A Thousand Stars: Episode III, Part 18

In my view, General Grievous is the perfect MacGuffin -- a device to drive the plot forward. He's presented as this tremendous threat, but we all know he's just another one of Sidious's puppets. As long as he's ostensibly leading the Separatist Army, Palpatine can claim that the war must persist and his emergency powers are still necessary. And while Obi-Wan is off chasing him, Anakin is left brooding on Coruscant, vulnerable to the Chancellor's temptations.

So we need a visual indication of someone who seems like a big deal, but underneath he's weak and insubstantial. Why not a cyborg with a soft fleshy organ pocket?

He's also, like Maul and Dooku, an aspect of proto-Vader. Maul had the brutal warrior physicality, Dooku has the idealistic, disillusioned former Jedi background, and Grievous has the part-man, part machine aspect. In this first shot, his intimidating be-cloaked form even resembles Vader.


But then we see how creepily non-human Grievous really is.


It happens so fast I could only get a blurry shot, but look at him crawling around on all his limbs like an insectoid. Eww.


I do love this shot of Obi-Wan, who's just having a blast.

Even in the darkest of the Star Wars films, there's still room for fun. Fighting robots and magic swords and all that delightful wacky stuff.

Speaking of, what is more fundamentally Star Wars than the vehicles? Grievous has this spinny thing like nothing we've seen before:


And Obi-Wan goes with the organic choice, another quintessential element of the saga:


I love the details put into scenes like this. Why invent an entirely new vehicle and an original creature for just one fight sequence? Because these movies are all about imagination and inventiveness. We have a sense of a much wider galaxy that we're getting only glimpses of. I like it.

Next time, more serious stuff again...