I would like to inform the esteemed audience that the “Tyrannus” in this poll is actually Count Doofus, er, Dooku. Just in case anyone else forgot this curious, only once or twice mentioned name of the memorable Christopher Lee character.
No quad lightsaber Grevious battle?
…and it wasn’t the Wilhelm scream, was it? cringe
- Alan[/quote]
No, believe it or not it was the Emperor’s scream when he falls down the shaft in Return of the Jedi. I found a lot of the SE changes questionable, but that one is absolutely inexplicable. Thankfully the scream was removed for the DVD release.
As for the poll, Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon/Maul is the best duel in the series on a technical/choreography level, IMO. But my favorite is still Luke confronting Vader in ESB, primarily because of the Big Revelation and the brilliant use of color and lighting.
That was a battle? He just spun his swords around and waited for Obi-Wan to kick his ass.
Only 27 out of 58 voters have even a bit of taste. A character who we had never met or cared about kills another nobody and then gets chopped in twine by hippy ObiWan…
The ObiWan-Anakin fight in RotS is worlds better than that Darth Maul fight simply because it’s at least characters we in theory give a shit about. But seriously, Luke vs Vader I or II. Those fights mattered. Luke fighting to avenge his father and ObiWan, then discovering the truth, then fighting to save his father while the entire rebellion was on the edge of defeat?
That was a battle? He just spun his swords around and waited for Obi-Wan to kick his ass.[/quote]
It was an even bigger let down if you’d seen him kicking ass in the Cartoons.
“The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master.”
“Only a master of evil, Darth.”
What, no love for this little ditty?
Not exactly Joss Whedon level quippery. Not even Monkey Island level…
And the fight was kinda dull in retrospect.
That was a battle? He just spun his swords around and waited for Obi-Wan to kick his ass.[/quote]
It was an even bigger let down if you’d seen him kicking ass in the Cartoons.[/quote]
Amen. Apparently this was partly due to the fact that they just handed the Clone Wars guys the character design and said, “We don’t really know what he’s going to do yet, just come up with stuff” and they went wild with it. I heard from a guy who did inbetweening on Clone Wars that the scene where Mace Force-crushes Grievous’ chest at the end of Season 2 was added by LucasFilm’s request to explain why the film Grievous is so much less dynamic than the animated one. I find it a bit hard to believe LucasFilm would even care about that, but supposedly that’s why he coughs in the movie.
[quote=“Andrew_Mayer”]
Not exactly Joss Whedon level quippery. Not even Monkey Island level…
And the fight was kinda dull in retrospect.[/quote]
Alls I’m saying is that the lightsaber duels were supposed to be a physical manifestation of a moral battle fought with words. That magic was lost in the prequels, and even - in my opinion - to a lesser extent in V and VI.
But yea, I guess on a purely visceral level, Empire and Jedi have better battles.
I agree. I groaned when Maul’s appearance was juxtaposed by the all-too-modern sounding, “We’ll take care of this,” line. “Intense!”
Well I finally saw Episode III so I guess I can vote now. Uh…
Obi-Wan vs Darth Anavaderkin is the best fight in the prequels, in my opinion. Oh yes; I went there. It was between two characters who mattered and who had an emotional attachment to each other. The same certainly can’t be said about the Maul fight, as impressive as it is choreographically.
Unfortunately we already knew the outcome of the Episode III battle going into it, because if we hadn’t, I think it’s as tension filled a fight as any in the lot. Only four votes? Absolutely unbelievable.
The Episode V and VI battles had the tension and emotion as well, so it’s a pretty difficult decision. The Empire Strikes Back battle of course had “I am your father” and the Return of The Jedi battle had a nice fight, followed by Luke’s nobility, followed by Anakin’s redemption, followed by the defeat of the Emperor.
So I guess I don’t know. I think I’m going to vote for the Revenge of The Sith finale simply because it has been criminally underrated in this poll.
Really though…Return of The Jedi. Come on.
[quote=“Andrew_Mayer”]
Not exactly Joss Whedon level quippery. Not even Monkey Island level…
And the fight was kinda dull in retrospect.[/quote]
Uh yeah, nobody’s handing out dialogue awards to the SW films, this just in. Anyway, to Hell with that quip, the rest of the dialogue is pretty good and, you know, actually there instead of the jack shit we go in the prequels until the final Obi Wan / Anakin fight. And the fight isn’t dull in retrospect, it’s dull in repetitive viewings.
