyhow, here’s where I would make one fairly big change:

OBI WAN and ANAKIN continue dueling as their respective platforms come close to one another...and then in a spectacular leap, ANAKIN jumps from his across a wide gap of flowing lava to land on OBI WAN’s platform. The platform wobbles dangerously but stays upright, and ANAKIN presses OBI WAN in very close combat. ANAKIN holds nothing back, delivering a blinding series of attacks that tax OBI WAN’s ability to parry them to the limit. The outcome seems clear, and with one massive slash, ANAKIN sends OBI WAN’s lightsaber flying, where it lands in the lava river and immediately combusts. ANAKIN barely pauses to run OBI WAN through, and OBI WAN leaps backward, desperately flinging himself across the lava to land miraculously on dry ground. He pushes himself to his feet, weaponless, as ANAKIN swings his platform around.

ANAKIN: This is the end, Master.

OBI WAN prepares himself....

ANAKIN: I will hunt down the rest of the Jedi and destroy them. You were a Master once, but your time is at an end.

ANAKIN lifts his lightsaber high over his head. OBI WAN looks up...the landing platform is nearly directly overhead. He makes a motion with his right hand.

ANAKIN: Prepare to meet your destiny!

On the landing platform, underneath the ship, the lightsaber that PADME dropped twitches and then rolls away, dropping over the side. Down below, ANAKIN leaps in his last attack on OBI WAN. OBI WAN drops, holding his right hand up to snatch ANAKIN’s original lightsaber from the air. In one smooth motion, he ignites the weapon and uses it to cut off ANAKIN’s legs and left arm below the elbow. ANAKIN shrieks and tumbles in a heap to the black sand, where he starts to slide down toward the lava. He lashes out with his one remaining appendage, his already-mechanical right arm. His glove begins to scorch, as does the syntho-flesh beneath it, revealing the structure of his mechanical hand. ANAKIN screams. OBI WAN retreats and deactivates the lightsaber.

OBI WAN: You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would, destroy the Sith, not join them. It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in Darkness!

ANAKIN’s lower extremities, what is left of them, are beginning to smoke.

ANAKIN: I hate you!

OBI WAN: You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.

ANAKIN: I...hate....

ANAKIN cannot finish, as his lower body catches fire. Now he can only shriek in agony as the flames begin consuming him.

OBI WAN: I loved you, Anakin.

The flames reach ANAKIN’s head, and his shrieks become more and more terrible and pathetic. He reaches up with his remaining arm, partially to try to attack and partially a reach for help. OBI WAN can watch no more and starts back up the hill, leaving ANAKIN to burn.

EXTERIOR: Landing platform

OBI WAN arrives back at the ship, where C-3PO awaits him at the bottom of the ramp.

C-3PO: Master Kenobi! We have brought Miss Padme on board. She is hurt very badly. We must leave this dreadful place!

OBI WAN: Start up the ship, 3PO.

C-3PO: Will Master Anakin be joining us?

OBI WAN: No, he won’t.

OBI WAN strides up onto the ship. He is walking slowly, painfully.

C-3PO: Oh dear....

C-3PO follows OBI WAN on board. Behind them, the mining installation is starting to succumb to the lava blasts. The ship’s ramp closes and the engines begin to glow.

INTERIOR: Naboo ship – cabin.

OBI WAN leans over PADME as a concerned R2-D2 whistles sadly nearby. PADME is very weak. An oxygen mask is on her face.

PADME: Obi Wan....

OBI WAN: Relax, Padme. Save your strength.

PADME: Anakin...

OBI WAN: Shhhh....

PADME: Anakin...why?

She lapses into unconsciousness. OBI WAN looks at R2.

OBI WAN: Stay with her.

He exits.

A special shoutout to the next shot, which has an exhausted and overwhelmed Obi Wan slumping into the copilot’s chair as C-3PO flies the ship away from Mustafar. The music at this point in the film is very sad and bleak, in keeping with what has happened.

