> netslackers <

Abuse the Force, George.
-- Thursday, May 19, 2005 --

And then but did Abby and her faithful dozen, including he that should be called KC, though KC beith not his name, but that abbreviation to which he doth partake, and that shortening to KC seemeth pleasing, for it is said that KC is that which he should be called, did do perilous journey nigh into Rockville, where, through means swift and divergent, yet though involving three hours standing in line, did they look upon that which he who is George Lucas deem fit to call Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. But in the first hour or so did it be as Star Wars II: Attack of the Bad Puns, but then, even as he who is called Anakin Skywalker but whom we know secretly to be nought but Hayden Christensen in a robe of amusing semblence develop unnatural colored contact lenses and begin to lay waste about him with his saber of strangley solid and apparently sharp light, did we in the audience feel fit to say, lo, this movie doth not suck.

So, as you may have gathered by the above (or not gathered and just read with ever increasing confusion and bewilderment, which is almost the same thing as gathered, except entirely the opposite), I, along with several others, including KC (that which it is he is to be called), went to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith last night (slash this morning...whatever). And it surprised us all by not sucking. Well, sort of. The first half sucked as most of the prequels do, and for awhile there was a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. But then they brought in some neat special effects and it got better. It is not cooincidental, I think, that the good-o-meter of this movie rises in an inverse relationship to the amount of time people spend talking.

So, since the movie itself is pretty neatly divided into a good half and a bad half (or, as I like to refer to them, the dark side and the light side, because I'm incorrigibly clever like that), I feel like I can legimitately present my opinions in equally black-and-white (slash light and dark) wording. Thus, The Top 10 Things to Like About Star Wars III and the Top 10 Things to Hate About It. I may run out of things to talk about before I reach ten in either category, but life is empty without a little risk. Also, many of my opinions are probably much less evenly categorized into the good/bad columns then they'll appear here. So you'll never know if what I'm saying is actually what I think or just a cunning ruse to fill out 10 bullet points. This, folks is life on the edge. Finally, there are likely to be spoilers. Probably of the variety of "Anakin goes evil!" type, but since I haven't written the list yet, I can't be sure. Obviously, I'll be far too lazy at the end of it all to go back and edit this to let you know how specific I get. But that's the way it goes. So, either go cry about it, or read on. Or just, I dunno, walk away and eat lunch, that's also a viable option. I'd do it.

Top 10 Things to Like About Star Wars III

10. No speaking lines for Jar Jar Binks (+50 billion pts.)
I feel like there is no need to further clarify why this is a good thing. If you don't understand, then you probably don't deserve to live.

9. Hayden Christensen does his best to be hot. I salute the effort, if not the overwhelming success. He manages to prance around without a shirt for a good few minutes, which is far superior to the prancing around without a shirt Amidala does for large portions of Star Wars II: Attack of the Underaged Naked Girl. The Force also rejoiced with the loss of both his and Obi-Wan's rattail. For though this takes place long, long ago, 90s hairdos are still not allowed to be in style. It's not Hayden's fault that he just doesn't look good with burns covering 90 percent of his body. It's a tough condition for any modeling job.

8. George Lucas seems to finally recognize that he is sublimely ridiculous. I don't know what it is about this film, but it felt like a lot of the corniness and horribleness of the opening was self-referential, like Lucas actually knew that people would laugh at how utterly stupid so much of what happens is, and he may as well ham it up. Attack of the Suckiness is just as bad, but it seems so much more sincere, which makes it even more painful.

7. Nobody's skin, at any point in the preceedings, is compared to sand. That this is a step up is a sign of just how low my standards have been set.

6. Ewan McGregor. What can I say, rattail or not, the man is a beast. He also does a mean Alec Guiness impersonation.

5. George Lucas scrambling around trying to tie up ends of the plot so that they make sense in the next three films is hilarious. My favorite example is the bit at the end where Yoda takes Obi Wan aside and is like, "By the way, Qui Jon figured out a way to come back from the dead. Let me show you how." You never even see anyone actually do it. It's like George Lucas wrote the entire script, shot the entire movie, and then realized, "Shit, I have no way of explaining how characters keep developing nifty blue bodies in the next trilogy. Uhh...insert random snippet of dialogue! No time to make it fit in with rest of the scene! No more budget left for special effects! Just film it, damnit, they'll buy it." On a scale of one to subtle, this is not one of the bits that registers.
Sidenote: For an alternate explanation of the cool blue body phenomenon, try this.

