Star Wars III Review (sort of)

Went with my family to see Star Wars III the day after it came out (for my wife's birthday), and pretty much reviewed it in a response I posted to a newsgroup, seen below. --Mike--
 

> Yeah this movie was the tragedy that GL promised us, I walked around all
> day today feeling slightly worse then when my last GF and I broke up, now
> thats powerful s***! The part where they are putting vader back together, and
> Padme dying in childbirth really strikes a chord.



My reply: For me, no comparison to the way I felt leaving the theater after Episode V,
Empire Strikes Back. Opening night, San Francisco, midnight show and out on the street at 2:45am wondering what was to become of Han Solo and whether Darth Vader really was Luke's father... not to mention a universe in which your friends turn on you and then come back to help, all in the briefest period of time. And knowing that the answers were three years away! A very different feeling than when you're looking at the past (as in Episode III).

> 1) Yoda being a total badass.  Alas, if he could have just hung on
> with his fingernails, the galaxy would be safe.
> 2) Grievous was awesome.  Not only in concept, but the execution of
> his character and animation was flawless.  Ditto the clone troopers.
> 3) Palpatine was really good.  If Ian McD had sucked, this movie
> wouldn't have worked at all.
> 4) The Anakin/Obi-wan sabre battle lived up to expectations.
> 5) The memory wipe debate has been settled.
> 6) Bail Organa was actually cool.


My reply: The younger Yoda is certainly a force to be reckoned with, and a lot of fun to watch.

Grievous... I dunno... reminded me too much of the Goons from the 1938 Popeye animated feature. For reference, check out http://www.math.pitt.edu/~bard/bardware/popeye/popeye9.gif and
http://www.awn.com/ottawa/OIAF04/images/prog_popeye6.gif and see if the  similarities stand out to you. Maybe it's just the nose, or the elongated arms?

Palpatine was interesting most of the time, but Obi-Wan was the only person on-screen who really held my interest. His emotions, for the most part, seemed realistic for the setting. Most everyone else seemed caught up in their own little world while the universe was collapsing around them. But even Obi-Wan, at times, was a bit too detached for his surroundings (such as when they land on the Imperial ship to "rescue" Palpatine, and he's having an almost-casual conversation with Anakin while a fierce battle is going on outside *and* inside the ship).

>> 4) I hate it when Lucas betrays a character just out of plot laziness.
>> Who believes Obi-wan would have left Anakin in the condition he was in
>> without putting him out of his misery?  But that would have fouled up
>> Ep4, wouldn't it?


My reply: What comes around, goes around. We saw Anakin burning, and later Anakin saw to it that the same fate came to Luke's Aunt & Uncle. Upon re-watching Episode 4 (the original) tonight, I feel that the scene where you see the two bodies not just burnt down to the bone, but laid out in a way that just reeked of agony... I don't think it was any less powerful than watching Anakin burn, and perhaps more so... especially since we know Anakin will survive. As we watch it, we're trying to figure out how they're going to put him back together again, what  it is that makes it so he can only breathe through his mask etc. That takes away from the spectacle of a man burning to death.

In my humble opinion, Lucas would make better movies if forced to deal with a smaller budget. Just because you can do something, given enough money, doesn't mean that you should do something. The effects are so incredible in Ep3, and so continuous, that it tends to overshadow the acting.

OK, I lied. While in general I'm trying to make a case that the story is more important than the effects, and that the effects can (and, with George Lucas, often do) get in the way, Yoda proves it doesn't have to be that way. Yoda is nothing but special effects, and everything about Yoda is real and interesting. Yoda is truly the best of both worlds.

And, since this newsgroup is startrek.vs.starwars after all, I'll toss in something else. Star Wars III wouldn't work without spectacular special effects. The story and acting just don't seem like they'd pull it off on their own; we care more about cool stuff on the screen than we do the drama that's being played out. Contrast that to Star Trek First Contact, and the relationships between Picard, Data, Worf, Lily & the Borg Queen. Even the Enterprise. They were all things that you (or some of us anyway) cared about, and we watched, not wanting to see the next cool special effect, but to see how nuts Picard would become, whether he could patch things up with Worf, and how vulnerable Data was to the things that make us human. I don't think people left the theater thinking "Geez, those were cheesy special effects, I sure wish they had a bigger budget and could have done more."

Lucas, on the other hand, can't leave well-enough alone and goes back to doctor up his originals, adding in more effects that he couldn't afford to do at the time. Does it really make the Spaceport (in Episode IV, the "original") more real to have all sorts of ridable creatures in town, as well as add in a bunch of traffic in the air? For that matter, in Episode III (as well as Episodes I & II, if I recall correctly), where are all those millions of people flying back & forth from & to? Or is it a metaphor for unsettledness, an inability to stay in any one place for a period of time?

Overall, Episode III was a good, fun movie. But it wasn't a great movie. Episode V/ Empire Strikes Back was a great movie, a near-epic. It left you caring about the people in it. It left you hanging with weighty questions.

--Mike--     Chain Reaction Bicycles
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