The third movie, or sixth, or last, or whatever.
I wanted to watch a movie last night on the old home theater system, so why not pick something noisy like Episode III? LWC responded with, "Yeah, we've only seen that once." I found parts I liked, specifically everything by Ian McDiarmid. Sure, he gets the cool over-the-top stuff and gets to chew the scenery, and that's a prime bit in a cheesy flick like this one. But he pulls it all off with a certain flair and passion that makes those scenes eminently watchable. Despite the addled attempts at acting by that Hayden boy.
The "love scenes" are painful to watch, but there are good moments by Portman and MacGregor where they seemed to have found a way to act in a Lucasfilm despite the director's hackneyed idea of what characters are for.
The stupid robot said that Padme had "lost the will to live," and LWC said that no mother would lose the will to live after seeing her children born. And I agree. LWC also complained about how the hell did everybody in the galaxy know that Palpy was the emperor so fast?
The sight of Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, throwing a temper tantrum after his Frankenstein act, is a nadir of the saga to be matched only by crazed ferret weasel Yoda in the highly-forgettable second movie, or fifth, or next to last.
Thanks for ruining everything, George. I found some good parts, but overall you fumbled the ball inside the red zone. Coaches get fired for that, but you made another hundred million smackers.
I know it's Christmas and I'm going to hell for that Emperor Ratzinger picture.
9 comments:
Packaged in the soundtrack for the third movie is a DVD by John Williams that summarises, in order (IE Episode 1,2,3,4,5,6) the entire Star Wars saga. All of this is set to his wonderful soundtrack music and edited to remove distracting things such as dialogue. To me, a lover of Episode 4 and 5 (the originals, mind you, not the 'special' ones), this has become the definitive version of Star Wars - really, it is the only one worth watching at all. I highly recommend it.
omvtlv - hopefully this works, because that 'o' might just be a 'd' - it is that deformed. I'm going with the 'o' since it would have to be a capital 'd' and the rest of those letters are lower case. - the human deductive mind at work... ;-)
You ain't kidding about that picture :)
It was funny, but one of the things that Kathy said after the arrival of The B was how rediculous it was for Padme to had done that right after giving birth.
no mother would lose the will to live after seeing her children born
Yeah, Tom beat me to it but that is possibly the scariest thing about having a child. If something happens to one parent, the other one really can't just give up. I said this before somewhere while I was pregnant (on the blog? in person? can't remember...) to someone who doesn't have kids and they argued with me. "Oh, no. My wife and I love each other so much that I can understand what Padme did." Well, that doesn't make it any less terrible or selfish.
How much does it suck that Leia's mother is a selfish bitch who just rolls over, gives up, and dies even though she's connected and responsible to two little beings she brought into the world of her own accord? Remember when Leia told Luke about having hazy memories of her mother as a beautiful, sad woman? Well, that wasn't Padme, unless Leia has a really unbelievable memory all the way back to the goshdarn womb! Someone explain to me Star Wars genetics that apparently allow ass kickers like Luke and Leia to come from the DNA of Padme and Mannequin Skywalker. I dare you.
But I'm glad all the boom boom sounded good on your home theater system. :)
I watched the feature commentary on the Episode III DVD recently. And it was everything DVD commentary SHOULD be, in that after I watched it, I understood exactly how they ended up making the film they made.
A special effects guy told me about how in this scene of Anakin staring at a hand-held computer, "George" had them use CG to bend Anakin's wrist downward, and then raise it -- so he wouldn't look quite so much like he was staring off blankly.
The same guy later told me how worried they were about "topping the Yoda fight" in Ep II, but how they really felt they rose to the occasion by "taking the fight into 3D" in the Senate chamber.
Basically, I learned how they pixel-fucked this movie to within an inch of its life, focusing on minutia that had nothing to do with establishing character or pathos.
I found the commentary on the "opera" scene VERY interesting. Apparently, Ian McDiarmid was losing his voice on the set the day they filmed the scene. But in a rare moment of deciding not to exert total control over everything, Lucas decided NOT to re-record the actor's dialogue later, as he liked the strange quality of his voice.
And how telling that this ONE scene where Lucas actually allowed something spontaneous to happen on set, where he actually gave one of his actors just a touch of free reign, is the only really compelling scene in the entire prequel trilogy.
