Star Wars, Episode III
May. 20th, 2005 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedusorSpoilers, natch.
I didn't like:
The writing. Dude. You'd think that with all this money, George Lucas could have managed to afford a decent writer. Good Lord, was the dialogue horrible. No actor or actress could have made it work, even Ewan Mcgregor (see below).
Hayden Christensen. I thought the pouty thing he had going in Attack of the Clones was the worst acting I'd ever seen. Well, he's beat his own record. The man cannot look menacing to save his god damn life. Also, he looks like Brad Pitt with a bad haircut.
Count Dooku. Not the part, but the lack thereof. Christopher Lee was the only good thing about Episode II, and he snuffs it in the first five minutes. Speaking of which...
The elevator/R2-D2 thing. It wasn't funny. Three seconds later, it still wasn't funny. Fifteen seconds after that, it was even less funny.
The music. John Williams wrote brilliant music for the first three movies. He expanded on that for Episode I, creating new themes for new characters. I think I heard one new theme in this movie, the theme of the droid king dude, and that was playing for about twenty seconds, plus it wasn't that good. I didn't hear any other new music. I guess he was just going with what had worked before.
The droid king dude. Hang on, did I read the star-scrolly-thing wrong? Did it say General Grievous? Yeah. Yeah, he did. The fuck? Also, where did he come from, and what was his purpose? I didn't get that at all.
Palpatine/Sidious, and his relationship with Anakin. This bothered me. First, the relationship in the first place. They were far, far too formal and confrontational to have been close friends since Anakin began training. Second, the shriveling-up thing. What was that about? Why did his skin do that? Why didn't it continue to shrivel as he did the electricity thing later? More importantly, why didn't anyone in the Senate notice, when he was talking to them all? Even Padmé just delivered a pseudo-profound line about evil.
Padme. Okay, so I didn't notice this in the second movie, but why is she called Padmé? I swear to god Amidala was her real name and Padme was the fake one for the fake handmaiden. Sabé was the real name of her decoy, according to my Phantom Menace guide thing. What was up with that?
The birth. Not only was it badly acted, but there was no explanation for the names, no reason for Padmé to die, and no explanation of Leia's line in Return of the Jedi about remembering a sad, beautiful woman as her mother. Yeah, maybe that was the adopted mother, but even if that's the case, it doesn't explain why she was sad.
Stupid drama/romance scenes. Not only were they badly written and, in general, acted, but the scene switching between Anakin and Padmé? I didn't like it the first time, looking out over the city, but I especially didn't like the birth/Vader-creation thing. Also, Luke's aunt and uncle against the double sunset- gaaaaaaaah. So bad.
Ripping off a LotR line. "Don't go down a path I can't follow." "Don't go where I can't follow." Not cool. Seriously.
The battles. I liked the original lightsaber battles because you could tell what was going on in them. Now we have fancy camera angles and sparks and colors and jumping and tossing and moving and I can't follow the action. I don't like that.
The scene switch patterns. I think Lucas used iMovie for these. They were distracting, annoying, repetitive and did not add to the drama, tension, or cinematography in any way.
Yoda's speech pattern. It works when he's being the wise Jedi master. It does not work when he's trying to convey something with immediate/useful meaning, especially if it's supposed to be dramatic. It got really, really annoying really, really fast.
Anakin's decline into the Dark Side. It didn't work. It was the entire point of the movie, and it did not work. It was too fast, for one thing- there wasn't any real passing of time that I could see, apart from the enlargening of Padmé's stomach. If not for that, it could have happened in three days. Also, the scene in which he committed himself to Palpatine- whaaaa? That was way, way too sudden. I didn't believe that Anakin descended slowly into fear and hate, because he didn't. He went from cute little kid to stubborn, angry teenager, and stayed that way until he became Darth Vader at the end of the movie. It wasn't gradual, it wasn't believable, and it did not work.
I liked:
Ewan Mcgregor. He almost made the dialogue seem believable. Almost.
The special effects. Well, the animation and shit. Like I said, I didn't like the lightsaber battles.
The part where Yoda's eyes did the blue fire thing. That was just cool.
I didn't enjoy it very much, in case there was any room for interpretation there.
I didn't like:
The writing. Dude. You'd think that with all this money, George Lucas could have managed to afford a decent writer. Good Lord, was the dialogue horrible. No actor or actress could have made it work, even Ewan Mcgregor (see below).
