Ladies and Gentlemen. Today is a day of marvelous significance. In 3 hours I will be staring my first final - Calculus 2, so I should do okay, I'm usually very good with mathematics. In one week from today, I will wake up in Austin for the first time in over a month, and begin my Summer vacations.
These both pale in comparison, however, next to my main reason for writing this. For those of you that do not know, two weeks from today, squeezed in what will most likely be a packed movie theater, I will view arguably the most anticipated movie of the decade: Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith. I think my head will explode. O_O!! Seriously, everything I've heard about this movie is that it is on several scales more awesome than the previous two installments.
WHAT FOLLOWS MAY SPOIL CERTAIN ELEMENTS THE MOVIE! CAREFUL!
The Clone Wars come to their own exciting end. Palpatine comes to his full Imperial power, and the Empire is formed. The Jedi are purged (and you know they aren't going down without a fight). And the big turn. Anakin Skywalker, great hope of the Jedi, falls to the Dark Side of the Force, is slain in combat with his Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and is reborn as the Dark Lord of the Sith that the Galaxy will learn to fear by the name of Darth Vader.
Also of note are the return of the greatest piece of William's Score in my opinion, the Imperial March. Seriously, very few other pieces of music so embody the pure coldness and steady march forward of evil that the March does. I can't help but listen to it without having visions of Star Destroyers floating in face, forming up on the mighty command ship Executor. Also, the fact that this movie is much darker than the previous two. I've read reports that Anakin is seen slaying the Jedi students (remember the class Yoda was teaching in AotC?) I thought it would be enough to show him walk into a room in the temple, and have the door close, and just have screams heard from outside, but never actually see anything. It sounds, though, that Lucas is actually SHOWING the slaughter... Very dark, and I guess it helps explain the PG-13 rating.
END SPOILERS!
I really think that this movie will be better than the previous two, particularly because its any entirely story driven, and very focused, or so it seems. The first two had a general frame work to work on - they need to discover Anakin, he needs to fall in love, and the Clone Wars need to start. And they accomplished that, but really, they could have done all that in about an hour, and it would have just been a bunch of boring historical data basically. They way they made them, the stories of the movies just seem tacked on to the frame. But this one seems genuinely full of stuff happening, and so it won't have the pacing issues of the previous two.
To be fair, I didn't HATE the first two. I have both of them on video (TPM on VHS, AotC on DVD). They are genuinely good Science fiction movies, if only B movies. In Phantom, I enjoyed watching the Pod Race scene, the final semi-epic battle between the Gungans and the Droid Army (Jar-Jar may be annoying, but the rest of them are pretty cool), and the saber fight between Darth Maul, Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon. However, I cringed when Anakin asked Padme` "Are you an angel?" In Attack, I enjoyed seeing Yoda go nuts, the starting battle of the Clone Wars, and Obi-Wan's duel with Jango Fett. I didn't like seeing Anakin and Padme` spending however long it was flirting with each other. Do you notice a pattern here? The love scenes in both movies were so stilted, and forced, and just plain badly acted. (I also take issue with the inclusion of a history of Boba Fett, but that's more of an irrational "OMG BOBA FETT IS COOL BECAUSE HE HAS NO HISTORY" type thing.)
Oh my God this thing seriously has me freaking and geeking out about it. Really, if there's one thing I dislike about the Prequel trilogy, its gotta be the overt focus on the Jedi. I mean, yes, the Jedi are cool and all, bad ass, really, but they're sort of hard to aspire to be. I mean, they're an inherited, almost elitist aristocracy. You get Force powers from your father or mother (or, the Force itself, if you're a divine conception), and so while you do need some training and work, and a Jedi's life is far from easy, its not possible to EARN Force Powers, you either have them or you don't. Where's the fun in that?
Where are the swashbuckling, flying by the seat of your pants heroes? The charming and skilled Han Solo figure? Here's a guy who is a REAL hero. He starts of in ANH as a hard luck mercenary. He's got a price on his head, so he's on the run with just his best friend, his ship, and whatever contracts he can land. His ship is a piece of junk by all accounts, but he's made it into the fastest hunk of junk in the Galaxy through hard work and skill. He's brave, he's honorable (he DID come back and help Luke at the first Death Star battle), and he doesn't have to rely on the Force for his success. By the end, he's a GENERAL, responsible in part for the Victory at the Battle of Endor.
