Revenge of the Sith Climactic Lightsaber Duel - 5 Years Later

[Tom Starkiller]

and Sidious duel one handed because HIS HILT WAS MADE TO BE HELD WITH ONE HAND. So Ian Mcdiarmid had trouble holding it with both hands... do your job, fight choreographer, and train him to learn...

Actually, if you look, when he fights Mace, he has Anakins sabre, because Ani was supposed to be there already and Palpatine took his lightsaber to fight with. That got cut, but the lightsaber is still there. (This was covered somewhere in the bonus features.) When Sideous and Yoda fight, the entire thing is CG.

I agree though, Except for Maul and Yoda, they're to similar. I think Mace's style is a little different but not that much. Hell, even Grievous wasn't that different. He just spun two sabers, lost them and then that was it, back to normal.

YouTube - "Anakin Red"

I think it would have been better taking place in the ruins of the Jedi Temple, when Yoda and Obi-Wan break in.

 

[cayman shen]

My Fav Lightsaber fight is probably in ROTJ. SOOOOO much emotion and raw anger in it. It's realistically sloppy and I can feel the tension in it.

YES.

I love the ROTS Duel music. I do feel some real glimmers of emotion. But it's hampered by dumb CGI stuntmen, lame droid surfboards, and Anakin's "acting." But since the music's sooooooo good, it frankly overwhelms those weaknesses. The music really moves me.

I hated, HATED the Duel of Fates music. It was so overblown. It was too grand for the situation. I didn't feel like much was at stake, since the big battles were elsewhere, but the music was HUGE. Overkill. And everyone has ooohed and aaahhhed about the choreography, but I'm not nuts about it. I mean, how many backflips can Kenobi really do, people?

I'd say the ROTS duel is my favorite of the PT, and I enjoy it. Five years later, it doesn't wow me like it did at first. It's come to feel more superficial as the new has worn off the PT in general and I realize that I'm having trouble believing in these characters.

 

[cayman shen]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I would actually love to see Lucas re-do the ANH duel with incredible prequel style acrobatics. It could be really cool just as a bonus feature, perhaps not edited into the feature film. Imagine all the flips and twirls and slashing of stormtroopers, force throwing Mouse Droids, etc... I say this as an Original version purist, who is simply curious, and feels that the Special Editions are ruined already anyway.

And THEN monkeys can throw poo at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!

 

[ItsThatGuy]

There was no emotion. There was no connection to Anakin. We never saw him doing anything amazing or heroic. We never saw the brother-like connection to Obi-Wan. We saw a whiner and someone who always had to have the aid of others.

If Anakin was a real hero and we saw a powerful relationship between Obi-Wan and him...it would have been different.

 

[Michael Bergeron]

It is, surprisingly, better with a red saber.

My previous comments still stand though. I wanted to see a raging Anakin beating the **** out of a struggling to survive Obi until his range blinds him just enough to misstep and Obi, the more focused of the two, takes his opportunity.

 

[ItsThatGuy]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I would actually love to see Lucas re-do the ANH duel with incredible prequel style acrobatics. It could be really cool just as a bonus feature, perhaps not edited into the feature film. Imagine all the flips and twirls and slashing of stormtroopers, force throwing Mouse Droids, etc... I say this as an Original version purist, who is simply curious, and feels that the Special Editions are ruined already anyway.

Just watch Ady-wan's revised version.

 

[MooMooEgg]

Actually, if you look, when he fights Mace, he has Anakins sabre, because Ani was supposed to be there already and Palpatine took his lightsaber to fight with. That got cut, but the lightsaber is still there. (This was covered somewhere in the bonus features.)

Yeah, I remember that as well, and I believe that was originally done because McDiarmid had trouble holding the Sidious saber in both hands so they wrote that in so he could get a longer saber hilt.

I just think it was a missed opportunity in making Sidious really dangerous and unique. I mean, you see the jedis and sith having to stop dueling in order to use one hand for a force push. Imagine if they had Sidious wield his saber with only one hand all the time, leaving him with a free hand to be cheap and force push/pull without having to stop fighting.

