Did Not Suck

Just got back from the midnight screening of Episode III, and as the title suggests it did not suck.

Theater parking did (no lighting, no painted spaces and downward hills on three sides makes for a bad time trying to leave a parking lot) but I can happily report that despite everyone's best college effort, no actual accidents had occurred by the time I was able to get away.

As for the movie, it was pretty much as I expected, and since I've been spoiled since way back the surprise for me was in how what I was going to see matched what I'd imagined from reading spoilers and the novelization.

The opening is pure CGI porn - there's no better way to put it, and that's not a complaint. There is so much happening during the Battle of Coruscant it would take many multiple visits to take it all in. It's true for the whole movie, in fact, as Episode III threatens visual overload on several occassions. (Blink early on in the film and you'll miss a cameo of the Millennium Falcon, or so I'm told - I must have been blinking.) Lightsaber combat is fast and frenetic, and I'm certain a small section of the population might be at risk of seizure during some of the saber blows.

I'm not going to get into the supposed "political undertones" that both the left and the right have been yammering on about all week, I'll save that for another time. I will say that my biggest gripe is in what George chose to cut and what he chose to keep in - I'd have glady sacrificed five or six minutes of General Grevious if it meant getting the stuff with the Delegation of 9000 and all the Mon Mothma stuff back into the movie. (I mean, really, did we just have to have yet another chase sequence past the halfway mark?) Mostly this comes from twenty something years of expectation - especially the scene where the Galactic Empire is declared - but it's also borne out of desire at that point to dial down the SFX.

Ian McDiarmid owns this movie, at least all the way up to the big reveal and Anakin's turn. After that, all the complexity is stripped away and he goes straight into the overwrought Emperor from Return of the Jedi. Even then, however, I found myself more wrapped up in Palpatine's scrap with Yoda than in The Duel itself. Again, the movie had to face off against a near lifetime's worth of fanboy imagination, but I felt that The Duel as presented wasn't quite as good as the Luke/Vader fight from Empire Strikes Back. McGregor's Obi-Wan is pretty much spot on this time around. The weak links continue to be Portman and Christensen, in my opinion. For the story of Darth Vader to really work, I have to be convinced that Anakin and Padme have this epic, tragic love and I'm still sitting here struggling not to see a whiny stalker and the enabling object of his warped affection. "I've been dying a little every day since you came back into my life" does not sound much like a paeon to eternal requited love.

As far as how Sith stacks up in the series overall, I'd put it in the number three slot, behind Empire and A New Hope, but before Return of the Jedi, Attack of the Clones and the Phantom Menace.

I'm sure more will come to me after I've slept a little, and given it the all important second viewing tomorrow. But all in all it was a pretty decent end to a big piece of Pop Americana.

Comments

[M. Thompson]

Yes, I saw it today, and the FALCON does have an apperance. It's in the sceen in the shuttle ferrying Anakin and Obi-Wan to the Senate building.