While not a true Star Wars nut, I am a fan. I liked Ep III. I thought some of the dialogue was pretty bad. The Foreign Minister is right, in that FX aren’t the big deal they once were because the state of the art is so advanced. But Lucas can be a master at visual storytelling, and he’s at his best at moments in this film. This aspect was completley lacking in EpI, and Ep II felt like a dress rehearsal.
I agree with the FM that I would put EpIII just behind Star Wars and Empire.
the problem with Star Wars is that fans of my generation are those of us who fell in love with Star Wars in the summer of 1977 when it came out. We tend to view it through the lens of nostalgia and see it as something more than it actually was. Star Wars was a fun, unconventional, visually stunning summer movie. I think Lucas has far less depth to his story than we hoped. His world certainly can’t hold a candle to the depth and complexity of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. And because of the timing of Peter Jacksons LOTR films, and Lucas’s I, II and III, those two worlds set themselves up for comparison. Scratch the surface of Middle Earth, and you find a complex and layered history and mythology that goes deeper than most fans will look. Scratch the surface of Lucas’s universe and you find he hasn’t thought beyond the imagery of the film most of the time.
What I find most interesting is how Lucas has come full circle. The “fresh” thing about the first film was it’s vision of a black and white universe. Good and Evil. The Evil Empire and the Good Rebels. No room for shades of grey. I’ll leave the historical comparissons to all the historians here. I challege Max Leader to ruminate on this paragraph, and post a historian’s take on it. The thing about Ep III in particular is that it takes the position that everything is shades of grey, and there are no absolutes. Lucas revels in moral ambiguity here but the story doesn’t have the depth to have anything really revelatory to say about it.
anyway, in a nutshell I liked this film a lot. It had it’s weak and stupid points, but so do all Star Wars films. I think it’s a nice wrap up to the series. Not a kiddie movie, though.
good points about Ep III. (potential spoilers)
- the first 20 minutes, one extended action sequence, is a tremendous opening for the film.
- The visual aspect of the storytelling is finally up to the bar he set with the first film, almost 30 years ago. This film has some stunning visual moments, and I’m not talking about FX.
- Palpatine/The Emperor. Great character, great villain. Some great dialogue. He gives some good lectures on the nature of the Sith (which geeks like me eat up) and is one of precisely two good performances in the film.
- Ewen McGregor (sp?) as Obi Wan. Not quite given the dialogue that Ian McDairmid (Palpatine) was given, McGregor does a great job as Obi Wan. The reluctant action hero. He comes accross as a guy who can really kick ass, isn’t afraid to, but doesn’t really want to. Unlike Annakin, who they keep telling us is so powerful without really convincing us, Obi Wan comes accross to the audience as a powerful Jedi via the story.
- Yoda. Just a cool character. Yoda is proof that a cgi character can work in a film in a major role.
- The final duel. The Annakin/Obi Wan duel has been one of the key moments in Star Wars mythology. now that it’s finally on film, I think it lives up to all our expectations.
- General Grievous. Jst a cool secondary villain. Another fun cgi character.
- (SPOILER) The moment where the Clones turn on the Jedi. This sequence blew me away. Just emotionally powerful in a way I didn’t know Lucas could pull off. The fate of the younglings is also the moment for me that Annakins fall became real.
- The last scene in the movie.
bad points
- Padme/Annakinn. No chemistry, dumb dialogue.
- Hayden Christiensen/Annakin. Poor guy has not much to work with. lame dialogue, and his motivation for falling is kinda clumsily handled.
- the death of Padme/birth of Luke and Leia. Dumb dialogue.
- The rise of the suited Vader. While this moment contains a briliant visial moment, where you see Annakins eyes fill with fear as the mask lowers to cover his face, when Vader gets off the table, he’s lumbering like Frankenstein. Some loved this. I thought that at this moment of the story, humor was inappropriate.
