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Newest Star Wars Reviews Suprisingly Positive
Patchw0rk F0g writes "CBC is reporting on the suprising results of pre-screenings of Lucas' latest (and final) installment of his sci-fi epic. From TFA, "The advance reviews of Revenge of the Sith, the sixth - and final - Star Wars film, have been mostly positive - and in some cases outright effusive." Go figure... maybe Georgie got it right finally."
What's so surprising? After all, A New Hope was the best one in the original trilogy, IMHO. Lucas is a great director. Just because he did something different the last two times from what you were expecting doesn't mean you'll always hate his work. So why get surprised?
Got it right finally? I'd say he did pretty well on his first attempt...
Is there anyone out there, that say, saw 5 out of the 6 Star Wars movies and are not going to see the last one because of a review or vice versa, see the last movie because of a positive review? In general movie reviews are relatively useless unless you know a reviewer well enough to be sure that his/her personal tastes line up with yours.
Well, I'll be watching it whether the critics love it or hate it. I like to form my own opinions.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.â"John Gaule
The lightsaber combat in eps 4, 5 and 6 especially seem a little lacklustre compared with the excitement of the big fight in episode 1. And the whole look of the series just jars a little when you have part 4 made 20 years before part 1 and really looking 20 years older even with the lick of paint for the special edition.
Add to that the fact that Lucas clearly changed his mind a few times about where the story was going, with Leia suddenly becoming Luke's sister (and I'm not even convinced that Obi wan's lie about Darth Vader killing Luke's father was originally meant to be a lie), it would make some sort of sense.
And then the guy can stop fiddling with the original trilogy, and "tell the story he originally wanted to tell".
How many friends do you think George Lucas has in the media? He formed his own movie company because he HATED the studio system; he never appears on talk shows or gives interviews; Lucasfilm isn't even a publicly traded company. He has as much sway over what movie reviewers say as you do.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Bravo for standing up and saying what (I'm sure) so many here are thinking, but won't say because it's now chic to bash George Lucas.
The first two weren't THAT bad! Yes, Jar-Jar got on a lot of peoples' nerves, and the puppy-love scenes in EP2 might have been a little overdone. But overall, I thought they were generally very enjoyable!
But let's face it; most people here weren't old enough to be movie critics when the original trilogy came out, so they don't really have much perspective. Now that it's fashionable to be jaded, they just can't bring themselves to admit that they actually liked TPM and AotC.
I for one look forward to seeing RotS, and won't be here sounding off about how George Lucas robbed my life of several hours.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I know, what's even worse are those first few movies. Just a few spaceships, Luke discovers the force, shoots a bunch of stormtroopers and blows up a Death Star or two. And Darth's his father. I mean seriosuly, what do people see in these things?
If you oversimplify to the degree that you did Episode III, you can make anything look stupid. Romea and Juliet is just two lovey-dovey people with a fatal misunderstanding. Indiana Jones is just some archaeologist who beats up Nazis. Episode III is just some saber fights. I mean come on; you know it's more than that.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
He has to make you fans again? What, just because he stops making movies for a while means you revert to your Pre-Star Wars stage and aren't a fan anymore? That's silly. If anything, you would be a fan from the first three he made, revert to normal person once hating Episode I, then see Episode II to see if he wins you back. Episode I shouldn't be his attempt to win you back, since there was nothing to disenchant you with the magic of Star Wars before that. Unless you didn't like the Special Editions or something but you don't need to bother seeing those.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
There are some reviews of Sith that are coming from people who a) are filing their last review b) publicly hated 1 and 2 and c) don't entirely gush (but come close) over Sith.
It looks like the movie manages to touch on whatever it was that made people stand up and take notice of 4 and 5. It has relatively simple characters (just like all of the rest) and some really cliche moments (just like all of the rest), but gets back into the spirit of what SW had lost.
My personal take on this is the same as the review that I linked to above: Lucas had a LOT ends to tie up and had to cut the story down brutally until it fit. He essentially became his own editor, and what 6, 1 and 2 needed more than anything else was an editor. All of that "so-and-so was an awful actor" that you heard from 1 and 2 was really more a factor of script and the pacing that the movies ground the audience through. If the actors had all been well-established like Ewan McGregor, you would have been able to easily pick out the difference between bad acting and horrid pacing.
