I had my partial movie marathon yesterday and I finished off this morning. It was pretty damn tough watching 6 movies at a time and all the junk food I ate had a lot to do with my stopping half-way across the third movie. I will never eat potato chips as long as live beyond this point, I was never a fan of that stuff, but after this experience I learned that eating it in any quantity is bad. Regardless of this, let's go on to the point.
I've completed what I said I would years ago, and I will never watch another Star Wars movie as long as I live, and any Star Wars game that I have now will be treated as simple 'space' games and nothing else. I will not buy another Star Wars game, nor will I waste my money on anything else that the franchise would have. I will remember what I was before and what Star Wars meant to me, but that's the end of it. On to my review.
In seeing the original movies as I completed the prequels, I started to see Star Wars in a different light, the many inconsistencies definitely bogged down my ability to think of the movies good and the character to suffer the most is Darth Vader. After seeing what an utter fool he was in the prequels, I couldn't bear to see a scene with him for too long. The fact that this great and 'evil' Dark Lord is someone who used to be an empty brained dunce and a constantly complaining individual who couldn't even speak in a voice that wasn't either stale as rotten cheese or inconceivably petulant (If that's the right word to describe it, that is) is something unbearably irritating. Further more, the whole idea of the Empire suddenly crumbling apart in Episode VI after the death of Palpatine is ludicrous, especially after the immense support he got from the senate and governors (wouldn't they perhaps call for a successor or start a massive civil war of succession? This issue is more complicated than you think). Star Wars is one big jumbled mess and I really can't describe it in one simple post, not right now anyway, and I don't think I ever will muster up the interest in writing a whole essay about this for many obvious reasons.
So now that I've given a short ending speech as to what I think of Star Wars as a whole (I know it was too short for justice), I will get on with my review of Episode III and my additional reasons to hate it.
Generally speaking, the overall tone of Episode III was an extremely rushed movie, and I predicted this the moment I finished watching Episode II so I'm not surprised. Not only was it rushed, it was also extremely childish and runs in the vein of cartoon's I remember watching in the 1980's and early-to-mid 90's. General Grevious's voice was so poorly done that even I could have similarly imitated it given the right conditions and with minimal aid. The battles found between characters like Mace Windu, Palpatine and Yoda were not those I'd expect of a battle aimed at entertaining thinking adults, but rather that for teens, children, and adults who just don't care for anything other than quick action. The dialogue was similarly bland, but there are other problems that I will discuss later.
Many people liked the lightsabre battles in this movie, and I actually found a few bits here and there that I did like myself. I would advise less observant people to realize that I liked certain bits of them, not the whole thing. For example, the battle between Obi-wan, Anakin and Count Dooku (still a ridicules name) was uninteresting for the most part until the end, when Anakin and Count Dooku fight alone and actually make moves I'd expect from a real swordfight, such as trapping arms and grappling, which were both done. This also applies to parts of the duel between Anakin and Obi-wan at the end, but other than these short bits, I found them to be too generic for my tastes.
So going on to the actual acting. Anakin is better than he was in AOTC and his bouts of complaining are far less irritating and more mature (except the one he does it in the counsel room, which I personal found to be beyond redeemable or acceptable), but one thing about Anakin that isn't good has nothing to do with being a 'whiny bitch' but it has everything to do with him being a complete moron. His methods of dealing with Palpatine and the Jedi are preposterous and his motivations are so jumbled that I seriously doubt even HE knew what he was doing. It makes you wonder whether George Lucas was drunk, high, or perhaps suffering from massive head injury when he wrote this. Perhaps it was all three in a way, but I doubt it.
Other than being rushed, the overall story reeks of amateur Fan fiction I used to write and read as a young teenager. Boy where those the days, the days I used to write something so incoherent and silly and sometimes make things that I'd plan to explain later on and totally forget to do it and, after all is done, I'd think I have a good story worth publishing or turning into a movie! Thankfully, those days are long gone, but despite this, George Lucas, a man in his late 50's, doesn't seem to have moved beyond this stage at all. Chefelf criticized him on this basis as well, as he stated that the Star Wars prequels reminded him of the stories he wrote as a 12 year older, and now I fully understand what he's talking about.
I think I've spoken enough about the overall movie for now; I'll be getting on to the additional reasons to hate it.
1: Watch out for Flak and Fighters!