Plus: Luke, like Obi Wan in ANH, throws the fight at the end - and he does it without the knowledge of unifying with the Force. He just says Fuck this, I’m not throwing in with this dude. Plus, he did it to save his friends. Obi and Yoda were all “This you do and ALL IS LOST!” and Luke’s all “Yeah, fuck you guys and this gay Jedi coda, I’m saving the only people who have proven to give a shit about me. And then, I’m gonna learn it all anyway and quell the motherfucking Empire and dark side. Bitches.” Or something, I forget the exact words he used.
One thing I really liked was how Obi Wan and Yoda overestimated Anakin and underestimated Luke. Also hos Obi was a ballbuster on Anakin and used a softer touch on Luke.
He only busted Anakin’s balls because he wanted Natalie Portman. It’s in the subtext, but it’s there.
The “fights between characters we care about” argument rests on the premise that we actually do care about the characters.
And on that point, basically anyone in the prequels, even a nobody with funky face paint, squarely beats Mark “Who?” Hamill, the terrible non-actor who should never have got the leading role in SW and whose carreer predictably fell into a huge black hole once the OT was done.
That’s the other reason, besides the clear technical improvements, why I’m not voting for any of the original battles.
Mark Hamil has actually done quite a bit of work in both film and television since the original Star Wars Trilogy. A lot of what he does is voice work, so you may not know it’s him, but he keeps busy. His Joker in the animated Batman stuff was great.
I wouldn’t say that his acting in the Star Wars movies was anything spectacular, but his Luke certainly wasn’t worse than some of the cardboard characters in the Prequels. I think he did fine given their resources and what they were trying to accomplish.
I think he’s drastically underrated by Star Wars geeks. That doesn’t mean he’s a great actor, but I always get a chuckle out of people who seem to have some sort of Harrison Ford/Han Solo hard-on from childhood that completely colors their viewpoint of the issue. Yeah, he acted like a sullen, whiny punk kid. How out of character.
The intercutting factor is why I went Empire over Return. As theoretically moving as Luke redeeming the sins of his father via low-amperage Force electrocution was, and as totally sweet as a massive space battle involving actual people getting exploded instead of shiny happy rogerroger droids was…there was all the stuff with the Ewoks, one of the more blatant harbingers of the future prequels’ direction. (The most blatant of all was the Holiday Special, but that was just too blatant for the world to really handle, and most people sort of blocked it out the way humanity totally forgot that Martians heatrayed most of our cities to slag in 1954 in the cheerful suckfest of that War of the Worlds series.)
Granted, some of the Empire fight was intercut with the wacky flailing antics of C3PO (in its own way a harbinger of the more aggressive wacky flailing droid antics to come), buck compared to the Ewok Factor, that barely registered.
And speaking of career black holes, Jesus, I wish I had a career black hole like Hamill–absolutely steady stream of what amounts to happily hamming it up into a microphone every now and then.
Huh? If anything he’s overrated, like anything to do with the original trilogy… but that’s just me. And you make me laugh if you insinuate that anyone but a Star Wars geek would even care about the character.
That doesn’t mean he’s a great actor, but I always get a chuckle out of people who seem to have some sort of Harrison Ford/Han Solo hard-on from childhood that completely colors their viewpoint of the issue. Yeah, he acted like a sullen, whiny punk kid. How out of character.
That’s not the point. The point is that Hamill has no screen presence whatsoever, cannot act in any convincing way, and keeps that sullen whiny punk kid look irrespective of the situation and long after he should have grown out of it. Apparently it’s natural to him.
If you want to see a real actor do the sullen kid thing right, go watch Hayden Christensen in ep 2/3. As inane as some of his lines are, he still manages to be convincing in his juvenile mood swings. He never looks like he accidentally stumbled onto the set, like Hamill always did. (And Carrie Fisher, whose performance was also far inferior to Nathalie Portman’s.)
His name is Ponda Baba and he is my favorite.
He doesn’t like you.[/quote]
Are his further adventures chronicled in some form of Novel, comic book, and/or fanfic?[/quote]
I don’t like you either! You just watch yourself. I have the death sentence on twelve message boards.