Slashdot Mirror
Ebert Gives 'Sith' Positive Review
emerald demon writes "The world's authority on reviewing movies, Roger Ebert, has released his review of "Star Wars--Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." I noticed that Ebert & Roeper gave it a two thumbs up, but I assumed that Ebert was going to go for the minimum for giving his thumb up--two and a half stars. I was delighted to read his three and a half starred review. It seemed like he let a few things slip, but it's obvious that he enjoyed it. '"Episode III" has more action per square minute, I'd guess, than any of the previous five movies, and it is spectacular.' Bad dialogue as usual: 'To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.'"
But clicking on the submitted link is worth it just for the headline picture and the funny caption.
Use your Google Toolbar to help Folding@HOME
From the Guardian:-
"Henceforth you will be known as Darth Vader!" These dire words, addressed to a tormented Anakin Skywalker as he crosses the threshold to the much-mentioned Dark Side, mark the definitive moment of his Luciferian journey, which will end with him in a black, neo-Wehrmacht helmet-mask, with incipient emphysema and a walk that makes him look as if he has had concrete hip replacements.
It supposedly forms the mythic heart of the gigantic Third Episode of George Lucas's colossally inflated Star Wars prequel trilogy. Yet when this moment happens - after what seems like seven hours of CGI action as dramatically weightless as the movement of tropical fish in an aquarium - I looked blearily around the cinema and sensed thousands of scalps failing to prickle. We had all been bored into submission long ago.
George Lucas is now not so much a director as chief executive-cum-potentate in charge of a vastly profitable franchise empire in which striking back is not an option. And within this empire's boundaries, Lucas is so mind-bogglingly powerful that none of his lieutenants dares tell him the truth: that yet another Something of the Something title, after Attack of the Clones and Return of the Jedi, is pretty annoying. (It's actually his fourth, if you count the original script title to the first Star Wars: Adventures of the Starkiller.) But here at any rate, finally, is the end of the road, or rather the middle of the road - the moment in 1977 where we came in. Lucas has taken three pointlessly long and artificially complicated movies to get to the point: precisely how did Luke Skywalker's father come to embrace the forces of darkness?
Hayden Christensen is Anakin, the talented but mercurial Jedi pupil of Obi-Wan Kenobi, in which role Ewan McGregor wears a big and bushy beard, to indicate the aged wisdom that we know is his destiny. Their mighty contest is to be at the centre of this movie, during which in quiet moments leading characters will gaze out over massive futuristic cityscapes resembling the photorealist artwork once used for 1970s sci-fi paperbacks: pointy buildings with swarms of pointy aircraft criss-crossing overhead, often bathed in crimson sunsets.
Once again, McGregor speaks in a simperingly lifeless Rada-English accent, a muddled and misconceived backdating of the Guinness original - the young fogey with the light-sabre. In boringness he is matched by that Jedi master of woodenness: Hayden Christensen, the flatliner to end all flatliners. As an actor Christensen must show the terrible embryo of future wickedness within himself. And how does he do this? By tilting his head down, looking up through lowered brows and giving the unmistakable impression that he is very, very cross. If Princess Diana had gone to the Dark Side, she would have looked a lot like this.
So why does Anakin desert the forces of light? It is his passionate love and concern for his pregnant wife, Princess Amidala, coupled with a sense of his own slighted dignity that are to be the tragic and fateful factors leading to the most unconvincing evil act you can imagine, an event weirdly neutralised by the bloodless unreality that surrounds everything. The vicious Anakin massacres - oh, horror! - a bunch of innocent Jedi children.
But that is not how Lucas's solemnly high-flown script chooses to refer to them. With sub-Shakespearian gravitas, McGregor intones: "Not even the younglings survived." I'm sorry, not even the what? Is that their surname or something? Are Mr and Mrs Youngling going to come home to find a nursery bloodbath?
