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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."
the sixth - and final - Star Wars film
final? aren't there supposed to be nine when they are all done?
Or maybe George is cashing in a few favours from friends in the media. Frankly, while it's possible that everyone's expectations were so low from Ep 1 & 2 that anything looks good in comparison, this is also the media which blindly and stupidly supports anything these days. These companies are absolutely desperate to be the one who gets on the bandwagon first.
Are we sure that there wasn't a ghost writer on this one? ESB is that best and wasn't written by Lucas. Or, maybe he just learn to write this time around. Either way, I have read that it's damn good and can't wait to see it the minute it opens.
Evolution or ID?
Do you want to know what the whole story, the whole character arc, of Anakin Skywalker is? Here it is, in a nutshell:
JESUS GROWS UP TO BE HITLER.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Firstly I hated the episode one, episode two was alright. So I wasnt expecting much. This one was great, I enjoyed every bit, theres a constant dark undertone to the whole film which is whats been missing from the first two. Go and see it.
I wont tell you how it ends...
Well, I wasn't planning to see Episode 3, and gave Episode 2 a skip too. Admittedly, it wasn't because of reviews, but (A) because of Episode 1, (B) because I'm not a big SW fan anyway, and (C) because they released the Episode 3 video game before the movie. Which neatly gives away the whole story. Gotta wonder what were they smoking there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Not sure how tongue in cheek your comment was, but I actually agree with it - Lucas should have left well enough alone with the much-beloved original trilogy, and just done a complete remake of eps 4-6 if he wasnt happy with them. After all, its nearly 30 years since the original Star Wars, and we are already seeing other remakes from the same era like "The Longest Yard" and "Amityville Horror"
Once you have all 6 movies on DVD will you watch them in the order that they are released on in the order that they are numbered? I contend that the 4-6 should always come before 1-3 because I don't want to know that Darth Vader is Luke's father, etc. I think that they should still be viewed in the released order or else the mystery will be lost, however most of my friends disagree with this notion. It would be like watching half of The Godfather II and then watching original Godfather beofre going back to the rest of II.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
I agree. 7 year olds dig ewoks. One day I got to thinking how come I wanted an ewok so bad 3rd grade was a complete wash with daydreaming, but yet I friggin hate Jar-Jar. Oh, it must be becuase I'm 30 now. I re-watched I & II with the mindset that I was a kid again and you know what, Star Wars rules again.
Lucas isn't that bad of a writer. At least not as bad as he is a director. He does write some pretty flaky dialogue, but good direction and acting can overcome that (ie: allowing the characters to improvise or reword so it sounds more natural and believable).
.. and a good chunk of that is the direction. Lucas' "vision" has always been stunning visual effects .. and not much else... and he writes for that.
... but IMO that's mostly due to them being part of the franchise. Had they been standalone movies I think they would have flopped (or at least I HOPE they would have flopped .. lol).
The problem is that a script is supposed to be a just a guideline. A script by itself is nothing.. it takes a lot to bring it to life
Don't forget that he also wrote Empire, Jedi and the Indiana Jones trilogy. As long as someone else directs his movies are usually a success.
In fact, the only movie that he directed that was a huge success on it's own merit* was A New Hope.. and even Lucas himself admitted it was a near disaster.. and that he had brought in some brilliant editors (Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew) that saved the movie.
* You can consider the prequels a financial success
I mean, other than having a movie about a guy talking about himself ...
The characters are dropped into situations and they react. Like when Han shot a bounty hunter sitting across from him.
Lucas' problem isn't character development. His problem is back-story. Vader had more character development in ep 4 & 5 than any other bad guy has had in ep 1-3.
Lucas just doesn't know how to write a story that will result in the character he has already developed. Which is why he falls back on fan-boy tricks of re-introducing the previously created characters and such (the droids, Boba's daddy, Tatoonie, etc).
Vader has character.
Annie is just put through some badly written situations and dialog so we can get to the Vader suit.
Just because he did something different the last two times from what you were expecting doesn't mean you'll always hate his work.
If, by "different," you mean, "crappy," then no, that's exactly what I expected from him.
If you ask me, and I realize you haven't, Lucas is a good director in the same sense that Charlie Babbit (Rainman) is a good mathematician. Lucas can do a lot of things extraordinarily well, not least of which is putting together a special effects shot. He is, however, a terrible writer of dialog, he has a huge blind spot when it comes to casting, and he is utterly incapable of working with actors.
Of course there are other people with some responsibilities for those tasks, but in the end, Lucas has to approve decisions made on those fronts, and he has never failed to fail. The cumulative effect is that his movies lack emotional depth. That's not to say they aren't passionate, but it's the passion of a bunch of adolescents (probably the reason so many SW fans latched on when they were 13). The series only ever showed any real gravitas when they hired a good writer or two to punch it up (e.g. TESB vis-a-vis Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan).
Think I'm full of it? Ask Harrison Ford, who famously told Lucas, "You can write this shit, George, but you can't say it."
// This is not a sig.
When one considers that the inside of R2 had porn plastered all over the inside to ease Baker's discomfort (I'm not making this up) one wonders what kind of comedy is involved.
