A Thousand Stars: Episode III, Part 26
Apr. 25th, 2024 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilShould have mentioned that I'd be out of town last week, but oh well, I'm back! We're going to examine a brief moment amid the tragic Order 66 sequence. It's significant that Episode III is the only film of the original saga to have a PG-13 rating. (Granted, the ratings system has shifted so much that they'd probably give all the movies that rating nowadays -- PG is reserved for kids' movies, which has me wondering what G is for anymore.) There's no question that the fall of the Republic and of Anakin Skywalker is going to make for a much darker, disturbing story. Yet it never edges into gratuitous violence or something that's shocking purely for the sake of being shocking.
Consider the massacre at the Jedi Temple. We see Anakin and the clonetroopers marching inside, but most of what happens after that is implied rather than directly portrayed. Particularly the awful brutality of killing younglings. We don't need to see that. Our imaginations can conjure up the horror perfectly well, after seeing this sequence of shots, concluding with this final haunting image.
And then, as Lucas has explained, we go to Padmé as an emotional surrogate for the agonizing grief we're experiencing. She doesn't know yet what actually happened; she worries that Anakin is dead. But her reaction gives us exactly the release we need. In sense, Anakin really has died, a death of character and conscience and spirit.
Next, images of a proto-Rebellion...
Consider the massacre at the Jedi Temple. We see Anakin and the clonetroopers marching inside, but most of what happens after that is implied rather than directly portrayed. Particularly the awful brutality of killing younglings. We don't need to see that. Our imaginations can conjure up the horror perfectly well, after seeing this sequence of shots, concluding with this final haunting image.
And then, as Lucas has explained, we go to Padmé as an emotional surrogate for the agonizing grief we're experiencing. She doesn't know yet what actually happened; she worries that Anakin is dead. But her reaction gives us exactly the release we need. In sense, Anakin really has died, a death of character and conscience and spirit.
Next, images of a proto-Rebellion...
