Thursday, May 19, 2005

The Obligatory Star Wars III "Revenge of the Sith" review.



OK, went to the 12:03 showing of "Revenge of the Sith" last night/early this morning (kind of weird, the original Star Wars premiered a day before my 16th birthday and there I was watching the prequel to that first film a day before my 44th birthday.) Unlike the billions of reports from the news the theatre was NOT filled with costumed geeks. (I only saw two people, a couple dressed as a storm trooper and a rebel pilot and two others in robes) The bulk of the sold out theatre (all three theatres' sold out for the 12:01, 12:02 & 12:03 shows) looked to be 20 and younger. The kid sitting next to me probably wasn't born until after the original trilogy.

The crowd was really rowdy, especially during the trailers (BTW, the Fantastic Four film looks good. The crowd really responded to all of the Torch lines and ESPECIALLY when the Thing says "It's Clobbering Time!") but they shut up as soon as the Star Wars logo appeared.

As for the film... it started off ok, I wasn't too thrilled with the opening scene, but it really started working for me when Anakin began his transformation. The dialogue, unfortunately (especially during the quiet, romantic scenes) are typical Lucas. The actors did their best with what they had.

The film was about 2 1/2 hours but moved pretty quickly. (for obvious reasons) I enjoyed the second half of the film more, though with every scene I had an odd feeling of deja-vu, as if I knew exactly what was about to happened. I began thinking for most scenes "oh, ok, that's how they were going to explain that".

-BUT-

There's a line at the end of the film that took me totally by surprised and I'm not sure why it was said. I'll be curious to why it was added.

The battle scenes in the second half are fun and it was nice seeing the last 10 minutes of the film. But it dawned on me after I saw the film (the crowd BTW, applauded of course, so I guess they enjoyed it), any kid born this year, for example, when they get older, can watch all six films in order. So for them, "Phantom Menace" always came before "A New Hope", so the revelation that Darth is Luke's father in "Empire" is no big deal, and more importantly, when Luke starts flirting with Leia, it's going to really be creepy.

I liked "Revenge of the Sith", it's WAAAY better than "Phantom Menace" an "Attack of the Clones", but not as good as "A New Hope" and of course the best, "Empire Strikes Back".

1 comment:

Benji said...

Haven't seen the movie yet, but as a lifelong fan I'm excited to see the story come full circle.
Nice review, great blog...keep it up!