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Originally Posted by Chuck Mayer
I agree that TPM and AOTC were unique, but unique doesn't always mean good. I can point out a lot of unique films that get one or two things right, and still aren't worth the two hours it took to watch them. I am interested in what direction you feel separates PT films from other directors?
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Mainly what Matt said — the way he uses the same scenes and dialogue to play entirely different beats and emotions, but also in the intangibles. So much of the worlds are digital, but they never have that claustrophobic, soundstage-y feel that most fantasy films are burdened with.
Even the negatives — dialogue, performances — operate at a recognizable rhythm; when you fall into the flow the problems are almost beside the point. It's not that random and sporadic disappointment of lesser directors: he gets consistent performances that veer off from the way real people act, saying things that real people wouldn't say.
Both fall into an evocative universe that feels all at once different from and familiar to our own. This isn't our world with scifi trappings tacked on. This is something else entirely.
Each movie has moments that you wouldn't get from any one else. In the Phantom Menace movie, even a complete novice to the series would understand that Palpatine is a bad guy, even though nothing in the film shows him to be lines like him watching Anakin's career with great interest work for people who've seen the original trilogy, but I bet they'd set off warning lights for the newbies too. It's in the editing, the way shots of Palpatine play off other shots. The funeral scene laying out the theory of two for the Sith, as an example, plays off a shot not of Sidious as would be intuitive but of Palpatine instead.
Attack of the Clones, even with some of the glaring flaws of the three, plays out the best for me. It comes the closest of the six to fulfulling the energetic promise of the adventure serial. The unique, standout moment for me in this film was the Kamino sequence. It's an absolutely beautiful world, simple rather than merely stark, and yet it's probably the most quietly unnerving moment of the series outside ROTS. The way the fetuses move in the glass canisters, so much of life and yet apart from life. Even the Kaminoans are as non-threatening as an alien species could possibly be: slow, soft-spoken, all pleasant curves, and graceful movements. Still completely disturbing. The tour-de-force cumulates with the reveal of the army which is instantly terrifying for every single person in the theater even though they're the "good guys". For those who know what's to come, the fact that they are the "good guys" is perhaps even more terrifying. The general consensus going into the PT was that Palpatine would conquer the Old Republic. Instead Lucas had him merely keep changing it until it was no longer the Republic.
As for Revenge of the Sith, the first hour is the least distinguished of the entirely six movies — the only time when I felt I was watching FX for the sake of FX. Everything from the opera scene on is the mark of a higher caliber visionary. It's got a terrifying inevitability that picks up momentum like a boulder rolling down a mountain. If I had to isolate one sequence as particularly unique, however, it'd be the towers scene. Padmé stands in her apartment and Anakin paces the council chamber, but no two characters share a more potent moment in the entire series. It's full to the brim with meaning and consequence, played exactly the right length of time, without a single word of dialogue being shared. It's a moment that made me believe the rumors that Lucas cut together the baptism sequence in
The Godfather. His cuts and juxtaposition speak in a way his dialogue has never been able to.
