Star Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Clones

I recently re-watched part of a scene in Attack of the Clones in order to verify some dialogue for a future post about an episode of The Clone Wars on my other blog.  While doing that, I noticed a significant detail in the conversation that Anakin and Padmé have while she's packing in her apartment.

After Anakin claims that "in some ways, a lot of ways, I'm really ahead of [Obi-Wan]," expresses his frustration that Obi-Wan "won't let me move on," and gives a further list of complaints, Padmé placates him by saying, "All mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like.  It's the only way we grow."  In a sort of defeated manner, he admits, "I know" and sits down.  Padmé then says, "Anakin, don't try to grow up too fast," and he replies, "But I am grown up."  Significantly, he stands up as he says this, as if trying to prove his point by showing that he's taller than she is.

Despicable Me 2

Earlier this week, I watched Despicable Me 2 (for only the second time), and I noticed a brief visual allusion.  Early in the movie, there are some scenes of Gru's lab, and one of them shows a group of minions sitting on a beam and eating lunch:

This seems to be based on the photograph known as Lunch atop a Skyscraper:

According to this article (which is also my source for the above image), the photograph was taken on 20 September 1932.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - S4E15 - "Deception"

In my latest re-watch of The Clone Wars, I've reached the episode arc in season four where Obi-Wan Kenobi goes undercover as the bounty hunter Rako Hardeen.  I noticed some metaphorical significance in the staging of a particular scene in "Deception."

After Moralo Eval, Cad Bane, and Rako Hardeen have escaped from prison, they steal a police speeder to get to the docks to steal a ship and leave Coruscant.  Moralo Eval and Cad Bane take the front seats, leaving the back seat for Rako Hardeen:

Since this is a police speeder and the back seat is where criminals are detained, there are bars in the interior and on the canopy.  Visually, this represents Kenobi's situation.  His goal is to investigate a kidnapping threat against Chancellor Palpatine that Eval is allegedly involved with, and for the moment, he simply has to go along with Eval's plans in order to discover more information.  In the same way that he experiences this temporary lack of agency, he's confined in the prisoner's seat of the police speeder.

Jaws

Earlier this week, I re-watched Jaws, and this gave me an opportunity to flesh out a note I recently found about something I realized shortly after I watched it a couple years ago:  although Hooper has expertise and Quint has experience, Brody is actually the best candidate to kill the shark.

About halfway through the movie, Quint comments that the shark is "either very smart or very dumb."  I think it's the former.  After Hooper is submerged in the cage, the shark is clever enough to lure his attention in one direction before circling back and surprising him from behind.  Because he's startled, Hooper drops the spear with which he had planned to give the shark a lethal injection.

Rather than outsmarting Quint, the shark merely overpowers him.  The shark's strength is greater than what Quint has seen before, so he's able to withstand Quint's strategy of harpooning barrels into him and using their buoyancy to force him to the surface.  Near the end of the movie, the shark essentially leaps onto the boat, causing it to sink and Quint to slide straight into his mouth.

The shark is able to counter and evade the plans that Hooper and Quint have, and it's almost because of Brody's lack of qualifications that he's able to succeed.  Throughout the movie, he's ill at ease around and on the water, and his last-minute plan involves frantically shooting at the compressed air tank in the shark's mouth.  There's even an added degree of randomness in his shots because his glasses were knocked off earlier and he doesn't see clearly.

If Brody were more comfortable on the water or had a thought-out plan, the shark would have had some idea of what to expect from him and how to avoid it, just as he did with Hooper and Quint.  It's Brody's unpredictability, spurred by his discomfort and desperation, that leads to his success in killing the shark.

Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Recently, I re-watched the original Star Wars trilogy for research for my Star Wars blog.  (I'm still in the midst of writing about The Clone Wars, so I'm publishing this post here instead.)  Re-watching Return of the Jedi reminded me of a realization I had about the title last year:  it's ambiguous who that titular Jedi is.

I think I'd always understood the "Jedi" in the title to refer to Luke, either specifically or as a representation of the whole Jedi order.  Yoda tells Luke that he will be a Jedi only after he confronts Vader.  Since he does confront him, he earns the title.  As he tells the Emperor, "I am a Jedi, like my father before me."  By the end of the movie, the Sith have been defeated and the Emperor has lost his hold on the galaxy, so, in a broader sense of the title, the entire Jedi order can return from near extinction.  Luke is free to follow Yoda's instructions and "pass on what you have learned."

Last year, I realized that the "Jedi" in the title could also refer to Anakin.  He had been a Jedi and turned to the dark side, but near the end of the movie, he returns to the light side and becomes a Jedi again.

The Lion King

I recently re-watched The Lion King for the first time in many years, and I noticed some significant visual contrasts. 

Near the beginning of the movie, there's a shot of Rafiki holding up Simba in the sunlight on Pride Rock before all of the animals in the kingdom:

Later, there's a contrasting shot of Pride Rock.  Instead of day, it's night; instead of sunlight, the moon is in the background; and instead of the various animals of the kingdom, there are only hyenas:

Visually, this illustrates the difference between Mufasa's reign and Scar's reign.  Near the end of the movie, after Simba has been restored as king, his heir is also held up by Rafiki.  The specific shot composition doesn't match, but it is in the daylight and before the animals in the kingdom, so there's a contrast again, this time between Scar's reign and Simba's reign.

These contrasts also show visually what Mufasa tells Simba near the beginning of the movie: "Everything the light touches is our kingdom.  A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun.  One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here and will rise with you as the new king."  In between the sunlit reigns of Mufasa and Simba, there's the darkness of Scar's reign.

