Just got back from seeing Episode III.
It’s clearly the best of the prequel trilogy–by a longshot.
What surprised me most about it is that, despite its listed running time of 146 minutes, the movie itself is only 26 minutes long, after you sit through two hours of previews. Doesn’t take Annakin harly any time to fall at all. Hope they don’t put all the previews on the DVD to fill up space.
Okay, I’m kidding about that of course. They won’t put the previews on the DVD.
And the movie also is really 146 minutes long, it just feels like you sit through two hours of previews first.
Episode III is, as I said, the best of the prequel trilogy. It succeeds in the chief tasks it sets for itself, which are considerable.
First and foremost, it has to find a convincing way to make Annakin turn to the Dark Side–something a lot more convincing than the "temptation" Luke gets put through in Episode VI. Ranting about the "true nature" and "power" of the Dark Side ain’t gonna do it. There has to be something more than that to make a convincing turn from good to evil.
The trick is harder than you’d think because of the extreme nature of the turn that has to be made. It’s not like getting somebody to cheat on his taxes. They’ve got to take Annakin Skywalker from being a little resentful to being a full-blown, black-wearin’, helmet-sportin’, Jedi-killin’, voice-raspin’ Supervillain.
What makes that so hard?
Well, people who are supervillains generally don’t believe that. Like everybody else, they like to think of themselves and what they are doing as good, and it’s hard to make Darth Vader-level evil look good.
The film thus has the challenge of taking us far enough into Annakin’s perspective to make what he’s doing seem intelligible, but not so far into it that we end up believing that the Jedi are evil and need to be wiped out.
The movie succeeds far, far better than I thought.
In fact, in some ways it succeeds a little too well, though there’ll be time to talk about that on another occasion, once folks have had a chance to see the movie.
I think there are flaws, though. Up to the point that Annakin actually turns to the Dark Side the movie is firing on all cylinders. Just after this, though, there is a scene in which Annakin formalizes his commitment to the Dark Side that I don’t think works as well. And then Annakin goes and does something so evil that, frankly, I could have done without it. It exceeds the bounds of what is believable in terms of sane human motivation and one can only be explained upon some kind of Dark Side mental compulsion that ain’t spelled out explicitly in the movie.
I would have handled things a little differently. Lucas has Annakin’s initial conversion to the Dark Side (which is quite intelligible) occur earlier than his final descent into total, irrational supervillainry, and I would have had the descent bridging the two be more even and gradual than what the film gives us.
Despite this, the movie does achieve its primary goal: Getting Annakin to break with the Light Side and embrace the Dark Side believably.
The movie also achieves its secondary objective, which is tying up the significant loose ends: How do Luke and Leia get born? How are they separated? How do the Jedi fall? What’s the sequence of events leading Yoda an Obi-Wan to go into exile? Why does the Emperor look so icky in the original trilogy? What’s with the "becoming one with the Force" bit? What is the confusing prophecy of "Bringing balance to the Force" supposed to mean in practical terms? Why doesn’t C-3P0 remember any of this? And most importantly: How Does Darth Get Physically Transformed Into A Half-Machine Icon Of Darkness And Why Doesn’t He Know About Luke And Leia?
The answers to some of these are obvious, but we still need to see them happen. Others are things fans have speculated on for years. The film manages to achieve these quite well, though at the price of introducing one notable departure from established continuity (something mentioned in a scene in Episode VI).
I’m prepared to accept the departure from continuity, though, as I think it serves the overall plot and makes the story of Episode III more believable. If Lucas hadn’t departed from continuity on this one point, it would have been harder to pull off the ending of the film.
The film’s third goal–like always–is to dazzle us with action, and it does that, though I’m probably not the best person to describe action scenes as my focus is more on plot and character.
It’s final major goal–also as always–is to be visually stunning, and it certainly is that. People are right when they say that this movie is more visually stunning than any previous Star Wars film. Not in every scene, mind you, but overall, it is. We get a raft of new visually dymanic worlds to look at–some (unfortunately) seen only in passing during the fall of the Jedi.
A favorite of mine are some scenes in which Obi-Wan is mounted on a Giant Battle Iguana-Chicken What Goes "Awp! Awp!" (It’s better than it sounds.)
We also get to (briefly) see the Wookies in action in their home environment, which can only call-up regrets about what Episode VI should have shown us. (Lucas originally planned for the forrest moon of Endor to be inhabited by Wookiees, but changed his mind, cut them in half, made them more teddy-bear like, and called them Ewoks–Wook-iee —-> Eee-wok, Get It?)
The acting has also improved, though it’s still poor. Ewan McGregor kicks butt as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda is okay. Samuel L. Jackson still comes off as flat to me, but Hayden Christiansen’s acting has literally doubled in quality since Episode II. Unfortunately, since his acting score last time was only 2.0 out of 10.0 possible, he’s still only up to 4.0 out of 10.0.
There are other things about the film that I’d nitpick, but there will be time for that later after folks have seen it, and these don’t fundamentally distract from the fact that this is without a doubt the best of the prequel trilogy.
I need to see it a second time before I try to compare it to the films of the first trilogy (though I strongly suspect I’ll conclude that it’s better than Episode VI, which is infested with teddy bears and lame attempts at conversion to the Dark Side, among other things).
NOTE: I know folks are likely to want to talk about this film, but since many have not seen it yet, please keep the combox for this post a SPOILER FREE ZONE. Comments with spoilers will be DELETED. I’ll create another post with a combox for spoiler-laden discussion for those who have already seen the film.