In the film, at this point Anakin is somehow still alive, and Palpatine arrives to rescue him. I’d change this slightly by having the resident droids of Mustafar intercede, collecting Anakin and putting him on a stretcher. I would assume that they have some kind of programming for if a human handler gets into trouble. The main problem here is that the sudden arrival of Palpatine makes it seem as if Mustafar and Coruscant are right next door to one another. Still, I love the imagery Lucas used here: the closeup of the fine, ash-like sand as Anakin’s machine hand tries to drag the rest of his body up the slope. It’s pathetic and sad, but it also shows the drive that Anakin still possesses, which he will channel over the next twenty years as Darth Vader.

What’s left is mainly wrapping everything up, isn’t it? Palpatine’s rescue of Anakin from Mustafar is intercut with Obi Wan’s arrival at some medical station with Padme. I wouldn’t have Yoda there, but virtually everything else in this entire sequence works for me. I would have the medical droids work to save Padme from the injuries Anakin inflicted upon her, but I would still keep the sense that what is killing her is her broken heart. A lot of people have complained about this over the years since the film came out, but it’s never bothered me in the least. First of all, dying of a broken heart is a very common thing to happen in mythic storytelling; it happens all the time in opera. Second of all, it happens in real life. Yes, I would have Padme be grievously injured, but I would also have the medical droids flummoxed because her injuries should be survivable...but aren’t.

The birth sequence, intercut with Anakin’s conversion into a cyborg, is in my opinion nearly perfectly done in the film. This entire sequence is visually stunning as it switches from the gentle lighting of Padme’s maternity room to Anakin’s droid-run facility, starkly lit and with no hints of warmth at all as the droids attach things to Anakin’s body with almost no regard for his comfort. When the mask is lowered over Anakin’s face, the transformation is complete, and the moment is very troubling. I love the POV shot as the mask is positioned, and there’s a tiny shot of Anakin’s face, the last time we see his eyes, and his eyes widen with fear just as they disappear from view. The mask is pressed into position and there is a hissing sound as the air is sucked out, Anakin is sealed within, and aside from whatever rare moments he takes to himself inside his meditation chambers, his face will not see the light of day again until he is near his own death.

Meanwhile, Padme names the babies “Luke” and “Leia”, begs Obi Wan to save Anakin, and then she dies. Again we cut to Anakin, who is now fully Darth Vader. For some reason this scene always gets made fun of, but it’s never bothered me. I like how Palpatine lays the guilt for Padme’s death right at Anakin’s feet. It’s the masterstroke that will keep Anakin stoked toward the Dark Side for many years to come, this knowledge that he destroyed the love of his life himself. It amazes me that Palpatine is often able to use the truth to get what he wants. Nothing he says here is a lie: “In your anger, you killed her.” He is stoking the same old guilt in Anakin’s heart, which guarantees that Anakin will never embrace his own heart again. As Anakin screams that infamous ”Nooooo!” (which I have never had a problem with anyway), Palpatine grins evilly in the background.

Now, Obi Wan and Bail Organa have to return Padme’s body to Naboo, whereupon they must have the discussion as to what should happen with the children. Remember, in my version, Yoda’s whereabouts are unknown....

Interior: Alderaan cruiser – hold.

OBI WAN and BAIL ORGANA watch through a window as Padme’s coffin is taken away by Royal Naboo Guards.

BAIL: We have heard nothing from Master Yoda.

OBI WAN: Yoda lives. More than that, I do not know. I will find him, in time.

BAIL: I have made arrangements to adopt the girl. My wife and I have been talking about children for some time. She will have a good home and she will be loved.

OBI WAN: I will take the boy to his family on Tatooine.

BAIL: We’ve just learned that Anakin Skywalker is still alive...as Darth Vader. You don’t think he will find his son?

OBI WAN: He’s Darth Vader now, not Anakin Skywalker. He’ll never go back there. There’s nothing for him on Tatooine anymore. Luke will be safe.

BAIL: I must go to pay my respects to Senator Amidala’s family. Will you join me?

OBI WAN looks outside at the gathering funerary procession and shakes his head.

OBI WAN: It’s best that no one knows I am here.

BAIL: Very well.

BAIL turns to go, and then stops and faces OBI WAN again. He steps in closer so he won’t be overheard by anyone.

BAIL: This is not the end, you know. The fight will continue.

OBI WAN nods, and BAIL leaves. OBI WAN walks into a tiny cabin where LUKE and LEIA are asleep. He sits down beside them, and dabs a cloth to one of their mouths.