An-other contrast is in the color.  At the beginning of the movie, during Mufasa's reign, the colors are vibrant, but during the worst point of Scar's reign, when there's no food or water, the landscape is almost devoid of color, mirroring this lifelessness:

After Simba is restored as the rightful king, there's a revival, and the proliferation of colors returns:

The colors illustrate this change from prosperity to desolation and then back to prosperity.

Both of these contrasts (the day/night shots of Pride Rock and the change in color) also demonstrate the cyclical theme of the movie ("the circle of life").

THX 1138

Earlier this week, I re-watched THX 1138 in order to confirm something I'd suspected based only on my recollections.  For the majority of the film, the color scheme is subdued; it's mostly white, gray, or black and comprised only of artificial elements.  The final shot, in which the title character emerges from the ground in front of a sunset, is completely opposite:

Instead of muted colors, there's a very bright orange, and it's a natural setting (with birds flying across the sky, even), rather than the man-made environments seen previously.  The stark contrast between this single shot and everything that comes before it visually illustrates THX's breaking free from a very regulated society.

I also noticed that the soundtrack for this scene is the first movement from Bach's St. Matthew Passion.

For what it's worth:  years ago, I discovered that part of the Yardbirds' "Still I'm Sad" is used in the soundtrack near the beginning of Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB, George Lucas's student film that's the basis for THX 1138.

Click

I recently re-watched Click for the first time in many years, and I found a couple interesting features to note.

Here's a summary of the plot:  Michael Newman is an architect who feels he needs to impress his boss in order to get a better position at work.  More and more, he's occupied with work obligations rather than spending time with his family.  Frustrated with the number of remote controls in his house, he goes out to buy a universal remote control in order to simplify his life, and he eventually gets one for free from Morty in the "way beyond" section of Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  He soon discovers that along with controlling his television, this universal remote can control the world around him, and before long, he's fast forwarding through traffic and arguments with his wife and skipping forward until his illnesses have cleared up or he's received a promotion at work.  Learning from his behavior, the programming on the remote begins to take over, and Newman finds that he's skipping too much.  His children grow up so quickly that he doesn't recognize them; his wife divorces him; and he learns of his father's death years after it happens.  After sustaining what is apparently a heart attack at his son's wedding, he finds himself on his death bed but manages to summon enough strength to run outside and tell his son that family comes first.  He dies but wakes up to find that he's still in Bed, Bath, and Beyond and that the whole adventure with the remote was a dream.

After he finds out that his father has died, Newman visits his gravestone.  Morty shows up (as he's done a few other times when Newman has questions about the remote and what it can do), tells him, "I'm sorry about your father.  Taking him wasn't something I wanted to do," and reveals that he's the angel of death.  Morty's name is an indication of his position; it's a nod to mors (genitive mortis), the Latin word for death.  Furthermore, in the same way that the diminutive name "Morty" is only a fraction of the true mortis, Newman's own death is merely part of his dream, not a genuine death.

As the remote gains a stronger hold on Newman's life, the color palette of the film gradually moves away from warm colors and towards cool colors (particularly gray, white, and blue), especially once he becomes CEO of the architectural firm.  This shift in color symbolizes two things:  first, that as he skips over events, Newman's life becomes progressively less enjoyable and less vivid.  Second, since the cooler color scheme matches the appearance of the remote itself (which is blue and silver), this shift illustrates the device's growing dominance over Newman's life.

Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

In re-watching The Clone Wars yet again, I recently watched the DVD featurette on the Zillo Beast story arc (episodes 18 and 19 of season 2).  Kilian Plunkett, one of the designers, explains that the Zillo Beast arrives on Coruscant at the same military staging area seen in Revenge of the Sith.  There are a few clips from the movie to illustrate this, and one of them shows a Jedi cruiser flying overhead:

I realized that this has a sort of reverse parallelism with a shot near the beginning of A New Hope, where a Star Destroyer passes over the camera in the opposite direction:

The similarity of these two shots may be coincidental, but the fact that the ships are in the same position relative to the camera while going in opposite directions does illustrate the contrast between these two time periods.  At this point in Revenge of the Sith, there are still Jedi working towards peace and justice in the Republic, but by the time of A New Hope, they're "all but extinct" in the "dark times" of the Empire, as Obi-Wan tells Luke.

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Last year, I realized a connection between the names of the Sith lords in Star Wars and their characters.  Since Revenge of the Sith is the movie with the most Sith lords (Tyrannus, Sidious, and Vader) and deals the most with their nature, I thought I'd add this point here too.

Most of the names of the Sith lords come ultimately from Latin.  Maul is from molere, which means to grind.  Tyrannus is the Latin word for tyrant.  Sidious seems to come from insidious, which is from the Latin insidiae, which means ambush or trickery.  Even Plagueis, who is only mentioned, has a Latinate name; it's similar to plague, which comes from plangere, to beat or to strike.  Vader is the exception.  While it's pronounced differently, vader is the Dutch word for father.

In the same way that Vader's name comes from a different language family, his motivation for becoming a Sith lord is different from the others'.  Sidious's goal is clearly the acquisition and maintaining of power.  ("Unlimited power!")  The motivations of Maul and Tyrannus really aren't explored to a great degree, but they seem similar to Sidious's.

Vader, on the other hand, throws in his lot with Sidious and becomes a Sith lord primarily to save Padmé from his premonitions of her death.  He does want power (over death), but his desire for power isn't a selfish one like Sidious's is.