And that's where I could see a pirouette coming in handy. Attack with your saber, spin, and have your hand out ready to do a force push behind you before the pirouette is complete.

 

[d_jedi1]

I still enjoy the fight but I'm also still VERY disappointed in Mustafar.
I always got the impression that Vader's rage had caused the volcanic activity that burned him.. possibly even ripping the planet apart.
THATS what I wanted to see. An Anakin so blinded by hatred, that as he fought and got more and more P.O.ed at Obi-Wan the planet started ripping itself apart.
Would have lent more weight to his comments about the Death Star in ANH too.

 

[CTF]

I always got the impression that Vader's rage had caused the volcanic activity that burned him.. possibly even ripping the planet apart.

THATS what I wanted to see. An Anakin so blinded by hatred, that as he fought and got more and more P.O.ed at Obi-Wan the planet started ripping itself apart.

No offense, but that sounds utterly ridiculous.

 

[cayman shen]

CTF, is your avatar from the 3 way scene in American Psycho? That's awesome. I actually want to clap.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

My problem is the lack of true emotion. Their moves are too "perfect". Anakin is supposed to be filled with rage, he should be swinging like a suicidal mad man. I agree that Obi should be more composed but even then he's defending himself from a suicidal mad man who has greater power than he does. I never see desperation in him and I never see true hatred in Anakin until he's missing all of his limbs.

I do agree that the cutaways really hurt the fight though but not as much as the anti-climactic "high ground" finish.

In ROTS Anakin is not more powerful than Obi Wan. Probably the opposite. Anakin is all potential. He's still learning. That's why Obi Wan beat him.

 

[d_jedi1]

No offense, but that sounds utterly ridiculous.

how so? if the force is that powerful and he's supposed to be some force-spawned god of a man then why would that be beyond him?
For that matter how would he know that “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”
To be honest, I was rather let down by the Jedi as a whole in the PT.

 

[niennumb1]

Bar none my favorite duel of them all was the final duel between Vader and Luke. Very emotional. Not so much fancy moves, but you really feel it and the music goes so well with it. Haunting and yet a hopeful tone coming through as Luke takes goes all or nothing to defeat the dark lord. One of the best movie moments ever.

That's where it shows you don't need fancy flipping and fast moves to make it powerful.

 

[Michael Bergeron]

In ROTS Anakin is not more powerful than Obi Wan. Probably the opposite. Anakin is all potential. He's still learning. That's why Obi Wan beat him.

Not true, Anakin is stronger but Obi Wan is better trained. Hence the even duel. That's even how GL describes it.

 

[cayman shen]

GL also calls lightsabers "the laser swords." His writing is so atrocious, fans kill themselves trying to explain it, fill in the gaps, and basically retcon the hell out of everything. Billions of posts have been made for a decade trying to explain all the inconsistencies in the PT. So "that's even how GL described it" means nothing to me. I'm used to having to do all the mental heavy lifting myself with these films. :lol

 

[SmilingOtter]

For me, I would have gotten a lot more out of it if Anakin's saber had been red - their both using blue sabers kind of confused the action somewhat.

YouTube - "Anakin Red"

It is, surprisingly, better with a red saber.

Thank you for posting that, Tom! Doesn't make it into a great duel IMO, but makes it a lot better.

 

[Tom Starkiller]

You're welcome.

I think that part of the problem is that Obi-Wan never wanted Anakin trained. He thought it was a bad idea in Ep I, and only did it for Qui-Gon. I think that that still shows in Ep II. As for Ep III... I honestly think by this point Lucas had given up story and gone totally for CGI. After all, Star Wars was always a playground to see what they could do for special effects.

 

[Michael Bergeron]

GL also calls lightsabers "the laser swords." His writing is so atrocious, fans kill themselves trying to explain it, fill in the gaps, and basically retcon the hell out of everything. Billions of posts have been made for a decade trying to explain all the inconsistencies in the PT. So "that's even how GL described it" means nothing to me. I'm used to having to do all the mental heavy lifting myself with these films. :lol

That wasn't my point. My point was that's how it was intended.

