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Post by Jen G on May 18, 2005 12:29:27 GMT -5
Okay, who is seeing it at midnight? Real Star Wars fans see this movie at the midnight premiere. ;-)
MA and Nick are coming to Columbus, and we're going to the Arena Grand Theater (along with my padawan, Becky) to see it. I think I might bring my lightsaber spoon that I got from Honey Smacks (the spoon special enough to merit my buying a non-organic, sugar charged cereal). I think I might die of excitement.
Am I the only super dork in the house?
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Post by Noah on May 18, 2005 17:29:53 GMT -5
Amanda and Corey and I are going to see it on Monday -- forsaking the thrill of seeing it as soon as possible for the thrill of seeing it when the rest of the world is at work. We've all taken the day off, and our plan -- we'll see what happens -- is to watch Epsiodes I and II at home, then go see Episode III, then come back home and watch the original trilogy. I know waiting till Monday doesn't sound like the decision of die-hards, but surely we get some dork points for endeavoring to watch all six movies in sequence.
Pretty exciting. Don't hesitate to fill this thread with spoilers after you see it. The reviews have been pretty upbeat...the New York Times actually said it's better than Episode IV!
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Post by Jen G on May 21, 2005 15:50:09 GMT -5
NO SPOILERS YET
Okay, I've seen it. And it took the three of us at least a day to stop staring into the horizon, slack jawed and drooling a little, and to start finding the words that would even begin to describe the experience of Revenge of the Sith.
It was heart pounding, face-grabbing, just...see, okay, I still can't find any words. It's a heartbreaking experience, and brings more tragedy and depth to the Star Wars realm than even I thought possible. Suddenly, the whole series is Anakin's story.
MA, Nick, Jupe, and I are going to pull the all-six-movies-in-sequence run once I'm out of school and visiting Champaign (mid June). So let me know how cool a game that is. Are you watching the newest editions of the OT? Because it seems like the changes were all made with Revenge of the Sith in mind.
MILD SPOILERS TO FOLLOW
Anakin totally turns into Darth Vader! Padme gives birth to these twins and names them Luke and Leia! That Chancellor Palpatine guy is TOTALLY the Emperor! Who knew?!? Seriously, though, I think one of the most astonishing things about Revenge of the Sith, aside from the human tragedy angle, is the degree to which is bravely lambasts American politics, particularly the unholy Bush administration. Lucas was fearless in his parallels, and nothing is handled with subtlety. I think you'll enjoy it very much.
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Post by Noah on May 24, 2005 12:24:57 GMT -5
Well, I am now among those who have seen all six Star Wars movies.
Revenge of the Sith is great. As almost every review has indicated, it's the best of the prequel trilogy, and it feels more of a piece with the original films than Episodes I and II did. It brings us from the end of Attack of the Clones to the beginning of A New Hope in a far more satisfying way than doubters predicted it would. For people who hated Episodes I and II, Episode III is what they had hoped the prequels would be from the start.
There are so many beautiful moments. My favorites, or at least the ones which leap to mind at the moment, include Yoda's line "Not if anything I have to say about it!" (Yoda gives the best performance in the film. The moment when he looks down and scratches his head achieves Chaplinesque proportions!) I relished the glimpses of Chewbacca and Moff Tarkin. It was great to see Natalie Portman in her first scene, with the vintage Princess Leia hairdo. It was incredibly moving to see the infant Leia cared for on Alderan, which we know will be obliterated in Episode IV. Luke and Obi-Wan wind up on Tatooine, and Yoda goes to Dagobah. There's even that great shot of R2-D2 and C-3PO on the Tantive IV. It's extremely satisfying to see these characters go off to the places where we first met them.
Two sequences in Sith were riveting and disturbing, more so than anything else in the series. The scene in which Anakin betrays Mace Windu, and Palpatine transforms into the gnarled Emperor, hurt like nothing in Star Wars ever has before -- until the final confrontation between Anakin and Obi-Wan, which contains the essence of the entire saga. Watching all of this, I was rooting for the good guys with a passion I haven't felt since Return of the Jedi. This is all the more impressive when you consider the fact that there was no mystery about how Episode III would end.
Now that we have the whole six-movie cycle, it's clear that Anakin is the saga's central character. He's a pawn in the real conflict, which is between Palpatine and Yoda. Anakin is a tragic figure, the result of genetic manipulation on the part of Palpatine and his presumed mentor, Darth Plagus. As Yoda suggests in Episode III, the prophecy was misread by Qui-Gon in Episode I -- Anakin isn't the "chosen one" who will "bring balance to the Force." His son is. Anakin's turn to the Dark Side is the result of his desire to save Padme from death, so it's ironic that it's actually the Jedi, not the Sith, who develop the power to transcend mortality. When Yoda sends Obi-Wan off to Tatooine, he tells him to learn how to commune with Jedi who have become one with the Force. That scene seemed to be leading to an appearance by Liam Neeson as a "Force ghost," which I would have liked to have seen.
When The Phantom Menace came out, I was absolutely determined to love it, no matter what. When it was roundly criticized as a disappointment, I defended it so tirelessly that by the time Attack of the Clones was released, I was tired of the whole thing. Having overstated my esteem for Episode I, I didn't even see Episode II until it had been out for a couple of weeks. These days, I do like Episodes I and II, and every once in a while I watch them and find them basically rewarding. (I think Episode II is significantly better than Episode I.) So I have come around a little. The prequels, for all their splendor, are hampered in places by leaden dialogue and catatonic bluescreen performances. When I watch them, I do care what happens, but that care is derived from my emotional investment in the original trilogy.
A lot of people have defended the prequels by saying that the original trilogy was just as cheesy, but what Episodes IV - VI had was humanity, a lot of it, a lot more than the new ones. It might be true that people's irritation with Jar Jar Binks was similar to the way C-3PO and the Ewoks were once received, but what the prequel triology really needs, and lacks, is a Han Solo character. Someone cynical and sarcastic, to undercut the somber tone of epic struggle. After seeing Episode III yesterday, we watched Episode IV, and there's no denying that the actors in the original films embodied their characters more convincingly. I know part of this is because Luke is a farmboy and Han is a renegade, while the principals in the prequels are living in a stiffer and more formal time and place. But that shouldn't prevent a good director and good actors from showing us the humanity of the characters and the situation.
Revenge of the Sith still has some of these problems, but it minimizes and overcomes them in a way that Menace and Clones didn't. And the amazing visual achievement goes beyond Episodes I and II, because for the first time since Jedi it doesn't feel excessive; it doesn't upstage the story. Watching the famous trash compactor scene in Episode IV, I thought about how scary that scene is, precisely because you don't really get to see the creature under the surface. It would be far less effective if there were thousands of digital creatures crawling all over everything, which is undoubtedly what Lucas would have done if he tried it now.
The love scenes between Anakin and Padme are better than those in Attack of the Clones, but only slightly. The only moment in Episode III which I found unbearably disingenuous was an important one, when Anakin is first encased in the Vader guise. Obviously intended as an homage to Frankenstein, it comes off more as a parody, with Vader staggering forward and shouting "NOOOO!" when he learns of Padme's death. It's just too silly. If it happened before the mask was on -- or even if it were photographed at a closer angle -- it might have worked.
The political parts of Menace and Clones bored a lot of people, but in Revenge of the Sith, the political intrigue is genuinely intriguing. Indeed, there are several moments which seem to comment on contemporary American politics. I'm sure Lucas knew what he was doing when he gave Anakin lines that are almost direct Bush quotations, and when Padme declares that democracy dies to the sound of thunderous applause. Watching Palpatine seize the Republic and create the Empire was surreal; I sat there thinking how at that very moment, Senate Republicans were on the Hill, fighting to abolish the filibustering of judicial nominees. Episode III, as a political drama, is about the danger of any one entity having too much power. The political drama of the United States, at the moment, is about the very same thing. On the other hand, any mythic story about the conflict between good and evil plays like an anti-Bush allegory these days.
So...that's more than you ever wanted to know, probably, about what I thought of Episode III. If you haven't seen it, do it as soon as possible, even if you gave up on the series after the last two. It's a major return to form for George Lucas. Even the cynics mostly agree that he's redeemed the whole enterprise of the prequels, and given us what we hoped for as soon as we learned he was going back in time.
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Post by wowposter on Nov 16, 2008 1:58:31 GMT -5
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