Revenge of the Sith TV Spots Revealed

Bobert@flixnjoystix.com writes "StarWars.com has unveiled three TV spots for STAR WARS: EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH!" The three spots are shorter than the longer trailer that has been seen earlier, and a little bit more pop action than the dark trailer that gave me hope. Anyway, here is Spot 1, Spot 2, and Spot 3.

Comments

High cheese factor

[BWJones]

A little more pop action? Gave you hope? *Sob!* "But I love her sooo much". Seriously. Starwars has been moving more and more to a TV soap opera type thing for a while now using tired old tools many of which have been borrowed from other films of the past. Yoda hanging on to a ledge? This seems to be a common theme in Star Wars films and perhaps action films of all kinds. Remember the quote from another geek fav? Run you fools!. Slapstick comments from C3PO and the scream of R2D2 are just stereotyped now. And the use of this particular narrator for the TV spots is just silly. Seems a little soft, like they got the narrator for a feel good Disney movie to appeal to the kiddies. I expect if I saw the film, one might find many other completely cheesy references and pop culture call outs like explaining away the Force by invoking pop culture understanding of molecular biology. That was weak as can be and completely ruined the magic of having Sir Alec Guiness explain the Force as "It's an energy that surrounds all living things.. The best films create an atmosphere that allows you to populate many of the questions with your own imagination rather than spelling everything out.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the first two Star Wars films.... well A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, but it started falling off for me with Revenge....whoops, Return of the Jedi. The next two had me shaking my head in disbelief. How could they go so wrong? What happened? Ewoks and Jar Jar and lightly veiled racism combined with poor dialogue. Yeah, the modelers at ILM are still some of the coolest, the animation is fabulous, John Williams is John Williams, but as a franchise, Star Wars has lost that magic for me........

For any aspiring film directors out there, please use the following guidelines as listed in order of importance.

Story>Writing>Acting>Direction>Cinematography>Ef fe cts/costume.

Re:High cheese factor

[Tenebrious1]

You know what annoys me? that all the freaking sentient aliens are pretty much the same size. why can't we have some superdense 15 foot giants walking around talking trash. Why are they all the same size?

Jabba is pretty big. Maybe the Hutts killed off all the other 15 foot giants to control the underworld, and thus you don't see any other giant creatures talking trash.

Re:High cheese factor

[justforaday]

I thought it's cos it was easier to fit people into the costumes in the 70s and 80s. Shows what I know...

Re:High cheese factor

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

Story>Writing>Acting>Direction>Cinematography>Effe cts/costume.

Slight nitpick... Direction is definitely more important than Acting, because good directors tend to create good performances. That's why good directors always seem to get good performances out of their subjects, whereas bad directors do not. McGregor can act, but he was so wooden in the latest two star wars films because he had nothing to work with (i.e. Lucas is a bad director). I suppose one could argue that the real problem with the last two Star Wars films was the writing, but I definitely lean towards it being a problem with Lucas' direction.

Also I would omit "Story" and just say "Writing", because some films have very little actual story/plot, but have excellent writing (e.g. Hurlyburly).

Re:High cheese factor

[kevin_conaway]

You want story? Go read a book.

You want to be entertained? Go see a movie.

Re:High cheese factor

[Golias]

I somewhat disagree.

Movies are not just a medium for storytelling. They are also a medium for visual art.

Look at Rodin's famous sculpture "The Thinker." Not much story going on there: "A naked guy sits on a rock and ponders something that troubles him." There's your whole plot, yet people come from all over the world just to gape at his naked pondering.

Is that so different from paying a few bucks to see a Death Star blow up? A little less highbrow than Rodin, perhaps, but at least on a par with going to the museum to check out that painting of a Campbell's Soup can by Andy Warhol.

Re:High cheese factor

[lgw]

The thing is, the story hasn't been that bad. The screenpay (dialog) has been terrible. The two Sith lords starting a civil war so that each could rise to power as leader of one faction - that's pretty good stuff. Hiring Jango Fett to arrange the asassination of a Senator guarded by Jedi so that the Jedi would follow the trail back and discover that the Rebuplic had a clone army just in time to start a war - again, nice plotting.

