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cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

those are all bad ideas actually

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cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

you guys are this close to saying he should have had an intro movie marvel style be careful guys

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

Bongo Bill posted:

We learn he's a cyborg when Obi-Wan shoots him in the exposed flesh.

I've re-watched the scene, and you're technically correct, but it's a two-second shot in the middle of an action scene where you see his organs, after which he... catches fire and explodes when shot.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

cuntman.net posted:

you guys are this close to saying he should have had an intro movie marvel style be careful guys

I'm saying exactly the opposite, I'm saying everything that makes him "make sense" as a character is carefully kept out of the movie and explained in background media.

Zoran
Aug 19, 2008

I lost to you once, monster. I shall not lose again! Die now, that our future can live!
Haha what? We see obi-wan wrenching the armor open, close-up on the organs, reaction shot from grievous, continued fighting, obi-wan thrown over the edge, obi-wan taking aim, organs getting hit, organs burning for a few seconds

How much communication do you need

Prolonged Panorama
Dec 21, 2007
Holy hookrat Sally smoking crack in the alley!



You also see his obviously organic eyes in several close ups.

cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

PT6A posted:

I'm saying exactly the opposite, I'm saying everything that makes him "make sense" as a character is carefully kept out of the movie and explained in background media.

youre saying he should have had his own plot arc or brand or something. who cares about that

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
It's very funny watching TCW tie itself in knots making sure that Anakin and Grevious never meet because of a line of dialogue in RotS.

Bongo Bill posted:

General Grievous' introduction in Revenge of the Sith is, in practical terms, very similar to Darth Vader's introduction in A New Hope.

The difference between the two is that in ANH we didn't have any prior expectations or understanding of the setting, whereas for Grevious (and later Snoke) we know enough to have specific questions because it's the sixth movie of the series, not the first.

His (rather interesting) backstory doesn't need to be in the films but he did feel like he came out of nowhere.

Kart Barfunkel
Nov 10, 2009


PT6A posted:

I've re-watched the scene, and you're technically correct, but it's a two-second shot in the middle of an action scene where you see his organs, after which he... catches fire and explodes when shot.

For how long should we have seen General Grievous’ exposed organs? Thirty seconds?

Should Obi-Wan Kenobi have slowly torn apart General Grievous like Audition so we get a better idea of his anatomy?

TheDeadlyShoe
Feb 14, 2014

cuntman.net posted:

youre saying he should have had his own plot arc or brand or something. who cares about that

He shoulda had some connection to Anakin's plot arc. Or been the Obiwan B Plot. Or something. But he doesn't; he's just a thug.

He doesn't even get taken out by Anakin, which woulda been thematically appropriate if Grevious was Vader 1.0. Anakin striking down his predecessor and all that stuff.


e: but even aside from that its not like Star Wars is above this sort of thing. Attack of the Clones is basically the Boba Fett Origin Story Movie.

TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 02:49 on May 6, 2023

cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

people really seem to want to reuse the arguments about snoke but it doesnt work here because the issue there was less about snoke, it was with the first order. in this case we know exactly what the cis is and grievous is just their current face

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

Cruising the information superhighway

Bongo Bill posted:

We learn he's a cyborg when Obi-Wan shoots him in the exposed flesh.


He has lizard eyes with skin around them.

cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

TheDeadlyShoe posted:

He shoulda had some connection to Anakin's plot arc. Or been the Obiwan B Plot.

nah

TheDeadlyShoe
Feb 14, 2014


Why not?

cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

you said "should" there which means you have to back it up first imo

cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

ok i'll say it anyway. i dont care that he doesnt have a backstory because it doesnt matter. we already know what he is because hes the face of the cis. and even then the entire point to him is that he (and also the cis) is just a distraction. trying to build him up wouldnt lead anywhere

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."
But would he need to be the face of the CIS if Dooku didn't die in the first ten minutes

Mechafunkzilla
Sep 11, 2006

If you want a vision of the future...

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

He has lizard eyes with skin around them.

and he coughs

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Mechafunkzilla posted:

and he coughs

A coughing robot in SW wouldn't be that big of a stretch, you already have C3P0 tittering and wailing all over the place

Mechafunkzilla
Sep 11, 2006

If you want a vision of the future...

