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May. 20th, 2005 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickRight. I went and saw The Movie Thursday night. This resulted in me being fashed all day at work today. I was still productive, but tired as all hell.
I'm not entirely sure going to the movie was worth me being tired all day at work today. To be fair, SW: RotS did not suck as much as the first two new ones. It sucked less than that. It was reasonably watchable, if a bit slow in parts.
I wonder, sometimes, if my problem with these movies is that I'm looking at them with adult eyes. (I was seven in 1977, when Star Wars came out. I was 10 for Empire and I was 13 for Return of the Jedi, for the less-geeky audience members among us.) I haven't particularly watched them again since about 1983, so my memories of what they WERE like may well have faded. Also, what I would have approved of, then, as moral clarity would, these days, strike me as annoyingly simplistic.
*sigh*
Couple of bitchy things, here. First off, space ships in flight should not make wooshing noises in the absence of atmosphere. They shouldn't. And better than two-thirds of the audience for these damn movies already knows that, so what was with the wooshing noises?
Second, there was absolutely no chemistry between Padme and Anakin. If he's motivated to the dark side by his love for her and his fear of losing her due to premonitionary dreams, then he should at least look like he's hot for her. He didn't. At all. Damn it. It's not like she's any better towards him, though she does a pretty nice job with being all breeding and maternal-ish, which is the material she's given. (You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.)
Third, you'd think that one man's slide into near-irrevocable darkness and evil would be, y'know, interesting. It wasn't all that. The dark side seemed a hell of a lot more alluring when I was a kid. Vader was the cool one in the damn movies. He was cooler than everybody else except possibly for Han Solo. (Han kicked serious ass and he SHOT FIRST, not that I'm pissed about revisionist Star Wars efforts or anything. And Yoda was cool. Yoda is still cool, for all that he's animated instead of being a puppet nowadays. Dagoba (the planet) was also very cool. And Boba Fett. He was cool. But Luke was so freaking callow (though I've got to say, he comes by it honest...) and Leia was so righteous and goody-goody (she comes by it honest, too) and I didn't like either of them very damn much. Darth Vader was appealing. He was a good character and he had class. He also got really rock-solid theme music, a cape (despite the advice of fashion designers for super heros, I rather like capes), and highly-quotable lines. The only way I can get from Anakin to Darth Vader is the (reasonable) assumption that being evil somehow makes people cooler.
Fourth, my first question to someone who was always telling me about Sith Lords would certainly be "How come you know so damn much about Sith Lords, Chancellor Palpatine?" It takes Anakin quite a while to get around to asking that question... which would be fine, if all that were interesting. However, since it's about as exciting as watching paint dry, I was wishing he'd hurry up about it.
Fifth, pre and post- Dark Side, Anakin gets a fair number of object lessons on the sort of man that Palpatine actually is. Anakin appears to be oblivious to these hyar object lessons and he doesn't ask any complicated questions of anyone. (Mostly he sulks and is petulant. It's not a very good look for him.) If I'd been sent to kill the leaders of the seperatists and thus End The War and when I got there, they were all like But Chancellor Palpatine told us..., I'd probably take the time to hear what they claimed Palpatine said to them. Palpatine was not supposed to be talking to those people because diplomacy had broken down and there was a war on. Why the hell would they claim they'd been talking to Palpatine? Did they have recordings? These would be questions I would ask. After all, I could always, y'know, kill the unarmed, soft bureaucratic types AFTER I'd learned how Palpatine would likely try to betray me. If you're playing for Team Evil, information on your enemies is a good thing but information on your allies is even better.
Our man Palpatine has better intelligence than anyone else in the movie. This is why he gets to be Emperor. (And he's cool. And scary, mostly. He's an effective villian.)
On the plus side, I liked most of the light saber fights. I liked the lava planet where Obi and Anakin fight. That whole thing was pretty cool, though I did want to yell at the screen that perhaps they should find somewhere safer to try to kill each other. It just looked dangerous. And hot. And surprisingly free of horrific fumes, too.
There were absolutely no annoying or racist alien creatures. YAY!!
There is a reasonably effective shot of Anakin going back to the Jedi temple and being approached by young children Jedi. I liked that one. The whole betrayal and slaughter of Jedi types was actually quite nicely done.