Movie Sci Fi, that's about as good as it gets. It all went down hill from the plot, unfortunately.

Re:High cheese factor

[cocoamix]

It's the same reason every ship in the galaxy is flying along the same imaginary horizon.

An oversimplification that sacrifices accuracy for easier visual digestion.

Re:High cheese factor

[Miaowara_Tomokato]

Is that so different from paying a few bucks to see a Death Star blow up?

Ah, but it is the story that makes the explosion so satisfying. Without a story, you're just seeing a small moon blasted to dust. The story fills in the all-important details: That's no moon, that's a space station; it is a symbol of power and evil; without the destruction of the Death Star untold numbers of innocents will die. That, along with the buildup, is what makes the explosion itself so satisfying.

If I am unclear, allow me to make a comparison to another popular film. In The Princess Bride, why is it so satisfying to watch Inigo Montoya's final confrontation? He is not the hero of the film, and all that happens is a swordfight. If people wanted to pay a few bucks just to see a swordfight, wouldn't Highlander IV (was that the most recent one?) have been a complete blockbuster? Ask yourself what the difference is.

Re:High cheese factor

[elitsirk]

I think that the only way the new Star Wars trilogy went wrong by waiting so long to be produced. Lets face it, we all saw the original 3 when we were kids (or at least 25 years younger than we are now). We know every detail by heart. We can recite the dialog and probably follow along with the choreography of the fight scenes. These movies have become *legends* to us. There was no way to top a legend or to really win the hearts of the moviegoers. The same elements that we cheered for in Return of the Jedi (C3PO's comments and R2D2's squeal, people hanging of the edges of cliffs, etc) are the same things that everyone claims are "cheesy" now. But if they hadn't been there, everyone would have moaned about how the new Star Wars was missing something and that it had lost the heart of the original series. I, for one, intend to sit back and enjoy the final movie for its own merits instead of comparing it to some mystical ideal movie I've created in my head.

Re:High cheese factor

[Skevin]

The next two had me shaking my head in disbelief. How could they go so wrong?

I heard an interesting story just the other day...
A guy walks into a bar, where he remembers drinking a spectacular beer fifteen years ago. Confident that the ownership of the establishment has not changed, he orders a beer. Upon taking a sip, he immediately spits it out.
"Hey Bartender!" the startled patron cries, "This beer tastes like piss!"
"That's not my problem," the bartender shrugs.
Three years later, the guy comes back to the bar and orders another beer, hoping it will be as good this time as it was eighteen years ago. The patron takes one sip and screams.
"Alright! Now that beer really tastes like piss!"
"Uh yeah," nods the bartender, "I peed in it, but it doesn't really matter now, because I have your money. I'll see you in three years."
The customer storms out. Three years later...

This is not a joke, folks: this is an analogy. George Lucas is the bartender, and any given one of us is the customer. My question to you is, are you going to buy another beer?

Solomon Kevin Chang

Re:High cheese factor

[Dirtside]

Wrong. People fundamentally go to the movies (and experience all entertainment media) in order to see great stories. Other things can act as a subtitute (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has great acting and writing and a lousy story), but great stories are what people are, at their core, seeking.

There's a great deal of literature on the subject; go read it.

Re:High cheese factor

[Anonymous Coward]

A huge creature wouldn't evolve sentience. Humans evolved sentience to kill (and avoid being killed by) huge creattures.

Soothing Sith

[topgeek]

These 30-second trailers will be more fulfilling than the last two months of movie releases.

Forced browser resizing

[JPelorat]

Looks cool, but I could have done without the annoying auto-resizing of Firefox...

Never fear

[nizo]

...more pop action than the dark trailer that gave me hope.

But if this one is bad, luckily there is always A New Hope.

Formulaic Trailers

[RichMan]

Looks like they watched the HHGTTG trailer and followed the guide entry on how to make a movie trailer. The deep voice seems like a characture of itself somehoe.

Missed the women in bikini's but really delivered on the explosions.