I love the landing gear metaphor for 1 and 2. It's very apt. and really captures the problem with those movies. LK helped get the pacing right in 5, and I think AG had a lot to do with the pacing in 4. Finally, GL has found the strength to build decent pacing in 3, so let's hope that he learns from this. I look forward to another 20 years of great story-telling WITH good pacing from this master tale spinner.
One other factor that you might consider: as this movie tries to tie 2 and 4 together, it must act as a transition back to the story that we grew up loving. In that sense, perhaps 3 also directly draws some of that feel back from the 70s....
I actually liked the first two movies... the dialogue wasn't exactly mind blowing... even dull at times... but they were still very entertaining by and large. However, I have a feeling that, story aside, if Darth Vader had been in the first two movies I think they would have gotten a much bigger reception. All of the original trilogy had Vader in it in all his 3V1L L337 coolness, and all three of them were very good... the third only dropping off mildly from the first two.
Now that Vader is finally coming back onto the screen he has everybody fawning again. I have a sinking suspicion that the dialogue and acting is going to be similar to that of these last two movies (essentially what makes them 'horrible' in many people's eyes), but its got Lord Vader... so it's AAAAALLLLLL good. My $0.02.
To the author of this article:
Finally got it right? So it somehow seems that George messed up some critical point in the original three? I think an obssessed legion of fanatical Lucas zealots and Star Wars freaks would beg to differ with that statement. Aside from that, yeah the Phantom Menace wasn't so great. Jar Jar Binks was incredibly annoying (can they please, PLEASE KILL HIM this movie? I'd love to see Jar Jar's fricking head get lopped off with a lightsaber; hell I'd pay money just to see that one scene by itself) and was far to prominent in the movie, but Attack of the Clones was pretty good. Particularly the end battle scene in the arena, and Yoda stepping up to the plate againest Count Dooku were particularly good. Personal opinion: take your opinion and shove it pal. With the exception of Phantom Menace I've liked all the movies, and I don't doubt Revenge of the Sith will be great as well.
If Lucas could easily buy good reviews, he would've bought good reviews for the last two prequels too.
To be honest though Lucas didn't have an awful lot to do for this film - he already knew how it had to end. I'm no writer but I'd wager it is a lot easier to formulate a screenplay when you already know exactly what it has to achieve to be considered a success.
Contrast that with Episodes I and II, where Lucas had very little in terms of pre-ordained plot development - the result was obvious, Jar Jar Binks et al.
Not to mention of course that since Episodes I and II were poorly received (62% and 65% respectively), reviews of this film were (and are already) bound to draw comparisons and as such favour it accordingly anyway.
For me one of the worst things about the previous two films in the franchise is that because they were continuations (albeit prequels) of what had already become legendary - no one had to try very hard. As a result the acting is wooden, the dialogue stunted and insincere, etc. Reminds me of the cringeworthy Matrix sequels.
Anyway, I personally believe that if the film didn't happen to include the words "Star Wars" in the title, that we would be seeing completely different reviews. And I consider myself to be an avid Star Wars fan to boot.
Agreed -- all Slashdotters should have their anti-marketing shields up at maximum power. Lucas realises this is his last kick at the can, and his host of Lucas media companies will milk this for all they're worth.
Call in a favour from your friend Spielberg, give Kevin Smith (who has made only one good movie) a free preview, give umpteenth number of 'exclusive' interviews, release $50 press kits to whoever asks...
This movie ~might~ be good, it ~might~ be better than the first two of the prequel trilogy. However, we heard all this twice before and most of us were burned. Don't be a sucker and go for the three-peat...lay low and wait for popular opinion, read legitimate film critics (rotten tomato) and gauge their aggregate response.
of course, if you have a 1978 Battle Star Galatica lunchbox in shrinkwrap, you can ignore my comments.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Lets be frank here and I'm not trolling.
Nothing will be good enough for the Slashdot crowd. He could film it in super douper total emersion 3D-o-vision with the best script & acting on the planet and there will still be compaints from many of the Slashdot crowd. He could choose to be totally divorced from the bloody thing and people will still hark back to how it isn't quite as good as the one they saw while in their nappy 25 years ago, and George has spoiled.
Hindsight is invariably 20-20 and rose tinted. People seem to forget that the originals had their very dodgy moments too. What people remember is not just the movie, it is the whole experience that they had when sitting there many moons ago, before the got old and embittered by age and by supporting Windows boxes (coz supporting Unix doesn't embitter one as much does it). It was going with their parents, getting popcorn, sitting surrounded in awe by peers, with their parents or older siblings. Playing with X Wing fighters for weeks afterward. It was getting all the mags & figures & watching the cheesy kids shows jump on the bandwagon. It was the fact that this was totally new, nothing else came close.