OBI WAN: The Force is strong in your family. Perhaps one day....

VOICE: (from the air) Obi Wan.

OBI WAN: What...Qui Gon?

VOICE OF QUI GON JINN: Obi Wan. All is not lost. I have things to teach you...many things...about the true power of the Force....

OBI WAN is stunned.

A very common complaint about Revenge of the Sith that I’ve never understood is that it’s dumb for Obi Wan to take Luke to Anakin’s own family, because then Anakin will find Luke, and that it’s doubly dumb to not even change Luke’s name. This has always sounded dumb to me. The Lars family isn’t Anakin’s family. His only connection to them is that his mother married Cliegg Lars, and now she is dead. Under what possible circumstance is Darth Vader going to drop by the Lars homestead for a visit? The complaint makes absolutely zero sense to me.

I do like withholding the idea that Qui Gon has somehow managed to live on as part of the Force until this moment, too, when it seems that the Dark Side stands completely triumphant over everything. Obviously I have Yoda disappearing into apparent exile, so I have to have Qui Gon personally manifest himself to Obi Wan. There is dialog in the original scripts which indicates that Lucas originally intended to have Qui Gon’s voice be heard again, but obviously that never happened. I don’t know if it was because Lucas decided not to do it or because Liam Neeson refused to do the voice work, but in my version of Revenge of the Sith, that happens.

At this point I would cut to:

Exterior: Space – Dagobah.

A tiny ship emerges from hyperspace and approaches the swamp planet.

Exterior: Dagobah – swamp.

The ship descends and lands in a clearing by the side of the swamp. As its engines cool and go dark, the ship opens, and YODA emerges. He moves slowly, perhaps limping. He walks out onto the land and looks across the swamp, to a tiny hut made of mud. YODA breathes out a deep and heavy sigh, and then he turns to his little ship and lifts his hand. The ship levitates, and then YODA uses the Force to move it to the middle of the swamp, where he releases it, allowing it to sink. Then he begins hobbling in the direction of the hut as his ship sinks into the water.

I remember how enigmatic Yoda is when we first meet him in The Empire Strikes Back, how ambiguous he is. His refusal to train Luke, his deep skepticism – it’s almost as if he has given up on the very idea of a new hope at all. That’s what I would hope to convey here: that Yoda is hiding not so much to rise again, but because he’s failed and genuinely doesn’t know if there is anything else he can do.

After this, all that’s left is the last arranging of the pieces: First, the burial of Padme. This is a beautiful sequence, again intercut with Vader and Palpatine. Padme’s funeral is extremely well-done, ending on the little wooden pendant in her hand, the one made for her by a young Anakin. I would change the last shots of Vader and Palpatine, though: I’d keep Palpatine on the bridge of the Star Destroyer, but I’d ditch the construction of the Death Star, and instead have him looking over the beginnings of the Imperial Fleet, with the first real incarnations of the Star Destroyers. Then I’d cut to Darth Vader, somewhere on some planet, confronting a straggler Jedi Knight and destroying him as a couple of stormtroopers look on. This seems to me more likely: first of all, I'm not sure what to make of the apparent suggestion that the first Death Star took twenty years to build; was the second one built at the same time, or was it one of the greatest "rush jobs" in Galatic history?

Also, I think we need to see Darth Vader in some kind of action, in the armor, looking like the classic Darth Vader. Obi Wan later tells Luke that Darth Vader "helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights", and it seems to me that seeing him do just that might be a good place to leave him. He has no regret by this point; he has given himself fully to the Dark Side and is content to do evil.

In the original script, Lucas included Yoda's arrival on Dagobah here; he later cut it on the basis that it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. Still, I'd show it. There's little better sense of how far the Jedi have fallen than to show Yoda's final destination, as far from the glorious marble of the Jedi Temple as you can get.

And then, at the end of it all, two sequences I wouldn’t change at all: Bail Organa arriving at home on Alderaan and presenting their adoptive daughter to his wife, and Obi Wan turning young Luke over to Owen and Beru Lars. That ending brought the entire Star Wars saga full-circle...and that’s where everything ends.

If there was a better way to end the story, a better final shot to look upon before the final smash to the credits, I can't imagine what it is. There is "A new hope", and he's growing up right there...until his own saga can begin.

