[Mike Mac from NYU]

As Chefelf pointed out in his list, all those cute Jedi kiddies we saw training in Ep II are going to be murdered in the next episode - presumably on Vader's orders. Now here's an interesting question: how is Lucas going to manage this one without upsetting his pre-teen fanbase? My guess is that it will happen offscreen and will never even be referred to - unless Lucas totally cops out and has them all sent back to their families or something. As for the rest of the Jedi, who knows?

He simply won't show it. He will refer to it, just like he did with Anakin's murdering those Sand people in Episode II.

Yo

[Vwing]

Actually, I heard (its just a rumor though) that Anakin will walk into the youngling training room, a voice will call out "Anakin!" and as he walks in, the screen cuts away (kind of the like the Sand People). I also heard that some of the younglings are going to be forced to fight in this movie. Lucas has already said he expects this to be the lowest-grossing SW movie because of its dark content that the younger audience may not like. Which begs the question: WHY DO PREQUELS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

[Chefelf]

I have a feeling that Lucas's idea of "dark" is going to be like a "dark" episode of G.I. Joe where there are a lot of lasers flying everywhere but no one actually dies.

It won't be dark. They won't show anything. It'll be as dark as the scene where Anakin kills the sandpeople... in other words NOT DARK AT ALL!

[civilian_number_two]

I say that Lucas is just dumb and spiteful enough to misunderstanf what "dark" means. I say 50/50 chance we either get the silly dark-leaning kid's stuff you guys are referring to, or we get rape and murder and the ripping out of living hearts.

Lucas boasting that his move will make less money is pretentious postering. It's an attempt to sound like he considers the stuff art, and bove commercialism.

Bullshit.

[HK 47]

I recently saw George on E! and he said that he will be making this movie much darker due to fan requests, even though it'll probably bring in less $. He didn't seem to happy with the idea though, it was like "I'm giving the fans what they want, but *sigh* I'd rather do it differently".

Hmmm, let's look at what we have so far:
1. Anime droid with quadruple lightsaber action.
2. Hayden going through some very "emotional" scenes.
3. Lava surfing.
Dark enough for you?

Seriously though, I don't understand some fans obsession with darkness, holocaust and brutal slaughter. The important thing is (or rather was) that the prequels are GOOD, dark or not. The same hope you feel in ESB should be evident even in the darkest hours of the fall of the republic. I however, have no such hope left.

[Vwing]

Yeah that's the thing I think people people misunderstand. I didn't find ESB "dark". I found it emotional. Han going into carbonite is sad, as is Luke losing his arm, the love story is comic and emotional at the same time, and it is very emotional when Luke finds out Vader is his father. This is not dark stuff though. Han going into carbonite showed no suffering, Luke losing his arm had no blood, hell, even when Luke decapitated Vader in the cave it was tame. I don't want to see in Episode III every Jedi just get massacred. In fact, that's why I didn't want to see the prequels in the first place, because you knew it could not end happy. I don't want to see Anakin's body absolutely mutilated. I want the emotion. ESB had emotion, but it still is not dark. I have a feeling that Episode III will be much closer to the rape and murder than any of us would care for.

[Vwing]

I think Lucas is capable of doing it, but I think you're missing something...he was scared. He KNEW he would have to make the prequels dark, and he was scared. He didn't want to alienate his target audience right off the bat, so he makes Episode I a kid movie. In Episode II, he's still scared, so he includes a little more darkness, but make the rest into either a stupid kid mystery or a mindless action flick. So now, with Episode III, he's fucked either way. He's either written himself into such a corner that he'll have to now include SO MUCH dark stuff in the movie that he will alienate younger fans, instead of doing it the smart way, which would have been to balance out the darkness among the three movies instead of shoving it into one movie, or he'll again pussy out and not do justice to the story. But because he pussied out the first 2 episodes, he's screwed in whatever he tries to do for Episode III.

[Just your average movie goer]

Lucas will screw this up - whether by making the movie too childish or too gruesome and over the top, he will screw it up.

Lucas doesn't understand 'dark'. When he made Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he seriously thought he was making the Indiana Jones equivalent of The Empire Strikes Back. He thinks more gore = dark.

The man's a buffoon.

And if he doesn't make the movie too childish, he will only over-compensate. He's got all the delicate finesse and touch of a bull in a china shop (as Chefelf so aptly put it).

[Just your average movie goer]

Actually, I just felt like a little disagreement about The Empire Strikes Back. I think it did get pretty dark in places. When Han went into the carbonite, it was pretty horrible because if you put yourself in his shoes, you would probably think that you might never come out again. And Leia would have thought that she'd probably never see Han again either. That part when they kiss and the stormtroopers tear Han away from Leia is pretty gut-wrenching stuff.

I spent a year living in Japan away from my girlfriend, who's Korean. I visited her one week and she visited me another week - and the airport partings were some of the most emotionally gut-wrenching, terrible things I've ever gone through. When I watch that scene in The Empire Strikes Back, I'm seeing a gut-wrenching airport parting - only multiplied so it's hundreds of times worse. That's pretty dark.

And freezing somebody indefinitely is a pretty cruel thing to do. And on the subject of that, we have to remember the torture scene in the movie. That was a pretty heavy scene and after watching the movie more times than I can remember, that scene still unsettles me. I don't know why the scene in Star Wars doesn't unsettle me so much - maybe it's because they don't show the interrogation. Or maybe it's because of what I suspect happened there - I was guessing that the machine put a needle in Leia that kind of weakened her physical and mental defenses and then Darth Vader tried to probe her mind with the force. Anyway, getting off track - the torture scene in The Empire Strikes Back says "This is a dark movie." As does the scene shortly afterwards where Han attacks Lando and is beaten by Lando's guards.

The Empire Strikes Back is not really a movie for little kiddies.

It is a great movie though - very, very high on the list.

I'm getting a bit sidetracked here - but I thought I'd like to say that The Empire Strikes Back has a maturity that the other Star Wars movies don't have.

In my books, The Empire Strikes Back is a very grown-up film. Perhaps that's one of the bigger reasons why I dislike Return of the Jedi so much... because it follows up on a very mature movie with a movie designed expressly for young adolescent boys.