Thursday, May 19, 2005
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (The Concise Review)
I’ve just come home from the movie and I’m still basking in the afterglow. What a glorious mess!
You already know the story, and, likely, you’ve already read reviews better than whatever it was that I would write. So, instead of a full review, here is my concise review.
The music was exquisite, the acting less so. In fact, the acting teetered throughout between barely acceptable and nearly horrid. The special effects were mind boggling; if George Lucas has done nothing else over the years, he has pushed the boundaries of what we see on the big screen. This addition was visually stunning.
The best parts of the movie were the quietest parts (when no one was talking) and the noisiest parts (when no one was, ahem, talking). I love lightsabers, and that’s a good thing since they were, quite wonderfully, everywhere. Some of the action sequences had me gripping at the arms on my chair, although it’s worth noting that some of the dialog had me rolling my eyes and wishing they’d given me the chance to smooth some rough edges on the script.
The worst of the movie was the fizzling love story, the best of the movie was the sense of betrayal and treason. The whole thing drags a bit here and there, but then it speeds through action scenes, exciting and enthralling, so that you’ll forgive the slower bits.
It is precisely what you expect, since you already know the story, and yet it remains engaging.
Much thanks to Lucas for minimizing the goofy humor moments designed to appeal to six year olds. More thanks for giving us a hell of a ride for the final chapter of the beloved Star Wars franchise. The sense of relief isn’t that the ride is over and it wasn’t that he made the best movie of his career (or even the franchise--that honor would still be shared somewhere between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back). The sigh of relief was that he gave us a movie that was just good enough to let us enjoy the ride without thinking that we had completely abandoned our taste.
Yes, it’s quite a glorious mess.
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I can’t wait for the final three movies! And new digital effects in the first six in twenty years! Yay for George!
I haven’t seen the new movie yet, but I’m confident that the betrayal and treason portrayed on the screen can’t be any worse than that committed by Lucas.
I just realized there’s a good reason why Lucas says he won’t make the last three movies. He’d have to cast new actors in the original roles since the last three scripts happen right after the middle three. Would we ever be able to accept another actor as Luke or Han Solo?
Maybe he’ll just wait until he can totally digitize old footage of Harrison Ford into a new movie.
No, they last three will be based around a new, computer generated character called Wacky McSquacky, a space duck from the planet Poopliffy. (McSquacky will be digitally inserted into all the previous movies for continuity’s sake.)
Go Wacky!
Hey, did a comment get deleted there?
A desktop wallpaper circa 2025.
I just realized that while Lucas has to hire new actors to make more movies, he can always pretend that he didn’t. He’d just film all the old movies over again with all the new actors, then release only those versions on SuperDuper-HD:DVD or whatever. Then all he’d have to do is ignore Harrison Ford at parties and we’d all be completely fooled!
“Hey, George, how’re ya doing?”
“Do I know you? Look over there, I think it’s Wacky McSquacky!”
No, he’d hire stand-ins and just CGI the manipulated likenesses of the original actors over the stand-ins. The original actors would also get voice credits for dubbed dialogue, so that they could get top billing while the stand-ins would be credited wholesale under the heading, “Stunts.”
And Wacky McSquacky would have to be inserted over Jar-Jar first, in a new and “improved” edition of Episodes 1, 2 and 3, released just before Episode 7’s pre-release hype starts up.
See, I thought about the stand-in idea, McG, but it would actually be cool. I figure that George Lucas will invariably do the thing that makes me most angry. Then he’ll say, “They’re my movies! I’ll do whatever I want!”
But I’ll almost forgive him if he inserts Wacky McSquacky. What a card!
Everybody loves Wacky McSquacky.
Matt, that was no mere comment that I deleted: it was spam.
Spam spam spam spam…
Damn, I responded to spam. Usually it’s so obvious that spam isn’t written by a real person. Or at least a real person that knows English well.
At the moment I don’t know which I find more concerning: The number of people willing to watch this movie despite the lack of a good story, or the lack of good stories for people to watch.