Another thing I like is that there is no dialogue in the film at all after the final scene in the ship's hold. Lucas relies on his images and his music to bring it all together

With that, we reach the end of Revenge of the Sith. I will have one more post in this series, tying everything together and addressing a few issues that apply to the Prequels as a whole and thoughts on this entire project, which ended up taking longer than I ever expected. Tune in, Star Warriors!

Fixing the Prequels: Revenge of the Sith (part ten)

Previously:

nine
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six
five
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three
two
one
So! When last we left off, Anakin had finally stopped wandering around the pitcher of Palpatine’s Kool-Aid and just picked it up and drained it in one swallow. What’s left now is the ramifications of the great attack on the Jedi, who never saw it coming, never realized, never had any idea of the danger they were in – the danger they themselves walked into.

Much of the rest of the film is nearly perfectly done, really. The entire third act of Revenge of the Sith, starting with Anakin’s turn and the attack on the Jedi, is utterly great, and this entire portion of the film is one reason it always pains me to hear people dismiss the entire Prequel Trilogy in one go, as if there was nothing of value to be found within it. Well, there is; there’s a great deal, and this is where George Lucas’s hand is the most steady. There are very few major changes I’d make to all this; just little things here and there to clarify or tighten things up slightly.

Where I’d left off, Anakin had just reached the most distasteful part of his duty in cleansing the Jedi Temple: the slaying of the younglings. We’d cut at this point to Padme in her apartment – as I’ve written it, arriving home after trying to fly to the Temple – where she looks out across the cityscape and, in one of the film’s many haunting images, sees only the smoke-and-fire shrouded haze of the Jedi Temple in the distance.

INT: Coruscant – Padme’s apartment.

PADME enters, where she is greeted by C-3PO.

C-3PO: Senator! We’ve had some problems--

PADME: What happened here?!

She sees the shattered glass everywhere.

C-3PO: Master Anakin had to make a rather dramatic exit. It seems something is amiss at the Jedi Temple. Could that be why?

PADME looks out the window, across the cityscape. In the distance, shrouded by flame and billowing red smoke, is the Jedi Temple. Horror overtakes her.

C-3PO: He’s quite resourceful for a human being...I’m sure he’ll be all right.

PADME breaks into tears.

At this point Bail Organa arrives at the Temple:

EXT. CORUSCANT-JEDI TEMPLE-LANDING PLATFORM-PRE-DAWN

The Jedi Temple is on fire. Large plumes of smoke billow toward the sky as BAIL ORGANA lands his Speeder on a Jedi Temple platform. FOUR CLONE TROOPERS stand guard at the entrance to the Temple. They lower their guns as BAIL gets out of his Speeder and walks toward them.

BAIL ORGANA: What's going on here? What’s happened to the Jedi--

CLONE SERGEANT: There's been a rebellion. Don't worry, sir, the situation is under control.

The CLONES bar the Senator from entering the Temple.

BAIL ORGANA: But the Jedi--!

He tries to push through, but the CLONES lift their weapons and aim them at BAIL.

CLONE SERGEANT: It's time for you to leave, sir.

BAIL ORGANA: And so it is.

BAIL reluctantly heads hack toward his Speeder. Suddenly, several SHOTS RING OUT. BAIL turns and sees a ten-year-old Jedi, ZETT JUKASSA, fighting the CLONES. The YOUNG JEDI cuts down several CLONES, including APPO, before he is overrun and shot.

BAIL ORGANA: No!

He starts forward, but the CLONES fire on him. He dives back into his speeder and takes off, only barely managing to regain control of his craft before crashing.

CLONE SERGEANT: Let him go! Stop firing! He’s a Senator!

Now we cut to Utapau:

EXT: Utapau – underwater – caves.

A group of CLONE TROOPERS on speeder bikes fly over the water, searching.

CLONE TROOPER: No one here, sir. He must be dead.

CLONE TROOPER #2: Let’s get back.

They fly off, and when they’re gone, OBI WAN KENOBI pops up from beneath the surface, his rebreather device in his mouth. He climbs up onto the rocks and looks himself over; he is bruised and bleeding in several places but not seriously wounded. He draws his lightsaber and attempts to ignite it, but it is waterlogged and fizzles. Stowing his rebreather back into his belt, he begins climbing up and out.

