(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:29 am)
So here’s my Episode III rant. I went with my buds at ActiveEdge to another George Lucas crapfest. Finally, this entire series will be behind me; the circle is complete. I can get on with my life.
As I left the movie theatre, eyes bleary from trying to keep them open, I reviewed the latest Lucas opus in my mind’s eye. EVERYTHING, JUST FRICKIN’ EVERYTHING, from the action to the characters to the ship design to the references to the next trilogy…all of it absolutely rocked. I was completely blown away. I just caught my self sighing out loud. Go see it, and marvel at how a single movie critically bridges the two trilogies into one amazing whole by recasting it into, really, a story about regret and redemption.
My eyes still hurt from feeling so emotionally swept up in the grand sweep of despair that befell the Republic. Must watch the next movie as soon as I get home. Sigh.
AND NOW THAT I HAVE EATEN SOMETHING AND AM THINKING STRAIGHT….
Great action to begin with, but of course the movie is not without its flaws. Dialog is not particularly memorable or well-delivered. In some places, the dialog is downright terrible. I tended to look at the characters for what they represented rather than how well they acted, archetypes within the mythology that is Star Wars. I love Lucas when he’s moving people around in spaceships and things are moving. The achievement in visualization and art direction is astonishing, too… I am 11 years old again! I want to be a Jedi!
There are dozens of moments of foreshadowing throughout the movie that I found haunting. The ship designs had hauntingly familiar elements: the docking bays, the wing foils, and the TIE-fighter style cabin canopies were wonderful touches…it was an utterly credibly evolution of ship design that follows in Episodes IV through VI. There are final closing shots of Tantooine that mirror the first Star Wars movie that gave me chills. And critical scenes, where Anakin makes choices that ultimately destroy the people he once cared about, mirror the scenes later in Empire and Return of the Jedi. The fall of Anakin Skywalker adds an entire different shading to Episodes IV through VI. This time, we know the story of Obiwan, Anakin, and Padme. We know the real treachery of the Emperor Palpatine first hand. And we’ve seen Luke and Leia born to a mother whose desire to live has been utterly destroyed. Seeing them again in Episodes IV and onward, we’ll see Padme and Anakin mirrored in their every action. Obiwan and Yoda will be mere shadows of what they were in the Clone Wars, seen now as truly defeated heroes on a path to reclaimation and redemption. Not that any of this will come out in the dialog, mind you…you’ll have to watch that movie in the theatre of your mind.
It would be interesting to rewrite the entire Star Wars movies with dialog that was truly inspiring. I still think we should make an Open Source version of the Star Wars story.
5 Comments
•••• SPOILERS AHEAD •••••
I saw it with the gang here at the factory yesterday and I do agree that it is easily the best of the first three films. The action, dialog and even the acting were far better than PM or Clones. There are critical flaws however that kept it from being better than Empire. The most glaring one is the scene with Mace and Palpatine where Anakin finally takes is oath to the Emperor. A couple scenes prior to this, Anakin was struggling internally with his conflicts, then only one or two scenes after this, he’s killing kids. Simply not enough motivation for this to happen credibly. The actual scene when he decides to ditch the Jedi and follow the Emperor simply wasn’t believable.
Padme was not in DIRECT, IMMEDIATE danger and hence the drama didn’t make the character’s turn to the dark side make sense. I’m also glad that Anakin as DV (with the voice of James Earl Jones) was only in the movie for 2 minutes. Hearing Jones spew lines about Padme seemed totally out of character for him. Any more of this, and it risked coloring the Darth Vader Character we all know and love to be a softie.
The fight scenes at the end between Obi Wan and Anakin were awesome and I really felt sadness for Ben when he had to stand there and let his friend burn to (what he thought was his death). Finally, there are still questions I have… How does Vader learn that Luke is really alive? What is that necklace that Anakin gave Padme… I don’t remember that. Overall, very good. Not as good as it could have been, but good.
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The foreshawoding was really amazing, especially with the designs. I kept saying things like “Oh, that’s the ship from Star Wars. And do you know who that is?” Yes, it totally felt like being a kid again.
Hey Ged,
I hear what you’re saying about Anakin and the lack of credible consistency. But I think part of his character IS inconsistency. He is swept up by conflicting emotions: the desire for recognition, the desire for acceptance, the sense of justice, and a recognition that he is a weaker person than he knows/believes that he should be. He does not have the strength of character, nor does he have the interpersonal intelligence, to really be the sort of man he desperately wants to be. And it’s definitely weaker than his overwhelming temper that drives him inexorably toward mistakes that he regrets for the rest of his life. He’s a more complex villain than I knew. I’ve worked with people who remind me a bit of him… wanting to do the right thing, but caught up in such immediate emotion and anger at the sense of how they’ve been WRONGED that they do exactly the wrong thing, undoing everything they’ve worked for up to that point. In the worst case, they become mere shades, going through the motions at some horrible job or marriage, with nothing to live for. I think DV has put himself in that position pretty credibly. All that is left for him is anger and pride and, in moments of solitude…regret.
I did find that scene with decked out DV agonizing about Padme disconcerting. I almost laughed out loud despite how drawn into it I was. But…reviewing it in my minds eye…it’s kind of cool that this is the last bit of emotion that you ever see from him until moments in Empire and Jedi. Then I superimpose that scene with him and Mace Windu and Palpatine with that one with Luke and Palpintine in Jedi…they are mirror scenes. I get chills. There was a point when Anakin was just a promising young kid filled with possibilities and dreams. That it ends like this is in the middle act genuinely fills me with sadness. That he redeems himself in Jedi seems less deux-ex-machina now…at the time, I remember thiking that the whole Darth Vader Just Wants To Save His Boy not very credible. But in context with the events through Episode I through III… it’s entirely different.
Don’t know Dave. There is a BIG difference between Anakin “letting” the emperor kill Windu (because he needs to save Padme) and him walking into a room full of children and slaughtering them. That bridge would seem to be a long one, or else a very, very dramatic one. And the aforementioned scene between these three characters just didn’t seem credible to me. JMHO.
Well, I would argue that Anakin is, at heart, a selfish person who doesn’t quite see things as compassionately as perhaps we do. It’s hard to fathom doing something like that. We know he’s done it before in Episode II, killing all the sand people’s women and children. Arguably, I think his action of killing the younglings was in line with “he must do what his new master bids if he is to save Padme”). He is doing it all for himself, and he thinks he’s also doing it for Padme. This entire line of action is part of that, right up to the part where Padme realizes that her Ani has become a monster. IMHO, anyway.
Perhaps I am misremembering this, and need to see it AGAIN (this time, in a theatre with Icees).