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Fark Garlicster Metafilter Plastic The Register SciFi Daily Sexblogs Slashdot Space.com The Smoking Gun Zeropaid [ CARTOONS ] Corrigan Children of the Atom Fiona Smyth Maakies MacKay MNFTIU.cc Secret Lair Smell of Steve [ VARIETY HOUR ] B3TA Hoogerbrugge Milk & Cookies Mumbleboy Onion Rathergood XE [ RERUNS ] [ 2005 ] JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST [ 2004 ] MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER [ 2002 ] [ 2003 ]	Sunday, May 22, 2005 That Movie About the Space Guys I was biking around the city, getting things done on Friday and I checked in at the Varsity, there was no line, so I caught a matinee of the Revenge of the Sith. It's much better than the first two prequels ... how could a movie be worse than Attack of the Clones? But overall, it's uneven: I would weight it as being 40% complete crap and 60% good stuff. To get a sense of perspective before I typed this post, I went and watched large chunks of the original trilogy. Some thoughts on Ep. III and the prequels in general: Cast & Characters The cast makes the original trilogy so much fun. Han, Leia, Luke and Wedge have energy and constant banter. Anakin, Padme, Mace and Nute Gunray are dead weight. One review I read observed that having digital sets hurt the actors' performances and watching the old films, it's clear that the actors' performances are much more natural than in the prequels because the actors have actual sets to react to, such as Han always leaning on and hanging off of the Falcon, showing the affection he has for his ship. While the human cast is more wooden in the prequels, the non-human cast is much more active. For the first half hour of Sith, R2-D2 is so bouncy, it's distracting and annoying. The character who benefits the most from the digital treatment is Yoda, who really comes to life in Sith. If you go back and watch Empire now, you'll be shocked by how much of a puppet he was then and how much of a real character he is now. Sith's new character General Greivous was not much of a General nor was he particularly greivous. He should have been called Boss Hacking Cough. The characeter wastes time that could have been better spent. One of the worst parts of Sith is Natalie Portman's character's ridiculous death. At the end, she's clearly dying and someone observes that there's no explanation for it, she seems to have "lost the will to live". So, after being depicted as a tough, smart, principled person during movies 1 & 2, in the end her character is just some doormat who can't live without her man, even though she just had two kids to take care of. Maybe Lucas will do a 'Greedo shoots first' re-edit and fix it so Padme doesn't die as a loser. Storytelling If you compare the orginal movies to the prequels, you notice a big difference in the way the stories are told. The orginals bounce around and there are some fun reversals. In A New Hope, there's a scene where Han & Chewie turn a corner and bump into a bunch of stormtroopers. Startled, the troopers run and Han chases them screaming, leaving Luke and Leia standing there thinking, WTF? In Jedi, Luke is pulled right to the brink of the Dark Side and he gives Darth Vader a good thrashing but turns it around at the last second. Events in the prequels, including Sith, simply go from A to B to C to D to ... E! There are no surprises or playful storytelling. This could also be partly a result of digital filmmaking: because everything needs to be so meticulously planned, there are no opportunities for improvisation or happy accidents. Another thing you notice in the prequels that you don't see at all in New Hope and Empire is the need to EXPLAIN EVERYTHING. Part of the fun of the orginal Star Wars is that you don't quite know what the hell they're talking about part of the time. For some reason, Lucas has decided that everything needs to be clealy explained, such as at the end when Yoda tells Obi Wan that he needs to go off and learn how to become a ghost. Did we really need to hear that? Of course not, that was a stupid thing to include. Sith wastes too much time on nonsense in the first half and rushes the second half. Jedi is packed with lots of junk, but it doesn't feel as choppy as Sith, which sometimes feels like the Coles' Notes version of a Star Wars movie. There are a few places where Lucas could have lingered longer, instead shots seem to get cut before they feel finished. Clutter There's a lot of digital clutter in both Clones and Sith and very few -- if any- good shots. If you watch Empire now, it's shocking how much better than film looks than sloppy Sith. And you can fully blame it on Kid in the Digital Candy Store syndrome: visually, Lucas lacks discipline. Neither the third Lord of the Rings or Matrix films are as sloppy as Sith, despite being loaded with eye candy. The Good Stuff Here's some of the stuff I like about the movie. The romance scenes are good despite the dialogue. All the reviews mention the horrible dialogue but fail to mention that, aside from the dialogue, the scenes themselves are quite good: Anakin and Amidala stand facing one another with this huge cityscape in the background and all the ambient noise is pulled so it's completely silent except for their annoying, yappy voices. Lucas should have just ditched the dialogue and had them stare at one another in pain. That would have worked, sort of like when Luke stares at the sunsets in A New Hope. Even though Anakin's path to the Dark Side is a bit dodgy and dubious, the light sabre duel between he and Obi Wan is really nice and the film's highlight. Still, watching Luke and Vader fight in Empire and Jedi is much more fun. The music. Not memorable like in the orginals, but very solid and holds its own through the whole flick. If the rest of the movie had been on the same level as the music, it would have been one helluva movie. 9:21 AM , # , \|