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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   2692 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I maintain that Revenge of the Sith is the best Star Wars movie. While the execution is certainly flawed (in the ways which you already noted), I think the story it tries to tell is a wonderful idea. The slow corruption of a paragon into a villain is a great story, and far more interesting than the standard hero's journey stuff the original trilogy is about. I do wish that the execution was better, but I give it a lot of credit for unevenly executing a great story idea (as compared to the original trilogy which successfully executes a boring story).

He was never a paragon though. He's a whiny arrogant prick in AotC who basically abandons his Jedi training as soon as he's alone with Padme and then commits mass murder. He isn't even really seduced by the dark side, he's tricked because Palpatine just lies about how he can save his wife from death by pregnancy, and then immediately goes into kill-children mode.

The OT is definitely kind of a mess because of how many massive changes they made on the fly. The first movie was intended to be a standalone of course, so it's a very generic hero's journey tale, and Vader and Anakin were two different people. Even in Empire Leia wasn't supposed to be Luke's sister (hence the kiss at the beginning) and Yoda saying "There is another" was referring to his real twin sister secretly being trained somewhere else, but Lucas realized it was going to be an even more complicated mess. RotJ is a pretty wacky movie overall but the throne room scene is peak.

He was never a paragon though. He's a whiny arrogant prick in AotC who basically abandons his Jedi training as soon as he's alone with Padme and then commits mass murder. He isn't even really seduced by the dark side, he's tricked because Palpatine just lies about how he can save his wife from death by pregnancy, and then immediately goes into kill-children mode.

Sure, but those are flaws in the execution. The story tells us that Anakin is a paragon (in Obi-Wan's dialogue in episode 4, with the prophecy about him being the chosen one, etc). So yeah, the execution is flawed but the idea is very much there.

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