Sunday, March 05, 2006

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
(spoilers) Is the Star Wars saga finally over?- the second trilogy is finally complete after Episodes I and II disappointed fans, antcipation was still high for Episode III after all- this was the one you'd get too see Anakin become Vader, the Jedi get wiped out, Luke and Leia being born, millions of fans hoping this would be the one Jar-Jar gets slaughtered. This was the prequel everybody had been waiting for- fans could excuse the weaknesses of the first two prequels- because this would be it- this would finally shut up the Star Wars fans-
Well let's go back to the original set of films- my favourite Star Wars films of them all is The Empire Strikes, I love the rebel taking a beating, fleeing Hoth, Luke's hand coming off, Han in Carbonite, the twist, ESB as an incredibly dark tone for a movie that the kids can see, and happily ROTS is the closest Star Wars films since to this tone- we got all them things we wanted (except the Jar Jar slaughter sadly)- We start with a kick ass opening scene that takes a straight into battle with Obi Wan and Anakin trying to save Senator Palaptine- Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) is suprisingly killed within the first fifteen minutes- because any Star Wars fan know the true villian of the piece as yet to show his colours. After the rescue, the film which was the main problem of the first two prequels becomes uninteresting when there's a lot of dialogue, George Lucas has never been brilliant at dialogue (Harrison Ford once said to Lucas "You can type this shit, but I can't say it")- the gushy love story between Anakin and Padme continues, but not as bad as Episode II. The film comes back into it's own with the death of Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson not going out like some punk!) and the assassination of the Jedi Knights (it's no Goodfellas but it's decent), Yoda fights Palapatine and the final battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan may be the best of the saga- Padme then dies during child birth of a broken heart(!) and we see Anakin become Vader which is cool until he speaks ("Nooooooooooooo") and then truly the prequels and sequels become one (not a perfect one but still...)

Ewan McGregor as got better with each prequel in my opinion, you finally just about believe he could become the legendary Alec Guinness, Hayden Christensen is also much improved as Anakin (he suffered a bit from whiny teen syndrome in the last movie) whilst the film belongs to Ian McDiarmid as Palapatine, whose been consistently good during the entire prequels and may arguably give the best performance in the entire saga, the lovely Natalie Portman (after two brilliant performances in 2004) as nothing too do but look pretty (something she does really, really well) and Chewbacca's appearance is not as bad as I thought it would be.

Overall a good way to end the series- not perfect, I'd happily watch this a couple of more times, I kind of was tied between giving it 3 or 4 stars- I feel like I should be a bit stingy- like I've said it's all come full circle as far as six films- but now instead of perfect trilogy (the originals) now it's an imperfect saga of movies.

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