Star Wars - Episode III

I don't know what everyone else thinks, but I thought this movie was awesome. It was infinitely better than the first two. I mean, every time you turned around there was a lightsaber duel going on. Plus, there was no Jar Jar Binks to chew up scenery and steal screentime.

There are people who would say that the acting was bad, and I can't argue with that fact. Most of the characters are very wooden, but the action more than made up for it.

Some comments from me and my fiancée from another board, with a few later emendations in brackets:

<<You've got everthing right here except the spelling of Anakin's name.

Other problems with the movie:

It was too BUSY. There were so many battles on so many planets that there wasn't time to relate to them. It was like watching the Cliff's notes instead of the actual story (and how come it takes only a few hours to get from the capital planet to the most remote worlds, and back again?).

The only time I though the movie was at all emotionally involving was when the scene of Padme giving birth was cross-cut with that of Darth Vader getting his makeover -- the images of new life versus living death were effective. And the fadeout against the double sunset of Tatooine resonated with Luke watching the same double sunset in the original STAR WARS. Note that none of these scenes were action scenes.

Lucas should have spent more time on the story. The transformation of Anakin from just a headstrong youth into a ruthless murderer is simply too sudden and unbelievable. There should have been some foreshadowingof this in THE PHANTOM MENACE and ATTACK OF THE CLONES, but there WASN'T. Yoda could talk of "much anger" in him, but nothing of the sort is ever SHOWN. You have to show, not tell.

[Note: I have since been reminded that Anakin slaughtered a village of sand people in CLONES. But if that slipped my mind, it apparently slipped everyone's mind in the movie as well as there are no references to it. But I'm told there ARE references to incidents in a series of on-line CLONE WARS videos, which few moviegoers have seen, and which must render a lot of the battle scenes confusing to those moviegoers.]

Except for Ian McDarmid as Palpatine, the acting was poor. And the dialogue was weak. But we already knew that Lucas can't direct and can't write; that's why the best movie of the series was THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

[Sure, the writing and acting in the original STAR WARS weren't that great. But there, the dialogue had a kind of naive charm, because it was never as pompous as what we've seen in the prequels.]

--BTE


--- In Aurora_Universe_Readers@yahoogroups.com, Velvet <mnfs0111@y...&gt; wrote:
&gt;
&gt; Just got back from seeing Star Wars Episode III with Brantley, and we were both underwhelmed to put it mildly.
&gt;
&gt; Many things wrong with the plot, what there was of it, but I'd like to mention just some.

&gt; 1) Anniken's motive for going over to the Dark Side is his fear that his wife, Padme, will die in childbirth. Now, why would a young, healthy woman living in the Galactic Capital die in childbirth? I kept on wanting to shout "if you're so worried, just take her to a good hospital"
&gt;
&gt; 2) When Anniken returns to the Capital and sees Padme again, she isn't showing and tells him she's pregnant. A short time later, at the end of the film, she's showing a little and gives birth to full term, good size twins. And her obstetrician was so bad that no one knew she was carrying twins.
&gt;
&gt; 3) When she's about to give birth, the robot obstetrician says: "there's
nothing physically wrong with her, but she's dying". And is answered "she's given up the will to live". Well healthy people do not just give up the will to live and die. And any normal woman would consider the birth of twins a pretty good reason to live, even if their father has turned out to be evil.
&gt;
&gt; There could have been some easy fixes to the story to make it make sense.
&gt;
&gt; 1) Anniken should have had some deep seated anxiety that Padme would be destroyed by some evil. Then it would have been very dramatic and a self-fullfilling prophesy (and a kind of poetic justice) when he is the evil that destroys her.
&gt;
&gt; 2) She should have given birth to 2 tiny, very premature babies.
&gt;
&gt; 3)We know that Luke and Lea are "orphans" (not really since their father is more or less alive) so Padme has to die. It would have been simple and much more realistic and dramatic for her to have been injured when Anniken strikes her so that she is bleeding internally and has to have an emergency Cesarean section (maybe even by Obi Wan Kenobi in the field to save the babies) and then dies from the injuries which could not be treated in time.
&gt;
&gt; And BTW, the best line of the film (although there weren't actually that many lines) was taken from "Bridge Over the River Kwai".
&gt;
&gt; Velvet