So I finally saw Episode III
 

Yes, I realize that every other person on earth saw the newest Star Wars before yesterday, but I didn't. Besides, I know the burning question on all of your minds has been: But what did Traci think about Episode III? Well, wonder no more, because here comes my review/opinion.


The first fifteen minutes really really annoyed me. The action was blah, the dialogue sucked, but worst of all, they made Obi Wan seem like Annakin's sidekick. I mean, come on, the guy is a Jedi master and they made him look like he was fumbling his way through fights. Give the guy some dignity for Pete's sake.

There was your standard Star Wars smattering of lame dialogue and bad acting, but overall I wasn't too bothered by it. Overall, I thought that Padme and Annakin didn't suck as bad this movie as they did the second.

This is the thing that really really gets me. I cannot believe for a second that sweet little Annakin from episode 1 grows up to be evil child killer Annakin in Episode 3. I just don't buy it. The kid was raised by a wonderful mother until the age of 10. He was a cute little boy that liked to build robots and pod race. Then he was with Jedi masters for years. He isn't inherently evil, we're just supposed to buy that his fear overcame him. Fear of what? Yoda said he was scared as a boy, but we never get an explanation as to what.

I can believe that he killed the camp of bad guys that tortured his mother. I can even buy that he was tricked by Darth Sideas. But I just can't believe that he would kill younglings to save Padme. Anyone who really loves someone else would know that that someone would not want bunches of children to die just so they could live. Nor do I think that someone that could do that would cry after. And Obi Wan, you should have known to do him in when he was burning up. Any idiot would have known that.

I'm excited to watch 4,5, and 6 now that I know the full backstory. I loved when Yoda was saying goodbye to Chewbaca. I loved everything with Yoda really. He totally rocks.

I can feel geekdom coming on. I find myself wanting to know more about Star Wars, read books, watch movies until I know minute details, etc. Sigh...why am I so attracted to geeky things? :rolleyes:

Well, I've only seen up to The Empire Strikes Back. So you were not the last person, not yet. :)

Donna

I haven't seen it either and, I'm afraid to because I don't remember the last 2 and fear I would be clueless. No, I KNOW I would be clueless. And I really don't want to go back and watch those boring last 2 films either.

I'm not even going to buy the DVD of Episode III, and I have all the others. That's how badly I thought it sucked.



But ... (warning, plug ahead) for a really interesting film about the Star Wars fandom line mania (of which I am a part), there's a new DVD release of Star Wait about the fascinating 6-week marathon line-up outside the Chinese Theater for Episode II of Star Wars back in 2002. As a veteran of all five Hollyood Star Wars lines, I can attest that the 2002 line was the best, and Star Wait captures the energetic essence without being all geeky and StarWarsy.

You can check out the Star Wait website here and you can buy the DVD here or at your local Target store.


(I'm a minor character in the DVD, but I do not get any proceeds of sales. Nevertheless, that was indeed a plug)

Why specifically did you hate it? And do you agree about sweet little anni being an unlikely candidate for Darth Vader?

I wouldn't go so far as to say the entire thing sucked. It was visually impressive, and entertaining to watch. There were even a few touching moments.

Nevertheless, it could have been much much better. They really failed with the dialogue for the most part. One part that I'm still irritated about is when Samuel L Jackson says, "So the prophecy says!" With such sarcasm that I wanted to punch him in the nose. They also really failed with Luke and Leia's birth. That could have been very touching but instead it was just eh.

Shame on you George Lucas!

Fortunately, I've blocked it out so well that I can hardly remember why I hated it. But lemme see if I can recap a bit. Yeah, Anakin turning dark was bu!!sh!t, and his motivation for doing so was absurd, and the ease with which he turned was insulting and ludicrous. The dialogue between Anakin and Padme was even more stilted than in the last film, and they have ZERO chemistry together. There was scene after scene after scene for the first hour of the movie where the characters simply repeated stuff that the audience already knew. Snooze-bore-bad storytelling. When the action finally got going, it was truncated as well as ridiculous. The Order 66 segment of killing the Jedi was a nice montage helped loads by the J.Williams score (otherwise unimpressive this outting), but it was underplayed ... and of course all the Jedi who didn't have the good fortune to be Yoda died easier than I would. Bah. I really liked the battle in the Senate chamber between Palpatine and Yoda; it was visually interesting. Other than that though, I found visual interest in this film to be minimal (certainly nothing worth the psychedelic drugs I took -- a first for a Star Wars film). After the lame, video-game-unworthy opening spaceship battle, the action consisted of light saber duel followed by light saber duel followed by light saber duel before another light saber duel which preceded a 13th light saber duel. They made light saber duels boring. And the purportedly climactic fight between Obi-wan and Anakin was unbelievably retarded. I enjoyed the montage of Anakin being transformed into Darth Vader, but the laughable Frankenstein moment and "Noooooo!" bellow ruined the mood of the one good scene. Nothing much happening after that (other than the really lame birth of the twins and the somewhat cool-looking funeral for Padme) pounded home the conclusion that everything good happened either before the film (Clone Wars) or after the film (Darth Vader terrorizing the universe and hunting down the rest of the Jedi - - though, of course, not looking on Planet Obvious aka Tatooine). It's such poor filmmaking to have a movie of the most boring part of your story.

