Spoilers Ahead!
Ha ha, I really just wanted to have a post entitled "Spoilers Ahead!", and now that dream has been fulfilled. It makes it seem like this post is a zone where fruit goes rotten and small children eat ice cream before dinner and go to bed all sick with stomach pains and remorse. No, rather this is my review of the new Star Wars chronicle, as I have just partaken in witnessing this film. There may or not be actual spoilers ahead, I haven't decided. Nevertheless, if you don't want to know anything about the film yet, don't read on.
So, yeah, as you may be able to tell from the time this post was written, depending on whether it decided to be right or not, I caught the midnight screening. You know, the one that is always supposed to be this big fucking deal, where all the hardcore fans come out from behind their laptops and don outfits to commemorate the fact that they saw the movie a few hours before other people did. So this is what I expected, a line stretching across town with plastic light saber battles and babies dressed as Ewoks against their will. Alas, such things were absent from this screening, not so much as a "Han Shot First" shirt was present, possibly because of the somewhat obscure location I chose to view the movie. There was a dude dressed in a Jedi robe thing, but he also looked like he wore that every day, so I don't really count that. What I did encounter, however, were the more ostensibly obvious elements of a first screening, which were elements such as people trying to be funny during the previews, screams of "Oh ho HO HO HO!!!" after an apparantly exciting scene, and Chewbacca impressions abound. Wow, you can growl. Singles bar, here we come. My seat conveniently is next to a pony-haired fool who looks like a Mark McKinney charecter on Kids In The Hall. This man also happens to be the most vocal of the wookies in the theatre, and the one who says each of the movies shown in the previews will, quote, "own". What they will own remains to be seen, as he did not specify, but I suppose he wished to see these movies. I was annoyed with the fact that these Star Wars fans were so suckered by the previews: Each one was based off a comic book or was an action movie starring a hot woman. "Just because we're Star Wars fans doesn't make us idiots" stated my friend, but clearly by the adrenaline rush flailed upon the audience by the promise of hackneyed one-liners and Jessica Alba in "Fantastic Four" this was not so.
After the promise of upcoming hype-fests was finished, the current hype-fest began. I admit to not being a rabid Star Wars fanatic by any means, but certainly I enjoy and have a warm fondness for the franchise. The last two movies, however, I considered a bowl of butt-nuggets, because they suffered from what I have termed "Friggin' Sweet Syndrome". The past two movies have played like George Lucas scoured the internet on Star Wars message boards, took things he thought would be "friggin' sweet" in a Star Wars movie, and threw them all together in a hung-over stooper the morning the final script was needed. "Man, a race in some cliffs and shit would be friggin' sweet... Maybe Yoda can like kick some guys ass... Oh god, I have a lot of Jim Beam empties to throw away..." Story, dialouge and general heart were not necessary elements, simply a buncha shit that people could talk about with gesticulation outside of the theatre when they were finished. Which is why I felt skeptical when this movie began. It started out like a fucking fanfiction:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACT 1
The opening title thing comes up, you know, Star Wars and all that. Begin opening title sequence:
WAR!!!!1
Then like talk about all the stuff that happened in between movies, I dunno, but make sure you say WAR!!!!!!!12@ there, cuz that's dope as fuck. Then like the camera pans down and we're like in space an shit an like battles are waging and explosions and ships and robots and like the camera like zooms around a star destroyer like it was ships eye view an shit... Kick ass. Like better than LOTR. We see Anakin and Obi-1 like all up in there ships and like there flying them and shooting the bad guys and blowin em up... Total explosions, lots of orange. Big noises, these things is loud.
ANAKIN:
[engaging in banter wit Obi] man these guys are easy
OBI-WAN:
don't get cocky anakin its the way of the dark side
ANAKIN:
man i get cocky only cuz i am a-number 1 bad azz killah what [all showing beginings of dark side here... totally saying this like future bad guy]
Ankin and obi-wan destroying bad guy ships an stuf.... The key here is this is hella bitchin', stress the awesomeness.
