so, in preparation for the upcoming instalment of in the “star wars” saga i’ve been re-viewing all its predecessors. i have come to the conclusion that it is only nostalgia that makes us think that the original trilogy was very much better than “the phantom menace” or “attack of the clones”. yes, “the empire strikes back” is better than the others but only in the way that stepping on a dog turd is better than falling into a giant vat of cow feces. all of them have lame stories, all of them have excruciatingly crap acting–though a special place must be given to “the return of the jedi”, which must be up there on the “bad acting in a high-profile movie” scale; an edited montage of harrison ford’s performance, in particular, should be placed in a time capsule.
i am forced to agree with roger ebert in his review of “the phantom menace”, where he notes that the only thing any of these movies have going for them is visual effects and imagination and that in that sense there is no difference between “the phantom menace” and anything in the first trilogy (though he does note in his review of “clones” that the dialog in that movie is particularly bad and drags everything else down). nevertheless, i’ll be in line on the first day to see the final piece of tedious shit in this series.