Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

saw the new Star Wars episode 3 today at the Archlight. oooooooh. how was it you ask of course? as a long time star wars fan and a lover of good movies, i'm leaning towards the middle. on the one hand, it's hard to deny the fact that George Lucas can't write a story and more importantly DIALOGUE worth his life. on the other hand, it's hard not to like a film like this because it's part of the reason why I'm probably even typing this at this point (meaning being a reviewer? no, just the idea of writing) so let's get my typical gripes out of the way first. okay the dialogue blew. it was terribly cheesy and generic, something that would make Harry Potter seem like an act of Shakespeare. fine. but most of the time you hungered for more expository. in fact, you required it since this was an epic. this is where a Peter Jackson holds a clear advantage since he had an establish piece of text to retrieve his dialogue that people love. this, however, wasn't as excusable. let's take some examples. the end part with Bail Organa suddenly declaring, "yeah my wife and i were thinking of adopting a baby..." WTF?!!?!?! that suddenly makes Organa seem impotent, huh? naturally, that coincides with how Princess Leia comes into Organa's possession, but that little line could've been done so much better for what it was worth. next the whole romance issue. the whole love affair from day one seemed like a pizza faced pair of teens' angst from puberty. this is a love story about loss. i didn't feel like people lost anything from this (except Lucas' mind). the ending part with Padame's sudden remonstration of Anakin "You're not the person I knew!" made a collective groan in the audience louder than a hundred oysters crying out in the universe at once. then Anakin's "You're either with me or against me" line probably made more people hurl than the entire love dialogue in the show put together. yes, we know that part of the movie is a parody of the American government. however, such a line makes things so painfully obvious that it certainly bespeaks an agenda. Contrast LOTR where the book was written a while back, yet can apply the same principles to our current government. Heck i found it hillarious when i found a bumper sticker that said, "Frodo failed; Bush has the ring!" never state the obvious. Both Legolas and Lucas fail here. Next let's talk about the visual groan factors. Jar Jar was there, yes (and unfortunately NOT slaughtered mercilessly to the billions of imploring Star Wars fans), but that's not the point. I'm talking the "cutesy" parts with androids making little noises resembling more of a chihuahua whimpering. These comedy moments were absolutely redundant and a waste of budget. This is a grim movie. We're going to see Anakin do his impression of the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four! We want to feel angst not this uplifted mood swing. Reminds me a bit of the Venoms movies where you had the comedic introduction of the Venoms gang to get you in the mood, then suddenly the entire group dying at the end. The difference between the two though is purely structural: the comedy routines of the Venoms was used to create a bond with the audience in making the characters more likeable. Here, the "adorable" androids simply generate resentment among fans. Next General Grievous. He's supposed to be like Darth Maul, a total badass. But he isn't. He's a TB infected cyborg of sorts. And he's completely useless. Complete time filler just like the entire podrace scene. Why devote the energy to a new villain? Yeah, he's like the Bin Ladens and Saddam Hussein's in that he's an asshole that irritates the hell out of you, but for no good reason. And then you end up hating him because you're told to. In my case, I'm completely apathetic. He's simple Jedi fodder. You already had several top villains with Christopher Lee reprising his role as Count Dooku, the Emperor and of course Anakin Skywalker. There needed to be more interaction with those three characters rather than a new merchandising piece. I mean, this is fucking Christopher Lee who got slaughtered in a few mere minutes. He went head-to-head against Yoda and survived! Too much potential lost for a CG character.... the whole Padme dying because she loses the will to live issue. eh????? i saw the South Park where Kyle does something similar as soon as Cartman wins a million bucks and buys up his own theme park. her dying slowly figuratively and literally felt like Kyle dying because of a hemroid on his ass. i'm sorry but there wasn't enough to convince me that Padme should die from a brokenheart. at this point i was more ready to accept her giving up because of a giant zit on her ass. padme's sudden lack of power. at one point she's queen. now she doesn't even have a voice except to whine and cry for no good reason. the whole bitching scene of her while Palpatine assumes power over the galaxy sucked. made her seem even weaker, compared with the same woman who challenged the entire Republic in episode 1. why didn't she suddenly get up and confront the Palpatine? that scene begged for her to do *SOMETHING*. okay, i think that's the majority of my bitching. now for the good stuff. scenery. lucas has always done an excellent job for putting the fantastic, in the most literal sense, on the big screen. there's no exception here with some high quality art devoted to the alien worlds of Star Wars. The war scenes are especially cool, but that comes along with the territory. The opening fight scene kicked ass. Scenes like that are what made people like myself Star Wars fans. of course, this time around Lucas had the budget the graphics to explicitly show what he once did through camera tricks from his earlier films. but here fans eagerly wanted to see those moments. Also, the wookie scene with the entire wookie populace going up in arms with the clone troopers totally brought up an enthusiastic cheer from my group. wookies kick ass! just for fun though they should've showed Chewbacca's family to see if people paid attention to the infamous Christas Special ;) Yoda. How can you not like this pop-culture icon? they totally made him look bad ass here. we got a taste of why he was called Jedi Master from episode 2. now we got an entire serving! i enjoyed how he challenges Palpatine directly and puts the old geezer over like Liger putting the Great Sasuke over in the Super J-Cup. that was an epic battle we wanted to see. And to see Palpatine not being this frail old man, but a vicious SOB. sure we knew he could he could lightning bolt a Jedi to the moon but his vigor here was a lot better. he made Samuel L Jackson his personal bitch, gangsta style. but forget those powers. his real power was in his resonance. i'm with the majority in how his character was the best of the group in its definition. classic archtype of the manipulator. some say that Anakin's turn was too quick, but one could argue that Palpatine, in understanding the ways of the Jedi, could be using Sith Mindtricks to be handling Anakin (although he never waves his hand ). Even the dreams in Anakin's head could be said to be implantations by the emperor himself to aggrandize the insecurity Anakin has over his fate. finally we have the climatic battle that many people for over three decades have been waiting to witness. the infamous toss Darth into the lava scene. this is a hard one to discuss because from a technical perspective, this is a great fight scene. probably the best lightsaber fight scene next to Yoda vs Count Dooku. however, i felt that an incredible amount of dialogue should've been embedded in the scene. instead, it felt like a Venoms movie in that both sides, particularly Anakin, lacked any vindication in his moves. you could feel Anakin's anger in his aggressiveness, but you wanted to see him vocally becoming arrogant and belittling Obi-Wan. The portions between Luke-Vader and Obi-Vader in 4-6 had decent dialogue that setup the motivations for their actions well, without delving into the technical elaborations of the lightsaber duel. like Luke going after Vader when Vader declares he'd attempt to go after Leia, that's a simple yet effective tool. Here the setup was "you're either with me or against me" along with Padme being unconscious. In Empire, Vader kept goading Luke which caused his ire to rise, ultimately leading to a fateful error that cost Luke his hand. Here there's no goading. Okay, enough ranting here. I'll follow up with a "how would I have fixed things?" type of post.