Suddenly, Obi-wan gets all attacked by like little mini bug robot creature things... like their like bugs but like robots... so like hes got all the robots on him and anakin's all like "nuh-uh, fuck dat shit" and like straightens em out an stuf, kikin ass, takin names (only not actually)
OBI-WAN:
d00d, take out the shields doo0d i gotta like blow the big ship up
ANAKIN:
Man, i sved you live, you cant even say "thanx dogg" or nuthin, man i should turn evil
OBI-WAN:
No, man, none a that, lets kill bad guys together
Ships like flying into the big like star ship whatever, like bay doors open and they all go in, but like bots is everywhichway, so they all hop outta they ships and kik some azz with like light sabers an shit... Like then once their all died like r2 jumps out of the ship
R2:
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111 [does that scream thing, you know that thing]
OBI-WAN:
Are Two, you all stay here an like do that control panel stuff, we gotta go kick that one guys ass come on
ANAKIN:
Yeh, we are Jedi.
So they all leeave and like r2 like goes tot he wall and starts tinkering an shit, anf like sparks are all cummin out on accounta he's doing his thang on like the mainframe or whatever. but like then some droid-o-bots like are coming from a different place, so r2's all there by himself and like controlling shit but has to fight cuz he is under attak.
DROID 1:
Halt, robot. We see you over there and we don't want you doing that.
DROID 2:
Yeah uh [i dunno, he should say something funny to lighten the mood and make audience go 'ha", cuz like its been real heavy up til now] [like all sumthin you wouldn't expect a droid to say, thatd be funny cuz people'd go "hes a droid and thats why it is funny he said that"]
But r2 like aint havin nunna that so he all like drops what he's doing and like sprays oil or somthin on the ground and the robots slip in a comical fashion, all like slapstick funny and audience laffin, so then after audeice is all like "ho shit he just whomped they ass" he like pulls out a flame thrower or sumthin [he should totally have a flame thrower] and like sets em all on fire and like screams again, cuz that scream sound is funny and never gets tiresome...
Fade to Anakin and Obi-Wan all kicking ass, use the rectangle fill thing, you know, the one with the rectangles, yeah that 1.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACT 4:
Anakin and Padme or however the fuck you spell it are all having an intimate moment... anakin looks like hes good still but you like see signs i dunno in the eyes or something hes gonna be like bad later... Padme is looking all hott and attainable looking, she like wants to go out with me man im like not even kidding
ANAKIN:
My love for you is like a river: There's a lot of it.
PADME:
Anakin, I have somthing to tell you... [distraught, look in eyes like about to say something hell of important, audience all on edge of seat waiting]
ANAKIN:
What is it?
PADME:
I'm preggers; your seed's all swimming in my belly, like i throw up in the mornings and want pancakes like all the time.
ANAKIN:
This is the happiest day of my life.
PADME:
It is for me too, Anakin. [they kiss and embrace, this scene is mainly for the chicks, maybe cut to a clevage shot for the dudes]
Then quik cut to a battle, people geting blowed up, less mush more crush. IN space and things.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luckily as the movie progressed it seemed less like this. George Lucas was never good with dialouge, which began the fanfiction comparison, but so does the Friggin' Sweet Syndrome. Fans want to see stuff that's friggin' sweet, and who can blame them? It's fucking Star Wars, not The Hours or The Notebook; we want Wookie fights and Yoda being cool and guys with four fucking light sabers and cheesy shit that any hack could've written. And, no, I'm no movie curmudgeon. There was plenty in this movie I would term non-ironically "friggin' sweet" because, damn, son, that shit was dope! This element, I felt, worked to Lucas' disadvantage in the last two films, however he seems to have struck the right amount of wallowing in his own creation in this film. I believe it was the darkness. This movie was quite dark in comparison to the others, the only one to be given a PG-13 rating. Most of the Jedi are picked off Godfather-style, meanwhile Anakin is off killing innocent children. Kick ass. I pretended every child he slaid to be his former self from Episode 1, and, sure, slaughter a little Jar-Jar while you're at it. The franchise deserved some wickedness, as the last two Pepsi-sponsored kid-friendly smile time hours known as Episodes 1 and 2 had enough schlock to make even any self-respecting 7 year old go "Alright, what the fuck? Give us more credit than that!" Here, however, a much-needed foray into the disturbing elements of the Star Wars story propelled Lucas' poor dialouge and previously inane story-telling into a world it finally deserved to be in: One of former glory. While this whole series of prequels may have been simply a cash cow to foster Lucas' appaling coke habit for a few more years, at least we got an enjoyable epic out of it. The conclusion of the evolution from Anakin to Darth Vader is here, as if to say "Fuck, I'm sorry for ever exposing you to Anakin's childhood, and his miscreant racial epithet comic relief know as Jar-Jar Binks... I'll never ever make anything as badass as Darth Vader, so here you go, have some more of him."
