Star Wars movie review

Well it's been a good while since I posted here, and I thought why not wax thoughtful on such a hot topic as the new Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith movie. Heck, no one's reading anyway, right?

Let me start off by saying that I thought the movie was pretty good. No more than that, not "great", just "pretty good". A lot of people are saying it's better than Return of the Jedi, but I strongly disagree. It was, however, nice to see some connections. I had a hopeful/fearful outlook to start because while the movie hailed the return of the most badass villain ever to grace the silver screen, let's face it - George Lucas sure has a way of fucking things up these days. But I was pleasantly surprised. One of the definite highlights was the distinct lack of Jar-Jar Binks - finally! R2D2 instead provided the comic relief, and it was great. That's how comic relief should be done! I also have to admit that Hayden Christensen - who, I have decided, is just a miserable actor - actually did an ok job in parts. He even managed to look cool (instead of his usual unsteady combination of crybaby/smoldering) when they slapped a cloak on him and pulled the hood down over his face... finally he drops the pansy act and starts kicking ass. Man I wish cloaks had never gone out of style! But anyway, the best scenes were the ones where he stopped being depressed loverboy and started killing. As always I liked Yoda - he's been my favorite since Empire - but even his lines were kinda goofy. I'd rather mute it and just watch him, he's the man. Even so, I was happy to see him open up a can of it with his mini-lightsaber. Also I got a real kick out of him knocking out the guard. So short, but so good!

But now let's move on to the really fun stuff - the bad stuff. Basically I had the same problems with this one that I had with the last two: miserable acting (for the most part) and even more atrocious writing. Who writes these scripts?! Ol' George can make it as impressive in terms of CGI as he wants, but great effects can't make up for terrible writing and acting. It constantly amazes me how he could make such great movies on such low budgets (4-6) and such worse movies on such astronomical budgets! I also (shockingly) still hated that the bad guys are just goofballs. The battle droid things are ridiculous - if I made a robot built for destruction, you can bet it wouldn't have an emotion chip or whatever these things have. Also, if it had to have a voice, it would be a cool voice. It was like they were battling an army of Number 5s from that movie Short Circuit; talk about non-threatening! My big problems with story connections: 1) why abandon these legions of clone guys and millions of battle droids, etc., for an army of stormtroopers who are equally poor marksmen? It just doesn't make sense - you don't have to pay robots and the clones clearly don't have social lives, families, etc. But oh well. Same with the starships; Lucas's technology frenzy has driven him into outdoing "later" technology with "earlier" technology. Anyway all that aside, it also bugged me to see the beginnings of the Death Star at the end of this movie. The twins were just born... it's going to be a good amount of time before the Death Star comes around. Since they built the second one in a relatively short time, why did the first one take so long? Maybe they had a lot of kinks to work out or something. Eh. The most disappointing thing was Darth Vader's pansification. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO" he screams in a pathetic, helpless way. I'd much rather have seen him go ballistic and crush/destroy things. But oh well. Last but not least, can we get real with the villains here? Darth Sidious? GENERAL GRIEVOUS???? Let's just put in Baron Badguy, Captain Coldblood and the Earl of Evil while we're at it. BAH!

So overall pretty good, despite all my objections. The problem overarching all three of these prequels (besides the awful scripting) is that it just doesn't seem realistic. Yeah yeah it's a space adventure, etc., but I thought the old, low-budget ones felt way more real (with the puppets and so on). There's so much computer animation that it makes me wonder why he bothered to put real actors in it at all. Might as well have animated the whole thing.

Movies aside, life is good! Puppies are growing and full of energy, my friends are back in town from college, and I haven't yet started my sucky summer job (still working at UVA for the moment).