Exactly. This is a scene that provides background for Luke's motivation to go to the academy. But the scene at the dinner table already does that very well.
That's what I was starting to see in some of the LOTR extended editions. The first one was even more awesome with the extra half hour, the second one even better with the extra forty minutes (but some scenes weren't necessary) - by the third one it was half and half, with some scenes you'd only get away with if you were doing a miniseries. Peter Jackson was indulging himself too much by then.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
You can see a lot of deleted scenes on the PT DVD's. I would have liked to have seen several put back in the films - Anakin's fight with Greedo and the sprint away from Mos Espa, scenes with Padme's family and the senators. Lucas just has a peeve about length, and never indulges in a running time over 2 1/2 hours.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
The one thing I can't figure out for the life of me is why they cut the 37 second clip of Yoda landing on Dagobah at the end of ROTS. That was such a beautiful scene. Quick, but beautiful, and was a great way to tie in to the OT. That really disappointing me.
I keep re-watching it and I'm like "why why why?" lol It was a perfect fit in.
But it was less than 40 seconds, and it was just....gorgeous. Felt completely like ESB. Might not have been absolutely 100 percent necessary, but I don't think it would have killed anything either.
Well if you think about it, what does the shot of Vader and the Emperor looking out the window watching the construction of the Death Star really add to the story of ROTS? We didn't hear a word about it all in the movie, and it doesn't help to wrap up the story we just saw. What it does try to do however, is go "oh hey, let's try and bridge these last 2 hours now to the OT in a matter of 5 minutes." lol
If scenes like that made it in the final cut, I just thought spending 35 seconds to show some closure to Yoda would have been acceptable. His last line is "teach you to commune with him, I will." And that's it. We don't see him again until ESB. So I guess that scene to me would have said that he goes to Dagobah immediately after he speaks to Obi-Wan. I know for the most part you should assume that anyway, given what had happened in the movie, but I still would have liked it.
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I like George.
Last edited by Sith Master X on Jun 7th, 2010 at 04:35 PM
I don't think anything was lost by not showing Yoda landing on Dagobah. Give a bit of mystery to the future fans who will one day watch these in order of I - VI (not matter how much the old guys grumble.) I'm just glad he resisted shots of Yavin & Hoth.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
I agree with you. As I said before: the end of ROTS tries to wrap things up a little too much, too neat. The whole DS thing was obsolete too... A lot was.
In a normal six part saga that one'd make from epsiode one, a filmmaker would never make such ending scenes to set the stage for the next one. There'd be a cliffhanger, or a loose thread (like VAder escaping alive at the end of ANH) but not a whole set of scenes: ooooh... look where they are going, that's where you are going to see them in the next episode...
To me, all that was flawed. I'd have preferred to see some scene of Anakin painfully accepting his new fate or finding out how inescapable his new life has become. No he loses his legs and arms, gets a portable iron lung and just stands there as the happy Palpy dog companion. And his bad ass days are still ahead of him, of which we hardly see anything.
You forget there's a twenty year gap between ROTS and ANH. What kind of cliffhanger ending would you put in? It's not like the uncertainty of the future we see from AOTC and ROTS, or the ending of TESB to ROTJ - both cases, the films are seperated by a single year.
We already had a scene in ROTS that shows Anakin's painful acceptance of his fate, when he awakes in his armour and finds Padme is (indirectly)dead because of him, and he's trapped in a fate he made for himself. I don't think we needed more scenes after that of Palpatine giving him pep talks. Just the silent montage around the galaxy of the central players was enough, with Anakin learning to live in his new role.
And Lucas was shaping it not so much as a six-part series, but as a pair of trilogies. Yes, he threw in visual foreshadowing hints in the closing scenes of ROTS - things people who have seen the OT already know. But that was just for the fans.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Don't get me wrong or anything, I really liked the last 10 minutes of the movie and the ending, I did.
But it was just sort of thrown in there for the sake of throwing it in and appealing to the fans, as you just mentioned, rather then let the ending unfold naturally.
It's nothing I lose any sleep over, but there's alot of Episode III that doesn't really bridge anything together into the OT (not that it really had to) and then in the last 10 minutes I feel like it was trying to take a two hour movie and convince us that the entire thing was a seamless transition into Episode 4, and it wasn't.
What acceptance did we see???? First we see him yell NOOOOOOOOOOO... and then he is there on the bridge...
To me, the whole structure of the PT is lacking. I think at least two episodes should have been the story of ROTS. And the last of Anakin being a being mofo tracking down Jedi, finding OB1 on his way for one final attempt to turn him back to the light side. As OB1 musings in ANH suggested.
Now we get a very long runway with a very obsolete AOTC and an overly rushed finale in ROTS. So th climax would then be Anakin locked up forever in the suit, but his turn and his bad assnes would already have been on great display. Now he's just a kid killer.
The cut away from his "NOOOOOO......" is a time cut, as we go to several other places and events going on (like Padme's funeral) before coming back to Palpatine & Vader on the Star Destroyer. We get the feeling time has passed, and Anakin/Vader has had time adjusting to his new role. (Because he's not sulking in the back of the ship, refusing to come out...)
But apparently, filmmaking craft can be too subtle for some people. While Lucas assumes the audience is paying attention and has gotten the idea, others apparently need a title card to appear on the bottom of the screen detailing HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED. Thankfully, those people are few in number.
The other events of hunting down further Jedi are something Lucas wanted to deal with in a different way, with the EU and the forthcoming live action series. He wanted it to end with Luke & Leia been given away to be raised separately; that is the appropriate ending.
And we always knew Anakin/Vader was a killer - children & otherwise - from ANH onward. We just didn't see it up close until ROTS. It's not unexpected.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Jun 3rd, 2010 09:03 AM