Where's the regular warrior? Episode 1's battle scene had a few Gungans, but aside from Captain Tarpels (Jar-Jar's number two guy at the Battle of Naboo) I cannot remember a single figure in that battle who didn't have medichlorian filled blood. Oh, and maybe Padme` (a Queen!), and a then maybe her head security officer, who I think is a local installation, because I don't remember him in the 2nd one. Speaking of Attack of the Clones, that one just makes it even worse. Go ahead, look at the final battle. Hell, look at ANY battle in that movie. Without fail, the good guys are either Jedi, or Padme` again, who is a Senator, not really a warrior. Everyone else, in EVERY occasion, is a CLONE! Not only are they wearing identical masks, so you can't tell them apart, UNDERNEATH they are just as uniform. Holy crap. Even battle droids have differing voices (I still get a little chuckle at the one in Episode I with a Brooklyn accent), but the clones all have Jango Fett's voice. Again I ask, where's the fun in that?
Who remembers Wedge Antilles? Remember the Battle of Yavin in Episode IV? Luke went into the trench with two wingmen, childhood friend Biggs Darklighter, and a guy named Wedge. Wedge took a hit and pulled out, while Biggs stayed and blew up. Remember the Battle of Hoth in Episode VI? When Luke's rear gunner, Dak, get fried in an explosion, its up to the snow speeder flown by Wedge, and his gunner Wes Janson, to trip up the AT-AT walkers that are marching on the Rebel Base. Remember the Battle of Endor? General Lando Calrissian flew the Millennium Falcon, and lead up Gold Squadron, but Red Squadron, the Rebellions X-Wing flight, was headed up by none other than Wedge Antilles, who fired shots at the reactor core. Here is the only man in the Rebel Alliance who gets to paint two Death Star silhouettes on the side of his ship. Not a medichlorian among him.
Anyway, I may have gotten a little off subject, but that just goes to show how much of a fan I am. I can go for hours on this stuff. Literally, I started writing this two hours ago. I only got an hour before Calc final, so I'd better wrap this up. So long, and may the Force be with you.
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2 comments:
I agree with you completely about the extensive focus on Jedi in the prequel trilogy. What made the originals good was the aspect of mystery that surrounded the Jedi. It was an ancient religion that most people didn't understand and almost no one practiced. Thus, there is really only one main Jedi hero, being Luke, and a few other important ones (Yoda and Obi-wan). Everyone else were normal people either part of a scattered Rebellion or of an organized Empire that thought too much of themselves (also known as the democrats and republicans). The normal people had almost no idea whatsoever that a Jedi was even involved in the whole war; only the main characters knew, everyone else seemed to think he was just a super good pilot.
Also, the exclusion of Han Solo (or a Han Solo type character) in the prequel trilogy has been my biggest complaint. The movies need a character with a cynical, sarcastic sense of humor who was a good guy but didn't really give a crap about it. He was funny. The problem with the new movies is that there are no funny characters, at least not with that style of humor. C-3P0 and R2-D2 always seemed like the comic relief of the movies (as well as the perspective for most of the orginal trilogy), and I suppose Jar-jar makes a similar equivalent to them, but none of them have the same style as Han Solo. Because he was the one who honestly didn't care.
Another thing I must criticize: medichlorions (or however its spelled). Bullshit. All the mystery of the Force just got slaughtered by an army of microorganisms. Now the Force is a boring thing in peoples' blood measured in quantity. That's what destroyed all of what was artistic in Star Wars, finally satisfying people more obsessed with big numbers and logical explanations instead of a story that's actually good.
Wo hast was ist gut weg zu?
u.u
"Everyone else were normal people either part of a scattered Rebellion or of an organized Empire that thought too much of themselves (also known as the democrats and republicans)."
Hardly. I'm not gonna go into it here, but yeah. No.
And on the Midi-Chlorians - I'm not even upset about them destroying the "mystery", I'm just upset about them making the force a blue blood country club. If you'd just watched the classic trilogy, you got (or at least I got) an impression of the force that everyone COULD use it, if they just practiced and believed and all. The only thing stopping Chewbacca, say, from becoming a Jedi was his own temperment, and just plain the fact that he didn't really wanna. But the idea was that anyone could become a Jedi if they were willing to put in enough work on it. But no, it turns out you gotta be born into it. X_X What a Pisser.
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