STAR WARS EPISODE 3
It totally wasn’t as bad as I expected! I watched it in the privacy of my living room, mind you, so I could tune out the horrible talking bits while folding my laundry.
Good:
- Ian McDiarmand is excellent as Palpatine/Sidious.
- Light sabre battles, light sabre battles, and then a few more light sabre battles.
- Um, special effects? Although Episode 3 fails spectacularly in every dramatic or human element, it makes a damn fine Universal Studios-style movie-ride.
- Darth Vader shaking his fist at the sky and screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” (I originally put this in the “Ungood” column, but I’ve decided that this is actually super wicked awesome!)
- The very very end, after the credits, when we see Captain Kirk sit up in bed and say to Spock, who is dozing peacefully next to him, “I just had the strangest dream…”.
Ungood:
- Any time at which anybody talks to anybody else, for any reason.
- Droids making cutesy “Uh-oh” noises.
- Video game clichés. The action scenes play out with video-game logic instead of movie logic. The worst example of this is the final scene in which Anakin and Obiwan are battling while jumping on floating platforms in a river of lava. If there’s a more ubiquitous and shopworn video game cliché, I’d like to hear it. Episode 2 was bad for this (and many other reasons) as well, what with Anakin’s race through the gauntlet of hydraulic presses. The action scripting throughout clearly influenced more by Super Mario Brothers and Quake than by adventure serials or Seven Samurai, which get so much lip service from Lucas and his blowjob brigade. The movie as a whole feels organized into video-game action, on the one hand, and cut-scenes, which fill us in on the story to move the action along the next level. The acting is on par with most video-game cut-scenes, and it’s no accident that most games allow you to skip them.
- Obiwan not delivering the coup-de-grace to his student, who lies screaming, dismembered and on fire. Instead, he berates him for being a bad friend and then leaves. What an asshole. I’m sure he’d walk over and give you a big hug if he had any arms or legs or skin, you fucking baby. Obiwan is overall the most grating and unsympathetic character in the whole movie, which is really saying something.