ROTS -- two thumbs pretty much up
May. 19th, 2005 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyvyolaTotal geek note: There is nothing cooler than going to an early screening, bypassing the line entirely, walking into a huge theater and discovering that the very best seats in the house have been marked off and your name is on one of them. Such was the privileged mood I, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
av_lad, ishyko and her husband, and Frank and Gina began our viewing experience in. Sucks not, to be me!
Revenge of the Sith quick and unspoilery -- I loved it.
Yes, I have issues. But the meat of it -- Anakin's turning and the fate of the Jedi -- had me from scene one.
Ian McDiarmid kicks ass and takes names. The man could read instructions off a shampoo bottle ("Lather. Rinssssse. Repeat.") and seduce you to the Dark Side.
The Jedi, I am more and more convinced, are the worst parents in the history of the galaxy. You'd think that a bunch of touchy-feely empathic types would figure out that telling a kid, "Oh, you managed to do good this time but we still don't trust you. *SLAP!*" is not the way to raise a stable, healthy adult. Mace Windu, I'm looking at you. Stay away from my nephews. No wonder Anakin prefers Palpatine's hair care regimen.
Anakin's fall is, perhaps, a bit quick but very well motivated and Hayden does a marvelous job with the attendent mood swings -- he often has the ever-so-unsettling manic gleam of the newly converted believer in his eye. And he nobly carries the burden of the hotness quotient for this episode. Pout, baby, pout!
What the hell is Natalie Portman even doing in this movie? She's gorgeous but spends most of her time dewy-eyed and in love or teary-eyed and in love. She only sparks to life in two scenes, both when her adult, political side comes to the fore. I would have loved another (or at least, a longer) scene where she discusses the war with Anakin. It would have fleshed out a later scene between them. (Ah, I'm already fanwanking to make it better!)
And speaking of fanwanking, the most irritating thing about this movie (stupid droid voices, George's attempts at humor, and George's attempts at romance aside) is that it makes clear just what a waste TPM and AOTC were. Why did we have to wait for Ep III to get to the meat of these relationships and philosophical issues? Sure, the seeds may have been there in the first two movies, but they weren't nurtured in any way. They were just dropped on dry soil and left to fend for themselves. ROTS just shows how much there was to explore and it makes me grit my teeth.
You finally get the vibe that Obi-Wan and Anakin consider themselves brothers and friends. There's finally an emotional resonance between them that links to the original movie. Their final confrontation is all the more epic and tragic as a result. But why couldn't we have had some of that in Clones?
Coolness points for the intergalactic opera. A truly "alien" art form and a fabulous scene between Anakin and the Chancellor. (Though I'm sure I was not the only one expecting a performance by the Diva herself, Plavalaguna.) Temuera Morrison gets plenty of "face time" (to quoteav_lad) and the various squads of Clone Troopers looked great. (I sense a great disturbance in the 501st, as if an entire club of costumers suddenly said, "I want a new trooper uniform!")
Best of all, from a purely selfish point of view, as a whole it makes Revelations feel even more firmly rooted in the SW universe. It really doesn't contradict us much and what it does can mostly be wanked away. ::handwave:: Plus, it actually confirms a bunch of our underlying assumptions and it even shows something that we show in our movie -- and we do it much better! Anakin has two visions -- go us! -- and Yoda specifically tells him that relying on them, giving them too much weight, is a slippery slope. And the visual effect for the visions sucks. And blows. Cheap '70s TV is what I'm talking here. Our visions are much better. I say this with no hesitation or qualification.
What else? Great music, really stunning cinematography, interesting fights, and a whole lot of fan service in little details (oh, what Yoda tells Obi-Wan at the end! Fangirls, start your engines!). I'm ready to see this one again and again.
av_lad, ishyko and her husband, and Frank and Gina began our viewing experience in. Sucks not, to be me!Revenge of the Sith quick and unspoilery -- I loved it.
Yes, I have issues. But the meat of it -- Anakin's turning and the fate of the Jedi -- had me from scene one.