 

[Colin Droidmilk]

For me, the most perfectly satisfying lightsabre moment of all the films is Ben in the cantina. This is the moment when Lucas came closest to the intensity of Kurosawa's sword-play. To have gone from this to the utterly ludicrous spectacle of a cg muppet flipping and flopping like a Roger Rabbit toon around the figure of Christopher Lee is sad beyond belief.

(For a full run-down of the declining potency of the lightsabre from one trilogy to the next, check RedLetterMedia's review of Attack of the Clones.)

 

[Vaderman]

Wow, I'm sure anyone here could write pages about this stuff.
The ROTJ duel was amazing and for the time, seeing Vader do a flip and Luke and Vader do some great "force" leaps was cool and it was very charged.

For the PT final battle, I agree with most of what has been said. The intercuts hurt (and why did Yoda leave, was he just worn out?)

It looks like Obi Wan is on the defensive for most of it, which you might expect from someone "far" more powerful with the force, but he holds his own because of training. As for that, since we are at the end of the era of Jedi and they have all been traoned by Yoda, Qui-Gon, Windu, et al, I totally buy them all having similar styles.
Also it is said somewhere that they are becoming arrogant (Maybe Yoda says it?)
Which would account for some of the flair and spinning the lightsaber in between steps, etc. They just got accustomed to kicking so much a$$. Remember they didn't know what "that was" when they met Maul. Clearly, they hadn't faced a foe from the Sith in a long while.

I also can buy the idea that they are fighting in a style we can't fathom. They are using weapons with no weight, that cut omni-directionally, that must be avoided completely (no deflecting it with your cloak!) And, they have this innate sense of what is happening which makes them seem like they have very fast reflexes. They can sense things before they happen, so they do know the blade is flying in right <here> to deflect it and this make the blade to blade fighting more believable.
Going back and watching the original Star Wars Vader v.s. Kenobi battle seems embarrassing.
Having some history helps, if you consider Obi-Wan beat Vader before, (-1 Vader confidence.)
Vader is "more machine then man" and maybe has less control of the force or fewer midiclorians (-1 Vader power)
Obi-wan has been on Tatooine, hanging out in hives of scum and villainy and training in the ways of the force (+1 Force ability?)
Obi-Wan has aged terribly in the years since Luke's birth and appears to go from 30-something to 60-something in what, 18 years? (-2 Kenobi is a weak old man, who should not have come back...)
Plus, Kenobi now wants to die so he can commune with Luke and Qui-Gon or something? So, he throws the fight to become immortal.
Okay.
As many of you have said, it is such common practice to fill in the gaps using whatever scraps of dialogue we can and inferences - it is second nature. What bothers me most is the disconnect between ROTS and Star Wars.
Obi-Wan talking to Luke about his father, Vader talking to Tarkin, his "ancient religion" (Tarkin doesn't seem to know the emperor uses the force?)
I always did think that the lightsabers acted like mood rings. Luke's started out white and got bluer. I never saw him make a new one until a couple of weeks ago, I guess that's when he made a blue one? When Han uses it to slice open the Taun-Taun, it looks pure white again to me.
I thought it was linked to them with the force and maybe wasn't nearly as powerful if a Jedi wasn't wielding it. Or something. I had to explain why everyone didn't run around with one!

So, I was also disappointed to not see Anakin with a red saber for the final battle.

I have watched the clone Wars to fill in some of it, Anakin and Obi-Wan seem to be friends in the series, though Obi-Wan only dispenses one-liners, no real thoughts or wisdom and Anakin is reckless, not really a great jedi, just a risk taker and a good pilot, so far.

Maybe the live-action series will help fill in more? I fear it will be all about young Boba Fett though, and not help "fix" any discrepancies.

Didn't Lucas comment in his Jon Stewart interview that maybe he should make another film, now that droids were more plentiful?

So, I guess my answer is a qualified "yes, I enjoyed it."
Wait, what was the question again?