Well, just what was stupid about episodes 1 and 2, you ask? I invite others to add to the list, or dispute my inclusion of the following:
1) Anakin grew up on the planet his son later hides on, yeh. So, maybe those Storm Troopers are retards and kill the people raising his son, but even turned to the dark side he feels so little that he doesn't shred the troopers who killed them into hamburger? They're his own relatives, for crying out loud. All GL had to do, was put this on another planet, it's a big universe.
2) Darth knows the droids, from his childhood? Yeh right. What does this add to the story? All the big story's in humanity's history have room for literally thousands of important people, important players. If they needed some droids (and yeh, they probably did), why not invent some new ones?
3) Yoda bounces around like a $10 toy from the bratstore? Yoda was supposed to be literally *awesome* if you did piss him off. Not comical. Yoda should have opened his robes, and anywhere from 6-20 lightsabers just levitate outward from him and activate. The bad guy (Darth Brooks? I forget his name) would have to do everything he can to not be mowed down by the cloud of spinning lightsabers biting at him from every side, even the distractions he might throw at Yoda would be smacked away. Let him escape, sure. But make it look like the guy beat the 100,000 to 1 odds in doing so.
4) Absolutely clueless intrigue. Even the bad guys in both shows would be amateurs when put up against the likes of my local city council. The good guys wouldn't stand a chance against the maternity ward at a hospital. The Jedi have magical powers, dammit, and you're telling me they never even notice a Sith Lord on the same planet as their headquarters? That once they know about him, it's all up to Ewan McGregor to find out what's going on? Aren't there dozens of Jedi, even hundreds (if not thousands). With influence at the highest levels of government?
5) The big Jedi battle against whatever those things were. They have to be rescued by storm troopers? Mace Windex runs around like a fat man, out of breath, sloppily hacking at things like one of the three stooges would swat at a bee. Some of these Jedi get nailed without ever even seeing it coming. It was so lame. If they can't squash an army that has less than 50 attackers per Jedi, then it's just plain dumb. You get the impression in the first 3 that if the Death Star coughs, Vader will go down to the surface and destroy the damn planet himself. With one arm tied around his back. He might be one of the most powerful ever, but the other Jedis should be with in a few orders of magnitude of that.
And Lawrence Kasdan is one of the best writers in the industry. If it weren't for his inclusion in the Star Wars franchise early on, those movies would probably have been disasters too. It's too bad he couldn't have helped write/written Eps I, II and III, because if he had, even with Lucas' highly questionable directing, the movies would have been MUCH better.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
If you haven't seen this take on Return of the Jedi, you must. Not only is it hilarious and right on the money, it even predicts and explains the crapiness so prevalent in Eps 1 & 2.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
I recently bought the animated Star Wars Clone Wars DVD, thinking even if I didn't like it, it might be a good buy for my young son. To my surprise, it is actually better than any of the recent movies: it has non-stop action and holds up to repeat viewing quite well.
Considering the website on which that "review" was posted, I think Mr. Podhoretz's opinions are unsurprising.
From some of the existing reviews:
" imagine that Revenge of the Sith is very much the film Lucas's fans want to see, but are some of them ready for an anti-Bush diatribe? Though every Star Wars film until now has existed in an insular comic-book world, a lot has happened since 1999 and 2002 in the real world and Lucas dares, for the first time, to address how the hollow political conflict in his franchise correlates with the reality outside its panels. (It would have been stupid not to strike a parallel.) Revenge of the Sith's two greatest moments tap into the uncertainty of our own political climate: the dazzling battle between Yoda and Darth Sidious (an outstanding Ian McDiarmid) inside the beautifully spiraling Senate hall evokes Democrats and Republicans scrambling for power and, during an obscenely over-the-top duel in Mustafar, Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) declares, "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes," after Anakin says, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Lucas's political gestures would be easier to appreciate if he himself didn't trade in absolutes and generalities (you know the drill: the darker the couture, the closer you are to the dark side), but it's still a welcome step forward. Pity we had to wait so long for it, but, as they say, better late than never. "
"This glimpse of intergalactic hell inspires moments of epic grandeur that haven't been felt since "The Empire Strikes Back." It's hard not to feel that Lucas's engagement with this story has a contemporary urgency, as line after pointed line invites us to see a parallel with today's wartime climate. As the Senate cedes power to Palpatine under the guise of intergalactic security, Natalie Portman's Princess Padme exclaims bitterly, "So this is how liberty dies--to thunderous applause.""
And my personal favorite:
"With familiar rhetoric, Palpatine declares the end of the Republic: in the name of peace, freedom, democracy, and security, he must accept the burden of power. Devastated, Padme remarks: "So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause." It is a shockingly serious moment, bitter and real. But the film's bluntest political statement comes when Anakin, lightsaber in hand, paraphrases George W. Bush's first State of the Union Address: "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy!" Obi-Wan, representing the forces of good, doesn't flip-flop. His damning answer? "Only a Sith deals in absolutes!" Mark my words: somebody is going to put that on a bumper sticker."
I think neocons are going to have a hard time with this one. Everyone else should enjoy it, though... so long as they can get the last two prequels out of their minds.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA