Star Wars: Episode Three: Revenge of the Review

Crap! The franchise is in chrisis! George Lucas seemed to have lost all of his senses and the few Jedi remaining had lost faith in him and fled to outlying systems such as the www.chefelf.com/forums/ quadrant. There they lamented the fall of their once great films, and the destruction and hunting down of the original trilogy began.

But some remained faithful to Star Wars in their hearts, hoping the Episode Three might save the prequel trilogy and the entire franchise. In a valiant attempt to discover my fate I led a rescue mission to a local theater. There I hoped to meet the feared General Grievous and Jar Jar Binx in battle.

The first thing that happened was they showed commercials. Not previews but real commercials for cars and even tv shows. That pissed me off. I might also mention that a bag of twizzlers and a diet soda cost over six dollars. It was at this point that I considered yelling "Now Testify" and starting a riot.

So there were some kick arse previews. I want to see Chronicles of Narnia BAD. There were a few other movies but none of them looked as kick ass. That preview sent chills up my spine and made up for the fact that every twizzler I ate cost me about a quarter.

Then the title came up. More excitement. That was a good sign. I gotta say that with rumors of lava surfing and crap like that my expectations were low.

Opening crawl came up. Oh damn! It was bad, I actually had to laugh. It really was some piss poor exposition. Then the action started up. It seemed very big and confusing, maybe a little too cluttered. I also couldnt tell the kinds of ships apart so it looked a bit meaningless.

Despite all the clutter I really liked the battle sequence, and it did cause some suspense. Someone mentioned Obi Wan being a general and that made me happy since hes called General Kenobi by Leia in ep4. At time Obi Wan sounded like a guy from Monty Python, he seemed a bit over-acted in the early parts of the film.

The fight with Dooku was cool, but I didn't much like how Obi Wan continuisly got thrown around. It really had echoes of ep6. I found Dooku's death to be silly, not only because it was so early but because there was little motivation:

When Anakin returns Padme says there were whispers he was killed. That's a pretty decent line and I think its rather clever seeing as one could see the murder of Dooku as a point where Anakin dies. The first love scene was painless if not good. The second one, though oft-lamented, wasn't completely awful like those in ep2.

Yoda's early dialogue still seems a bit weird but it gets bettter he actualyl starts giving relevant advice for the first time since ROTJ, good stuff. The scene with Palpatine and Anakin in the opera was actually very well done, and I also spotted Baron Papanoida, aka George Lucas' only cameo. He's milling around outside the door.

I found Palpatine's quote "It is a volcanic planet - you'll be safe there" To be funny, but I dont think it was a mistake, just an ironic little tidbit to show how dumb the trade federation are.

Holograms were a bit over used but not too bad considering how much people had to move around. I also found the grievous duel to be lacking in dialogue, but it made up for it with some surprisingly good action.

It was at this point that I stopped taking notes and just lost myself in the movie. About half way through the film becomes OT quality Star Wars. The Yoda duel with Palpatine was much better than his fighting in ep2. And the senate chamber was a great battle ground. The attack on the Jedi temple was handled well. Mace's battle with Sidious was fabulous.

I found Anakin's fall to be quite convincing. The battle between him and Obi Wan on the lava planet was spectacular. The sound track was excellent. Everything about the end of this film was good, especially using the binary sunset to tie it to the OT. Beautiful ending.

I think this film has earned it's place with the original trilogy. The other two prequels were just lead-ups to this moment and I'm glad they werent bad enough to kill all hope.