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Star Wars - Episode III
by author name on Monday 23 May 2005
A review of Star Wars Episode III. Warning, contains spoilers and is quite negative towards a film that has devote cult followers who believe otherwise.
Dammit Lucas, stop making films!
I was in no rush to see Star Wars: Episode III. Honestly, the first two (Episodes I and II) truly turned me off to the Star Wars franchise. If I had it in me to walk away from the Dark Side of Geek addiction, I would have; if I really had a choice, I wouldn?t have seen Episode III.
However, as a geek, I could not deny my nature. The question was simply when, not if, I would see the movie. I saw it tonight. I?m glad it?s over.
A lot of people are not going to like my opinion of this film. I have been told by many people that Episode III is a really good movie, that it redeems the Star Wars line, that it isn?t a waste of money. Episode III was mediocre at best. It was better than Episodes I and II but it?s not like the bar was set high. My plan is pretty much to bash this film and to try my best to justify my points. However, seeing as this film falls into that annoying category legacy movie lines complete with obsessed fans, this review has a disclaimer:
There are spoilers in this review. Those spoilers may not be overt, I will try not to make them ruin what there is to ruin of that movie, but, be forewarned. You may wish to simply accept that I did not like the movie and do not recommend it, see it anyway, then read why I didn?t like and find out of if you agree (because all of us will see this movie, regardless of how bad or how unnecessary it is).
Right. So, on with the review:
The point of this film is to take Anakin Skywalker and turn him into Darth Vader. They do that. It takes them 140 minutes to do it, but they do. By the end of the film Lucas does set up most of the starting positions for Episode IV. So, in that vein, he succeeded, which is why this film is not a total failure. There was a point, it succeeded in doing achieving it.
So, this film is not horrible, it?s just entirely unnecessary. The only purpose for this film was to set up the pieces for the beginning a 28 year old film. A one-sided dvd-case sized insert could have summed up ALL the ?important? information this film conveyed.
The story of this movie could be told in five minutes. However, Lucas found that using computer generated everything he could add 135 minutes of special effects ? that?s much better than trying to write a good story.
There?s a space battle in the beginning. Awesome! Nope. Instead of having cool dog fighting there?s a missile that fires little robot gremlins. The next 10 minutes or so is spent trying to remove them from the ship.
Just to recap, a MISSILE is fired at a space ship. It hits. But instead of blowing up the ship, it?s some how a much better idea to release really ineffective little robots (which for some unknown reason appear to be eyeballs) who try to dismantle the ship. They don?t put explosives or anything on the ship, they just start, slowing, to do annoying things like break the windshield wipers. And that scene goes on and on and on.
That?s how the movie starts and that?s pretty much how it continues throughout the rest of the film. Randomly added, highly unnecessary sequences of overly used special effects that yield little-to-no excitement and definitely no story benefit. A decent percentage of this film was spent dealing with these stupid eyeball gremlin things that were even more annoying to the audience than they were to the pilots of the ships they were destroying.
There was a huge iguana. It got a lot of screen time. It was stupid. It didn?t need to be there. It was there SOLELY because Lucas thought that it would be cool to spend a lot of time on a large iguana. I can see it now.
?Mr. Lucas, I don?t get it, why do we need to have this iguana??
?Well, it symbolizes the nature and life side of the force in stark contrast to the machine lifelessness of the darkside.?
?Umm? but it?s totally random and really doesn?t seem practical. How about something that would make sense instead??
?Look intern, the huge iguana will look cool. It stays.?
The dialog, when it didn?t simply suck, was stripped straight from the best Daytime Soap Opera that was playing when Lucas was suppose to be writing scripts. And since Lucas directed the film as well, it?s his fault the acting generally sucked.
Ewan McGregor stood out as the best actor on the screen ? that is, when he was on the screen. He spent a lot of time simply being computer generated. But, that just enhances the quality of the film, right? I mean, think of all the special effects you can do if you simply replace the actors. God this movie sucked.
This movie relied on special effects to compensate for the horribly weak story. It starts out as a classic premise but is executed at a level of quality barely above afternoon cartoons.
I?ve been told that this movie is really good because they focus on the characters in this film. But the characters are painfully flat, have dialogue that seems painfully forced and ridiculously over-the-top, and the only growth of any character is the literal growth in Padme?s womb. Good because it focuses on the characters. Right.
?What?s the dumbest way a person can die??
?Lost the will to live??
?I don?t know, that can be done well.?
?Umm? we can make it appear really, really stupid if it?s written poorly and we find a way to use special effects.?
?Perfect.?
?I?m glad you like it Mr. Lucas.?
So, scenes are either pointless, drag on for far too long, are pointless and drag on for far too long, or were part of the five minutes of interesting story setup for Episode IV.
Oh, and Obi-Wan is a total dick. But don?t? worry, it?s not because of his character or any choice his character would have made. No, he?s a dick because Lucas is a bad writer and couldn?t have found a way to make an important moment happen without Obi-Wan becoming a total, heartless, dick.
There?s really no reason for me to comment on the sets or the lighting or the anything technical like that, it was all computer generated anyway. At least Shrek didn?t pretend that their film used live actors. One reason why the original three Star Wars films are still great (or they were before Lucas went senile and started messing with them) was because they used physical props. Things look real because they were. Fight scenes required cool fighting not just special effects and animated jumping.
It is a shame that I saw this film simply because it is part of the legacy of something that was great. My hope was that this would be a great film. My expectations were that it wouldn?t be. The myth is that Lucas wrote these three films before the original movies. If that?s true, I guess it took Lucas three scripts before he learned how to write good movies.
And I know people will disagree with me on my feelings of this film. That still won?t stop me from saying that, ?LUCAS HAS NOT REDEEMED HIMSELF WITH THIS FILM!? For setting up Episode IV, he gets a score of 1/10. But that's it. This was not a good movie. I will not pay to see this movie again. I quite likely will never sit through it again. Lucas has truly spoiled the Star Wars name for me. What a bastard.
- Savage
 
Rating:
Comments ...
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Comments: 52
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I don't tend to read other reviews until after I've seen and reviewed a film myself (I don't like it spoiled for me or to affect my review - my review, my opinion). Before Episode III came out, Kevin Smith of Clerks fame wrote a review which many people salivated over. I just read it. It seems we saw two different movies.
"'Revenge of the Sith' is, quite simply, fucking awesome." Smith's words, not mine.
I was worried about giving away too much with my review. Compared to Smith's all I said was that Episode III was a movie shown in movie theaters. Not only do I not agree with his review but I hate his style of reviewing - of seeing the movie before everyone and then, in detail, describing as much of the movie as he can remember.
So, I still think the movie was horrible however I have yet to meet someone who agrees with me. Let me know how you feel about it. Vote in the new Escapist Reality poll. Let's see where we, as a community stands.
- Savage
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Comments: 23
Registered: 15 Jun : 11:10
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the movie had this line "love cannot save us, but my powers can"
that sums it up, who saw that line and said "yeah! that should go in the final draft"
there were at least a half dozen hands cut off. you know it was cool when luke got his cut off but now it turns out he was just jumping on the band wagon
lucas doesn't know how to use NPC's much less reuse them but he sure likes to do the latter
nobody lived up to how cool darth maul was....NOBODY!
apparently jedi knights think war is fun
how come count dookoo is the only republican, I mean sith lord to not have the name "darth" (or is he darth dookoo?)
yeah what was up with that iguana?
overall movie was ok, I didn't regret the $7.50 but it was boring at times, and Darth vader looks like frankenstein's monster when he busts out of the Evil medical table and shouts "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
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