[This bit echoes back to my TPM series, in which Obi Wan had some trouble early on with a waterlogged lightsaber. Meanwhile....]

EXT: Kashyyyk – beach – battleground – night.

A group of CLONE TROOPERS is searching through the remains littering a battlefield on the beachhead.

CLONE TROOPER: No sign of him, sir. Just dead Wookiees.

CLONE SERGEANT: Proceed to the east. He must be here somewhere.

EXT: Kashyyyk – hillside overlooking the beach.

Two Wookiees, TARRFUL and CHEWBACCA, arrive on the hilltop, where TARRFUL lets down YODA from his back. YODA waves his hand, using the Force to toss aside a pile of vegetation that had been concealing a small emergency ship.

YODA: Thank you. Fear for your planet’s safety I do. A dark time is upon us. Goodbye, Tarrful and Chewbacca!

The two WOOKIEES howl in reply, and YODA boards his tiny ship and flies up and away from the planet.

INT: YODA’S SHIP.

YODA: Emergency channel, activate.

EXT: Coruscant – docking bay.

BAIL ORGANA lands his speeder near his ALDERAANIAN CRUISER, where he hops out and throws his cape over his shoulders. Two OFFICIALS approach.

OFFICIAL: Senator?

BAIL ORGANA: I have business offworld. Emergency business in the name of the Senate.

OFFICIAL: Very well.

He strides past them to his ship, whose thrusters are warming up.

INT: Alderaanian cruiser – corridor.

BAIL ORGANA is met at the entrance by CAPTAIN ANTILLES.

ANTILLES: Senator? What’s going on?

BAIL ORGANA: I don’t know. Did you get a Jedi beacon?

ANTILLES: I did. It’s a complete mess over there. The Clone Troopers are going wild. I’m not sure anyone’s really in command.

BAIL ORGANA: That will change soon. This is just the beginning. Get us into space. As soon as we’re out of Coruscant’s transponder range, activate that beacon and get us to Polis Massa.

ANTILLES: Polis Massa?

BAIL ORGANA: You heard me. Hopefully we can stop a few Jedi from walking into this catastrophe.

EXT: Coruscant – sky.

The Alderaanian Cruiser lifts off and leaves Coruscant.

[Now, did anyone besides me get really excited at the sight of that ship and the familiar white corridors?]

EXT. UTAPAU-SINKHOLE WALL-LATE DAY

OBI-WAN hides from a group of CLONE TROOPERS.

CLONE CAPTAIN: Start loading your men on the ship.

CLONE TROOPER: Yes, sir.

OBI-WAN tries to sneak back to the secret platform, down a flight of stairs.

EXT. UTAPAU-SECRET LANDING PLATFORM-LATE DAY

OBI-WAN makes his way out of the cave and onto General Grievous's secret landing platform. He runs to the Starfighter and climbs into the one-man ship. The Starfighter takes off and disappears into the sky.

EXT. UTAPAU-SPACE

OBI-WAN flies away from the planet Utapau in General Grievous's tiny Starfighter.

INT. GENERAL GRIEVOUS'S STARFIGHTER-SPACE

OBI-WAN activates the controls on the Starfighter. He punches in several coordinates and codes. A BEEPING SOUND is heard. It quickly speeds up until it is a steady tone. OBI-WAN speaks into his comlink.

OBI-WAN: Emergency Code Nine Thirteen ... I have no contact on any frequency. Are there any Jedi out there? . . . anywhere . . .

A BURST OF STATIC is heard- and a FUZZY HOLOGRAM image appears.

BAIL: (hologram) . . . Kenobi . . .

OBI-WAN: (continuing) I've locked on. Repeat.

The FUZZY HOLOGRAM image comes into focus, and it is BAIL ORGANA.

BAIL ORGANA: Master Kenobi??

OBI-WAN: Senator Organa! My Clone Troops turned on me ... I need help.

BAIL ORGANA: We have just rescued Master Yoda. It appears this ambush has happened everywhere. We're sending you our coordinates.

OBI WAN: Acknowledged.

BAIL’s hologram fades. OBI WAN settles back for a long flight.

