Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith

[sinanju]

snippy, Twoson and I went to see Episode III today.  This review will contain spoilers.  If you don't wish to be spoiled, stop reading.

One Sentence Review:  It was better than Snippy or I expected.

Slightly Longer Review:  It was better than Snippy or I expected.  It was "almost good," to quote my lovely and talented wife.

My Thoughts On The Film In No Particular Order:

• The SFX were, as indicated by previous reviews, extremely busy.  Distractingly so, at times.  There was never a scene on Trantor Coruscant that didn't have zillions of aircars streaming around, often distracting me from the action up front.
• R2D2 apparently experienced some serious downgrades between ROTS and Star Wars.  His capabilities are vastly greater in this movie than in his first appearance.
• Christian Haydensen wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe by other reviews.  Granted, I never bought for a moment that Anakin could turn into Darth Vader as portrayed by David Prowse and James Earl Jones' combined efforts, but as a character in his own right, I didn't think he was so bad.
• Ditto for Natalie Portman, by the way.  Some of the lines I'd seen mocked on the net didn't come across as nearly as wooden/comical/stupid as I expected.
• The Republic/Empire has a serious fetish for Art Deco style, apparently.  And aircars with a major stylistic nod to the 30s or 50s were pretty common too.
• A lot of weapons used in the opening battle scene appear designed to take as long as possible to destroy the target.  The Hostile Mushrooms (tm) that behave like gremlins, slowly destroying your fighter, are a case in point.  Wouldn't it quicker, easier and more effective if they were just big bombs that exploded once they latched onto the target vessel?
• Space/aerial battles still take place at pointblank range.  This is a limitation of movies and television generally, of course; but it's particularly obvious when you have scores of immense warships blasting away at one another while hovering close enough that you could throw a rock from one to the other.
• Giant laser cannons which eject empty shells?  It is to laugh.  (Obligatory Fanwank:  those are disposable, one-shot capacitors used to generate the hellish energy required to fire these immense weapons.  Yeah.  Yeah, that's the ticket....)
  
• A coughing, wheezing droid?  Oh, wait--Grevious is a cyborg.
• On c'mon, Dooku.  You really didn't see it coming when Palpatine sacrificed you?  Tsk.
• Boy, apparently everyone in this film is going to age about 40 years (or more) in the time it takes Luke and Leia to reach 18-20.
• So when Padme runs out to confront Anakin on Volcano World (tm), she's wearing the oddest maternity clothes I've ever seen:  a short, short dress with bare legs and arms.  Yet, when she falls unconscious after Anakin uses the Choke Attack on her, she's modestly dressed in pants (I confirmed with Snippy that she, too, thought Padme's legs were bare in the earlier shot).  Of course, without pants, her unmentionables would have been exposed to the world when she fell over.  Bad editing, dudes.
• The Jedi have Plot Contrivance Syndrome.  Sometimes they've got amazing telekinetic powers and sometimes they don't.  Or at least they don't remember that they do.
• Palpatine was a hell of a lot more menacing (and more convincing, which is the same thing) as Palpatine thas as the withered, hissing Evil Overlord persona.  I realize the Emperor looked that way, but that could have happened to him during the 20 years between Eps III and IV.
• The Jedi clearly never heard the old saw "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."  Had they given Anakin the title he wanted, Palpatine would have had a harder time convincing him to betray them.  As it was, Anakin ratted out Palpatine as a Sith Lord to Windu (the Jedi who most obviously didn't trust him) and then agonized over his decision before going to Palpatine's defense.  A little more respect all along and Anakin might not have been so vulnerable to Palpatine's manipulations.
• And Windu's sudden decision to throw out the very Jedi code he'd been defending by deciding to off Palpatine without a trial didn't help.  Way to force Anakin into a snap decision.  Moron.
• Boy, remind me never to get on Obi-Wan's bad side!  Taking off three of Anakin's limbs in a battle to the death is one thing, but standing by idly while he catches fire and burns up and then leaving him for dead was just vicious.  If you want him dead, then fuckin' kill him, dude.  It's the merciful thing to do--on top of which, it also means you don't leave a live enemy behind you thirsting for revenge (clearly the Jedi are also not familiar with the Evil Overlord list of mistakes).
• On the other hand, Palpatine gets major loyalty points from me for coming to Anakin's rescue.  After all, Anakin has served his purpose--he's been fundamental to destroying the Jedi as an organization, wiping out the separatist leaders and whatnot.  And Anakin could potentially become more powerful than Palpatine and overthrow him.  So letting him die would have cost Palpatine little; yet he came all the way to Volcano World to rescue him.  That's gotta produce loyalty in a student.
• Snippy laughed long and loud (well, she stifled it so as not to bother the other moviegoers--but she definitely laughed long and heartily) when Frankenstein Darth Vader lurched upright and pulled himself free of the restraints after being cyborged out.  His anguished cry of "Nooooooooooo!" at the news of Padme's death was funny as hell too.  We know that scene wasn't supposed to be funny, but it was.  You know it was.
• I think it would have worked far better if Palpatine had told Vader, when asked about Padme, that Obi-Wan had "left her for dead, as he left you for dead.  He cared nothing for either of you."  Instead of an unintentionally funny scene, you'd give Darth an even stronger motivation to want to crush Obi-Wan, the resistance and everyone and everthing they support.

Overall, I enjoyed it well enough despite the plot holes and over-reliance on special effects.

Comments

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

LJ has a cool feature that acts very nicely as, among other things, spoiler protection. It's the LJ Cut (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=75).

As for your points, I'm pretty much right on with you. I do recall an episode of B5, though, that featured a battle between the Narn and the Shadows that featured some nice long distance engagement. And the battles between the Galactica and Cylon basestars in the new BSG have been better at featuring battles that don't occur at close range only.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know about the cut tag. I've used it often. In this case, however, I just didn't feel like bothering with it. And the close-range space battles don't bother me _too_ much. As I said, understand why they're filmed that way, but given that _contemporary_ warships generally engage one another at over-the-horizon distances...it looks a little strange.