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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.
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.
f fe cts/costume.
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........
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Well, since these trailers are available on starwars.com, I guess I have no reason to watch The O.C. anymore...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
How about "What I like about you" or "I want candy" playing in the background like every other trailer. Can somebody please "mash" that up, post it, and then boing boing can blog about it.
When does this game come out and what are the system requirements?
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
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OMFG if episode 3 doesn't live up to my ultra critical, obsessive standards I'm going to kill myself!!!
The funny part of your diatribe is when you state "like they got the narrator for a feel good Disney movie to appeal to the kiddies." Hello! From the beginning this was a film for the kiddies. Note the PG rating. Until now its been PG all the way.
Back in 1977 I was 12 years old and what really got me excited about the film was a TV ad like one of these with a similar friendly announcer that was shown the Saturday of the opening weekend. We saw the film that afternoon.
I am now dating a woman who is 25 and had never seen any of the films. So this past week we watched all 5. Everyone has their favorites and they also have bits that they hate about the different films. Here are some interesting comments she made: She liked the Ewoks, she even liked Phantom Menace. Upon watching it with her and explaining what was going on I realized I like the structure of Phantom Menace and the part of the story that is told in it. I also realized that the "veiled racism" is really just coloring viewers add - there is nothing overtly racist in it. Its a real stretch to claim the characters *represent* real world cultures. The biggest problems with Phantom Menace are the dialog which isn't punchy enough and the acting which I think lacks the proper reaction because you have actors in green rooms talking to thin air - that type of acting will progress over time but I think classically trained actors are used to reacting to something they can see.
The 5th movie is a blast. It is a lot of fun and there is a lot of action. The dialog is much better and the acting is a lot better. Hayden Christensen actually does a decent job with the script and I think the main issue is not his acting range (which should improve over time) but the script itself. He does emote frustration, anger, happiness, joy, brooding, etc. The script itself could probably tighten up the transitions though and it doesn't.
Even with that said, episode II moves along a lot faster and doesn't have some of the more difficult plot complications of Episode I. When you look at a book like Dune you see an interesting and complex interconnection of science and mysticism. We have that here too in the Star Wars saga. One thing stands in contrast though - Frank Hurbert can include appendixes and go on for several pages about the subtlties of these concepts. In a 2 hour movie Lucas can at best hope to give us a hint of what he means. Things like the symbiosis of the Midi-chlorians and the immaculate conception of Anakin are difficult enough to explain on paper let alone in 15 seconds on film. In going over the additional information available from the official sites it becomes more clear what Lucas means when he inserts this stuff. It is a question for film makers: how do you do it differently without affecting the tone of the story or slowing it to a crawl while you lecture?
Lucas was inspried a bit by watching Japanese films. He enjoyed them without having to fully understand them. In those films the Japanese don't explain everything about their culture (actually quite the opposite they explain nothing) and its up to the viewer to interpret or just accept and move on. The problem initially I had with the Imaculate Conception of Anakin is its too close to Christian beliefs about The Christ. The Will of the Force thus becomes an intelligence and one that is all pervasive much like God. Its hard to escape that conclusion. The problem with the alegory is that Anakin isn't Jesus but a person who has a hard life, becomes corrupted into a force of Evil and 25-30 years later finds partial redemption and perhaps does bring balance to the Force by getting rid of the Sith Master.
I am looking forward to this 6th installment of the series. Mainly because it wraps things up. In many ways the story is already well known. We know all the roads that get to here.