Padme's outfits and hairdos were substantially less complex than in movie #2. This was an improvement worth mentioning. However, despite the simpler attire, it takes the better part of the movie for anyone besides us and Anakin to notice that she's knocked up.
The end of the film intercuts the birth of the twins with the rebirth of Anakin as Vader. This, for Lucas, was astonishingly subtle. I thought it a bit heavy-handed, but at least there weren't big flashing neon signs letting us know that, y'know, blood and pain and new life are happening here, for good and for evil. The end of Matrix 3 was worse on heavy-handed symbolism, so I guess this was okay.
They did tie up some loose narrative ends (the one running through my mind: "Why wouldn't the droids remember all of this that they'd been through?") and some of the stuff in the earlier movies probably makes more sense now if I had the heart to go back and watch them... I'm about half afraid to because I don't know that they'll measure up to what I remember.
I'm not entirely sure going to the movie was worth me being tired all day at work today. To be fair, SW: RotS did not suck as much as the first two new ones. It sucked less than that. It was reasonably watchable, if a bit slow in parts.
I wonder, sometimes, if my problem with these movies is that I'm looking at them with adult eyes. (I was seven in 1977, when Star Wars came out. I was 10 for Empire and I was 13 for Return of the Jedi, for the less-geeky audience members among us.) I haven't particularly watched them again since about 1983, so my memories of what they WERE like may well have faded. Also, what I would have approved of, then, as moral clarity would, these days, strike me as annoyingly simplistic.
*sigh*
Couple of bitchy things, here. First off, space ships in flight should not make wooshing noises in the absence of atmosphere. They shouldn't. And better than two-thirds of the audience for these damn movies already knows that, so what was with the wooshing noises?
Second, there was absolutely no chemistry between Padme and Anakin. If he's motivated to the dark side by his love for her and his fear of losing her due to premonitionary dreams, then he should at least look like he's hot for her. He didn't. At all. Damn it. It's not like she's any better towards him, though she does a pretty nice job with being all breeding and maternal-ish, which is the material she's given. (You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.)
Third, you'd think that one man's slide into near-irrevocable darkness and evil would be, y'know, interesting. It wasn't all that. The dark side seemed a hell of a lot more alluring when I was a kid. Vader was the cool one in the damn movies. He was cooler than everybody else except possibly for Han Solo. (Han kicked serious ass and he SHOT FIRST, not that I'm pissed about revisionist Star Wars efforts or anything. And Yoda was cool. Yoda is still cool, for all that he's animated instead of being a puppet nowadays. Dagoba (the planet) was also very cool. And Boba Fett. He was cool. But Luke was so freaking callow (though I've got to say, he comes by it honest...) and Leia was so righteous and goody-goody (she comes by it honest, too) and I didn't like either of them very damn much. Darth Vader was appealing. He was a good character and he had class. He also got really rock-solid theme music, a cape (despite the advice of fashion designers for super heros, I rather like capes), and highly-quotable lines. The only way I can get from Anakin to Darth Vader is the (reasonable) assumption that being evil somehow makes people cooler.
Fourth, my first question to someone who was always telling me about Sith Lords would certainly be "How come you know so damn much about Sith Lords, Chancellor Palpatine?" It takes Anakin quite a while to get around to asking that question... which would be fine, if all that were interesting. However, since it's about as exciting as watching paint dry, I was wishing he'd hurry up about it.
Fifth, pre and post- Dark Side, Anakin gets a fair number of object lessons on the sort of man that Palpatine actually is. Anakin appears to be oblivious to these hyar object lessons and he doesn't ask any complicated questions of anyone. (Mostly he sulks and is petulant. It's not a very good look for him.) If I'd been sent to kill the leaders of the seperatists and thus End The War and when I got there, they were all like But Chancellor Palpatine told us..., I'd probably take the time to hear what they claimed Palpatine said to them. Palpatine was not supposed to be talking to those people because diplomacy had broken down and there was a war on. Why the hell would they claim they'd been talking to Palpatine? Did they have recordings? These would be questions I would ask. After all, I could always, y'know, kill the unarmed, soft bureaucratic types AFTER I'd learned how Palpatine would likely try to betray me. If you're playing for Team Evil, information on your enemies is a good thing but information on your allies is even better.
