So I finally saw Episode III

[Gemini Cricket]

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


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...

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

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!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

Is he really that much of a god in Hollywood that no one is going to bring up these terrible flaws?

That's the thing, this wasn't really made "in Hollywood". He funded it, he shot it. The only reason he involved anyone else was for Fox's distribution network. I heard an interview with a Fox exec who said that Lucas just completely blew off anyone who tried to talk to him about the movie. The man's a complete egomaniac, he thinks he's god's gift to movie making at this point and obviously doesn't listen to anyone's input.

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

That's the thing, this wasn't really made "in Hollywood". He funded it, he shot it. The only reason he involved anyone else was for Fox's distribution network. I heard an interview with a Fox exec who said that Lucas just completely blew off anyone who tried to talk to him about the movie. The man's a complete egomaniac, he thinks he's god's gift to movie making at this point and obviously doesn't listen to anyone's input.

Ah, now I see. One of my favorite SNL skits of all time was the one where they made fun of George Lucas. He called himself God the entire time. I guess it isn't too far off from the truth.

Alex, I suppose the focusing on special effects worked, because there were moments in the movie where I found myself watching the background and forgetting about what the characters were saying.

I watched episode IV last night (or at least most of it, I fell asleep). It is such a fun movie. There's comedy and whimsy that is completely lacking in 2 and 3. It isn't like the world is any better in 4, 5, and 6 either. In fact it's worse. Did Lucas actually write these himself?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

Did Lucas actually write these himself?

Lucas wrote and directed the very first Star Wars script himself. And if you watch it objectively, you can see that it's the least polished of the original trilogy in terms of dialog, direction, and cinematography. However, all of those could easily be ignored due to the novelty and genius of the wholly original presentation of the story.

For Empire and Jedi, Lucas has a story writing and producing credit. The scripting and directing were handed off. IMO, the dialog, writing, direction, edtiing, etc. are superior in both of those movies. However, I tend not to compare them as a whole to the original because, well, it's the original and like I said I'm willing to forgive Star Wars some of its flaws because of the level of originality.

Then comes the prequels. Not only was Lucas never a particularly good screenplay writer or director to begin with, he has done neither for decades so he's even worse. He's insulated himself from the movie making world (heck, from any aspect of the real world) to an extreme degree. He's allowed his ego to grow to galactic proportions. So, completely forgetting the rather brilliant move he made for Empire and Jedi, he refuses to relinquish those roles and insists on doing it "his way". Feh.

We all should have seen this coming with the Special Editions. That was his true vision? That's what he truly wanted? Thank the lucky stars that at the time he made the original trilogy, he had budget restrictions and a studio to answer to to reign him in.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

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

It isn't that they're bad, just that they're frequently unnecessary and sometimes distracting.

It is funny that in regular films the director usually does everything possible to screen out the confusion of the real world so that you can focus on exactly what you're supposed to. In computer animated films (and in many ways the last three Star Wars are just CG movies) to show off the technical skill as much of the distracting world as possible is crammed into the frame.