Edit: I suppose this post should contain a spoiler warning, so consider yourself warned gentle reader.
Yup. I did enjoy the movie and it was far superior to those travesties, episodes one and two.
Corny dialog? By the bucketful.
Bad acting? Painfully large amounts.
I like Natalie Portman. She is a very, very attractive brunette and I have a weakness for brunettes. However she was fucking bad in the movie. Really, really fucking bad. Her main purpose seemed to be decorative and to engage in a competition for worst performer with Hayden Christensen. He was excruciatingly bad in those scenes where he had to appear with the aforementioned brunette. They weren’t helped by the lousy dialog in the scenes involving the two of them.
Doesn’t quite sound like redemption, does it? Well it was.
Christensen did a reasonably good job of portraying Anakin’s slide to the Darth side. Perversely the more evil Anakin became the better was Christensen’s performance (He went from rip-out-your finger-nails-and-shove-lit-matches-up-your-arse painful to a mild throat pain painful. And that is a good thing. ). However he did redeem himself. The scene where Vader lies burning, crippled by Kenobi, screaming out his hatred of the friend and the order he betrayed was perfect.
The others did a bang-up job. McGregor/Kenobi was just right. A mentor and a truly noble person betrayed utterly by his best friend. Forced to stop Vader and beating him in spite of Vader’s superiority. The fight with the android General Grievous was decent. I did seriously object to the mutant oversized chameleon/iguana that he rode for a good part of the movie.
Yoda’s “performance” was pretty good too (If a CGI rendering can be called a performance.). Who doesn’t like a hyperkinetic green furball whose lightsaber antics look like a tube-light in a violent mating ritual. Ian McDiarmid as Palaptine was perfect. Gleefully oozing evil and subtle corruption. Tugging ever so gently on a mildly moronic Skywalker, pulling him inch by inch to the dark side. Masterfully orchestrating the betrayal of the Jedi. A scene that was heart breaking for someone as immersed in the lore as I am.
The movie was not just enjoyable. It was a relief. Having my memory of the original three irrevocably tainted by the Phantom Menace and the Attack of the Clones, I was prepared for crap of gargantuan proportions. I was very pleasantly proven wrong. While not as good as the original three this more than made up for the disappointment of the last two. I should state here that the original three were seen by a different person. And the impressions I made then have been set in stone. I could not change them even if I wished to do so. It is possible that this movie is superior to some or all of the movies in the original trilogy, but for me the original trilogy will remain superior. In spite of the fact that storm trooper armor offers no defense against anything harder than cotton candy, or that the storm troopers who are the Empire’s elite couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, or the fact that Luke and Leia made out, or that…well you get my point. The original trilogy is not something that I can logically dissect. I see its flaws and they just do not matter to me.
End note: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy," Anakin Skywalker, tells Obi-Wan Kenobi. Does that sound familiar? Well apparently conservative groups like Pabaah thought so, and called for a boycott of the movie. I have a sneaking suspicion that the boycott failed. And um…if your groups name is Pabaah, it is a wee bit tough to take you seriously.
1 comment:
Hmm...normally any view of yours on the Star Movies needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. But since you have also mirrored my opinion on the first 2 episodes, maybe I do need to see this movie.
I doubt I will be as impressed as you've been, coz the original trilogy didnt do much for me. But I need to see this to remove the memory of the Attack of the Clowns!
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