Star Wars

[merlinofchaos]

Things I liked:

1. Haydensen did pretty well, came quite a ways from the whiny Luke-clone from aotc.
   
2. Ewan McGregor does a fantastic Alec Guiness impression, though not quite as good in this one as previous movies.
   
3. As usual, the effects were stunning. The video-game droids factory stuff wasn't quite as present.
   
4. Ian MacDiarmid does a pretty good job in his role.
   
5. Bail's ship was the Blockade Runner in Star Wars. At first I thought it was just the same kind of ship, but no, it was the same ship.
   
6. The use of Anakin's hand to foreshadow.
   
7. Lots of ships and things hearkening to how they'll look in the next movie. Though some of them not quite enough.
   
8. The shot of Owen & Beru & baby-Luke on Tatooine. That was nicely done.
   

Things I hated:

1. Natalie Portman was completely wasted.
   
2. Unnamed Jedi suck. If a Jedi has no name, you can kill him or her by sneezing hard in his or her direction.
   
3. Vader doesn't hunt down and murder the Jedi; mostly the clones do that. All Vader does is go kill a whole bunch of younglings, which isn't much like hunting.
   
4. The Yoda-Emperor fight. Ugh.
   
5. In fact, the fights in general. While cool, they were too fucking long. By the time it got to the Anakin/Obi-Wan fight, I was ready for it to be over, which is sad. It was a good fight.
   
6. Too much action. I guess this is an extension of too many fights, but seriously, a movie doesn't need to be non-stop like that.
   
7. The ending montage was really choppy. There was too much homage to the next movie and not enough actual stuff happening.
   
8. Crappy crappy dialogue in a lot of places. Padme's death.
   
9. Overuse of foreshadowing.
   
10. Overuse of old musical themes.
    
11. I saw Mon Mothma in the credits but missed her in the movie. I'm guessing she was sitting with Bail at the Senate but didn't have any appreciable role.
    
12. Jimmy Smits was wasted. Bail could've been interesting but was just a foil.
    
13. The skeleton of the Death Star. Clearly some amount of time had to pass to get to that point. But the scene just seemed kind of awkward to me.
    

Overall, it was an ok movie. I suspect it will be as basically forgettable as AotC was for me, though perhaps a few more bits will stand out in my memory as time passes. I don't agree with those who say it's worthy to sit next to the trilogy, it's not. Even Jedi is far better. But I don't hate it by any means.

It's made $85M in 2 days. It'll make more than AotC did, I'm sure.

Comments

[baronnocturna.livejournal.com]

I feel it was as good as Jedi in many ways (I never liked Jedi much and the special edition has done nothing to help that) but compared to ESB and to a lesser extent, ANH its not worthy. I stand by my original assertion: AotC and RotS should have been the only story, spannign 3 movies with TPM blown away. I think maybe then the movies would be better as I really think the thing that doomed this movie more than anything was the hectic pace.

I didn't have a major problem with the fight scenes. The only really protracted scene was Obi/Ani, with the Yoda/Emporer duel being mostly worthless. Compared to say, ANY of the matrix sequels, the fights were kept at a sane level. Also, compare most of the fight sequences to the saber duels in both ESB and RotJ and they are similar in length, they were just broken up by the other aspects of the story.

Overuse of foreshadowing is Lucas' middle name. EVERY Star Wars movie does it.

I had a MAJOR problem with the jedi death sequences. There was no hunting down, it was just betrayal, the end. The montage was lame.

Yeah, the unnamed jedi were as worthless as redshirts not named Scotty on Star Trek.

The musical themes I felt were the way they were due to the poor pace of the movie. Too difficult to introduce new themes for 1 minute long scenes.

Portman was wasted as was Smits and ALL side characters. MAJOR flaw in ALL the prequels. Mace Windu was as well, I felt his character was far too incongruent and inapporpriate. He had a bit too much dark side in him, but hey, its Samuel l...

Mon mothma's lack of inclusion didn't bother me. Not EVERYONE from the original trilogy should make an appearance.

The dialog. Again, with the exception of ESB, it was no different than any other Star Wars movie. ANH was riddled with attorcious dialog (as was the Christmas special) on the same scale as the prequels. ESB was less an offender and RotJ had some truly cringe worthy moments, but probably less than RotS.

I feel it is just as Star Warsy as the original trilogy, but it is also quite flawed. ANH was flawed (but less so), ESB was damn near perfect and RotJ was probably about as flawed (e.g. EVERYTHING regarding ewoks, Salacious Crumb, Admiral Akbar, etc...) In fact, RotJs only REAL redeeming moments were the space battle (except Akbar), Tattooine, scenes with emporer, and the Dagobah scenes (sort of). The Endor stuff was utter crap. Much of the filler was mostly annoying. Anyway, I digress. RotS was FAR from perfect, anc doesn't redeem the prequel trilogy on its own, but was a solid watchable movie, with iffy dialog and some weak plot points, but grade A eye candy, and the truth is, that puts it RIGHT in line with the other Star Wars movie (ESB excepted).