4. Some parts of the movie (much of what happens after Anakin's official conversion to Evil) are genuinely good, not just amusingly-bad good. Some are actually moving. I won't get more specific, even though it probably wouldn't matter if I did, because you should know this stuff, but sometimes I have these impulses to be a good person. They are quickly quashed, but there nonetheless.

3. Light sabers. Pretty. When used in battle, much resembling of rave lights, except for the bit where they slash people in half. I've never had a rave light do that to me. The point is, lightsaber battles are fun, and this film has them in spades. Like I said before, most of the last half of the film is fighting, largely without dialogue, and you can bet that George Lucas was probably least involved with the fight choreography above everything else, and that pretty much means that the movie gets better, cause Lucas is often somewhat of a dumbass.

2. My personal favorite line: "I sense a plot against the Jedi Council in the Force." This is great. It cracked me up for a good ten minutes. Nobody ever senses something this specific in the Force. Ever. Alderan was completely destroyed, and all Obi Wan got was a twinge. You sense great darkness in the Force. You sense a disturbance in the Force. You do not sense any kind of direct idea of the plot in the Force. It's like sensing that your spinach puffs are burning in the oven in the Force. Doesn't happpen.

1. At one point, Obi Wan calls George Bush a Sith Lord. That basically makes the entire movie worth it for me. I really want to hear the White House response: "We understand that George Bush has never, to our knowledge, used his fear and anger to channel the forces of Darkness and strangle White House aides with his powers. We command George Lucas to either provide substantive evidence of the existence of his fictional 'Darth Dubya,' or completely withdraw all allegations."

As a sidenote, meaning I've run out of bullet points, and top eleven or twelve lists just aren't done, Yoda can be quite funny. He is also never, at any point in the movie, involved in a disturbing sexual relationship with Mace. The film's complete lack of kinky puppet sex is definitely +infinity points.

And on we go to

Top 10 Things to Hate About Star Wars III

10. Jar Jar Binks. Silent, but still there, in an alarming extreme close-up. I feel like this is Lucas standing sulkily on the sidelines being like, "Well I like him." Wrong again, George. Wrong again. Doubleplus ungood. Minus 80 trillion points.

9. Some people in this movie have been known to be good in other movies. Others have been known to suck in other movies. Still others just haven't been in other movies, so it's hard to say. Whatever their resume, many people try to act. Few of them succeed. They should stop it and get to the fighting, already.

8. Once again, we are repeatedly and painfully bludgeoned over the head with the fact that Lucas cannot write dialogue to save his life or the lives of any small woodland creatures under his protection. Many of the scenes are nought but people going, "I love you more." "No, I love you more." "No, I love you infinity." "Damn, you got me." Actually, the dialogue in the original trilogy is equally sucky (well, not equally. No one in the original trilogy is compared to sand, either). I hesitate to say that Mark Hamil may just be a better actor than people in these films, because that's probably a lie, but at least he's more sincere sounding. Hayden Christensen, not so much. Sweetie, let your evilly colored contact lenses do your acting for you and shut up. We'll all be better for it.

7. On a similar note, Lucas is a bad director (you may have gathered this from previous comments). He has no sense of pacing within a scene or within the movie as a whole. Many scenes just end at what feels like a random moment- nothing has been resolved, there is probably more dialogue to be said, aaahhhh, incoming wipe transition, run away, run away! He also can't milk a moment. You sort of get the idea that he knows when one is there, he just doesn't know what to do with it, like men and spatulas (actually, that doesn't make any sense, but spatula is a funny word). For example, the first time we hear the Darth Vader breath is a Moment. It should last longer than five seconds. We should at least hear two or three deep breaths in silence before being whisked away to something less interesting.

6. Scenes with no purpose. This movie is already 2.5 hours long. Cut them. Especially if they involve Queen Hairdo and the Man-shaped Angst Machine. Then not only cut them, but burn the original prints.