Let's see, did I leave anything out? I'm sure I have far more loathing for far more elements of this putrid piece of movie muck, but that's all that's coming to the top of my head.

And now, I must bathe.

Yes, Episode III sucked. But after Attack of the Clones it almost felt like a relief in its relative goodness.

Bad dialog, bad motivations, bad plotting, bad special effects (special effects that were implemented impeccably but were pointless in their presence). Worst of all, a bad transition for what has to follow in the original three movies.

Here's hoping that George Lucas never again applies his eye to a camera. Let him stick to producing and making electrons move in computers.

So true. He seemed to have a mantra in his cinematography, "Okay, all you actors...hold perfectly still and talk forever. All the visual interest in this scene will be in the form of pointless crap moving around behind you." :rolleyes: The concept of blocking completely escapes that man.

I'd be okay with him adding a few more story writing credits to his resume. Not script, story. He's pretty good at coming up at writing the basic kernel of some great stories, he just needs actual writers to take care of the little details like plot, dialog, continuity, etc.

To describe III, I quote Luke Skywalker: "What a piece of junk!"
:D

Here was my review of III (from MiceChat)
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Have you ever had a friend who liked cooking for you but really stunk at it? You love your friend, and maybe once or twice they got it right, but at some point (if it’s a really good friend) you have to give out some constructive feedback or they’ll have to learn to get better otherwise they’ll never get it and you’ll have to eat it.

Ie. A friend of mine thinks she’s the world’s bestest chef. She loves to cook. She loves to feed her friends. Sadly, what she cooks is famously bad. So, after several meals I had to break down and tell her. Of course, we fought and there was a period where she didn’t talk to me. But upon listening to me and other friends, she came to the conclusion that she needed to try different things and get help to get better. And she did!

George Lucas is a grand chef who served up great meals in the past, but is now serving us garbage. And, to top it all off, after seeing ‘Sith’ I have food poisoning. Someone at some point in the making of the films needed to tell him he needed to go back to cooking school, but no one did. Ugh.

But, GC, you were so excited and wanted to see this film. Maybe your expectations were too high.

Since the announcement of the 3rd movie and until today, I avoided every review, magazine etc about the making of this film. I avoided the book, comic books and all reviews in this thread on purpose. I wanted my vision unaltered beforehand, I was excited but my expectations were not too high… I was stunned at how bad ‘Phantom’ and ‘Clones’ were. Going into this film I expected it to be just okay, if not better than the previous two. I was wrong in both regards.

It’s Star Wars, it’s not Shakespeare.

Nothing but Shakespeare is Shakespeare. I don’t expect Oscar winning performances when I walk into SW movies. I don’t expect them to be deep, life changing or even emotionally uplifting. However, what I do expect from every movie I walk into is pretty basic. They NEED to have the following: a clear-cut message/moral/point (unless the ultimate goal of the movie is to not have one, but that must be acknowledged somewhere in the film), an engagingly structured plot (the characters go from here to here and change [because of things that happen] in these ways) and a film always needs to know its audience (Age group? Sci-fi fans? Romantic Film Fans).

The problem with the prequels is that Lucas never knew his audience. He forgot about the thirty/forty somethings who made his first three films mega-hits. He searched for a younger, newer fan base and appealed the stories to children. But not even in an affective way, Jar Jar characters and Jake Lloyd ‘woopee’ characters appeal to no one. If the adults don’t like them, kids won’t either.

Lucas said himself that he didn’t care about the people who hated ‘Phantom’ and ‘Clones’. In Entertainment Weekly he said that he has younger fans who love the films. If this is true, didn’t he just alienate the new fans by making ‘Sith’ violent, PG-13 and a ‘Titanic’-style love story?
I, as an audience member, felt like an outsider watching these films. Why? To put it simply, there was no ‘Han Solo’ or ‘C-3P0’.

But, wait, I saw C-3P0.

Han Solo and C-3P0 in the first three movies were audience members invited into the film to experience everything that happened to the main characters. We related to them and laughed at them because we saw ourselves reacting to these extraordinary situations as they did. There was no one to relate to in these three films.

C3P0 in these films was almost a set piece. He said things occasionally, but didn’t give us the comic relief he gave us in the 1st three. He played no vital role.

Ie. Han Solo showed us that traveling in space is fun, that some people in the galaxy are skeptical about the Force and that even people with advanced technology at their disposal still have everyday financial debt.
Ie. C-3P0 showed us that traveling in space is dangerous and scary, that getting desert sand in your gears sucks, that it was possible to be a gentleman in turbulent times and that companionship is important even to robots.

