Star Wars 3 – I finally saw it
OK, the site-wide ban on STAR WARS talk is hereby lifted. Feel free to talk about the movie in the comments section below. Go ahead and spoil it all. I don’t care anymore. Amazingly, I found a couple of new things in the movie that people hadn’t managed to spoil on me in the movie’s first 9 days of release.
I liked it a whole lot. It was definitely worth my time, and I may just go back to see it again.
I loved all of Yoda’s money shots. Every time he lights up his light sabre, the camera is poised for the most dramatic or heroic post. I want my Yoda poster now.
I also want all his dialogue from the movie. Is that somewhere on the web? There’s one line of dialogue that I giggled at. It’s such a simple common sentence, but it made me laugh in Yoda speak as being particularly torturous.
It all ties together nicely, I think, and I definitely want to watch the original three movies again now. So many DVDs, so little time…
31. May 2005 at 17:50
The movie’s definitely not better than mediocre.
Is it more enjoyable and in several ways more satisfying than the last 2? Yeah, but it really wasn’t that hard to beat Episode I and II.
In the end, the film still has enough of the same problems the last 2 had to keep it from being a classic.
The acting is STILL bad where Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman’s big scenes are concerned. Either Anakin Skywalker was poorly cast, or you have to concede like 90% of the other people out there with at least half a brain that Lucas is just a BAD director.
The dialogue is STILL atrocious. The only film in the ENTIRE Star Wars series that doesn’t get bogged down by bad dialogue is probably The Empire Strikes Back — the only film where Lucas didn’t or wasn’t on the set much of the time. I no longer think it’s a coincidence that Empire stands heads-and-shoulders above the other films in the series.
Episode III’s last and biggest problem is how contrived and quickly Anakin’s conversion into Vader goes. There’s no big build-up there. Sure, it’s bound to be anti-climactic since this IS a prequel and the conclusion is foregone history, but we could have had a bigger build-up than we did that left us feeling more. Instead, in the end I thought Anakin GOT WHAT HE DESERVED and the only victims really were all the people he let down, hurt, and killed — including especially Padme and Obi-Wan.
If the whole point of the Prequels was to make us understand WHY Anakin did what he did AND feel sorry for him, it sure failed where I’m concerned as far as Episode III goes. Anakin still comes off as a whiny spoiled kid given way too much power who finally got bit in the end by the big hand of karma. He really got what was coming to him. Too bad everybody else had to pay for his stupidity and impatience.
OK, there are 3 good points to this film and they are Ian McDiamird as Palpatine/The Emperor, Frank Oz as Yoda, and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. All 3 actors gave excellent performances and did very good jobs with the material they were given. McDiamird, in particular, basically steals the movie. McGregor really is about the only sympathetic character in the whole Jedi clan with the exception of the young apprentices slaughtered in the Jedi temple.
As much I liked Oz’s vocal performances as Yoda, I would have preferred to see a bit of the Yoda puppet. As impractical as the puppet is for the dueling scenes, there are points in the film where it would have worked better or seemed more plausible to use the puppet instead of over-relying on CGI. The CGI still does stick out like a sore thumb in places and ruins any sense of “reality” Lucas is trying to create.
1. June 2005 at 08:59
No time to go through GeorgeC’s comments point by point, but it was clear to me that there was never an intention for the audience to feel sorry for Anakin. You are not supposed to sympathize with Vader and the Stormtroopers – they’re the bad guys. I did really enjoy crazed, ranting Anakin.
1. June 2005 at 12:15
Loved this movie. It’s amazing to me how hard people are on Star Wars, taking Lucas to task for even the most minute of infractions against their cinematic sensibilities. It’s amazing how many 3-star and 4-star reviews I’ve read that spend 75% of the article pointing out the flaws. The problem is that we’re just too dang hard on Star Wars. There is no other popular work of art that comes under such scrutiny. It’s a bit unfair.
So, Augie, what did you notice that no one else did? You just kind of left that hanging.
1. June 2005 at 13:03
Broc – it’s not that I noticed things that nobody else did. It’s that I noticed things that they hadn’t told me about yet. I went in knowing about Padme’s funeral and Anakin slaying the Jedi children, for example, but nobody spoiled me on Mace Windu’s death scene or Grievous’ fate.
And, man, does Lucas like to chop limbs off or what? Can we get a count on this movie? Vader lost both legs. Grievous lost two or three of his hands, I think. Dooku lost both hands.
1. June 2005 at 17:00
Favorite line that should’ve been in there; Padme saying at the end “Help me OB-GYN, you’re my only hope”.
The movie would’ve also been a lot stronger if Padme’s complete descent into wimphood (save for that one line in the Senate) had been attributed to Anakin and his power fetish/Force power having been dominating and emotionally abusing her. With her friends wondering whatever happened to Blaster Girl from the previous two movies.
That and switching out the “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” scene with a calm “Good” to show just how transformed into Vader he’d become.
Oh, and one does wonder why Obi-Wan was so convinced that Anakin had failed to bring balance to the Force. Lessee, at the start of the movie we’ve got hundreds of Jedi and two Sith. At the end, we’ve got two Jedi, two Sith. Seems balanced to me.
2. June 2005 at 09:59
But then, Tom, the obvious question would be why the Jedi were so excited about the possibility of someone bringing “balance” to the Force. I’m presuming that this “balance” means taking out the Sith entirely, since the Dark Side is not a natural part of the Force but a freakish mutant outgrowth. (Which Anikin then does at the end of RotJ.) Or maybe it was meaning to take the Jedi out of their somewhat decandent state at the time of the prequel trilogy (scheming, spying, arguing) and into a more pure union with the Force. (Which he may or may not have done by the end of RotJ, but certainly it was at the expense of most of the Jedi themselves.)
As for my opinion of Ep 3, I thought it was OK. I thought the turn to the Dark Side was well done, the action sequences were pretty fun, General Grievous was pretty cool. The love story was really weak, as in Ep 2. I just didn’t get really excited by the film though, despite only having that one major complaint.
2. June 2005 at 17:52
Funny Augie that you mention the Limb Chopping that Lucas loves in his movies. That was the first thing I said when I walked out of the midnight showing. It also goes back to the original Trilogy too. And if you think about it, Anakin gets a lot of limbs cut off in both trilogies. Arm in Episode II, other arm and both legs in Episode III, and hand in Epiosde VI.
And to those who say the dialogue is bad (which I agree on totally), you have to remember the original Trilogy dialogue wasn’t that far off either.
2. June 2005 at 22:13
I just wasn’t excited by this movie. I tried so hard to like it, I love the originals more than any other movies, and even really liked the second one. The toughest part for me to understand is for the jedi to be the baddest a$$es in the universe they all got slaughtered pretty easily. One code word and they all get taken down with one shot. None of them could sense that something bad was happening? I mean come on, in Ep. 2 a handful of jedi tore everybody, including Jango Fett, apart. Here we get a bunch of retard jedi who get shot in the back. It’s ridiculous. It really made me rethink me walking around and telling people who say things like, “I think your wrong” “No, you don’t”, and they say, “Maybe I don’t”. What good is the jedi mind trick according to this movie??