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Review: Star Wars Episode III
The special effects question is easy: This is quite simply one of the most gorgeous films ever made. Everything is superb. Lucas has an incredible visual sense; he is a truly visual filmmaker, and his images hit home, are beautifully executed, and are technically stunning. Of course, we really and truly expect perfection here from Lucas, so this may not seem like news.
You are deceiving yourself. Lucas has frankly outdone what I thought possible. My jaw was on the floor the entire time.
But what about those tattered remains?
I myself am not a huge Star Wars fan. I enjoy the films, but I wasn't raised on them, didn't see any of them (except Episode II) in the theaters. I was one of those kids who knew Darth Vader was Luke's father before I had heard of Star Wars, because I saw the parodies before I saw the originals.
I will say this now. Episode III proves that "A New Hope" was a mistake. A freak accident of success, because Lucas seems incapable of doing fun action. How he managed to make "A New Hope" a delightful, playful, fundamentally fun movie is beyond me. Because when Episode III starts, it falls flat on its face, continuing the sad attempt in Episode's I and II to make the kind of joyous space opera that, of all six, only "A New Hope" managed to be.
Lucas however, can do myth very, very well. And once Lucas gets around to telling the Myth Of Anakin's Fall, the real story that Episode I and II have been leading to, everything works. Here we have the George Lucas of "The Empire Strikes Back" and "The Return of the Jedi." Hayden Christiansen goes from a pretty (if ineffectual) actor to being the tragic Darth Vader, and you believe. Darth Sidious is the villain that Darth Vader was in the original trilogy. Better perhaps, more sinister. The fall of Anakin is completely and utterly believable. I was shocked. I understood why he fell to the Dark Side. It's called the freakin' Dark Side for goodness sake! How could you freakin' fall?
Because of a tempter. Because of dark dreams. Because of love.
I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who, like me, went in not knowing exactly how it all happened. Some have always known the story, and are just watching it play out; some of us have willfully ignored the spoilers, and waited.
But I will say this for those who do know what happens. When order 66 is given, my breath was taken away. When the final battles occur, I was truly fearful. In other words, he doesn't screw it up.
I'm going to see it again.
Jamie also saw Revenge of the Sith, but it doesn't seem like he saw quite the same film. His thoughts:
I heard it might be good, so I tried to like it. I really did. Revenge of the Sith is one of the worst movies I've seen recently. It's Battlefield Earth bad.
It's not just that when Lucas tries to "do" myth he generates a world populated by generics. Nor is it just that the plot is absurdly thin (the movie exists to showcase the galaxy's most complete betrayal ever, brought on by two dreams and a promise from someone who couldn't be more obviously untrustworthy if he were twirling a mustache).
This movie is terrible first, because Lucas writes unbearable dialogue, especially in romantic scenes. And since the motivator is romantic love, we get a lot of bad lines. Remember "I don't like sand"? Episode III one-ups that. The climactic emotional moment, I swear to God, is a rip-off of Homer Simpson.
And second, Hayden Christensen is a lousy actor. There, I said it. Even with the silly script, Ewan McGregor is fine, and Natalie Portman brings life to a few scenes, but Anakin gets not a single believable moment. Even when all he has to do is look sideways, he's more fake than a losing high school forensics team. He's wooden like community-college Acting 101. I could go on.
Best I can say is that Jar-Jar doesn't speak. The special effects are there, and since they cover every square inch of the screen constantly, you will get many per unit time per dollar. If you like that kind of thing, you're going to go see it anyway, so enjoy.
Thanks go to erikharrison for his take on the movie.
Seriously, put a robot in the hangar bay, it plugs in, then NETWORK OWNED! you can open any jail cell, tell exactly where the prisoner are, open any door and even control the elevators.
The Empire should look into using firewalls.
Lucas doesn't realize that just because you have new technologies available, they are going to add to the storytelling. So we have new high-resolution timers? That doesn't mean we want to see counters all over the action and getting in the way of the actors faces! We didn't need big counters in the original trilogy. Anyone that paid to see this in a theater must feel terribly deceived.
Please report to the nearest MPAA reprogramming station!
They closed them all. The MPAA couldn't afford the upkeep because nobody is paying to see movies anymore.
Meese luuvs Jar Jar!!
For some reason there is a large timestamp running across the film. I guess Lucas wanted to add an air of suspense with that effect.
__________
|rip/\/\aster
What has Lucas done to the possibly tattered remains of my childhood?
Yeesh, I'm sick of people bitching that Lucas ruined their childhood fantasies with his subsequent movies.
If a few hours of film constituted the emotional highlight of your childhood, I'd say you have bigger issues to worry about than Lucas or his imaginary universe.