One of the things about the previous film, Attack of the Clones, that made you think things might be looking up was the terrific performance by Christopher Lee as the sinister Count Dooku. Almost the very first thing Lucas does here is kill him off. It is a crippling blow that leaves us with a range of scandalously dull secondary characters. People such as Senator Bail Organa, played by Jimmy Smits, and Samuel L Jackson as the fiercely uninte
Alexandra DuPont
It's a girl, not a guy.
Random is the New Order.
Google has a very good non-biased, objective review system in place. Check it out for this movie:
9 &oi=showtimes&fq=Star+Wars--Episode+III:+Revenge+o f+the+Sith/
http://www.google.com/reviews?cid=ba601666fe1a2e7
It pulls from many different sources
Single reviewers are often unreliable, having bias and agendas of their own. If you want a more objective approach to the popularity of a film, you should look at sites that provide an overview of all reviews for a given film.
Rotten Tomatoes is one of the best examples of this. They simply assess a review as either favorable or unfavorable and do away with the less empirical ratings. They count up the total number of positive versus negative reviews, and give a percentage. They'll link every review, include a blurb from each, and pick the most well written ones (positive and negative) and put them in a sidebar.
Their film ratings so far on Star Wars are...
A New Hope - 93%
Empire Strikes Back - 98%
Return of the Jedi - 80%
Phantom Menace - 62%
Attack of the Clones - 65%
Revenge of the Sith - 84%
Looks like it's on par with Jedi in the opinion of most critics.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
If you watch the behind the scenes jazz on the fourth disc included with the Trilogy DVD set, that dialog was changed by Empire's director and Harrison Ford, on the fly. :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I have seen the movie yesterday (French theaters :)), and slashdotters who enjoyed the first trilogy and disliked the first to episodes of the prequels should not worry too much.
;)
;)). Everyone will enjoy Chewie's appearance too.
;)
The first episode was way too childish and had very slow development. The second one had stupid conversations but this time, Star Wars is back.
This time, there isn't much useless talking. Of course there is still some. Even if Anakin/Padme dialogs are better than before, I still find them unnatural. But everything goes fast in the movie and there is no time to get bored at least in the first watching. Don't tried to look it many times yet.
The movie starts impressively at the heart of a battle of the Clone Wars. And Palpatine's game is clear from the very start. It's told to be particulary dark, but I don't think so. Of course Darth Vader is not really a good citizen, and he certainly does some things that may be worse if they were filmed by wanting them to be real dark. But in this case, not really. It's just like in the ESB when Darth Vader kills Captain Needa & co. It just happens, plain fact, few emotions.
There is also great comedy in the movie. The audience was laughing many times, especially with Artoo who is the true hero of this movie (just kidding, but it is certainly his best performance!
About visual effects, well, it's still good, but I'm not that a fan of special effects. I find Yoda is too well rendered, in fact, he doesn't look real in the movie (less than in TaoC I think). But it's not shocking after a while. For fans, there's a lot of light saber fights, of course.
Once again, Ewan McGregor does a good job playing Obi-Wan, he may definitely become that old retired man called Ben on Tatooin. Btw there is real news about his retirement (ie, what was he doing all this time ?).
Palpatine is great too.
Well ROTS is simply the movie it should have been, and the two other prequels should have had the same quality. The matter is, George Lucas hadn't enough to tell. Two movies would have been enough, maybe... Or addind some stories to his "Grand Vision"
There are *GREAT* moments in the movie too, not only "good enough" moments. There is especially one moment I find really great (think 66 !).
For the first time in the prequels, it felt just like real Star Wars. Certainly makes me (and you, soon) hope for the sequel trilogy, even if I don't think it will come true.
I was at the Star Wars saga marathon on Monday at the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, London, England. we saw all the SW movies, including Sith, starting at 7am and finishing at 11.30pm.
;"Absolutely not...but I am working on Indiana Jones", which got a pretty bid roar from the crowd.
George Lucas and others came in before Sith. The film was good, very good.
Anyway, George snuck back into the cinema and stood at the back watching our (very positive) reactions to the movie, he then also came back at the end of the film. This never happens at these kinds of showings and remember, the PREMIERE was happening not 100 meters away at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square.