I watched the rest, I await the next as does everyone else here, even those that refuse to admit it.
Oh and just to piss off the remaining readers I haven't offended yet, I love my TiVo.
Just because your paranoid doesn't really mean they aren't out to get you
I'm a member of an oppressed minority group who believes that New Hope was better than Empire.
I dunno why that is. Maybe we didn't care for some of the darkness in ESB, and New Hope was more fun. Maybe the open-ended conclusion was less thrilling than the destruction of the Death Star. Maybe it's the "freshman effect" that made Clerks better than Mallrats. (Not that ESB is anything like Mallrats. ESB is a great movie. Just less fun than New Hope.)
It's not important why. I just wanted to state out loud that although it's accepted wisdom that Empire was better than New Hope, it's not entirely universal.
But that's why I've said before on Slashdot that I thought that Sith had a good chance to be the best of the prequels: it ties in to what I feel is the best of the originals.
1. It was meant to remind people of the movies they liked. They remember Tatoonie from ep 4 and they liked ep 4. (and it saved Lucas from having to create another world and populate it).
... but failed.
Besides, you left out the part about hoping that Vader would NEVER have any desire to visit family members. But that's probably okay because Annie didn't even bother to save his mom.
2. It was meant to remind people of the movies they liked. They remember the droids from ep 4 and they liked ep 4. (and it saved Lucas from having to create another character to speak the lines).
3. Lucas equates "skill" with "flash". A skilled Yoda would be more believable just standing there and blocking every attack (like the two Jedi did when faced with the attack droids in ep 1).
4. That is "explained" by the "fact" that the Sith can "hide" themselves from the Jedi. That is their secret power. That and the ability to quickly find very powerful replacement apprentices who can train in secret to challenge the Jedi. The Jedi's secret power is the ability to blow up the Sith's Death Star in every movie.
5. Jedi may be great individually. But they don't seem to spend any time learning group tactics. If it wasn't for their secret ability to blow up Death Stars, they probably would have been wiped out a long time ago. And that would have been a good plot. Big Jedi convention at Jedi Central and evil Emperor sends a nova torpedo into the sun. All Jedi dead expect for a couple who learned of the plan while travelling and tried to fight the control ship
Ep 3 is a fan boy movie. You get to see the things you've already seen and you get flashy battles. People like flashy battles, right?
The first two weren't THAT bad!
The second wasn't that bad. The acting was terrible, and a few other things could have been better, but basically it was still a proper Star Wars movie.
The first was a huge, embarrassing, computer-animated steaming turd from beginning to end (although that last expression is a bit misleading, as it might be construed to imply there was some sense of direction in it), and anyone who doesn't see that is just... just..., well just plain wrong. So there. Glad we cleared that up.
sudo ergo sum
Good special effects but extremely dumb corny story with simplistic "view" of good and evil. I guess that is one thing that appeals to fans who really don't understand grey shades and multiple conflicting motivations of complex human behavior. The acting is cardboard cut out in the best parts. These are really movies made for small children.
One thing that I always notice in these kinds of Cowboys and Indian movies is the dialogue. When the hapless "writers" want to evoke an accent or primitive or noble they delete all contractions from the dialogue. It's kind of humorous, in a crude stumbling way.
Yeah, I know, the geeks will hate me for critiquing their love story.
"I know, what's even worse are those first few movies. Just a few spaceships, Luke discovers the force, shoots a bunch of stormtroopers and blows up a Death Star or two. And Darth's his father. I mean seriosuly, what do people see in these things?"
You know, I must be one of the very few total nerds who nevertheless haven't even seen Episode 4 until a few months ago. You know what? I can't see what people saw in that either.
The acting isn't really any good. The story really does justice to the "Episode 3" title, because it's like waking into the middle of a movie with not much clue as to what's happened, why are they really fighting, and wth that's really solved. And the one lightsaber fight is not like between the most powerful Jedi alive and his Master, but like between people who've never used one before. Obi Wan holds it like he'd hold his... ahem, let's just say now I see why the "I see your schwartz is as big as mine" scene was there in the Spaceballs parody.
I guess the one that said it the best was one of Scott Kurtz's characters in his PvP Online comic: it's not Lucas that ruined your childhood memories, it's growing up that did it. The only way you could find the new episodes as entertaining as the old ones (or I'd add, the only way to find the old ones entertaining at all too) is if you could see them through the eyes of a 6 year old.
