Damning with faint praise...
Getting away from the sordid mess Canadian politics has become, lets talk about the latest Toy commercial from Lucasfilm...er, I mean the latest film in the Star Wars franchise - Revenge of the Sith.
What can I say - since I had rated the previous two films as among the worst in cinematic history, my expectations were not high for the latest release. Going in with such non-lofty expectations certainly helped...and I found the film to be....OK (thats as good as I can give it.) - the bad dialogue and wooden acting (Treebeard from LOTR gives a better 'performance' than most of the actors in this film) can only partially be covered up by the glitzy digital special effects, and wham-bam action sequences.
All in all, I was able to shut down my critical faculties for a couple of hours and enjoy the film for what it was - but now I find a few things seem to be nagging me:
- Medical science has taken great leaps "a long time ago, in galaxy far away", such that a man who has been dismembered and covered in boiling lava can be saved, but handling childbirth? seems have the good robot doc stumped .
- Darth's "seduction" to the Dark side seems to be less of a seduction and more of a hoodwinking by a master con-artist...
- The Dark side seems to consist of getting a bad skin condition and the ability to shoot some cheesy blue lightening...um, so why is it so "seductive"??
- I know that George Lucas is aiming the film at the kids who buy all the toys (or more accurately cause the toys to be bought) but come on...does that mean that he has to write at a 4th grade level? I can partially understand the wooden acting based on the dialogue the actors are forced to recite - and lets face it, the fact is that Lucas is far more enamoured of creating incredible digital landscape etc. than working with actual actors - they are like props he is forced to work with.
- Darth Vader calling out "Noooooo" has to be among the cheeziest moments ever in film...
- The opening space battle was impressive looking...but left me bored since I had no clue who was who, who was shooting at who, or why I should care about any of it...
- Why on earth did Lucas have to try and tie things together so much and have all these characters from the first Star Wars films make appearences in the Prequels...I know this was supposed to give the Star Wars geeks a little thrill (omigod...look its a young Chewbacca!!)...but jesus, I found it annoying.
And amazingly, all that being said, I still thought that this movie was better than the first two...but maybe that was Lucas' real genius...making the first two movies so bad that we couldn't help but give the third a passing grade...
Hmmmmmm....
What can I say - since I had rated the previous two films as among the worst in cinematic history, my expectations were not high for the latest release. Going in with such non-lofty expectations certainly helped...and I found the film to be....OK (thats as good as I can give it.) - the bad dialogue and wooden acting (Treebeard from LOTR gives a better 'performance' than most of the actors in this film) can only partially be covered up by the glitzy digital special effects, and wham-bam action sequences.
All in all, I was able to shut down my critical faculties for a couple of hours and enjoy the film for what it was - but now I find a few things seem to be nagging me:
- Medical science has taken great leaps "a long time ago, in galaxy far away", such that a man who has been dismembered and covered in boiling lava can be saved, but handling childbirth? seems have the good robot doc stumped .
- Darth's "seduction" to the Dark side seems to be less of a seduction and more of a hoodwinking by a master con-artist...
- The Dark side seems to consist of getting a bad skin condition and the ability to shoot some cheesy blue lightening...um, so why is it so "seductive"??
- I know that George Lucas is aiming the film at the kids who buy all the toys (or more accurately cause the toys to be bought) but come on...does that mean that he has to write at a 4th grade level? I can partially understand the wooden acting based on the dialogue the actors are forced to recite - and lets face it, the fact is that Lucas is far more enamoured of creating incredible digital landscape etc. than working with actual actors - they are like props he is forced to work with.
- Darth Vader calling out "Noooooo" has to be among the cheeziest moments ever in film...
- The opening space battle was impressive looking...but left me bored since I had no clue who was who, who was shooting at who, or why I should care about any of it...
- Why on earth did Lucas have to try and tie things together so much and have all these characters from the first Star Wars films make appearences in the Prequels...I know this was supposed to give the Star Wars geeks a little thrill (omigod...look its a young Chewbacca!!)...but jesus, I found it annoying.
And amazingly, all that being said, I still thought that this movie was better than the first two...but maybe that was Lucas' real genius...making the first two movies so bad that we couldn't help but give the third a passing grade...
Hmmmmmm....
posted by Steve at
1:02 PM
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