The fact that there's flak in this movie is no surprise. I've heard about it on the official Star Wars forums about a year back or so. So what's stupid with this? It all makes you wonder just what was George Lucas thinking when he put flak into this movie. Flak was used from World War 1 to the Korean War (and is probably in small use today) as a very inaccurate method of taking airplanes from the sky. While it was effective, it required very large batteries of guns with radar control. Also the amount of flak in the movie is too low and to be effective against bringing down anything.
But what am I talking about? The only reason why Flak is there is because it makes a nice special effect and nothing else! Facts and realism be damned, and damn the fact that flak is basically a shrapnel shell that explodes at a predetermined height and sends chunks of metal the size of your fist flying all over the place, which renders it too dangerous and too low to use in places such as the Wookie battle (in which quite a bit of friendlies would have been killed as well as the enemy). In the movie, Flak doesn't resemble anything it is in real life, but are basically balls of black smoke popping up here and there.
P.S. The title of my 'reason to hate' is taken from a frequent warning that bomber crews were told in World War 2, as they constantly had to watch out for flak and fighters.
2: wheeze, wheeze, cough cough!
The reason why General grievous has such a problem with his constant coughing and wheezing is because he received some damage from a character in the Clone Wars cartoon (I'm totally serious here) but you think that such an important individual would have this problem fixed, don't you? Of course he should! But being a kid's movie, there needs to be a reason for small children to laugh at him (as if his appearance and dialogue weren't enough!) so he has to cough around and move like an old man. I'm actually surprised he wasn't carrying a walking stick around with him!
3: Chew on this, ya scurvy scum!
Did anyone else notice that the fight between the two battleships in the beginning looked exactly like a fight between two 17th century ships? Forgive me if I may sound silly, but given the technology of the era, you'd think they'd have better ways to fight one another than simply to get closer and shoot at point blank range. I'd also think that this is possible to create something more exciting and better overall, but I guess that this is the level of George's creativity. What a sad scenario.
![sleep.gif](http://www.chefelf.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif)
4: the battle droids.
Throughout the prequels, the battle droids have shown themselves too geared towards kids. The were colorful, goofy, humorous (in a silly way) and generally ridicules. In Episode III, however, they sink down a new depth. Everything they do is precisely what I would expect to find a sci-fi movie geared at 6-8 year olders (that demographic precisely), as are the 'buzzdroids'. Not only are their voices really silly, their behavior and actions (such as the ironically named 'super' battle droids who talk and behave like schoolyard bullies and street punks/thugs). Every one of them even acts like they're begging for mercy and warding off with their hands when Anakin and Obi-wan are attacking them are too kiddy and just plain embarrassing to watch. The Phantom Menace droids and AOTC are far more respectable by comparison.
5: Lack of a planetary defense system.
I know that the republic has a fleet of ships standing by to defend the place, but I'm surprised that the planet didn't have some kind of defense system like beams, missiles and other stuff that could have made any attack by those Separatists far too dangerous to carry out. I guess the fact that they were so stupid as to be unable to destroy GG's ship before he got Palpatine is proof that the fleet was some time off planet and had to be called... hmm....
6: Is he still on board or what?
Forgive me, but I have to bring up this issue. If Palpatine and the Jedi were still on board the ship, why the hell is everyone blasting at it with high explosives and blaster fire? Don't they realize that if they blow up the ship, they'll kill the man they're trying to rescue? I guess it's best to damage the ship to the point of destroying it and have the heroes make a dramatic escape (or landing in this case) than simply make a safe exit on a ship.
A safe exit on a ship? Nahh, that's far too boring. Let's cause the ship to be on the verge of blowing up after all the battle damage it too from trigger happy battleship crews who are far too eager to waste several tons of ammo into the behemoth!
7: Two Jedi will do just fine, thank you.
Whatever got into the minds of George went he thought about sending a mere pair of Jedi into the battleship to rescue Palpatine? Please forgive me for forgetting that this is just a childish fantasy, but any scenario of this sort would call for several hundred commandoes and probably even a compliment of regular troops and technicians as well. That's a huge ship we're talking about and it would probably be too dangerous to send them in... This brings me to my next point.
(continued)
8: Big ship, but empty.
OK, here's the wang. You got yourself a huge ship with hardly anyone on board and practically no security systems other than a pinch full of these force field things and less droids than cops in your average police station. Do I really need to go on further?
