Faded Boxers

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

I was actually expecting this movie to suck three sweaty balls (one sweaty ball for each of the three movies so far); but despite all misgivings, it only ended up sucking only one sweaty testicle.

It goes without saying that there were a lot to hate about this movie (wooden acting, lousy editing, no character development among others). Most of which were already discussed in my Episode II review and need not be repeated here. Instead, I’ve decided to focus on the stuff that didn’t necessarily suck about this movie in the hopes limiting the length of this post.

Surprisingly enough, there were some stuff in the movie that I liked. Not surprisingly enough though, these can be counted in only one hand. One hand with only two fingers that is!

First of which was how well the fight scenes were captured. You know how I’m always complaining about how modern action directors are always messing up the photography of their fight scenes? They have this misconception that confusing camera angles breed excitement. This is true only if your audience is composed mostly of retards who grew up on MTV. Oh Snap!

What I noticed about this movie which I didn’t see in other Star Wars movies was how relatively coherent the fight scenes were. The audience was always made aware of where everyone is at any given moment, and most of the moves were properly framed and captured. Consequently, this makes for more exciting confrontations if only these scenes involved characters that were worth caring about.

Based on the virtue of the fight scenes, I was more than willing to give George Lucas props. That was until I did some digging and learned that Steven Spielberg deserved the credit more than Lucas as he was the one who designed the fight scenes that I liked: Yoda’s duel with Darth Sidious, and Obi-Wan’s fight with General Grievous. Spielberg also consulted on other scenes, such as the climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin. So George is still pretty much in the dog house on this one.

And the other thing I liked was how the story was able to bring a moderately satisfying end to the series. I’m not saying that it saved the whole series, because the only thing that could have done that was if George Lucas died before he started shooting The Phantom Menace. What I mean is how this movie ended things in a relatively strong note, and people can finally go on with their lives and possibly forget about Star Wars altogether.

For me, the greatest tragedy concerning Star Wars is not Anakin’s descent to the Dark Side, but how a story worth telling wasn’t told well. I admit it, I was a big Star Wars geek growing up. What initially got my attention was of course the space ships, lightsabers, and Princess Leia in a bikini. But after the effects of those have worn off (there’s only so many fantasies you can come up with a bikini-clad Princess Leia), it told a story which you can keep coming back to. I think, people who claim to have liked the first two films were actually confusing the story with the execution of the story—which are two different things entirely.

To be fair to this new trilogy, to story was no less engaging than that of the original. Unfortunately, the flaws with the new trilogy were more pronounced and were therefore harder to ignore. It didn’t help matters when George Lucas practically admitted that he was much more interested in outdoing the effects in his previous movie than spending time with his human actors.

In summary, I give this movie a rating of one ball:

Other cheap thrills I got while watching the movie were the appearances of Captain Antilles, a young Grand Moff Tarkin, and Chewbacca! Had they included a young Han Solo, I would have creamed my pants regardless of how unsatisfying the movie was.

[Updated May 24:]

I just remembered a couple of things about the movie that were worth mentioning:

Scenes that I thought were pretty cool:

• Luke Skywalker’s Harry Potter scene on Tatooine.
• Darth Vader’s Frankenstein step.
• Chewbacca’s Tarzan swing, which was a throwback to the one he did in Return of the Jedi

Continuity error (Spoiler Warning):
Something that bugged the hell out of me was how Padmé died without Leia ever meeting her. This was a problem for me because it was implied in Jedi that Leia at least had a chance to see her according to the following exchange:

Princess Leia: Luke, what’s wrong?
Luke: Leia, do you remember your mother? Your real mother?
Princess Leia: Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.
Luke: What do you remember?
Princess Leia: Just… images really. Feelings.
Luke: Tell me.
Princess Leia: She was… very beautiful. Kind, but sad. Why are you asking me this?
Luke: I have no memory of my mother. I never knew her.