Our man Palpatine has better intelligence than anyone else in the movie. This is why he gets to be Emperor. (And he's cool. And scary, mostly. He's an effective villian.)
On the plus side, I liked most of the light saber fights. I liked the lava planet where Obi and Anakin fight. That whole thing was pretty cool, though I did want to yell at the screen that perhaps they should find somewhere safer to try to kill each other. It just looked dangerous. And hot. And surprisingly free of horrific fumes, too.
There were absolutely no annoying or racist alien creatures. YAY!!
There is a reasonably effective shot of Anakin going back to the Jedi temple and being approached by young children Jedi. I liked that one. The whole betrayal and slaughter of Jedi types was actually quite nicely done.
Padme's outfits and hairdos were substantially less complex than in movie #2. This was an improvement worth mentioning. However, despite the simpler attire, it takes the better part of the movie for anyone besides us and Anakin to notice that she's knocked up.
The end of the film intercuts the birth of the twins with the rebirth of Anakin as Vader. This, for Lucas, was astonishingly subtle. I thought it a bit heavy-handed, but at least there weren't big flashing neon signs letting us know that, y'know, blood and pain and new life are happening here, for good and for evil. The end of Matrix 3 was worse on heavy-handed symbolism, so I guess this was okay.
They did tie up some loose narrative ends (the one running through my mind: "Why wouldn't the droids remember all of this that they'd been through?") and some of the stuff in the earlier movies probably makes more sense now if I had the heart to go back and watch them... I'm about half afraid to because I don't know that they'll measure up to what I remember.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-21 01:36 pm (UTC)I'm also upset that the Wookie planet was tropical. Maybe evolution works differently in a galaxy far, far away, but I kind of doubt it. Large tropical animals are fine. Large HAIRY tropical animals are not. But that's probably just me.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-23 01:05 pm (UTC)But then, I always thought that the Jedi ought to have been shown to be essentially corrupt, and that Dooku ought to have been an honest separatist who had nothing to do with the Sith. I'm clearly not on the same page as Lucas. Wonder what the script looked like before they brought in Tom Stoppard to provide some literary value?
Anakin slouches towards Gomorrah
Date: 2005-05-23 06:47 pm (UTC)0. The scene in the Cantina in the beg. of AotC, where he got all righteous with the shapeshifter before Jango Fett killed her.
1. Killing the sand people
2. Ignoring all the rules and getting married
3. Giving in to his pride and anger throughout Ep. 2 (he nearly came to blows with Obi Wan before the AotC fight with Dooku)
4. Killing Dooku
5. Whacking Windu's hand off, allowing him to be killed by the Emp.
The final steps weren't subtle, and they weren't all about outright evil stuff. It was about Anakin wanting to do things the easy, seductive way. He didn't have the patience or the self-restraint to wait for things to come to him. Killing off the kids was (1) evil but (2) also demonstrative of Anakin's "straight line" desire -- go do things the straight-forward, easy way. Absolutes, all black and white (as Obi Wan said in the climactic scene).
Obi Wan was twice the jedi Anakin would ever be, and it was all because he wasn't a head case, and Anakin was.
Re: Anakin slouches towards Gomorrah
Date: 2005-05-23 11:11 pm (UTC)Re-writing Star Wars ROTS
Date: 2005-05-23 09:58 pm (UTC)I am still looking forward to seeing it though.
And since we all know what happens in the end anyway, there's no point in avoiding spoilers.
Cousin Sue
no subject
Date: 2005-05-23 10:12 pm (UTC)No, it was the obnoxiously busy action that drove me batty. Lucas's vision was much more charming when he was forced by tight budgets and SFX impossibilities to hold to a austere, defined, battered, lived-in aesthetic. The prequels are all baroquely overwrought and shiny. Very tiring. And Coruscant should have been in ruins from the battle. We end up seeing more damage from the "Jedi uprising" at the end of the movie than from the grand fleet action flinging sealiner-sized shards of wreckage all over the surface of the most densely-populated planet in the galaxy.
That's three or four things, isn't it? Oh, well.