Don't Fetter the Force, Ani
Let’s talk about Star Wars, shall we?
Firstly, let me just post right upfront my rating for Revenge of the Sith: 22% Failure Rating. Now that that is over with, let’s just get to the long-winded elaboration . . .
I’ve said it a lot elsewhere, in regards to my opinion on the movie, but let me state it here, too: I really want to dislike Episode III more than I do—really, really do. The antagonistic critic within me cries out for the embroiled rage to swell within and to make heated attacks against the movie . . . But, anger leads to suffering, suffering leads to hate, yadda, yadda, Yoda, whatever.
Here’s the deal: I hated Phantom Menace, and I could’ve done without nigh-on four-fifths of Attack of the Clones (hell, I could’ve done without the subtitle, for one thing). Episode I was geared towards children and we will never be quite sure why—my assumption is that Lucas believes himself to be much akin to Spielberg and able to pull off the fuzzy child-filled movie with deeper connotations, but he is very much not—and Episode II was a teen drama, a very long and flashy episode of 90210 with lightsabres. Use the Force, Melrose.
So, given my disdain for the previous two installments of the New Trilogy, then what chance do I have of liking the third? Very little, indeed. However, I ended up discovering Revenge to be a pretty enjoyable movie-going experience, although I will not be so dramatic as others have and spout off that I think it’s up there with Empire Strikes Back—hell, no. There is the fact that I enjoyed it, but the other facts remain that the elements of the New Trilogy that I disliked are still there and the reasons why I found pleasure from Ep. III are so far-removed from why I liked the Old Trilogy.
To be direct, I was won over solely by the action and the storyline of the third episode: nothing more, nothing less. The lightsabre duels were excellent, the space war cuts were stupendous, and the entire sheen of the film reeked of the billions of dollars thrown at the special effects and CGI department. I’m pretty sure I could smell money burning every single time General Grievous walked across the screen. So, conclusion, here: “Oh, my God, that shit was red-hot shiny.”
I’ve been kicking around different explanations, in my head, for why I thought Ep I & Ep. II were so blah and I actually liked Ep. III; one of the best reasons I think this was that the case is that I finally gave a flying fuck about the characters in Revenge of the Sith. George Lucas can not write dialogue, and he wrote dialogue . . . Which was problematic, because, unsurprisingly, the dialogue was atrocious throughout the New Trilogy movies—he should’ve stuck to story ideas and outlines, like in the Old Trilogy. In the previous two prequel movies, this caused me to simply not even care a little bit about the characters nor, invariably, the plot. It didn’t help that Lucas was obviously poorly directing these people and the acting came out flat and sterile, for the most part.
However, what overrode these factors—which were still prevalent in the new prequel movie—was the familiarity of the whole ordeal. Anakin Skywalker was reminiscent of Luke Skywalker; Obiwan Kenobi was, for one thing, Obiwan Kenobi and, for another, the Han Solo character type (cool, collected, calm, slightly sarcastic); Yoda was there, Chewbacca was there, R2D2 and C3PO were there; the Emperor was there, albeit in the form of Senator Palpatine for the most part, yet he remained a “familiar” character. I imagine that the intention for Padme Amidalia to resemble Princess Leia was there, but that miserably failed (I don’t like Natalia Portman, I should mention). In the end, it all harkened back the good, old, original movies and wasn’t so strung up in all the new, retarded bullshit Lucas had given us for the previous two movies—no “Attack of the Clones,” no teenaged drama, no goofy sea-creatures, just your run-of-the-mill, old-fashioned Star Wars.
The third episode managed, in my opinion, to break away from the stigma created by Eps. I & II, which did it very well; as it moved more and more into the territory of the Original Trilogy, it became better and better—the Clone War ended early on in the movie, and there was little focus on General Grievous, aside from for keystone battle scenes. I could, essentially, forget that absolutely no worthwhile character development took place in Phantom and Attack, and just focus on the character development in Revenge, and I could forget all the insignificant characters that were introduced and killed off. Fuck Padme, in a bad way; was I supposed to care about Mace Windu, just because he was Samuel L. Jackson the Jedi? Qui’Gon Jin (or however you spell it) was gone, Jar Jar didn’t open his mouth, Captain Antilles (Wedge’s father) had maybe three lines . . . It was Obiwan Kenobi’s show, or Yoda’s show, or Anakin’s show—and, honestly, I think Christenson managed to do something very right with the character in this movie (like there was no pressure, he was only the protagonist and star).
Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious/the Emperor, I felt, gave a good delivery, throughout the movie; he carried the arrogant, manipulative, confident and self-assured bit convincingly enough. Let’s not talk about the rise of Darth Vader, okay? Seriously, you don’t want to know—suffice it to say that watching the old Frankenstein movie equivocates to about the same thing, with the lightning and the <”It’s alive! It’s ali-i-i-ive!” Not even James Earl Jones could redeem that piss-poor dialogue exchange.
“YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!”
A few random points: if put ‘in’ in the name of the Sith Lord and his Apprentice, you get “Insidious” and “Invader.” Why? Also, a lot of folk have been spitting out about how the Jedi should’ve seen it comin’, ‘cause there had to be an extreme evil to balance out the extreme good. I will maintain that the Jedi view themselves as ultimately neutral and balanced, in and of themselves, so the Sith was throwing off the balance by being evil, while they were simply neutral with good tendencies. After all, there were some complaints that the Jedi didn’t act when the Republic always wanted them to do so. Interesting aside: have you ever heard any Jedi refer to the “light side” of the Force? Sure, the Dark gets its name dropped like an NBA superstar, but do they ever really call the alternative the Light (outside of video games or the Expanded Universe)?
Padme dies. Ha, ha.
Firstly, let me just post right upfront my rating for Revenge of the Sith: 22% Failure Rating. Now that that is over with, let’s just get to the long-winded elaboration . . .
I’ve said it a lot elsewhere, in regards to my opinion on the movie, but let me state it here, too: I really want to dislike Episode III more than I do—really, really do. The antagonistic critic within me cries out for the embroiled rage to swell within and to make heated attacks against the movie . . . But, anger leads to suffering, suffering leads to hate, yadda, yadda, Yoda, whatever.
Here’s the deal: I hated Phantom Menace, and I could’ve done without nigh-on four-fifths of Attack of the Clones (hell, I could’ve done without the subtitle, for one thing). Episode I was geared towards children and we will never be quite sure why—my assumption is that Lucas believes himself to be much akin to Spielberg and able to pull off the fuzzy child-filled movie with deeper connotations, but he is very much not—and Episode II was a teen drama, a very long and flashy episode of 90210 with lightsabres. Use the Force, Melrose.
So, given my disdain for the previous two installments of the New Trilogy, then what chance do I have of liking the third? Very little, indeed. However, I ended up discovering Revenge to be a pretty enjoyable movie-going experience, although I will not be so dramatic as others have and spout off that I think it’s up there with Empire Strikes Back—hell, no. There is the fact that I enjoyed it, but the other facts remain that the elements of the New Trilogy that I disliked are still there and the reasons why I found pleasure from Ep. III are so far-removed from why I liked the Old Trilogy.
To be direct, I was won over solely by the action and the storyline of the third episode: nothing more, nothing less. The lightsabre duels were excellent, the space war cuts were stupendous, and the entire sheen of the film reeked of the billions of dollars thrown at the special effects and CGI department. I’m pretty sure I could smell money burning every single time General Grievous walked across the screen. So, conclusion, here: “Oh, my God, that shit was red-hot shiny.”
I’ve been kicking around different explanations, in my head, for why I thought Ep I & Ep. II were so blah and I actually liked Ep. III; one of the best reasons I think this was that the case is that I finally gave a flying fuck about the characters in Revenge of the Sith. George Lucas can not write dialogue, and he wrote dialogue . . . Which was problematic, because, unsurprisingly, the dialogue was atrocious throughout the New Trilogy movies—he should’ve stuck to story ideas and outlines, like in the Old Trilogy. In the previous two prequel movies, this caused me to simply not even care a little bit about the characters nor, invariably, the plot. It didn’t help that Lucas was obviously poorly directing these people and the acting came out flat and sterile, for the most part.