But Luke never knew his mother!
The proper order should be, 4-5-6 and maybe 3.
That's because all those support copyright are plants by THE MAN, man. Don't you get it, they're listening to everything we do man, it's like a total conspiracy, they're even reading this post man! Oh god they're everywhere...
Insiders know that the Death Star you see getting started in Episode III is the one they outsourced. Sixteen years later it was still basically a clusterfuq, way over budget and late as hell but management decided to go live with it, against the protests of the totally skilled local Imperial Base Makers (who claim that the outsource companies don't know a damn thing about building Death Stars.)
Wait until Episode IV to see how well it holds up. Everybody (ie, the local Imperial Base Makers with experience and professional training) knows to put in defenses against snub fighters, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
... I already can't wait for "Revenge of the Seveth".
It was bad enough before that we had to wait 3 years to find out what happend to Han after he was frozen, but with this schedule, we would have to wait 12 years!
No no, they were too busy posting duplicate stories to go see it.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I liked the bit in the opening space shoot em up where R2 kills the bad droid that is latched onto someone's fighter craft, and the dead droid hulk is slowly "blown" backwards and off the spaceship, presumably by "space wind"?
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
You know that bit where Obi-Wan says "It's like...she's lost the will to live"? She wasn't the only one.
Actually the first 3 death stars were destroyed in episodes 3.3, 3.6 and 3.9 during the wacky adventures of Nimrod Bangalore: Rebel Extroardinaire, and his zany sidekick Jumba-Jumba! Watch as plot holes are patched and everything finally makes sense! This is what you've finally been waiting for!
Of course it could, it is a government project!
I don't know why Lucas had to inject his own contemporary politics into this one, apart from sucking up to the people at Cannes. Doesn't he realize that will seriously harm the experience of 50% of the population who were just expecting a Star Wars movie?
Yeah, it really spoiled it for me when Yoda turned round and said "For the Republicrats do not vote. Strong in the Dark Side they are."
Oh, wait - he didn't. In fact, I don't actually remember a single reference to contemporary politics in the entire fucking movie.
Of course, if you want to read your political affiliations into a kids' story, feel free. If you can see huge similarities between whichever party you support and the Sith, hey, you're welcome to. If the cap fits, right?
Only the Sith speak in extremes.
Indeed, this film series (whose art house qualities remind the intellectual filmgoer of the Decalogue in scope, or perhaps a parallel can be best made between Star Wars and the Trois Couleurs Trilogy, in that both series exhibit semi-paradoxical tendencies for the both the surreal and the comic while trying to maintain at least some semblance of the post-modernistic cliche of parallel bereavement and longing for the freudian (or perhaps jungian would be better) other in that the subconscious is always expressed in terms of pseudo-violence, usually directed towards the self but often manifested in the form of senseless destruction against establishment regulation.
It is important to remember this war amongst the stars in these quasi-anthropological terms, for the genesis of such serial work too can have its roots in the experimental (think of the obvious parallels between Return of the Jedi and, say, Man With a Movie Camera). With that in mind, Revenge of the Sith...
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
;)
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
wow, thats the same firing order as the spark plugs in my trucks engine have... but as far as the viewing order, i think i would just omit episode 1 from the list completely and read a review for it.
Linux is to the internet as Duct Tape is to the Universe.
You just used "affect the effect" in a sentence.
I've never seen such poor writing from somebody who knows the correct meaning of both words.
Is that a light saber I see before me?
Anakin: "Come back here, Obi-Wan, and fight like a man! I'll bite your kneecaps off!"
"Now, we are going to set this pile of evil ablaze, but because these are children's toys, the fire will spread quickly, so please stand back and try not to inhale the toxic fumes."
...was not that Leia knew about her mother in Episode 6. If one actually reads the dialogue, he says the following:
LUKE: Leia... do you remember your mother? Your real mother?
LEIA: Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.
LUKE: What do you remember?
LEIA: Just...images, really. Feelings.
LUKE: Tell me.
LEIA: She was very beautiful. Kind, but...sad.
So, let's see. Very young. Check. Can't remember words or anything specific. Check. However Obi-wan's dialogue is a bit more problematic:
OBI-WAN: When your father left, he didn't know your mother was pregnant. Your mother and I knew he would find out eventually, but we wanted to keep you both as safe as possible, for as long as possible. So I took you to live with my brother Owen on Tatooine... and your mother took Leia to live as the daughter of Senator Organa, on Alderaan.
Where to begin? How about Anakin knowing very early on and oh how about that bit about Leia taking Leia to Alderaan. Now THAT's a problem.