OBI WAN: What is happening?!

The ship here, General Grievous’s starfighter, is an odd ship indeed. I’ve never been able to decide if I liked it or not. It’s got this old-car-from-1959 vibe to it, almost as if Lucas is paying a visual homage of sorts to American Graffiti.

Meanwhile, back on Coruscant, Anakin checks in with Padme:

EXT: Padme’s apartment – speeder dock.

A speeder arrives, and ANAKIN jumps out. PADME comes running out and throws her arms around him.

PADME: Oh Anakin, I was so worried! What’s happened at the Temple?

ANAKIN disengages from her embrace.

ANAKIN: It’s as I always feared. It’s why the Jedi have been shutting me out. They were planning to strike against the Chancellor and take control of the Republic.

PADME: What?!

ANAKIN: They tried it, Padme. They really tried it. They failed.

PADME: I can’t believe it!

ANAKIN: I was there. I saw it all. Master Windu tried to assassinate the Chancellor.

PADME: Is...is he....

ANAKIN: Windu is dead. As are most of the rest of the Jedi. They’re traitors, Padme. I always sensed something wrong with the Order....

PADME: What about Obi Wan?

ANAKIN: If he’s not already dead, he’s a traitor too.

PADME: You can’t believe that!

ANAKIN shakes his head.

ANAKIN: I don’t know what to believe, really. I’m afraid for Obi Wan. I pray he is not a part of this plot.

PADME stares at him as he goes inside. There is something very different about him now that she can’t quite put her finger on. She follows him to the fireplace, where he stops and looks into a mirror. The reflection staring back is dark, distorted.

ANAKIN: I’m sorry about your window. Obi Wan and I are bad for your windows....

PADME: Anakin.

ANAKIN: I have to leave now. I’ve been given a very important mission.

PADME: By who?

ANAKIN: Chancellor Palpatine. At least one Jedi is still loyal to him. He has intelligence that the Separatist leaders are on Mustafar. I’m going there to end this war once and for all.

He steps forward and takes PADME’s hands.

ANAKIN: Soon it will all be over, my love. No more war, no more Senate, no more Jedi order telling us who we can be. Soon we’ll be in your Lake Country...just you and me and our child...I will teach him how to use the Force.

PADME: Or her.

ANAKIN: Or her. We’ll make a new Order, free of Jedi poison.

PADME: Anakin....

ANAKIN: I will return. When I do, it will all be better. You’ll see.

He puts something down on the end table. It is his old lightsaber.

ANAKIN: It’s all right. I have a new one. This one is for my son. Or my daughter.

He kisses her, and then he leaves. PADME is deeply disturbed. She knows that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

One thing lost, slightly, in the finished film is Anakin’s failure to recognize that in the end, he is largely just a pawn in everything. He’s still trying to maintain some semblance of control over his destiny, and his realization of how badly he’s lost it comes far, far too late. He still thinks that a happy ending is possible, a happy ending where he goes off and lives with Padme and teaches his kid about the Force. Anakin is swirling down the rabbit hole now.

We cut now to Bail Organa’s ship, where Obi Wan rejoins Yoda. One tiny nitpick I have with this sequence is that there isn’t enough discussion along the lines of “What the hell just happened to us?!” So, here’s my version:

EXT: Space – Alderaanian Cruiser.

OBI WAN flies his stolen starfighter into the Alderaanian cruiser’s landing bay.

INT: Alderaanian cruiser – corridor.

OBI WAN emerges from the landing bay to meet YODA and BAIL ORGANA.

YODA: Hurt you are, Obi Wan.

OBI WAN: Not badly, Master. What happened? We had the battle won, and then my own clone troopers fired on me!

YODA: Betrayed, you were, along with all the Jedi. Controlled from outside, the clones are. The Dark Side....

BAIL ORGANA: I saw thousands of clone troopers attacking the Temple. That’s why I had my Captain steal a transponder. I had hoped more would answer the call.

OBI WAN: Are there no others?

YODA: None who have answered. Perished, or gone into hiding, they have.

BAIL ORGANA: The Temple is now sending a signal for all Jedi to return. It says that the war is over.

OBI WAN: A trap. Darth Sidious is behind this, isn’t he?

YODA: Indeed he is...and unmasked now is he.