Things tied together pretty nicely in the end, though I must admit it always bugged me that the charecters in 4, 5 and 6 are for some reason also in 1, 2 and 3, despite being in entirely different situations in the two sections. Oh well. However, the following things weren't exactly cleared up for me:
1. How Yoda turned from CGI to Muppet
2. Why Yoda is able to do mad flips and kick enemy ass yet can't walk or put together a decent sentence
3. Why technology in the prequels is so much better and more advanced than anything in the originals
Well, I've said my peace. Good night, all, and glad to see you cared enough to read through all this garbage.
So, yeah, as you may be able to tell from the time this post was written, depending on whether it decided to be right or not, I caught the midnight screening. You know, the one that is always supposed to be this big fucking deal, where all the hardcore fans come out from behind their laptops and don outfits to commemorate the fact that they saw the movie a few hours before other people did. So this is what I expected, a line stretching across town with plastic light saber battles and babies dressed as Ewoks against their will. Alas, such things were absent from this screening, not so much as a "Han Shot First" shirt was present, possibly because of the somewhat obscure location I chose to view the movie. There was a dude dressed in a Jedi robe thing, but he also looked like he wore that every day, so I don't really count that. What I did encounter, however, were the more ostensibly obvious elements of a first screening, which were elements such as people trying to be funny during the previews, screams of "Oh ho HO HO HO!!!" after an apparantly exciting scene, and Chewbacca impressions abound. Wow, you can growl. Singles bar, here we come. My seat conveniently is next to a pony-haired fool who looks like a Mark McKinney charecter on Kids In The Hall. This man also happens to be the most vocal of the wookies in the theatre, and the one who says each of the movies shown in the previews will, quote, "own". What they will own remains to be seen, as he did not specify, but I suppose he wished to see these movies. I was annoyed with the fact that these Star Wars fans were so suckered by the previews: Each one was based off a comic book or was an action movie starring a hot woman. "Just because we're Star Wars fans doesn't make us idiots" stated my friend, but clearly by the adrenaline rush flailed upon the audience by the promise of hackneyed one-liners and Jessica Alba in "Fantastic Four" this was not so.
After the promise of upcoming hype-fests was finished, the current hype-fest began. I admit to not being a rabid Star Wars fanatic by any means, but certainly I enjoy and have a warm fondness for the franchise. The last two movies, however, I considered a bowl of butt-nuggets, because they suffered from what I have termed "Friggin' Sweet Syndrome". The past two movies have played like George Lucas scoured the internet on Star Wars message boards, took things he thought would be "friggin' sweet" in a Star Wars movie, and threw them all together in a hung-over stooper the morning the final script was needed. "Man, a race in some cliffs and shit would be friggin' sweet... Maybe Yoda can like kick some guys ass... Oh god, I have a lot of Jim Beam empties to throw away..." Story, dialouge and general heart were not necessary elements, simply a buncha shit that people could talk about with gesticulation outside of the theatre when they were finished. Which is why I felt skeptical when this movie began. It started out like a fucking fanfiction:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACT 1
The opening title thing comes up, you know, Star Wars and all that. Begin opening title sequence:
WAR!!!!1
Then like talk about all the stuff that happened in between movies, I dunno, but make sure you say WAR!!!!!!!12@ there, cuz that's dope as fuck. Then like the camera pans down and we're like in space an shit an like battles are waging and explosions and ships and robots and like the camera like zooms around a star destroyer like it was ships eye view an shit... Kick ass. Like better than LOTR. We see Anakin and Obi-1 like all up in there ships and like there flying them and shooting the bad guys and blowin em up... Total explosions, lots of orange. Big noises, these things is loud.
