Friday, May 20, 2005

Star Wars Review

Where do I start. Well, let's see how accurate my pre-review on Thursday was.
The Good?
1) Were the special effects good? Yes. They were awesome. BUT HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO SEE SHIPS LANDING? They must have had 300 scenes of a ship coming in for a landing. We get it, your special effects are cool. But, the movie was 80% special effects and 20% story.
2) John Williams music will never get old. Actually, it can.
3) Did it make a connection to the first three? Yes... in the last 10 minutes. The first 2 movies up until the last 10 minutes of this movie are pointless and unnecessary.
4) Young Han? Nope, instead we get a stupid, "I love you Chewie" with absolutely no character building for him. It's not enough to just drop the name of a beloved character George, DO SOMETHING WITH THEM! I thought Yoda was about to give Chewie a big wet one.
5) Did Jar-Jar bite it? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! He LIVES!!!!!
6) What about the planet Allnood? Nope, but we get Hellplanet? It was some kind of industrial battleground. Once again, no explanation but it made great eye candy and was about as subtle imagery as a stop sign.
7) Did Darth Sing? It would have been better if he did. At one point I thought I was watching Young Frankenstein. PUTTINN ON THE RITZZZZ!!!!
8) Wookie Nerds? None. Thank God!

The Bad?
1) Bad dialogue? Where do I begin? Paraphrases...
  • Anakin: "I must stop you from killing the Senator so we can bring him to justice. (Kills Mace Windu) Uhh... Senator you're awesome I bow to you." But I thought he needed to be brought to... ah forget it.
  • Anakin: "If you are not with me you are my enemy." That quotes only 2000 years old.
  • Doctor: "There's nothing physically wrong with her, she's just given up the will to live." Yeah, you're new twins give you no reason to live.
  • Obi-Wan: "It's a boy!" Padame: "Luke!". Obi-Wan: "And a girl." Padame: "Leia." Did she already know them?

2) Too many Chewies? Uh, for three seconds. And they could have used some special effects to bring them up to speed.

3) Robot love? It would have been hotter than Anakin and Padame.

4) Evil George W.? It was so poorly written who knows if there was any subcontext or not.

5) Anakin becoming James Earl Jones? Nope. Anakin becoming bad Frankenstein.

6) No Lando? He wasn't in it. Lucky for Billy Dee, what's left of his career dodged a bullet.

7) Do Jedi reproduce asexually? Well, Anakin sure didn't seem all that thrilled with Padame.

8) 7 hours too long? 2 hours and 20 minutes was too long.

9) How many nerds with Light sabers? Enough that they had to make an announcement not to "ignite" them.

Final thoughts? The last three movies are dead to me. They are not Star Wars canon. I will never watch them again. The logic was fuzzy (the Sith are the "absolutist"?; When did Anakin and the Senator become so tight?; Darth without hesitation believes everything Palpatine says but doubts all the Jedi?; We hide the kids with Darths family and a renegade Senator??? Oh yeah, the empire will never check there.)--- the acting was atrocious, YOU ARE IN A STAR WARS MOVIE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD- GET INTERESTED!!!!! (Kudos for McGregor for doing his best, he's the only part of the trilogy who connected with me)--- and the heart of the series was ripped out.

Star Wars nerds just answer this question: If there had not been the origonal three would Star Wars be a cultural phenomonon? Would people wait in line for a mid-night show? Would these Turkeys have even made enough money to enable Lucas to make them?

I sum it all up with this quote, once again, from the Doctor refering to Padame at the end: "There's nothing physically wrong with her, she's just given up the will to live." After seeing these movies, I know how she feels.

Scale of 1-10: 4

1 comment:

James said...

Other crunchy bits:

Palpatine: Mace melted my face! Now my evil is obvious to all who look at me!

Obi-Wan: I have the higher ground! This enables me to cut off two legs and one arm with a single blow.

Yoda: Oh, by the way, Qui-Gon came back from the dead and can talk to us, let me tell you how it's done so people in the next movie will understand why we get to be Jedi Ghosts but all of these hundreds of slaughtered Jedi's stay dead. This is too complex to portray with actual footage of Qui-Gon so I'll just mention this as an aside.

Organa: Ok 3P0, I have to wipe your mind so that the next three movies make sense in light of the fact that you were BUILT BY DARTH VADER.

Me: Nice smooth transition from ep. 2 (start of Clone Wars) to ep. 3 (end of Clone Wars) without having to show or explain it. (I guess I should have watched Cartoon Network for this?) Doesn't it start as a "fake" war engineered by Palpatine with the Trade Federation et. al. on the "bad side", but in ep. 3 there is all this talk of the "seperatists", but when did they form?

I agree with you on these:

Yoda: Let's "hide" Luke with Darth's in-laws on his homeworld! They'll NEVER LOOK THERE (and they never do).

Padme: Look at my bright smile as I see my children born into the world and I name them. Alas, it is too late for me! I have already lost all hope. See it quickly drain from my face as I die of sadness as must all women must who discover their husband is a jerk.