Ya know, the weird thing is, when I see the behind the scenes footage of McGregor training for the TPM fight it looks pretty cool. Yet, when I see it in TPM it's pretty clean and sterile.
Maybe it's the shabby sports wear, the shabby beard and hair and the sweat that made it look like a real effort. I dunno.
1.) The lack of emotional investment in the characters;
2.) The style itself, with the speed, pre-practised perfect routines, and the twirly-whirly; and
3.) The polished, super-clean, sterile looking, effortless movements (and environments).
Add number 1, and the others remain. The style I've already b*tched about, but the very look and feel of the fights is fake feeling. Aside from the Anakin-Kenobi duel, there's not alot of sweat, or panting, or struggling. Remember Luke getting all bruised and sweaty? The look on his face when he's down on the ground with Vader's saber at his throat? It looked and felt real. You could see the grit and the strain.
It looked like the sabers lost their weight in the PT. None of the actors got dirty and sweaty during the fights. After Luke loses his hand, look at him. He's grunting through gritted teeth, he's filthy, he's angry, he's real. Or when he defeats Vader in RotJ; panting and glowering over him after thrashing the shit out of him. Then look at the PT. The fighting looks easy, and elegant, and flowing, and perfect, and done in an air-conditioned studio with lots of stunt doubles and changes of clothes. Again, the exception is the RotS final duel, and no surprise most people call it the best. I do too (by default), and that gritty, sweaty, panting, struggling look the actors have by the end of it is a part of that quality. But it's just one of like 8 in the trilogy. None of the others come close to it.
It's why I liked the TFA duel. Look at them bleed, look at them gasp, and scream, and sweat, and limp, and snarl, and struggle. It's great! It feels real. And I value that over perfectly executed, polished, stylized choreography any day.
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Well, even the ROTS fight had its problems: overlong, very weird moments (twirly-whirly duel, hand force lock, swinging from ropes, jumping from flying mini-robot to other mini-robots and... only one emotion, ergo no dynamics).
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Minus the twirly bit, I broadly agree with that- as I noted, the ROTS duel loses it when they go outside. But it's really good before that.
Actually, one thing I would say is that in the PT, they had trouble finding interesting endings to duels. All three major OT duels end well- unexpected Obi-Wan sacrifice, Luke loses a hand and father reveal, Luke goes crazy-bonkers, rejects Dark Side,, Anakin intervenes.
TPM does really well until Obi-Wan falls down the pit. This a good (nearly literal) cliffhanger, but the solution 'he jumps out the pit and kills Maul' is weak.
AOTC is the one I would agree suffers from lack of emotional involvement; it's a good job Lee was playing Dooku or he would have no personality at all (another badly underused character), It has 'Dooku wins but is then driven of by Yoda'. Having to bail out your heroes with the super-master is always unsatisfying- it's exactly why they kept Luke off-screen in TFA.
The Windu fight ending is my favourite of the PT, but it;s led to those endless debates over whether Palpy faked the loss or not (I still say no).
Yoda/Palpatine didn't so much end as fizzle out. I was actually slightly surprised it seemed to be over. It's like Yoda got bored of it and cleared off.
Obi-Wan/Anakin had already lost it by then and 'I have the high ground' seems such an arbitrary ending. Actually, it might have worked better if they had directly linked it to it being the same move Obi-Wan used to defeat Maul. But the fundamental problem ios that it is a duel where we know what happens (literally we know that of all the PT duels, but it's more emotionally acute here) and it was badly in need of something a little clever at the end- like, Anakin wins (maybe because Obi-Wan's heart isn't in it) but hesitates [a la The Vikings), allowing Obi-Wan to win, or Obi-Wan tries to save Anakin but it all goes awry at the last moment and he's forced to strike him down. Just something to give the closing of the circle a bit of an edge and make us think, even just for a moment, that maybe it could have been different. 'Anakin jumps at Obi-Wan and gets cut in half' is all a bit meh.
Luckily McGregor is a good actor and the post-fight speech works out well.
Anyway, TFA's duel ended well enough; we'll see where it goes from here.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Jan 21st, 2016 at 05:34 PM
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And you're most likely right about that...
Because, iirc, Samuel L. Jackson himself wanted Mace to have a really nice feat before his death... a nice performance... that's what I read. Originally, Lucas wanted him to job to Sidious like everyone else.
One big reason the result of that fight causes confusion is because Yoda lost to Palpatine, and we're told/ implied throughout the trilogy (and by out of Universe commentary) that Yoda's the most Powerful Jedi combatant.
But Yoda's fight was just very different to Mace's fight, so that's neither here or there, especially when it's in the same movie where Obi-Wan beats Anakin who beats Dooku who beats Obi-Wan.
And The other big reason the result of the Mace/Palpatine fight has always seemed questionable to people is because it worked out so perfectly for Palpatine that you can't help but wonder if he planned the whole thing.
Last edited by Darth Thor on Jan 21st, 2016 at 07:17 PM
Exactly. By default. It had something, but soggy potato chips are still soggy.
I hadn't even thought about the lackluster endings--usually I'm tuned out by then. They do kinda suck. Kenobi's outburst at the end was well done, and one of the best genuinely emotional moments of the whole trilogy. But given his, uh... deflated reaction to Anakin's fall in the first place, it's existence just kind of makes it the flower from the pot of dirt.
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Nope, it wasn't a visually impressive fight. Kinda sucked for action. And if that's all that was judged by it would rightfully hold bottom score.
Thank god everybody knows there's more to a sword fight outside of the fact that they're swinging swords at each other. Right? Guys?
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A lot of people criticize that scene in RotJ because it looks like Luke is just swinging a baseball bat, but that's probably my favorite scene in all of the Star Wars movies.
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