Monday, August 24, 2009

Speech of the Week #37

Welcome everyone to a weekly column here on YDKS Movies entitled Speech of the Week! Every week, I will post a new scene from a movie that features a speech of some sort being given. After all, there are a lot of famous scenes in film where characters give an influential speech of some sort. Then again, there are also a lot of scenes where characters give a speech and it just comes off cheesy and lame. In this section, you will see both kinds. That's right, people, I'm giving you the good and bad of film speeches all wrapped up in one great big package. I hope you all enjoy.

This week's speech is terrible. It's basically the moment where, if Episode I: The Phantom Menace didn't kill Star Wars for you, this did. In this scene, Anakin kills a bunch of sand people because they enslave his mother and cause her death. After massacring them, Anakin gives a speech to Padme about how he should be all-powerful and how ruthless he was in killing them all.

This should be a powerful scene. It's a turning point in the story of Anakin Skywalker and his turn to the dark side of the Force. However, terrible on the nose writing by George Lucas and awful acting by Hayden Christensen make it laughable. My friends and I tend to quote this scene quite a bit. We like to say "I killed them all... but not just the men... but the women... and the children! They're like animals! I hate them!" in our most whiny / emo voice possible. 

This was the scene that made Anakin into an emo kid. Because of Lucas' writing and Christensen's performance, he just comes off as a whiny little bitch instead of a badass villain. Way to screw up one of the coolest villains of all time. 

The only thing that saves this scene from being completely unwatchable is the fact that he doesn't spend time whining about how much he hates sand. That's because he did this earlier in the movie. Seriously... how did this screenplay get approved?

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