Fix the Mustafar Lightsaber Duel!

Many SW fans say that the duel on Mustafar had too much fight choreography and action scenes and that it wasn't emotional and intelligent enough like the star wars original trilogy lightsaber duels!

This thread is a discussion about how YOU would have fixed the duel had you written the movie to make it more like you wanted it to be.

i would reboot the whole damn PT or just disavow it all together

Originally posted by focus4chumps
i would reboot the whole damn PT or just disavow it all together

I'm going to start a new thread eventually about how how the PT should have been written better, but now, let's just discuss the duel on mustafar.

look, you have a shaky start here, but you havent swatted the PT-squeeling-fangirl hornets nest yet. trust me, it doesnt need to be a thread.

:edit: though despite the assertions of localized established group-think hives all over the internets, it's not quite an unpopular or undiscussed idea
http://www.slashfilm.com/the-new-star-wars-movie-idea-remake-prequels/

:edit 2: though i hope if they ever do its not for a long time. star wars needs to move ahead again.

Originally posted by focus4chumps
look, you have a shaky start here, but you havent swatted the PT-squeeling-fangirl hornets nest yet. trust me, it doesnt need to be a thread.

:edit: though despite the assertions of localized established group-think hives all over the internets, it's not quite an unpopular or undiscussed idea
http://www.slashfilm.com/the-new-star-wars-movie-idea-remake-prequels/

:edit 2: though i hope if they ever do its not for a long time. star wars needs to move ahead again.

I would have made anakin fight obi wan in a setting that looked very similar to where luke dueled vader during cloud city, at least for a part of the duel.

i thought the buildup was ok, despite hayden's horrible acting. ewan just has a way of working past crummy dialogue.

the proper way to have a cinematic duel or fight of any sort is to follow the rocky mold. it cant just be dancing and fencing for 15 minutes. part of the thrill in a duel is the threat of the hero being defeated. obiwan was in control 100% of the time, and so was anakin.

the key to the rocky mold is to have what i call the "rocky moment" the hero seemingly beaten/killed and then find untapped inner-strength and rise back to his feet, etc, etc. this is why the ep1 duel was the only thing that saved that giant turd. thats what made the luke/vader duels so exciting.

Originally posted by focus4chumps
i thought the buildup was ok, despite hayden's horrible acting. ewan just has a way of working past crummy dialogue.

the proper way to have a cinematic duel or fight of any sort is to follow the rocky mold. it cant just be dancing and fencing for 15 minutes. part of the thrill in a duel is the threat of the hero being defeated. obiwan was in control 100% of the time, and so was anakin.

the key to the rocky mold is to have what i call the "rocky moment" the hero seemingly beaten/killed and then find untapped inner-strength and rise back to his feet, etc, etc. this is why the ep1 duel was the only thing that saved that giant turd. thats what made the luke/vader duels so exciting.

I would have shown obi wan brush to the darkside or almost fall to the darkside like luke did, but resist at the end, during his anger that he gains during his duel with anakin, not only to create a ROTJ parallel and to add more depth to the story, but because it would show that even kenobi was threatened by the darkside.

When was the rocky moment during the ROTJ duel? The suprising and climatic moment of the mustafar duel was when obi wan cuts off anakin's legs.

in rotj it was more of an emotional rocky moment. which was fine since they couldnt logically have luke be manhandled by vader after he had previously challenged him as but a newbie and made vader work damn hard for that win. so instead he was beaten down inside with the turmoil over leia. it was still tension and suspense. "will he turn evil?" just another type of looming defeat to keep us on edge.

and in ep3 i think it would have been as simple as "obiwan gets his ass whooped". i mean, did you see him at the end of that duel? quick shower and a change of robes and you'd never suspect he had been fighting.

I thought the choreography was bad, tbh. Way too much repetition, and only a few moments where things actually looked heated.

That said, yeah, compared to ROTJ it's incredibly lacking in emotional depth. At least the speech at the end was well delived. Then again, that's Ewan; he can play anything.

Characterisation was often missing in the PT duels, thankfully compensated in part due to the fact they had good actors in them.

One of the best bits of the TPM duel was the pause when the fields close, where Obi-Wan twitches impatiently, Maul prowls like a redator and Qui-Gon meditates. Some felt there was more characterisation in that moment than the entire rest of the film. Nonetheless, Maul was horribly underused and it would have been better if Maul had actually DONE something in the film beforehand that would have made the stakes seem higher. It was actually a faintly irrelevant fight in the grand scheme of things.

Which is sad as, imo, it's the best one in terms of choreography. Ray Parks background no doubt helped with that.

The original draft had Maul defending the backup generator for the droids, which at least gave the fight a point. But much better would have been for Maul to have done some blatantly in-face evil stuff beforehand so it felt like something with a stake.

It was, nonetheless, an awesome fight.

That would have given him at least something to do, other than "capture the queen, but only after you kill the jedi". I can understand Lucas wanting the guy to have a bit of mystique, but letting us see so little of him makes him very much Boba Fett-like.

I hate to say it, but Darth Maul is way f*cking cooler than Boba Fett. Misused and underwritten that Sith may be, but great badassness I see in his screen time.

Maul actually did something effective and permanent, and his PIS death was still a lot better than Boba's.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
I hate to say it, but Darth Maul is way f*cking cooler than Boba Fett. Misused and underwritten that Sith may be, but great badassness I see in his screen time.

Maul actually did something effective and permanent, and his PIS death was still a lot better than Boba's.

Maul technically was the only third Sith, he broke the rule of two, because Plageuis was also alive during TPM.

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5
Maul technically was the only third Sith, he broke the rule of two, because Plageuis was also alive during TPM.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
This isn't the EU subforum, you want to include Plagueis, go there.

This isn't the place for EU discussion, so yes, I understand that. These threads discuss the movies, they're not a discussion for the EU, even if that EU took place in the movie era.

However, I was just using the EU to explain a misconception/plot hole in the film. I don't think using the EU to explain all of the details that the movie doesn't explicity tell us counts as an EU discussion.

Also that had nothing to do with what I said.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Also that had nothing to do with what I said.

The main discussion in this thread is the movie's storyline of the prequels, not the EU.

I just used the EU to explain a part of the movie.

I was just pointing out that Maul was a very unique Sith in the sense that he broke the rule of two.

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5
This isn't the place for EU discussion, so yes, I understand that. These threads discuss the movies, they're not a discussion for the EU, even if that EU took place in the movie era.

However, I was just using the EU to explain a misconception/plot hole in the film. I don't think using the EU to explain all of the details that the movie doesn't explicity tell us counts as an EU discussion.

Yes it does. Any EU continuity is to be ignored here. The Rule of Two was not broken.