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.
of course, the trailer looks stunning because the marketing team realized that the promo at least had to look good–screw the film, becuase once the suckers are in their seats (as I will be again I imagine) the money’s already in the bank. George Lucas may be the least talented most successful director in history. That is, if he can be said “to direct” at all. he went straight from the amatuerish but provocative movies like American Graffiti and THX1138 (or whatever the number is) to the charming ineptitude of Star Wars straight to soulless corporate crap–saved, as arnab says, only by spectacular visual design.
If my experiences with the second and third Matrix films are any kind of precedent, I will have to slit someone’s throat and drink their blood in the theater in order to relieve one tenth of the stupefying anger I will feel at the nonsensical crap having just unrolled on screen and breaking all box office records. No doubt, too, the mannequin playing Anakin Skywalker will bring his considerable acting chops to bear on the transformation from milqetoast into Darth Vadar. I’d prefer a thousand times seeing Don Knotts transform into the Incredible Mr. Limpet.
I didn’t see episode 2 in a theater, and won’t see this one. (I did rent episode 2 on DVD as a back-up to another rental, but skipped around enough to avoid qualifying as actually ‘watching’ the film.)
I gave up on this schtick a while back. (I also gave a miss to Matrix 2 & 3)
I wonder if Peter Jackson could remake the entire 6 film series and make it decent…
just got back from “revenge of the sith” and surprise, surprise, it is really quite good. the best of the 6 in my opinion, and the last hour is actually moving. see it in on the big screen, see it at a bargain matinee, but see it.
Hooray! I’m glad to hear it. I’ll report back after my viewing, which will be this weekend.
Well, Jimmy Smits was good. He really sold both his lines of dialogue.
I’m going to disagree with Arnab. I found the film dull. To the point of almost leaving; if I hadn’t gone with two other people, I’d have walked out. I was that underwhelmed.
That said, I see no reason to harp on the film’s flaws. I actually thought it was just fine at doing what it set out to do; I simply realized, a few bucks lighter in the pocket, that I don’t really care what it’s trying to do.
However, I will say that there is a wit to the earlier films, in both characterization and action-scene execution, wholly lacking from these “first three” episodes. (With one small exception: the last half-hour of the last one–number two–was that the Clones title?–was funny, focused, exciting. Thirty minutes out of the 8 hours total. Hell, Bergman has a better funny-to-somber ratio than Lucas.)
It was also fun to see wookies having emotions and dialogue. I enjoyed, as Yoda leaves Wookie planet (probably called like Pohpah or Ge’ffarr or some other crap I can’t pronounce let alone remember), watching two wookies exchange comments. I’m actually just assuming they were expressing emotions. They could very well have been saying ‘I liked him better as a puppet’ or ‘How the fuck did huge furry mammals evolve on a tropical planet?’ It would have been nice to have the whole movie with wookie dialogue. No tortured exposition, just “whrooahrr” and “ffrooorhhh.”
the wookie planet is kashyyk. and what do you have against wookie-speak? is it simply your own anger at not being able to understand their complex system of grunts, roars and barks? chewbacca has never been this expressive in a film–not even in his cameo appearance in “fanny and alexander”.
you’re right about the first two films–well, really only the first one–being wittier. perhaps i liked this one because the previous 3 (including “jedi”) had lowered the bar so much, perhaps because i was sitting so close to the screen–who knows? but i did like it. and i thought the confrontation between yoda and sidious/palpatine (sorry for giving that away readers!) was pretty good, as was the last fight between anakin and kenobi. i think mcgregor’s performance in this film is the best in the entire series. yes, better even than that of the pointy-headed jedi (who does speak in this film).
Wha? That’s a little over generous isn’t it? I can understand why a guy who reads about the history of the Galactic Empire would like it, and someone else would find it so boring that they’d walk out of it if they could, but THAT SAID, YOU DON’T WANT TO HARP ON THE FILM’S FLAWS?
I generally agree with Mike on many movies, and I had no intenetion of seeing it anyway (I had considered trying to find a theater here that had dubbed it into Spanish, but I was afraid they’d have English subtitles, defeating the whole purpose), but i’m glad to hear he hated it, and am feeling smugger about my decision to skip it.
That said, Schrader’s version of Exorcist is out this week, and I plan on seeing it this weekend.
Why does Arnab keep moving my meandering links from one topic to another into their own topics? neat-freak.