|
|
| Monday, May 23, 2005 01:19 PM |
| Surprise! Another Star Wars Post! |
 by Fëanor |
- Having written about the film so much before its release, and having now seen it three times, I feel like I owe you folks a more detailed review of Revenge of the Sith, so here goes. (Be warned if you haven't seen it yet: I may say some things here that could be considered spoilers.)
It's an excellent Star Wars film, far better than the first two prequels, and possibly even equal to or better than Return of the Jedi in terms of quality. Special effects, editing, music, story, sound effects, costuming, lighting, sets, props, action sequences, fight choreography, general visual design--in all of these areas the movie is absolutely fantastic. I also found many of the dramatic scenes very effective, and some of the dialogue quite good. I particularly like Padme's line, "So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause," and pretty much every scene with Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine. Palpatine has controlled almost everything that has happened in all the prequels. He is a wonderfully duplicitous evil genius and McDiarmid handles the character perfectly.
I love the way the story of Anakin's corruption and fall is paralleled with the corruption and fall of the Republic. Anakin claims he's only trying to gain power to protect his wife, just as the Emperor claims he needs power to protect the Republic. Both become controlling and greedy and corrupt. One thing George can do really, really well is weave together mirroring plotlines with clever editing.
Another dramatic scene I enjoyed, which probably worked so well for me because it was completely wordless, is the one in which Anakin waits pensively in the Jedi council chamber for Mace Windu and the other Jedi Masters to return from arresting Palpatine, and Padme waits pensively across town in her roof-top apartment. There's a lot of tension and agony and fear in the scene, as we cut back and forth between the two characters, until finally Anakin snaps from the pressure, and runs off to meet his doom and take on the mantle of Darth Vader.
But dialogue is definitely the film's weakness; many of the emotional and romantic scenes are marred by clumsy wording and poor acting. Some of my least favorite moments: when the medical droid reveals that Padme has "lost the will to live," and when Darth Vader screams, "Noooo!" Admittedly, both lines make sense in context, but both are also melodramatic and cliche, and could have been said better.
I was surprised by the little details that were carried over from the "Clone Wars" cartoon--like Anakin's new mechanical arm, and General Grievous coughing from the injury Mace Windu gave him as he was escaping with the kidnapped Palpatine. But I was disappointed by the difference between Grievous as he appears in the cartoons and Grievous as he appears in this film. In the cartoons, he's introduced--in a fantastically tense, dramatic, and tragic sequence--as an incredible bad-ass and a huge threat to the Jedi. He takes on multiple Jedi at once and comes out victorious, killing more than one of them. He's portrayed as a talented tactician and an unstoppable melee fighter.
But in the movie, he becomes something of a coward (in fact, Mace Windu uses that very word to describe him) and a failure, constantly retreating. When he finally gets into a duel with Obi-Wan and whips out the four lightsabers, I was ready for one of the greatest sword fights ever. But Obi-Wan quickly and easily clips off two of his arms, and things devolve from there. I still find the fight ultimately satisfying, and Grievous's character acceptable in terms of the film's story, but it's not what I expected.
And I do have some other questions of continuity and logic. Most can be explained away in one way or another, but the one that bothers me the most is this: why hide Luke on Tatooine? If you think the Sith might come looking for the kid some day, and you want to put him somewhere where they won't find him, why would you give him to his only family in the universe, whom Vader knows, and who are still living on the planet Vader saw them last? And, as dje2004 has pointed out, why wouldn't you at least change the kid's name? Admittedly, as far as we know Vader and the Emperor don't even know that Padme lived long enough to have the kids, and even if the Sith did find that out somehow, they still seem to think there's only one kid. But the Jedi are trying to plan for the future, if and when the Sith do come looking, so why Tatooine? If I were Vader, that's the first place I'd look.
But most of my problems with the film are minor nitpicking of that sort. It is as exciting and moving as I had hoped, with plenty of effective dramatic scenes, and lots of fantastic fighting scenes. It's a worthy conclusion to a great film saga. And I can't wait to buy it on DVD.
- As always after I see a Star Wars movie, I desperately want to be a Jedi now. I want to be strong in the Force, with a shit-ton of midichlorians and my own custom-made lightsaber, with probably a green blade and a comfortable leather grip. This has lead to me occasionally reaching out my hand toward various household objects and willing that they float toward me. It has also lead me to make various half-hearted attempts to find my toy lightsabers. I'm pretty sure they're lying around the apartment somewhere, but I haven't actually gotten up the energy to pull everything out of the various storage spaces in order to find them. We'll be pulling all that stuff out before we move, anyway, so my sabers will probably turn up then. If they don't, then I guess they're still at my parents' house. Or poppy has destroyed them, perhaps in order to keep me from going off on some fool idealistic crusade...
I don't know what I'm going to do with my lightsabers once I get them out anyway. I'll probably just whirl them around a bit, realize that I look like a jackass, and then put them away and lose track of them again.
- The results of my Star Wars movie day poll were pretty definitive--everybody came down strongly on the side of showing the films in numerical, interior chronological order. Everybody also came down strongly on the side of showing the original, theatrical versions of episodes IV, V, and VI. Luckily, I have now acquired the complete set of these as a loan from the bloginator's father-in-law. Someone suggested the excellent idea of copying them onto DVD, and I was hoping my Dad could help me out with that one, but it sounds like not. Still, I can at least copy them onto other VHS tapes so I have my own copies (sshh--don't tell the authorities!), and I'm sure everyone will be fine with viewing them in VHS format.
I guess what I'd really like to be able to do is create my own dream version of the original trilogy, incorporating the special edition and DVD changes that I like (the better effects in the Battle of Yavin, the Biggs scene, the airier and more dream-like Cloud City), but leaving out the ones I don't (the stupid and illogical new Greedo scene, the repetitive and unnecessary Jabba scene in IV, the horrible and annoying new musical sequence in Jabba's palace). That would rock.
- UPDATE: An article, via kds, on the pirated DVD version of Revenge of the Sith that's already available in China. Poppy and I had heard about this and hadn't been particular impressed--of course somebody bootlegged Star Wars, so what? This article reveals the answer to that question, and that answer is Dolph Lundgren.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