5. I like the lightsaber battles. They are cool. But they all look alike. Everybody has the same fighting style, and while they are all equally nice to look at, they don't develop anything new as the movie goes on. One in particular is also filmed in such extreme close up that all you get is a lot of whirling lights. Many epileptics died to bring you this film.

4. R2D2: Battle bot. What the fuck. When did R2D2 develop rocket boosters? Did he just not feel like using them in episodes four through six? I feel like the transformers music should have been playing the background.
On that note, Lucas is just a little too excited about some of his nifty computerized abilities. This shows up a lot in the lightsaber battles as well, in that there seems to have been a great decline in lightsaber skills somewhere in between episodes 3 and 4. Obi Wan got old, maybe Darth's evil cape hampers his mobility, but Luke is just not impressive compared to the most meager of Jedi in the prequels. They're massacreing armies while he's having trouble with the wompa bats on Dagobah.
Also, many of the non-spaceship special effects are just terrible. Any time people get cg stunt doubles, it's like a big neon sign flashes in the corner of the screen going, "Press x to jump, o to fire your blaster, and triple triangle up down sideways to beat the boss at the end of level five."

3. Amidala used to have purpose. It wasn't all that interesting, but she did stuff. She was a senator. She senitized. Here, she does nothing. Nothing. She is totally lame and useless. She hangs around her apartment. She wears funny hairdos. At one point, she doesn't wear nearly enough clothing, despite being pregnant. Mostly she cries a lot. Yay Natalie Portman. You can cry on cue. Good for you. Out of my movie.

2. Characters are overwhelmingly stupid. It's crucial to the plot, for whatever reason, that Anakin and Amidala's marriage be secret. Dunno why, but they seem to feel it's necessary. Why, then, are they obviously sharing an apartment in the city, making out on the balcony, and getting each other pregnant? (Ok, not each other, per se, but that would have definitely made for a more interesting movie.) And why does no one seem to notice that Amidala is pregnant? At one point, someone says, "We have to save the babies!" and this random senator looks over with this look of confusion and says "Babies?" like an obviously pregnant woman was not RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF HIM! What, did they think she'd been hitting the buffet line particuarly hard in the last few weeks?

1. Darth Vader's voice was not meant to be used to say things like, "Where is Padme? Is she alright?" It is meant to be used to say things like, "Die now" and "I find your lack of faith disturbing, general," followed by the imminent strangling of a displeasing underling. It is not to be abused by having him cry out "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" in pain, because it will not sound heartrending, it will sound stupid. And it does. Lord, but it does.

Once again out of bullet points. I feel like I should mention that George Lucas has a thing about dismembered hands, because EVERYONE at some point loses theirs. You win in Star Wars if you come through with your lightsaber arm intact. It's effective when it shows a disturbing parallel between Luke and Vader. It's ineffective when most of the Jedi nation is keeping the market in artificial limbs afloat.

Um. That is all.

> Abby 12:49 PM [111652749158345898]
>

Comments:

well done abby. well done. i realized suddenly that i made many of the exact same comments to my friend online last night before i read this. of course they weren't quite as well put.

suggestion for next time: break it into two posts. people are too fucking lazy to read a three-thousand page post.

# posted by  KC : May 28, 2005 at 1:35 PM

 

Well done on a nice blog Blogger. I was searching for information on theatrical contact lenses and came across your post Abuse the Force, George. - not quite what I was looking for related to theatrical contact lenses but very interesting all the same!

We're all getting ready for Christmas and it will soon be another year. I hope to be completing my studies in opthalmology in 2006 which includes a thesis on upcoming contact lens technology and improved eye health. I'm also planning to take a course on the excima laser, which should be fun.

If you do have a moment, please take a look at my new site on: Contact Lens Reviews .

A merry Christmas to you and yours! Amon

# posted by  Anonymous : January 6, 2006 at 4:54 AM

 

Shop at your favorite stores 24 hours a day. Why go to the mall when you can shop online and avoid the traffic

# posted by  Anonymous : January 10, 2006 at 7:20 AM

 

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