ANAKIN:
[engaging in banter wit Obi] man these guys are easy
OBI-WAN:
don't get cocky anakin its the way of the dark side
ANAKIN:
man i get cocky only cuz i am a-number 1 bad azz killah what [all showing beginings of dark side here... totally saying this like future bad guy]
Ankin and obi-wan destroying bad guy ships an stuf.... The key here is this is hella bitchin', stress the awesomeness.
Suddenly, Obi-wan gets all attacked by like little mini bug robot creature things... like their like bugs but like robots... so like hes got all the robots on him and anakin's all like "nuh-uh, fuck dat shit" and like straightens em out an stuf, kikin ass, takin names (only not actually)
OBI-WAN:
d00d, take out the shields doo0d i gotta like blow the big ship up
ANAKIN:
Man, i sved you live, you cant even say "thanx dogg" or nuthin, man i should turn evil
OBI-WAN:
No, man, none a that, lets kill bad guys together
Ships like flying into the big like star ship whatever, like bay doors open and they all go in, but like bots is everywhichway, so they all hop outta they ships and kik some azz with like light sabers an shit... Like then once their all died like r2 jumps out of the ship
R2:
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111 [does that scream thing, you know that thing]
OBI-WAN:
Are Two, you all stay here an like do that control panel stuff, we gotta go kick that one guys ass come on
ANAKIN:
Yeh, we are Jedi.
So they all leeave and like r2 like goes tot he wall and starts tinkering an shit, anf like sparks are all cummin out on accounta he's doing his thang on like the mainframe or whatever. but like then some droid-o-bots like are coming from a different place, so r2's all there by himself and like controlling shit but has to fight cuz he is under attak.
DROID 1:
Halt, robot. We see you over there and we don't want you doing that.
DROID 2:
Yeah uh [i dunno, he should say something funny to lighten the mood and make audience go 'ha", cuz like its been real heavy up til now] [like all sumthin you wouldn't expect a droid to say, thatd be funny cuz people'd go "hes a droid and thats why it is funny he said that"]
But r2 like aint havin nunna that so he all like drops what he's doing and like sprays oil or somthin on the ground and the robots slip in a comical fashion, all like slapstick funny and audience laffin, so then after audeice is all like "ho shit he just whomped they ass" he like pulls out a flame thrower or sumthin [he should totally have a flame thrower] and like sets em all on fire and like screams again, cuz that scream sound is funny and never gets tiresome...
Fade to Anakin and Obi-Wan all kicking ass, use the rectangle fill thing, you know, the one with the rectangles, yeah that 1.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACT 4:
Anakin and Padme or however the fuck you spell it are all having an intimate moment... anakin looks like hes good still but you like see signs i dunno in the eyes or something hes gonna be like bad later... Padme is looking all hott and attainable looking, she like wants to go out with me man im like not even kidding
ANAKIN:
My love for you is like a river: There's a lot of it.
PADME:
Anakin, I have somthing to tell you... [distraught, look in eyes like about to say something hell of important, audience all on edge of seat waiting]
ANAKIN:
What is it?
PADME:
I'm preggers; your seed's all swimming in my belly, like i throw up in the mornings and want pancakes like all the time.
ANAKIN:
This is the happiest day of my life.