OBI WAN: Who is he?

YODA: Mind your thoughts, Obi Wan. Power over the armies of the Republic?

OBI WAN: Palpatine.

YODA: Hidden from us, the entire time. Weak we became. See him, we did not.

OBI WAN: But if Palpatine is a Sith Lord, then Anakin is in grave danger!

Yoda nods.

OBI WAN: We have to go back!

YODA: Beyond saving, your apprentice may be....

OBI WAN: We have to try...and besides, we have to deactivate that signal from the Temple. Any stragglers going back will be captured and killed.

YODA: Agree, I do...but beware your feelings, Obi Wan. More to reveal, the Dark Side has.

It makes sense to me that Obi Wan would be worried about Anakin, who it turns out has been left in the very thick of things. He doesn’t know yet, he hasn’t even begun to suspect. Has Yoda? Possibly. I suspect he would. He knows that the Sith come in pairs, after all.

And what’s Anakin up to? He’s arriving on Mustafar, which is one of my favorite planet settings in all of Star Wars. Seriously, look at this:

That’s amazing. It’s just brutal hellscape from one horizon to the other. Inside the mining facility, the sniveling Separatist conspirators are all together in one place, and Darth Sidious tells them (via hologram) that his new apprentice, Darth Vader, will take care of them. And sure enough, he arrives just a bit later (as Bail Organa arrives back on Coruscant, with Obi Wan and Yoda, just in time for the Chancellor’s special session of the Senate). Anakin/Vader’s entrance here is just perfect. He walks in, face shrouded by his hood, and gestures the doors closed. It’s truly chilling. The Separatists have absolutely no idea what’s about to happen to them, and why would they?

This entire next bit is thrilling, as we intercut between Palpatine’s speech to the Senate, in which he rallies public opinion against the Jedi and support for his having won the war to justify declaring himself Emperor, Obi Wan and Yoda’s infiltration of the Temple, and Anakin’s brutal slaughter of the Separatist leaders. Lots of amazing visuals here, from Yoda throwing his lightsaber into a clone trooper’s heart, to Palpatine’s messianic proclamation, to Anakin’s final, devastating turn. There’s such a brutal finality to Anakin’s actions here, particularly when Nute Gunray, the Trade Federation leader whom we met way back in the opening scenes of TPM, is protesting that Sidious promised them all peace...and Anakin cuts him down in midsentence.

Of particular interest is Obi Wan and Yoda finding the dead younglings. I would relocate this to the library, in keeping with the previous entry.

INT: Jedi Temple – library.

OBI WAN and YODA enter...and find the bodies of the slain younglings. OBI WAN looks as though he is going to be sick.

OBI WAN: Not even the younglings survived?

YODA: Not cut down by blaster fire. Lightsaber wounds, these are.

OBI WAN: Sidious has a new apprentice, doesn’t he? Who could it be?

And cut to Anakin, killing the Separatists and enjoying it.

Yup...Anakin has gone well and truly around the bend.

Other things I like in this sequence? Well, Padme’s line about “So this is how liberty dies – with thundrous applause.” Palpatine didn’t take over the Republic; instead, he made it want to go where he wanted it. That’s how it works, a lot of the time.

The only major change I’d make in all this is this next scene, when Obi Wan watches the security recordings and learns the truth.

INT: Jedi Temple – security and computer center.

YODA keeps watch as OBI WAN works with the computers.

OBI WAN: That should do it. I’ve recalibrated the message to warn Jedi to stay away.

YODA: A long time it will take for them to discover the change. Come. Go, we must.

OBI WAN: No.

He turns to another console with a large viewscreen.

OBI WAN: We have to learn what we’re facing.

YODA sighs.

YODA: Only pain you will find, I fear.

OBI WAN turns on the screen and plays the recording. It is hazy at first, a scene of chaotic destruction as CLONE TROOPERS surge into the Great Hall, blasting Jedi. But then, in one corner, a glimpse of something...a red light, flashing back and forth.

CLONE TROOPER: Form up behind Lord Vader!

OBI WAN: Lord Vader? Focus here.

He touches the screen and the scene shifts to center on the red light. It focuses...the red light is a lightsaber, flashing with dizzying speed, its wielder shrouded in dark robes. OBI WAN watches for a moment as YODA stands near, staring at the floor, shaking his head.