However, what overrode these factors—which were still prevalent in the new prequel movie—was the familiarity of the whole ordeal. Anakin Skywalker was reminiscent of Luke Skywalker; Obiwan Kenobi was, for one thing, Obiwan Kenobi and, for another, the Han Solo character type (cool, collected, calm, slightly sarcastic); Yoda was there, Chewbacca was there, R2D2 and C3PO were there; the Emperor was there, albeit in the form of Senator Palpatine for the most part, yet he remained a “familiar” character. I imagine that the intention for Padme Amidalia to resemble Princess Leia was there, but that miserably failed (I don’t like Natalia Portman, I should mention). In the end, it all harkened back the good, old, original movies and wasn’t so strung up in all the new, retarded bullshit Lucas had given us for the previous two movies—no “Attack of the Clones,” no teenaged drama, no goofy sea-creatures, just your run-of-the-mill, old-fashioned Star Wars.
The third episode managed, in my opinion, to break away from the stigma created by Eps. I & II, which did it very well; as it moved more and more into the territory of the Original Trilogy, it became better and better—the Clone War ended early on in the movie, and there was little focus on General Grievous, aside from for keystone battle scenes. I could, essentially, forget that absolutely no worthwhile character development took place in Phantom and Attack, and just focus on the character development in Revenge, and I could forget all the insignificant characters that were introduced and killed off. Fuck Padme, in a bad way; was I supposed to care about Mace Windu, just because he was Samuel L. Jackson the Jedi? Qui’Gon Jin (or however you spell it) was gone, Jar Jar didn’t open his mouth, Captain Antilles (Wedge’s father) had maybe three lines . . . It was Obiwan Kenobi’s show, or Yoda’s show, or Anakin’s show—and, honestly, I think Christenson managed to do something very right with the character in this movie (like there was no pressure, he was only the protagonist and star).
Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious/the Emperor, I felt, gave a good delivery, throughout the movie; he carried the arrogant, manipulative, confident and self-assured bit convincingly enough. Let’s not talk about the rise of Darth Vader, okay? Seriously, you don’t want to know—suffice it to say that watching the old Frankenstein movie equivocates to about the same thing, with the lightning and the <”It’s alive! It’s ali-i-i-ive!” Not even James Earl Jones could redeem that piss-poor dialogue exchange.
“YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!”
A few random points: if put ‘in’ in the name of the Sith Lord and his Apprentice, you get “Insidious” and “Invader.” Why? Also, a lot of folk have been spitting out about how the Jedi should’ve seen it comin’, ‘cause there had to be an extreme evil to balance out the extreme good. I will maintain that the Jedi view themselves as ultimately neutral and balanced, in and of themselves, so the Sith was throwing off the balance by being evil, while they were simply neutral with good tendencies. After all, there were some complaints that the Jedi didn’t act when the Republic always wanted them to do so. Interesting aside: have you ever heard any Jedi refer to the “light side” of the Force? Sure, the Dark gets its name dropped like an NBA superstar, but do they ever really call the alternative the Light (outside of video games or the Expanded Universe)?
Padme dies. Ha, ha.
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
10:04 AM
2 Comments:
LOL, have you seen the Cartoon Network Clone Wars? I think it was better than Ep.III. It actually made anakin into less of a whiny bitch. Padme is still annoying, but you get to see how bad-ass yoda, and the jedi-shaft really are. But I do agree on most of your points. Except the fact that Lucas wrote dialogue. What movie were you watching, sweety? The best scene between Ani and Padme was when he was jacking up the temple, and she was looking out from her apt., while he looks to her apt. It was the most moving moment between them, and it didn't have any lines, and they weren't even in the same rooM!
Yeah, I have heard many good things about Clone Wars, and I believe I will have to gank the whole deal from a friend and sit down to watch it, sometime this summer.
Oh, George Lucas did write the script for Revenge, as well as for Phantom and Attack; he's accreditted with the whole screenplay. Which is why the dialogue in the New Trilogy is always so markedly horrid. Sad, but true.
That scene was probably the only point in the entirety of the movie that made me give any sort of fuck about Padme and Anakin as a couple—it was surprisingly well done. And, thank God, too, because something had to counterbalance that other balcony scene with those two, with the exchange of dialogue that went something akin to: "I love you"; "I love you, more"; "I love you, more"; "No, I love you more"; "No, I love yo-o-o-ou, times infinity"; "I love you, times infinity, plus one!"
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