Episode 3: A Longer, Spoiler Free Review
On the way home last night I explained to my wife that I didn’t think there were any spoilers to this movie. We all knew how it was going to end, who was going to live, who was going to die. We were pretty much along for Mr. Lucas’ Wild Ride. But there were some things that I considered borderline spoilers, so I am going to avoid covering them in this post (look for a later post on those topics).
In short, this movie was much better than either Episode 1 or Episode 2. It is the only of the prequel movies that you could even consider comparing the original trilogy. I think one of the main reasons for this, is that this is a very adult movie. Episode 1 was a kids movie. Yeah, Anakin is a kid in that movie, but the whole thing feels a little too squeaky clean. Episode 3 is dark. Right out of the gates in the first battle scene, you get to see some pilots die, including the body of a pilot floating in space. Pretty harsh reality that Mr. Lucas has (for the most part) avoided in his other movies.
But you have to expect this movie to be dark. In pre-release interview, Lucas even admits this is the darkest of the Star Wars movies that he has made. You know at the end of the movie there are no Jedi left, except Ben and Yoda. They make that clear at the beginning of Episode 4. So you are expecting a lot of people to die, and you will not be disappointed. This is probably not a movie to take your kids to, unless you screen it first and know when to cover their eyes (like the Darth Vader transformation scene, etc.)
The movie was full of a lot of good things. Yoda is one bad dude that I wouldn’t want to mess with. He appears pretty arrogant in the film, which I think leads to his eventual defeat (arrogance leads to the dark side, hmmm?). But he still has the best lines and the best moves. I also had mixed feelings on Yoda being used as comic relief. He’s a pretty serious dude and I thought his comic relief position hurt his bad-ass-ness. But he still got many rounds of applause in the theater when he went into total bad-ass mode.
I also thought that Mr. Lucas did an excellent job with the story. As I mentioned before, we knew both the beginning and the end, so it was up to Mr. Lucas to make the trip believable and interesting, and I think he achieved both goals. Even though I was pretty tired at the midnight showing, I had no problems staying awake. There was plenty of action and it moved along at a nice place.
Now for the bad stuff. I think Natalie Portman was largely under-utilized in this movie. Appearing in Episode 1 really put some punch into her career and made her a household name. Due to this, she has had the luxury of picking and choosing her roles. And she likes to choose meaty roles that really allow her to show off her range as an actor. But her job in Episode 3 was basically eye-candy. This was a boys movie (all the main characters were men), so she was reduced to standing around, looking slightly pregnant, and saying things like “It will be alright, Anakin”. A waste of the fine Ms. Portman’s talent, but also part of the price she had to pay to get into the franchise that made her a household name.
Somebody needs to get Mr. Lucas a dialogue writer, or maybe just a clue. There were at least 3 times when the dialogue coming out of some characters mouth was not needed. People who come to see Star Wars aren’t idiots and don’t need their hands held to make sure they understand things. Let people figure things out, give them a chance.
This is my paragraph dedicated to ultimate FanBoy nits. First, you don’t land capital ships (think Star Destroyers) in an atmosphere. Even Star Trek got that right, you build them in space. It is more efficient than wasting all that energy leaving the atmosphere, and since there is no gravity up there, you can be more flexible in your design. Margaret pointed out to me some time line issues. We figure it is at least 15 years between 3 and 4 (judging on Luke’s age, it could possibly be more). Ben must really age in those years. And I don’t think they had an early completion bonus with their general contractor on the Death Star, as it looked structurally complete in 3, but doesn’t come on-line for 15 more years? Or as Dave pointed out to me, that the Wookies don’t get burnt up as Yoda’s ship takes off no more than 15 feet away?
Ok, that’s enough geeking out for now… Back to the regularly schedule review.
The end of this movie is not very uplifting at all. Remember that Episode 4 is titled “A New Hope”. They don’t have much hope at all at the end of Episode 3. Just a little bit of a downer.
To summarize, it doesn’t matter if you forgot to see Episode 1 and 2, as long as you have seen Episode 4 (The original Star Wars), you will enjoy Episode 3.
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