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Here we discuss all the Star Wars stuff that could possibly come up in normal, relaxed, human conversations.
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Also, having just watched TPM and AOTC, it's weird how Anakin and Obi-Wan are supposed to be besties. Anakin's a good kid at the end of TPM, but right from the start of AOTC he's a creepy fucking asshole. I'm not sure which relationship is less believable, Anakin and Obi-Wan or Anakin and Padme.
Still. If you have the mad skill to delimb an opponent in the air while also avoiding decapitating them, that’s... How is that not petty.
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Obi-wan crippling Anakin but not killing him outright is one of the only things I really like about the PT. Obi-wan is still a diehard Jedi and he's not going to kill an unarmed opponent, especially one who was basically a surrogate son and brother. I don't think Obi-wan is even just leaving him to die, he's simply so heartbroken that he decides to live with the consequences if Anakin survives. He has to know he should kill Anakin and he also has to know Force users can survive all kinds of damage but even if Anakin did turn on him and the Order, Anakin being alive means there's somebody important to Obi-Wan left alive in the universe.
And then why didn’t Obi-wan kill him afterwards? Because at that point, it’s not a fight anymore; it’s an execution. And those are very, very different things.
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Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Also, Anakin was literally on fire when Obi Wan left. "Well, that dude's dead" is a pretty reasonable conclusion to come to in that situation.
Unlike the last few movies, they're actually doing 2D showings at midnight too rather than railroading me into 3D. So that's nice!
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Heh unarmed
I'm all aboard the Cara Dune train. And Pedro's been killing it as Mando.
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Anakin and Padme is worse by far. Anakin and Obi I can at least handwave some stuff because Obi-Wan has been mentoring the kid for ten years or so and now he's hit the rebellious teenager phase. It's not great, but I can believe it. Anakin having spent the past decade pining for some rando woman he met for a week and then she actually falls for his whiny ass... nooooope.
You under estimate the power of the dark side. Never underestimate the planning prowess of Papa Palpatine, who clearly Chuck Woolery'd those two off screen.
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The sequels put too little between TFA and TLJ.
Fucking poetry.
I agree with this if the "too much time" is not that AOTC should take an earlier swath of time and that TPM should take up more. I think you could cut out almost all of what is currently in TPM, reduce it to the first 20 minutes of a new movie with Obi-Wan (not Qui-Gon) finding Anakin in the desert and then time skip forward to AOTC Anakin to show more of the Clone Wars, Anakin's training, and build the relationships between Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padme.
Like you don't really need Qui-Gon for the rest of the series, the time spent on him is wasted. You don't really need the trade federation, they're just part of the separatists, blah blah blah. Just have a younger Obi-Wan on Tatooine for reasons, he finds a magic boy podracing and brings him in done. Move on. Almost everything that takes place in TPC is irrelevant, or easily redone in 30 seconds of dialogue.
George wanted someone for the kids watching to identify with, and nobody had the balls to tell him that maybe it shouldn’t be the kid who grows up to be Darth freaking Vader.
And while I’m fine with the TFA and TLJ we got, the cliffhanger ending kinda tied things down.
You could severely cut down the scene and just have Obi-Wan meeting a contact at the race track, he happens to notice a kid climbing out of the cockpit of a racer and going "wait what? Is that a human child?" "Oh yeah. Skywalker. He's actually really good. They keep checking him to see if someone's remote piloting that but there's no evidence." Obi-Wan meets him, runs a couple tests, and says, "how would you like to do something better with your life?" Just get rid of the mom and virgin birth. He's an orphan slave who flies and races for his master. That's all we need to know.
Later, Anakin and Obi-Wan get randomly assigned security detail to the young hot Senator from Naboo because of her being targeted by the rising separatist threat. Hell, maybe Anakin is in the right place at the right time (the force wills it) and rescues her from an assassination attempt with his daring heroics, forming a foundation for their romance and a reason for her to pull strings to get that handsome young Jedi assigned to her. (I wouldn't want her to be some sort of weird temptress character because that's an icky trope, but she's just young, attractive, and powerful and looking for someone.)
And that ties up everything you need from the first movie as far as I can tell. Reintroduce Obi-Wan, find Anakin, meet Padme.
Then, like you said, he does something crazy like jump out a window to chase down an assassin, which impress Padme.
Also, by compressing the training timeline we lose the whole taking kids thing, AND it makes Yoda’s “too old comment” more of half-hearted justification rather than something which gets needlessly explained.
Also, have Obi-Wan not know about Leia.
Naw man younger me is definitely worse off for that game not being on the N64. That was a good time.
Also I have a hard time believing he could be a Republic fighter pilot without some sort of Jedi screening or some general going "This Anakin fellow is kind of unbelievably good let me get one of my Jedi contacts to check him out."
I don't mind the too old thing because it can be both light hearted and real. I find it hard to believe that Jedi would turn away randomly found force users and be like "Well you're over the age of five, so I guess good luck with the Force stuff. Try not to be evil or we'll have to murder you later, bye!" Like you'd prefer to take them as young as possible but if you can keep tabs on them and prevent a rogue Sith that seems like a good outcome even if they're older and may not reach maximum potential.
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Yeah, he's got a great design.
It's just a shame that there's nothing to him beyond his design. Just "Generic angry alien guy with a cool lightsaber", and then he's cut in half and flushed down a hole.
If it wasn't for the Clone Wars series doing some serious rehab on him...
That said, it would have been a lot better for the Jedi to have some verbal exchanges with Maul to highlight he’s more than some assassin.
It would also have been great for Palpatine to have some moment where he realizes Maul has hit the ceiling, so to speak, in terms of his usefulness and versatility, and is going to need someone with pathos underlining their hatred.
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Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
But there's so much wrong with the PT, it's barely worth diving to granular levels like that. Disney could wipe them and re-make them entirely keeping only broad strokes and what's canon from the OT, and be better off.
I mean it's a reasonable way to prove a kid has skills. It's impossible for most people to do even with years of experience, so here's a young kid. I think part of it is that Anakin is apparently 9 in that movie and maybe I have no idea what kids look like at ages but he looks and acts like a five year old to me. You could age him up a little more, maybe 11 or 12, and it's a flashy thing that builds the world a little, it makes sense as a job for a slave kid to do.
I don't think I would make it like a 15-20 minute long action centerpiece, but as a background thing where Obi-Wan can just happen upon this diamond in the rough? Works fine.
But its been 20 years. Accept the shit and move on, I say. We have a lot more recent things to complain about.