However, to look at this and see that as the overriding point of the trilogy is to miss the point: the one critical mistake that could've averted Anakin's fall and the empire's rise. He didn't use a condom. If Padme/Anakin had used proper birth control, Luke/Leia wouldn't have been born but more importantly Anakin would have lost his biggest motivation to go to the dark side.
So remember kids, for the sake of the galaxy, use proper contraception.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Thats what I always wondered, ever since hearing a transformer yell out commands to himself
Wow. How important you must think you are.
Good thing you preserved time for posting on Slashdot - a truly valuable use of time.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
"the Vader transformation in Ep III would have terrified me for years"
I also found the Vader transformation scene quite horrific, I remember rising from my seat in a stupor shoting "Noooooo!" when I saw it....
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
Anyone notice that, in the star wars movies, like episode 1 and 2, yoda is all bad ass and serious all the time. But in Empire and Jedi, the fucker is like, laughing all the time? Hanging out in a swamp in a hut? I think i figured out what happened. After everything happened with all the jedi dying and shit... yoda started sportin the ganj! It's the only explanation possible. Dude's got a bad case of the munchies when he first meets luke and he's giggling up a fit. I bet it's because he just smoked a bowl!
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
Did you just review the reviews? The recursion is mind numbing...
I thought everyone on Slashdot saw it opening night at midnight.
75% of Slashdotters are not allowed to go out after 9:00 pm.
Of that 75%, half are trying to download it using bittorrent over a dial-up connection. The other half is still trying to shut down adware popups while getting to a warez site.
Of the other 25%, half went to see the movie or plan to. The rest of us will wait a month for the DVD to be released.
I made up all these numbers in case you're still wondering.
You know, I was going to do the spelling correction bit, but this -
ends up saving Anakin's sole
is priceless.
"Dad, I caught the fish you lost!"
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
I never could take Yoda seriously because he sounded too much like Grover (same muppeteer).
the dark side of the force.
In a world where nearly everyone uses Windows, the idea of a machine - including a government-owned machine - being totally open to intruders is hardly novel. It is only too believable.
Sorry to disagree, but I think it was the reverse.
It was 1977, and a still impressionable Bill the Nerd saw the original Star Wars and had an epiphany: "So all computer technology must have vulnerabilities!"
That one event explains ActiveX being designed after the vulnerable nature of the Internet was already explicitly obvious, and MSWindows being a security nightmare after various Unixes demonstrated how file access control should work.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
But still - the worst parts of Episode III for me:
The funny thing is that he's using a PowerBook or some other Apple notebook and he issues an ftp command from an Unix shell.
I suppose that Jeff's character, being a hardcore scientist, coded the virus in plain C.
Therefore, the problem isn't that alien technology is so easily owned but that they haven't been able to come up with something better than ftp and vulnerability to buffer overruns!!!!
I just lost faith in extraterrestrial intelligent life by watching that movie....
Mace turns and said "I don't remember askin' you a G@#DAMN thing" - - [Whacks Palpatine]
Or
[Mace whacks Palpatine] , [Big dark force energy explosion]
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did that break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue. I believe you were saying something about 'not supposed to kill.'"
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
Does anyone else think Lucas has a whole Freudian issue with hands and whatnot? I had to stop the urge to cross my legs every time I saw someone getting his hand hacked off in this movie.
Jeezes, George, just go see a counselor or something, don't take out your psychological issues on the audience at the big screen where everyone can watch...
Seriously, does anyone know if there's any symbolism to losing a hand?
**Warning, Spoilers**
A count of who loses hands to who in the Star Wars movies:
New Hope: No one.
Empire: Luke, to Vader
Return of the Jedi: Vader, to luke
Phantom Menace: No one.
Clones: Anakin, to Dooku
Sith: Dooku, to Anakin. Windu, to Anakin. Grievious, to Obi-wan. Anakin, to Obi-wan.
In conclusion, if we ever see a third trilogy, in 7 no one will lose a hand, in 8 Leia will lose a hand, and in 9 half the friggin galaxy will lose a hand.
No, they invented that tech, and after long hard lessons discarded it. As Dr. Non Canonical explains: "[balcony rails] are the first step in a civilizational decline that begins with a laudable concern for safety and ends up with 24 hour nannying of adults, and allergy safety labels reading 'contains nuts' on packets of nuts. The result of cosseting the shallow end of the gene pool is that it breeds and expands, quickly overwhelming literacy, sanity, and self responsibility. Entire planets which travelled this route have been lost, upon the demise from loneliness of the last person who knew how to be a nanny rather than require one. While compassion would suggest we protect those stupid enough to step off their own balcony (or off footbridges, etc), hard practical experience says let them fall." (emphasis in original)
I have mod points today. I'd swap them for a tack hammer.