Who could you relate to in the original trilogy? Luke – farm boy stuck in someplace he’d like to get out of, loyal to family needs to get his own life. Han Solo – normal guy who fixes and races vehicles. Obi Wan – Older person dragged back into society after writing it off.

Who could you relate to in the prequels? Nobody. Unless you happen to be a slave, Senator, Senate Leader, Emperor, a fussy teen Jedi, Council member, Count, droid with human parts or a big bright blue chicken lizard. (That last one was a joke.)

I know this is a long post, but I’m really passionate about film, filmmaking and the man who redefined filmmaking for everyone and handed us this piece of Shi-th…

Specifics about the film:

(I’ll start with the Pros)
1. There was one scene I absolutely loved, loved, loved! On the platform of the lava planet, the Anakin, Padme and Obi Wan scene where she discovers Anakin has lost it. His anger, her fear and Obi Wan in the middle made it wonderful.

2. Loved all of the light saber scenes.

3. Loved Grevious’s wheel mobile.

4. Love Ian McDirmid all the way through. Evil, evil man.

5. R2-D2 saves the day yet again. Love it.

(Now the Cons)

1. Lots of scenes were just way too busy with special effects to effectively watch certain key areas of action. Even during the love scenes, there were so many flying vehicles and racing ships and even floaty objects (that made grids in the air for some reason) that the effects turned out to be distracting and didn’t play a vital role to the story.

2. Horrible horrible dialogue. ‘My heart is breaking.’ Yes, we know. Movies show us things not tell us the obvious.

3. Dooku getting killed off early. Palpatine should have killed Dooku. Anakin too Dath-like early on, he had nowhere to go with his character then.

4. New characters in the 3rd part of a trilogy? Who the heck is Darth Grevious and why do we care? I don’t know. He just shows up.

5. Obi Wan riding that big turquoise chicken lizard Mardi Gras lizard. What was Lucas smoking when he chose that creature to be the steed of choice?

6. Female Jedi getting killed in what looked like E.T.’s home world from Universal’s E.T. ride. Yuck!

7. The E.T. moment when Chewbacca and friend watch Yoda take off in small E.T. ship shaped vehicle. Bleh. I know Steven helped with this one, but give me a dang break. I was waiting for the rainbow to shoot out of the end of the ship…

8. Arbitrary names for kids. C’mon writer, figure out a why for the names.

9. Leia in ‘Jedi’ remembers mother as being sad. When she was 1 minute old? Ugh.

10. Darth Vader’s Frankenstein and “Noooo!” moment. I don’t know if it was a tribute to the Frankenstein film, but it didn’t work.

Here’s how the Darth Vader scene should have worked:
Anakin wakes up as Vader. His binds fly off… he makes the binds come off, he’s a Jedi he can do that. None of the other room breakage occurs at this time or before… Emperor summons him, Vader walks to him. He kneels to Emperor.
“Rise, Lord Vader.”
He stands, looks Palpatine in the face and his first word as Darth Vader is “Padme?”.
“Anakin, Padme was killed…”
Vader turns away slowly.
“By you.” Emperor says. “In anger.”
Vader stands there, silent. Then suddenly the room starts to shake, the medical equipment flies apart, the droids explode, the table breaks and Palpatine is inadvertently thrown off his feet. Vader’s anger destroys the room. Palpatine looks up at him with a ‘I better keep my eye on this one. He could end up killing me’ look of concern.
The scene ends with Vader standing there unmoved looking forwards. The Emperor slowly gets to his feet.
End of scene

Anyway, as you can see, I didn’t care for the film. I loved how it all tied in to the 1st trilogy, but it just wasn’t what it should have been.

Sorry for the long post...

No! I'm loving this, and all the other reviews in this thread. I agree with so much of this stuff.

Were the special effects not that good? I'm easy to impress I suppose, and found the backdrops to be quite pretty.

I too loved R2D2! He was the only comic relief in the movie. They had a big opportunity to provide comic relief in Obi Wan's character because Obi seems like a whimsical kind of guy, but they failed big time. Instead he just comes across as a doofus.

I was quite disappointed in the Jedi massacre as well. Aren't Jedi supposed to be able to sense evil plots? There was a deleted scene with a female Jedi that was just terrible. I was so glad they didn't put that in.

Even though the movie clearly couldn't stand on its own, I still enjoyed it. Probably because it gives us more backstory for 4, 5, and 6. What I'm wondering is that since it is apparently obvious to every single person on earth except for George Lucas that the dialogue sucks hard, why didn't anyone mention it to him? Is he really that much of a god in Hollywood that no one is going to bring up these terrible flaws?

I'll say that I liked it better than two. Just because in two Annakin bugged the ever living crap out of me, and he did less so in three. Even though two makes more sense story wise. I liked one. You get a sense of excitement when you see him as a small boy and wonder how he became so dark. It's too bad the next two are such a disappointment. It's like they left an hour of film out that shows us why he turned. Especially the first kill (Dooku?). He debates for like a second and then throws his training out the window? I don't buy it. After that, I half expected him to leave Obi for dead.

I'm gonna go watch four now!