So, in answer to the chants of "we want 9", he said
Remember, there is to be a live action SW in the future, so the next film, if there is to be one, (my guess is that it) will be spun from that series.
I've largely turned to Metacritic for movie reviews these days. They convert the rating systems of various sources into a standard 0-100 rating, then give you the composite ratings of "experts" as well as visitors to the sites.
It really lets you get a feel for the general sentiments surrounding the movie (or video game, or cd/dvd... etc) while allowing you to disregard the handful of skewed reviews.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Yes, I work in a big media group and was lucky to be on a premiere tuesday. I will try not spoil anything, but I can tell you this:
- WATCH Clone Wars before, or you won't understand many things. General Grievous, for example, is not "introduced", he's not considered a "new" character.
- What I did like most was the focus on how a society, democracy, can fall. Somewhat of a "larger view" of the things. Remember "The Fall of the Roman Empire"?
- The most dark and adult movie of the 6. Actually, there's a moment so terribe that can be only suggested, but not showed.
- Good Plot, but I wasn't totally convinced why Anakim turned to the Dark side - I mean, he could be in a somewhat "gray" side, but this is just me, watch and draw your conclusions.
- Great action, maybe the best of the 6. Opening sequence is AWSOME.
- Speeches are bad, but there are some good ones ( you can find at least 2 explicit political references, one from the Emperror, other from Vader). The one I liked more was Amidala's conclusion when in Senate
- Actors fine, Samuel Jackson very good.
- Oh, and Jar-Jar doesn't open his mouth.
All said, it would be unfair to compare this one with the latest 2 - forget about them. This one brought back the magic of good old Star Wars, but in a more adult way. Have fun!
Let me say first, that whilst Lucas has created a good universe and good action films, he is definitely not perfect. No need to repeat his flaws, they get dragged out in every SW thread here, and I agree with most of them. No, the SW universe is not as deep and rich as Tolkien, but Lucas has told a good story (even though there are holes, shallow acting) and it is still enjoyable.
I wouldn't call myself a fanboy, although I think SW was one of the first movies I saw, and I've enjoyed them since (naturally TPM is the weakest as it is the foundation for the others - ironically, AOTC and ROTS will make TPM a marginally better movie because it now has increased relevance to the overall plot, but lets face it, TPM is not flash).
That said, I enjoyed ROTS, and think it will probably become my favourite SW movie, above ANH and TESB. SW is about Anakin, not Luke, and ROTS is _the_ episode that goes into the most detail in Anakin's story. The OT is more about Luke, which whilst it is an important part of the overall story, it is now clearly a sub-plot of the whole.
ROTS benefits by being the last movie released of the six, much like ROTK benefited by the groundwork done by the first two LOTR movies. Everyone was up to speed with the universe the movie took place in, and hence a lot more can be communicated to the viewer. ROTS doesn't disappoint and answers most of the questions people have and at first viewing it appears to provide an excellent bridge from PT to OT. A lot happens in ROTS.
It was interesting coming home and watching the first 30-45 minutes of ANH. The scene where Obiwan is telling Luke about the Clone Wars and his father - you now know so much more of that story, and realise that that story is much bigger than Luke's role. It definitely changes the context of the OT.
Given the weaknesses of TPM, AOTC and ROTJ, I'd say that many SW fans favourite movies may now become ROTS, ANH and TESB. Watching these three in a row probably will give the best watching of the SW universe in years to come. It may even make ROTJ seem like a lame finish to the Anakin story. I think the peak of the SW universe will be centred around ROTS and ANH.
Be interesting to see other comments as they come in.
John Podhoretz [NY Post] hated it:
Jason Appuzo [Liberty Film Festival] objected to the needless insertion of politics:
You're in a different field - it's not a valid comparison. Let's consider how many times teachers have gone on strike, and let's consider what the districts were trying to take away each time. Remove all those things, and you have where teachers would be without union organization. I strongly suggest you read about the history of unions and how they got us (and you) to where we are today. Without them, there'd be no such thing as overtime, a legally mandated work week, workplace safety, etc, etc.