Hayden Christensen. I thought the pouty thing he had going in Attack of the Clones was the worst acting I'd ever seen. Well, he's beat his own record. The man cannot look menacing to save his god damn life. Also, he looks like Brad Pitt with a bad haircut.
Count Dooku. Not the part, but the lack thereof. Christopher Lee was the only good thing about Episode II, and he snuffs it in the first five minutes. Speaking of which...
The elevator/R2-D2 thing. It wasn't funny. Three seconds later, it still wasn't funny. Fifteen seconds after that, it was even less funny.
The music. John Williams wrote brilliant music for the first three movies. He expanded on that for Episode I, creating new themes for new characters. I think I heard one new theme in this movie, the theme of the droid king dude, and that was playing for about twenty seconds, plus it wasn't that good. I didn't hear any other new music. I guess he was just going with what had worked before.
The droid king dude. Hang on, did I read the star-scrolly-thing wrong? Did it say General Grievous? Yeah. Yeah, he did. The fuck? Also, where did he come from, and what was his purpose? I didn't get that at all.
Palpatine/Sidious, and his relationship with Anakin. This bothered me. First, the relationship in the first place. They were far, far too formal and confrontational to have been close friends since Anakin began training. Second, the shriveling-up thing. What was that about? Why did his skin do that? Why didn't it continue to shrivel as he did the electricity thing later? More importantly, why didn't anyone in the Senate notice, when he was talking to them all? Even Padmé just delivered a pseudo-profound line about evil.
Padme. Okay, so I didn't notice this in the second movie, but why is she called Padmé? I swear to god Amidala was her real name and Padme was the fake one for the fake handmaiden. Sabé was the real name of her decoy, according to my Phantom Menace guide thing. What was up with that?
The birth. Not only was it badly acted, but there was no explanation for the names, no reason for Padmé to die, and no explanation of Leia's line in Return of the Jedi about remembering a sad, beautiful woman as her mother. Yeah, maybe that was the adopted mother, but even if that's the case, it doesn't explain why she was sad.
Stupid drama/romance scenes. Not only were they badly written and, in general, acted, but the scene switching between Anakin and Padmé? I didn't like it the first time, looking out over the city, but I especially didn't like the birth/Vader-creation thing. Also, Luke's aunt and uncle against the double sunset- gaaaaaaaah. So bad.
Ripping off a LotR line. "Don't go down a path I can't follow." "Don't go where I can't follow." Not cool. Seriously.
The battles. I liked the original lightsaber battles because you could tell what was going on in them. Now we have fancy camera angles and sparks and colors and jumping and tossing and moving and I can't follow the action. I don't like that.
The scene switch patterns. I think Lucas used iMovie for these. They were distracting, annoying, repetitive and did not add to the drama, tension, or cinematography in any way.
Yoda's speech pattern. It works when he's being the wise Jedi master. It does not work when he's trying to convey something with immediate/useful meaning, especially if it's supposed to be dramatic. It got really, really annoying really, really fast.
Anakin's decline into the Dark Side. It didn't work. It was the entire point of the movie, and it did not work. It was too fast, for one thing- there wasn't any real passing of time that I could see, apart from the enlargening of Padmé's stomach. If not for that, it could have happened in three days. Also, the scene in which he committed himself to Palpatine- whaaaa? That was way, way too sudden. I didn't believe that Anakin descended slowly into fear and hate, because he didn't. He went from cute little kid to stubborn, angry teenager, and stayed that way until he became Darth Vader at the end of the movie. It wasn't gradual, it wasn't believable, and it did not work.
I liked:
Ewan Mcgregor. He almost made the dialogue seem believable. Almost.
The special effects. Well, the animation and shit. Like I said, I didn't like the lightsaber battles.
The part where Yoda's eyes did the blue fire thing. That was just cool.
I didn't enjoy it very much, in case there was any room for interpretation there.
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Date: 2005-05-21 05:20 pm (UTC)Wow. Even after the absolutely wooden performance that Jake Lloyd put in for Ep I?
There are two great tragedies for the whole Star Wars cycle (aside from the overarching pain of Lucas as a director). The first is Lucas' recent revisionist history: claiming that he never said he would make a third trilogy and that the saga is supposed to be about Anakin/Vader. If true then the first three were terribly written to show that. The second is that if this revisionism is true then it's truly sad that Anakin was portrayed so badly by the actors who played him in the movies where he truly was central.