Like I said... thanks to this commentary, I now totally understand how this film ended up the way it did.
Heimlich, there is a similar bit on the Episode II commentary when they discussed filming a scene between Anakin and Padme seperately, just because they could. Fabulous.
And Kathy, I can't imagine a single parent anywhere who would buy the "giving up" cop-out. That was simply Lucas not being able to come up with any compelling reason for her to die. Death during childbirth? No, we're too advanced technologically. How about she's so madly in love that she completely rejects her children and just "gives up"? Yeah, that'll be great!
I really need to stop getting pulled into these discussions. :)
So, here's my Ep III story. I rented it today, just because I couldn't find anything else interesting, and laid down to watch it before falling asleep. The before didn't really happen, I fell asleep during what was supposed to be the "climactic" duel between Obi-wan and Anakin. Still haven't seen the rest.
But, throughout the entire movie, I was stunned by how there is absolutely no plot movement whatsoever. It's just scene/dialog and scene/action. Repeat. There was simply no emotion or feeling to anything that happened in the entire movie. I got the sense that the actors were just mailing it in to get through the whole thing, and Lucas didn't care, because he wanted a special effects bomb.
I think the reason, as Heimlich said, goes back farther than them just pixel fucking. I think it goes back to what everyone said about Episode IV when it came out. Rather than talking about the establishment of complete myth and a compelling story, all anyone ever said about it was how dazzling the special effects were.
As Mick Foley said in his book, when you're the top in your profession, there is a certain weird pressure on yourself to keep topping yourself. Any GM of any RPG knows this, that when the game becomes too epic, you can't keep topping yourself, and it all just collapses inward as you try to make things bigger and better.
Lucas, with the prequels, primarily the last two (the first was still decent in my mind), was driven to generate something out of Lucasfilm, the paramount of special effects studios in existence. He couldn't spend time on things like plot and character development because he had to top himself.
And it all sort of just collapsed inward into pixel fucking.
Some of the stuff was cool, the lightsaber work was flashy and interesting, though ultimately not as enthralling as some of the earlier duels, due to the lack of character development through fighting style.
Seeing Obi-Wan and Vader duel in Ep IV, you got the sense that there was more to it, that it wasn't simply a fight, but that these were two aging and venerated warriors. Obi-Wan knew what would happen, and he accepted it. Vader was confused, but ultimately got what he wanted.
Instead, in Ep III, every character flips and jumps around like Yoda on meth, showing no difference between styles whatsoever.
I still, to this day, think that it would have been far, far more compelling if Yoda never made an offensive swing, that he pulled a Neo at the end of Matrix I, and simply made himself unhittable. You could then have built Dooku to a rage, and show him just trying to overpower him, creating a compelling contrast between Light and Dark, and the philosophy behind it.
Instead, crazed weasel.
*sigh*
so much hatred....
you know, you could have watched Top Gun, that's a great home movie theatre movie.
Someone explain to me Star Wars genetics that apparently allow ass kickers like Luke and Leia to come from the DNA of Padme and Mannequin Skywalker. I dare you.
You really want me to bring up the "M" word?
Jason... I totally agree about Yoda being unhittable. That would have been so much better and would have been thousands of times more correlated to his docile character. Like Joel Grey in Remo Williams, if anyone else knows what the hell I'm talking about.
I finally brought myself to rent Ep III. In short, it only served the purpose of getting from point A to point B -- characters be damned. George Lucas is a pixel-fucking hack. The man who built so much into the collective childhood of my generation has successfully torn it all down. The first few bricks were chipped away in Ep. VI.
And, yes, Evan, the opera scene's development is very telling of how much better any of these prequels could have been had Lucas just let things evolve on their own. Here he has all this talent, even Portman and Christensen, and he wastes almost all of it.
The next time Lucas wants to further pixel-fuck the original trilogy that appears to be losing whatever identity it had before he adds ninety Tauntauns to the Hoth scene "jus' 'cuz," perhaps he should have James redub some far better dialogue in the final duel between Vader and Luke. God, how I cringe at "His failure is complete." WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN, GEORGE?
Post a Comment