So while you were probably going for sarcasm, I find what you wrote there actually true: the old movies really _are_ even worse.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Either way, I have never trusted a movie review from anyone but a close friend who I know is reliable. I have yet to find a movie critic whos opinions are consistant with my tastes.
John Podhoretz just posted a warning:
WARNING: He also gives a Jar-Jar spoiler in a later reply.also had some great writing and acting in it. Same with that other indie flick he did (THX-9087980 or whatever it was called).
Maybe he just sucks at making Star Wars films.
click me
I'd say the only disappointing aspect of this movie is lack of Vader himself in his suit. Sure, Anakin technically becomes Darth Vader before the shit hits the fan, but it's not the same without the suit. Even then it's not disappointing considering what happens before it, but it just makes you want more.
It'd be nice to see more of Vader himself going ape shit, but you only end up seeing that in the last few minutes when he awakens after being operated on and learning about what had happened. I mean, you'd expect some scenes containing mass genocide or some form of magnificent display of "Hey, I'm the most powerful being in the known galaxy, watch me as I fuck you up big time."
You see all these amazing movies that the human Vader has that the mechanical Vader never uses in the later movies. It would just be nice to see mechanical Vader utilize all these swift "magical" moves that apparently have deteriorated over time.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I'll be damned if I'm going to have my six year witness the "slaughter" at the Jedi Temple, or give him nightmares from the violence.
Not that I plan to see the film, but at least that will be one less brat ruining it for everyone else in the theater.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Name one movie where the pre-release reviews weren't positive. The film companies control what gets said about their movies and they're not about to let some critic slam their film before the public's paid millions to see it. And if a critic DID write a negative pre-release review, he'd never get to see another pre-release.
George Lucas has employed brilliant marketing techniques by lowering the standards. He realized, the lower he set the bar, the better his chances that one of the films would succeed. Clearly, the bar could not have been any lower after the gems that were Episodes I and II!
:-)
Folks... This is going to be the BEST DAMNED STAR WARS MOVIE since episode II
Today's PVP comic seems very appropriate.
Vader Geek: It's too late for me, son. Joss Whedon is my master now.
Think about this: who was your favourite character in the original Trilogy? Most of you, like me, will say "Han Solo". There may be some other answers, but the key is that you will have an answer.
Now, who's your favourite character in the new Trilogy? Most of you, like me, will say "um.... uh.... er..." There is not one single "cool" character in the prequel Trilogy. Darth Maul is pretty cool, but relatively meaningless and, of course, only exists in one of the movies. The "heroes" are all Jedi, which is kind of cool, but all Jedi seem to be, by definition, stiff, pretentious, and completely devoid of character. Obi Wan is the exception, but he only barely manages to show the slightest hint of personality.
The history that Lucas created for the prequels is bad. There's no doubt about that. I still think that Annakin should not have been an immaculately-conceived slave, but rather he should have grown up with Obi Wan, the two being close friends. He should have been a bit of a badass right from the start (maybe he could have been the cool "Han Solo" character of the prequels), and he and Obi Wan should have drifted apart over time. I still like the old idea of Owen being Obi Wan's brother, and I think Beru should have been Annakin's sister (why the hell did she say with such fondness "there's too much of his father in him" in Episode IV, if she never knew Annakin as anything other than the weird angry dude who showed up one day to slaughter Tusken Raiders?).
But even with the weak back-story that Lucas created, the movies could still have been saved if there had just been one single character that I could actually give a shit about.
Vader grew between 4 & 5. But it seemed that it was because Lucas decided to change the course of the picture. I think some say that Lucas had the entire 9 movie series planned out before starting ep. 4. I don't believe it. Vader was the leader in ep. 5, second only to the Emperor. That's not true in ep. 4, where Tarkin seemed to be the leader.
That is why there seems to be growth in Vader between 4 & 5--the whole Vader is Luke's father, turned by the Emperor storyline wasn't in existence at the time.
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.-- Adam Walinsky
Just because Tarkin requested for Vader to release someone doesn't mean he was barking orders. Vader was still #2 in ANH. Tarkin was asking Vader to release him in a demanding manor. Sort of a you're being rediculous, release him. No diffrent than how you may tell your boss he is wrong when he is doing something stupid. Especially if he was doing it for personal enjoyment.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.