PADME:
It is for me too, Anakin. [they kiss and embrace, this scene is mainly for the chicks, maybe cut to a clevage shot for the dudes]
Then quik cut to a battle, people geting blowed up, less mush more crush. IN space and things.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luckily as the movie progressed it seemed less like this. George Lucas was never good with dialouge, which began the fanfiction comparison, but so does the Friggin' Sweet Syndrome. Fans want to see stuff that's friggin' sweet, and who can blame them? It's fucking Star Wars, not The Hours or The Notebook; we want Wookie fights and Yoda being cool and guys with four fucking light sabers and cheesy shit that any hack could've written. And, no, I'm no movie curmudgeon. There was plenty in this movie I would term non-ironically "friggin' sweet" because, damn, son, that shit was dope! This element, I felt, worked to Lucas' disadvantage in the last two films, however he seems to have struck the right amount of wallowing in his own creation in this film. I believe it was the darkness. This movie was quite dark in comparison to the others, the only one to be given a PG-13 rating. Most of the Jedi are picked off Godfather-style, meanwhile Anakin is off killing innocent children. Kick ass. I pretended every child he slaid to be his former self from Episode 1, and, sure, slaughter a little Jar-Jar while you're at it. The franchise deserved some wickedness, as the last two Pepsi-sponsored kid-friendly smile time hours known as Episodes 1 and 2 had enough schlock to make even any self-respecting 7 year old go "Alright, what the fuck? Give us more credit than that!" Here, however, a much-needed foray into the disturbing elements of the Star Wars story propelled Lucas' poor dialouge and previously inane story-telling into a world it finally deserved to be in: One of former glory. While this whole series of prequels may have been simply a cash cow to foster Lucas' appaling coke habit for a few more years, at least we got an enjoyable epic out of it. The conclusion of the evolution from Anakin to Darth Vader is here, as if to say "Fuck, I'm sorry for ever exposing you to Anakin's childhood, and his miscreant racial epithet comic relief know as Jar-Jar Binks... I'll never ever make anything as badass as Darth Vader, so here you go, have some more of him."
Things tied together pretty nicely in the end, though I must admit it always bugged me that the charecters in 4, 5 and 6 are for some reason also in 1, 2 and 3, despite being in entirely different situations in the two sections. Oh well. However, the following things weren't exactly cleared up for me:
1. How Yoda turned from CGI to Muppet
2. Why Yoda is able to do mad flips and kick enemy ass yet can't walk or put together a decent sentence
3. Why technology in the prequels is so much better and more advanced than anything in the originals
Well, I've said my peace. Good night, all, and glad to see you cared enough to read through all this garbage.
posted by MC Harv at 3:23 AM
8 Comments:
"My love for you is like a river: There's a lot of it."
Stop it! I'm gonna pee!! You're so funny I'm crying.
I read your review and I didn't quite come away with whether you liked it or not, but I'm seeing the movie regardless (or, as an old boss used to like to say fifteen times in a day, "irregardless").
Sorry, I can come off as a pretencious movie critic who writes ambiguous reviews sometimes.
Bottom line: I loved it. Go see it.
"From my point of view, the jedi are evil!"
"Anakin! You're breaking my heart!!"
etc.
Before the movie started, there were people fighting in the theater the with lightsabers that actually lit up.
We brought in a 12 pack of coke(opened and dispersed thru peeps' (lean)pockets), two bags of Swedish fish, and a box of Swiss cake rolls. Fuck you, movie theaters.
-Lekim
No giant hershey bar? that's tradition for the movies where I come from.
sex, no fooling some of the 'romantic dialogue' was even worse than that. it hurt. And yes, some of the regular dialogue was even more painful, but overall it was sweet. i just saw it, and to summarize my thoughts on the matter, i would go masturbate, but there's no point because it just won't be as satisfying
You're obviously someone who would go masturbate at the slightest provocation. You must be a close friend of Jack's.
Yoda didn't turn from CGI to muppet - he was always there as Yoda! Yoda is able to do mad flips because he's a jedi, but he doesn't do it much because he's almost 900 years old, small, and fragile. Yet when the time to fight has to come, Yoda will fight like a warrior. My theory is that the technology in the prequels appears more advanced than the originals because the evil nature of the Empire wants to take all the technology for theirs. The technology is definatley still there in the first trilogy, just not as flashy (the Death Star could blow up an entire planet for chrissakes!).
I wouldn't call Episode II a kiddie movie - sure, Lucas put plenty of kiddie friendly elements into it to contrast with the overall lack of plot and focus into political aspects. And the film should still be somewhat respected for its tie-ins and forshadowing to the originals (we got to meet Luke's future uncle and aunt, they drank blue milk, and we saw the origin of Boba Fett - not to mention the stormtroopers, which was always a big question of mine back in the day).
Best ROTS review I've read yet.
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