OBI WAN: Freeze image!

The screen freezes on a shot of the SITH APPRENTICE.

OBI WAN: No....

It is unmistakably ANAKIN.

OBI WAN: No! It can’t be!

YODA: Screen off.

The monitor goes dark.

OBI WAN: Anakin...no!

YODA: Feared this, I did.

OBI WAN: You never said anything!

YODA: Hope for Skywalker, I had. Hope that was misplaced. Much failure here. Much of it, mine.

OBI WAN: We pushed him into Palpatine’s arms!

YODA: A Sith he is, now. And destroyed they must be.

OBI WAN: I will confront Palpatine. I cannot attack Anakin. He is--

YODA: Anakin he is, no longer. The young man you knew is dead. Only this creature remains. Darth Vader he is now.

OBI WAN: I can’t do it!

YODA: You must. Not strong enough to confront Sidious are you, and only two are we.

OBI WAN: I don’t even know where he is!

YODA: You will.

And, it turns out, he does....

INT: Coruscant – Padme’s apartment – day.

OBI WAN meets with PADME.

PADME: The Chancellor is a Sith Lord?

OBI WAN: He deceived us all.

PADME: Is there hope?

OBI WAN: Little...but we have to act. [pause as he gathers his courage] Padme...where is Anakin?

PADME: You need him to defeat the Chancellor!

OBI WAN: No...Anakin is in grave danger.

PADME: From the Sith?

OBI WAN: From himself.

PADME: I don’t understand.

OBI WAN: This is so hard to say...but...Anakin isn’t in danger from Palpatine’s apprentice. Anakin IS Palpatine’s apprentice.

PADME recoils.

PADME: What?

OBI WAN: Anakin has joined Palpatine. He has joined the Sith.

PADME: He wouldn’t--

OBI WAN: He has turned to the Dark Side, Padme, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I have seen the security recordings from the Temple assault. Anakin led the Clone Troopers. He helped slaughter every Jedi there.

PADME: No!

OBI WAN: Including the younglings.

PADME: No! He wouldn’t do that! You’re wrong! You’re wrong....

She sits on the couch, stricken with horror and grief. She knows it’s true. OBI WAN joins her.

OBI WAN: Padme...I must find him.

PADME: (through tears) You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?

OBI WAN cannot answer ‘Yes’....

OBI WAN: He is...a grave threat. To the Republic...to you...to himself.

PADME is exerting every bit of control she can muster, and still, her cracks are showing. Finally she shakes her head.

PADME: I can’t. I don’t know where he is.

OBI WAN sees that she is lying, but he doesn’t press her. Instead he rises and walks toward the exit, stopping on the threshold.

OBI WAN: Anakin is the father, isn’t he?

PADME cannot reply.

OBI WAN: I’m so sorry.

He leaves, and he is barely out the door before Padme breaks down...but only for a moment. OBI WAN flies off, and PADME looks across the room to the table where ANAKIN’s old lightsaber rests. She gets up, walks over to the table, and picks up the lightsaber.

PADME: C-3PO? Call Captain Typho. I need my ship.

INT: Mustafar – mining complex.

PAN THROUGH the complex, across the bodies that still lay where they fell when ANAKIN struck them down, and finally to ANAKIN himself, standing at an overlook, surveying the hellish planet. His eyes are crazed, and a tear rolls down one cheek.

This scene, the bit between Obi Wan and Padme, is one of the best in the entire Star Wars saga, and I only change it to reflect my own previous changes. The scene is brilliantly acted by Ewan MacGregor and Natalie Portman, from his refusal to actually say that he needs to go kill Anakin, to her denial of what she’s hearing but the look on her face which makes clear that she knows how true it is. And that cut to Anakin, standing on the overlook with his dead behind him...the look of insane rage, leavened with the single tear...that’s pretty amazing, and it’s all tied together by John Williams in one of the saga’s most compelling bits of scoring. The music for this scene, starting with Obi Wan’s arrival at Padme’s apartment, can be heard here, at the 2:24 mark:


This is music of grim realization. As you listen to it, you can hear all the dark pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

And that’s where we’ll stop. Next time...it all ends.