Wolfsheim posted:

A coughing robot in SW wouldn't be that big of a stretch, you already have C3P0 tittering and wailing all over the place

C3PO doesn't cough

cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

Wolfsheim posted:

But would he need to be the face of the CIS if Dooku didn't die in the first ten minutes

well sure there definitely are a lot of changes you could make if you wanted to make the story as streamlined as possible

Darko
Dec 23, 2004

Dooku was old news and we needed a new "different" thing for this movie since every movie provided a different lightsaber thing. Maul had a dual blade, Dooku was a fencer (and you got to see Anakin use two at once) and now we get a dude who is basically the guy with lightsaber knees, so Obi Wan has to shoot him.

Again, he's a mid boss, he doesn't matter for anything besides an obstacle, just like "guy that got chopped up in plane propeller" in Raiders or "henchman that got crushed" in Temple of Doom.

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

cuntman.net posted:

well sure there definitely are a lot of changes you could make if you wanted to make the story as streamlined as possible

It already was! Order 66 is like five minutes! They were actively rushing through the good stuff to cram it all in lol

cuntman.net
Mar 1, 2013

well in that case there definitely should have been a subplot about how hes still a man on the inside or the result of one of sidious's experiments then

TheDeadlyShoe
Feb 14, 2014

I like the cackling villain Grevious and all; I don't need a deep character retrospective. I just wanted him to tie into the plot. He was just kind of hurriedly shoved to the side so they could move on to Palpatine Stuff, but it didn't have to be that way. It made him feel incomplete and kind of irrelevant.

Grevious having the Vader aesthetic and all is a red herring because there's no thematic link there. Grevious was never the Vader, not even close, (other than their mutual love of murdering Jedi.) I think the movie woulda been better if we saw something behind Grevious mask other than some hosed up lungs. I don't mean the movies needed *more* Grevious. But just any kind of emotional stakes at any level.

Kart Barfunkel
Nov 10, 2009


General Grievous is in there for like half the movie. His death signifies where things really start to accelerate and the story needs to be more serious.

He gets plenty of screen time.

He’s the embodiment of the war, the droid figurehead who gets swept away when that finishes.

Kart Barfunkel fucked around with this message at 03:36 on May 6, 2023

ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is
the throughline is pretty obvious: anakin needs to something incontrovertibly Not Good at the start of the film to establish where he's at as a character, having spent several years in all-out war and becoming more and more of a little authoritarian dweeb than he already was. killing Dooku is basically perfect for this, since he got his rear end beat by him at the end of the last movie, and seeing him both work with obi-wan, but also beat Dooku without him, establishes that he's grown both as a character and in power since then, but is also clearly getting worse in more important ways.

but the CIS still needs to be a threat, and the council of doofuses we saw in attack of the clones are deliberately framed as not threatening in a 'obi-wan needs to go have a cool swordfight with these people' way. so they need a character that obi-wan needs to go have a cool swordfight with, who's in charge of the CIS long enough for anakin's arc to complete while obi-wan isn't around to intervene. grievous is that character because dooku can't be, since he's dead.

the way maul, dooku and grievous all parallel darth vader in different ways is also really good specifically because they're three different characters that are unlike darth vader, and each other. it's why the cyborg darth maul arc in clone wars is kind of crap; it blurs the line between maul and grievous to both of their detriments.

Mechafunkzilla
Sep 11, 2006

If you want a vision of the future...
Grievous is thematically important because using 4 lightsabers demonstrates that the jedi aren't special, and are in fact losers

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

General Grievous commands the droid army. Killing him will end the war, as without him, the scattered CIS will be unable to maintain the organization of their last desperate offensive. He's a Jedi killer to remind the audience that Jedi are mortal and can be beaten by conventional means; even the highly formidable Obi-Wan has to abandon the Jedi arts and kill him with a gun instead. Both of these details set up Order 66: as soon as Grievous is confirmed dead, Palpatine has no need of the Jedi any longer, so he wastes no time in exterminating them, which has been shown to be possible.

Like the foreground villains of the last two movies, he's an echo of the famous characteristics of Darth Vader: after Maul the imposing enforcer and Dooku the genteel former Jedi with superior swordsmanship, there is Grievous the Jedi hunter cyborg with respiratory issues. Palpatine is drawn to certain traits in his followers, showing another facet to the tragedy of Darth Vader's existence, merely the latest in a long line of expendable henchmen.