9: Hands up, Jedi!
OK, I'm just going to bring up these two points. First, when Anakin and Obi-Wan are attacked by destroyer droids and are forced into this room, they are suddenly faced with about a dozen droids who seemed to have popped up from nowhere and order them in the squeakiest voice imaginable to drop their weapons. Anakin and Obi-Wan quickly dispatch them after that. Here's the deal... taking into consideration how close they were and how dangerous the Jedi are to them, they could VERY easily have killed them both at that range, but for some reason they thought to capture them at the most inappropriate moment and with inappropriate methods.
If they were really intent on capturing them... why not set their weapons to stun? This was done in Star Wars and mentioned in ESB, but for some reason, blasters haven't been fitted with that or no one thought about having a non-lethal weapon yet...
![wacko.gif](http://www.chefelf.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)
The second instance, which I believe is even stupider, is when Anakin is dangling down the elevator shaft when these two droids come up and order him to put his hands up... oh for crying out loud!
![blushing.gif](http://www.chefelf.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/blushing.gif)
10: Still using those?
Destroyer droids seem to be the perfect anti-Jedi weapon. Whenever they send them, Jedi always make a run for it. So you'd think with this that the Jedi would develop a tactic for dealing with them, but I guess they suffer from some defective intellectual trait that forbids them from developing new tactics to survive, which is why they were able to cope with thousands of years of technological advancements...
11: Why did he want them prisoner?
General Grievous wants the Jedi prisoner, and the purpose was never explained. I suppose that Palpatine wanted to do something, but I just can't... never mind.
![huh.gif](http://www.chefelf.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)
12: I wanted revenge… or did I?
Anakin does a good job of defeating Count Dooku and has him on knees. Palpatine then snickers and laughs and, with all the skill of a kumquat, he tells Anakin to kill him. Anakin naturally protests to this by saying it is ‘not the Jedi way’ to kill an unarmed prisoner and ‘he should stand trial’. Despite this, Palpatine nags him until he chops off Dooku’s head and gives the god-awful “I shouldn’t have done that” line that was already addressed by Chefelf. Anakin complains about this as he frees Palpatine but Palpatine just says that ‘it’s natural, he cut off your arm and you wanted revenge’. Now hold it right there for one moment, the only reason why Anakin killed Dooku is on Palpatine’s order and insistence, not for revenge. But for some reason this scene had to be rushed in order to make room for the squawking iguana chase thing with General Grievous and the video gameish battle between him and Obi-Wan. There was simply no time for unimportant things like showing Anakin attempting to unleash his anger and hatred, or having conflicting emotions or desires. More time should be allocated towards special effects and sounds and other things that really matter in Lucas’s mind.
13: The aftermath.
For some reason, no one looks into the facts that Count Dooku should have been caught alive and that Palpatine was so utterly evil and heartless that he ordered Anakin to kill him and even to leave Obi-Wan to die. Thankfully, Anakin is both considerate enough to help his master escape and stupid enough to lie to the authorities and his superiors about what happened on the ship which could have given the Jedi an early warning that perhaps he’s not entirely what he seems…
14: flaps? For what?
As Anakin takes control of the helm (how is it possible that only two people and a droid capable of taking complete control of a giant spaceship is beyond me), he orders all flaps and other stuff to be extended as he makes his approach on planet for an emergence landing. First of all, given the level of technology level of Star Wars, such stuff are totally unnecessary and I seriously doubt they’d ever have that much installed in the extraordinarily unlikely event of a horizontal landing as shown in the movie. But I guess that landing strips wouldn’t be needed either. I wish that George would cut on the special effects for a moment and have them abandon ship in a stolen shuttle, which would be infinitely more logical.
15: Trying to throw them off, is he?
General Grievous snickers and gloats as he says “Time to abandon ship.” When he launches every escape pod onboard, apparently to throw them off his trail, now I will discuss how this is stupid. Taking into consideration how many fighters and ships are around, why not simply destroy every single escape pod around. One of them will hold our robotic moron and he will be destroyed. Also, how is escaping in one of those things going to do any good? Surely he doesn’t have a hyperdrive onboard? Or maybe I should watch the movie again. :wacko
This is all for now. I’ve so many reasons in my head that I can’t think straight. I think it may take a while before I compose a complete list in addition to these… geeze, even Episode II didn’t bring up this much in my mind! O_O