Ian McDiarmid kicks ass and takes names. The man could read instructions off a shampoo bottle ("Lather. Rinssssse. Repeat.") and seduce you to the Dark Side.
The Jedi, I am more and more convinced, are the worst parents in the history of the galaxy. You'd think that a bunch of touchy-feely empathic types would figure out that telling a kid, "Oh, you managed to do good this time but we still don't trust you. *SLAP!*" is not the way to raise a stable, healthy adult. Mace Windu, I'm looking at you. Stay away from my nephews. No wonder Anakin prefers Palpatine's hair care regimen.
Anakin's fall is, perhaps, a bit quick but very well motivated and Hayden does a marvelous job with the attendent mood swings -- he often has the ever-so-unsettling manic gleam of the newly converted believer in his eye. And he nobly carries the burden of the hotness quotient for this episode. Pout, baby, pout!
What the hell is Natalie Portman even doing in this movie? She's gorgeous but spends most of her time dewy-eyed and in love or teary-eyed and in love. She only sparks to life in two scenes, both when her adult, political side comes to the fore. I would have loved another (or at least, a longer) scene where she discusses the war with Anakin. It would have fleshed out a later scene between them. (Ah, I'm already fanwanking to make it better!)
And speaking of fanwanking, the most irritating thing about this movie (stupid droid voices, George's attempts at humor, and George's attempts at romance aside) is that it makes clear just what a waste TPM and AOTC were. Why did we have to wait for Ep III to get to the meat of these relationships and philosophical issues? Sure, the seeds may have been there in the first two movies, but they weren't nurtured in any way. They were just dropped on dry soil and left to fend for themselves. ROTS just shows how much there was to explore and it makes me grit my teeth.
You finally get the vibe that Obi-Wan and Anakin consider themselves brothers and friends. There's finally an emotional resonance between them that links to the original movie. Their final confrontation is all the more epic and tragic as a result. But why couldn't we have had some of that in Clones?
Coolness points for the intergalactic opera. A truly "alien" art form and a fabulous scene between Anakin and the Chancellor. (Though I'm sure I was not the only one expecting a performance by the Diva herself, Plavalaguna.) Temuera Morrison gets plenty of "face time" (to quote
av_lad) and the various squads of Clone Troopers looked great. (I sense a great disturbance in the 501st, as if an entire club of costumers suddenly said, "I want a new trooper uniform!")Best of all, from a purely selfish point of view, as a whole it makes Revelations feel even more firmly rooted in the SW universe. It really doesn't contradict us much and what it does can mostly be wanked away. ::handwave:: Plus, it actually confirms a bunch of our underlying assumptions and it even shows something that we show in our movie -- and we do it much better! Anakin has two visions -- go us! -- and Yoda specifically tells him that relying on them, giving them too much weight, is a slippery slope. And the visual effect for the visions sucks. And blows. Cheap '70s TV is what I'm talking here. Our visions are much better. I say this with no hesitation or qualification.
What else? Great music, really stunning cinematography, interesting fights, and a whole lot of fan service in little details (oh, what Yoda tells Obi-Wan at the end! Fangirls, start your engines!). I'm ready to see this one again and again.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 04:44 pm (UTC)Every film should have an army of wookies.
And an army of Temuera Morrisons, too.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 05:18 pm (UTC)Also, after being in the Sith Academy, the Yoda line about having a special rapport with the wookies just about killed me and
FandomTM: We've already gone there. And probably written about it, too.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 06:38 pm (UTC)But that outfit poor Padme had to wear to bed... just, no.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 07:22 pm (UTC)Making Amidala wear strings of beads to bed took me to the same bad place as the lightsabre lollipops and the GunGun tongue candy.
I repeat, WTF?
Yours from the gutter,
Vy
no subject
Date: 2005-05-25 04:02 am (UTC)they had pearls in the crotch and everything!
;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 07:23 pm (UTC)Oh my god, I was totally seduced by the dark side! Let's hear it for hot young Sith! First Maul, then Vader. I may swoon!
Come with us for our FIRST viewing . . .
Date: 2005-05-20 06:18 pm (UTC)