He's got that old-timey villain demeanor, the cackling plots, the abuse of subordinates, the bad posture, the name that's a synonym for "bad," to evoke that old-timey serial feel. This is in part because George Lucas fuckin loves that poo poo and who can blame him, and in part to suggest to the audience that this war's been going on arbitrarily long, with plenty of back-and-forth but no decisive changes, just episode after episode. Dave Filoni later went back and filled in those episodes.

Dpulex
Feb 26, 2013
The PT and clone wars are great at showing how incompetent and arrogant the jedi were and they deserved to lose.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I feel like half the complaints about the prequels are a result of people being really bad at watching movies.

Though I still say that people didn't realise Anakin and Padme's relationship was supposed to be messed up in part because of poor direction and in part because of years of Hollywood presenting way more clearly messed up relationships as perfect romantic ideals to the point where audiences don't even know they're supposed to see problems.

YaketySass
Jan 15, 2019

Blind Idiot Dog
Grievous isn't important but the way he's introduced helps to communicate that the war has been going for a long time and that the various characters have grown in skill and reputation. Anakin's a famous hero now, the Separatists have more dangerous weirdoes in command than the doofuses from the Trade Federation, both sides have had many back-and-forths for all of this to happen. There's your Clone Wars.

That he's also a campy villain full of bluster is also a good joke on Palpatine's part. This is the guy the Jedi think they need to catch to solve everything?

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
His name is literally “Generic Bad”.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
This is all getting away from the initial point which was that the prequels can be confusing the first time you watch them, because you don't have the benefit of having watched the films a bunch of times. Whether that's inherently a bad thing is open to debate -- I mean, look at the extremely polarizing reaction to Cloud Atlas -- but it's certainly A Choice for a big blockbuster, and I think it explains why some of the films were initially poorly received.

I'm not sure those choices are enough to qualify as a mistake or a flaw, but it probably contributed to the movies receiving less respect than they deserved.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Though I still say that people didn't realise Anakin and Padme's relationship was supposed to be messed up in part because of poor direction and in part because of years of Hollywood presenting way more clearly messed up relationships as perfect romantic ideals to the point where audiences don't even know they're supposed to see problems.

I would agree with that. Anakin was a hosed up, sexless monk taken from his enslaved family at a young age, getting into a relationship with an older woman out of sheer infatuation. When he sought advice from his "wise masters" they're like "idk, have you tried 'not loving' any harder???" Yoda was like "oh, young Skywalker is in great pain... probably should treat him like poo poo about it, instead of helping."

I think the films, on the whole, do a great job of portraying Anakin as a decent guy who is repeatedly victimized by the people around him, which makes Darth Vader's arc in the OT work, so from that point of view I think the writing was good enough.

ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is
i wouldn't characterise anakin as a 'decent guy'. he's a hero, but in the classical sense, because his life is a greek tragedy.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
That's probably the thing, Anakin is treated both by people and the narrative as variously a destined hero like goddamn Link or a weapon to be used (And is there really a difference?). Padme hears him outright confess to war crimes and treats it like a nervous breakdown rather than something to be at least telling him to turn himself in about.

It's a big thing in The Clone Wars, Anakin tends to be outright the guy you want at your back, but that's because he's the guy who'll kill the gently caress out of whoever is presenting the biggest problem at the moment. He gets along with Tarkin for a reason.

It's a contrast to how Luke Skywalker's actions are judged, and how he treats them- and the galaxy he grows up in. Part of it's arbitrary, part of it's long overdue recognition of material conditions. Anakin is held to impossible standards, Luke is the last desperate hope, and that's deliberate.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

His name is literally “Generic Bad”.

Lol

BiggestBatman
Aug 23, 2018
Obi wan spends episodes 2 and 3 having wacky jedi adventures ignorant of anakin's emotional turmoil until it's too late.

Grievous is more like jango, who, beyond a fairly shallow connection to the clones and leopointing for the audience, is just a mook for obi to fight.

YggdrasilTM
Nov 7, 2011

ungulateman posted:

i wouldn't characterise anakin as a 'decent guy'. he's a hero, but in the classical sense, because his life is a greek tragedy.

Nah.

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Blood Boils
Dec 27, 2006

Its not an S, on my planet it means QUIPS
When ~in the OT films~ do we learn that Vader is a cyborg

Is it inference from his breathing, or Obiwan's line about more machine than man?


Yup.

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