The contest, Star Wars, and full-frontal nudity.
So, as promised, the winner of my Couscous Express giveaway, the person whose name I randomly pulled from a hat (well, a virtual hat, anyway):
Bryan Boles of Tennessee!
Your book will be placed in the tender mercies of our fine postal system shortly. Thanks to Big Larry, king of Ait/Planetlar, for supplying the book, and thanks to everyone who entered the drawing!
So, yeah, that new Star Wars movie.
Wasn’t bad.
Well, there’s my spoiler-free review. I suppose I should say that Lucas has finally focused more on the action, which is what he’s generally good at, and less on the love story, which has been somewhat less than convincing, to say the least. At any rate, I thought I’d list some random reactions to the film (like I did with Spider-Man 2 way back when). I’ve been avoiding other people’s reviews, so I apologize if I cover ground already, um, covered by others.
So, SPOILER ALERT…yeah, yeah, “Anakin is Darth Vader?!?” I haven’t heard that joke enough:
- Like I said, Lucas brings on the action, and keeps the draggy parts to a minimum. The initial lovey-dovey scenes between Anakin and Padme are still remarkably unconvincing, with awkward dialogue…but the later scenes, after Anakin’s turn to the dark side, the “romantic” dialogue suddenly has a more menacing undercurrent, which works quite nicely.
- Palpatine finally going into all-out scenery-chewing villain mode was something of a relief, and something that the previous two movies desperately needed.
- How to improve any Star Wars movie: insert Yoda, kicking ass. I never, ever get tired of Yoda’s lightsabre fight with Dooku in Attack of the Clones, and I greatly enjoyed his action scenes in this film.
- Dumb jokes were at a minimum in this film…no C3P0 “I’m beside myself!” lines, like in AOTC. Not that there wasn’t humor…mostly in the most badass of droids, R2-D2, giving some of the bad guys what-for.
- Though, speaking of our favorite astromech droid, what’s with R2 popping out of his spaceship socket like a piece of bread out of a toaster? I hope he has good shocks in those legs of his.
- As you know, Jar Jar is in the film, but doesn’t say a word (though I bet we’ll get some deleted scenes with him in the eventual DVD release). In an odd sort of way, I missed him, and that last shot of him in the funeral procession was sadly touching.
- I’m not 100% certain I bought that Anakin would turn so completely to evil…okay, maybe he was emotionally broken after giving a hand (har har) to Palpatine during his battle with Windu, but going straight into killing “younglings?” Well, then again, he’s done it before, slaughtering a whole Sandpeople community in AOTC (as recreated in the cheery “Tusken Raider Encounter” Lego set).
- Hey, who else liked Senator Organa’s tricked-out flying hot rod?
- The reveal of Darth Vader was handled well…I’d been afraid for six years that we were going to get Vader rolled out of the lab (or wherever) and a jump-cut to Jar Jar waving his arms and shouting “meesa thinks we’re in trouble now!” I could have done without the never terribly convincing “NOOOOOOOOOO!” cliche. I’m half-surprised he didn’t fall to his knees at the same time.
- So am I understanding Palpatine’s story about his Sith Lord’s powers right, that Palpatine himself is responsible for Anakin’s “virgin” birth?
- For just a brief moment, as Yoda was talking to Obi-Wan about his “further training” at the end of the film, I thought we’d be getting a Qui-Gon cameo. No dice…I guess Liam Neeson was busy (or just refusing to have anything more to do with the series).
- Neither my girlfriend nor I caught Padme’s last line of dialogue, prior to her passing. Could someone let us know what it was?
- As we were leaving the theatre, we heard a young boy tell his mom, “you know, there’s going to be an Episode IV.”
Okay, END SPOILERS…though I’m betting if you were planning on seeing the film, you would already have done so by now!
I’m sure there are inconsistencies between this trilogy and the original trilogy (there’s gotta be some weird timeline kinks in there, somewhere), but I’ll let someone else dope those out. I’m just happy that the movie ended up being better than expected, given the previous two installments. Not perfect, but acceptable and enjoyable.
Of course, I may have just been in a good mood for the showing, since one of the trailers preceding the film was for Stealth…surely the greatest movie ever made. Evil robot plane, I love you.
I’m sorry to say that there is no full-frontal nudity in this post. My apologies.
