here sith ing...
[movies]
posted by tom / May 20, 2005 / 
We saw Star Wars, and it was good. No: very good. I came away impressed. All of the stupid, boring and/or whiney bullshit (trade embargos?) finally culminated in a surprisingly decent sprint of character development. My spoiler-free quibbles:
- General Grievous was decidedly less awesome than his cartoon incarnation. Also, he turned out to be yet another bad guy with a stupid pseudo-Asian accent (no offense, pseudo-Asian readers). In the cartoons he was mute, dispatched Jedi with ease, and kind of scary.
- The acting remained non-great. Christensen continued his anticipatory method technique of pretending to already be half-machine. McDiarmid's lines dripped with so much menace that it began to collect in puddles on the floor. And Natalie Portman committed the cardinal Star Wars starlet sin of not actually looking all that hot. On the upside, Ewan McGregor's Obi Wan finally had something to do other than act like a weenie, and he did it well.
- Yoda's charming speech mannerisms have been codified into a strict Yodelian Grammar, and it's really annoying. Object Subject Verb. Object Subject Verb. Every. Single. Time. Even puppets ought to change things up once in a while.
- The writing, although better than the last two, was still pretty bad. George, why must you call them "younglings"? Is "children" not sufficiently mythopoetic? Let's compromise: how about "space-children"? (I'm a longstanding supporter of adding the "space" prefix to every scifi noun.)
On the other hand, I am looking forward to endless months of encouraging Catherine to remember "when there was only our love," and we weren't buffeted by the cruel winds of a galactic power struggle, or, say, the need to put away our Xbox controllers.
Finally, allow me to direct you (via Yglesias) to Tyler Cowen's excellent case against the Jedi. In short: everyone's a fascist. Well, except maybe the Ewoks. And we probably only think that because of our patronizingly primitivist worldview.
Comments
Cowen makes some excellent points... the Jedi really had slipped regarding their lofty mission statement. When Master Yoda's own paduan learner succumbs to the Sith, you'd think it would mark a serious crisis within the Council. It should have highlighted the need for sweeping reforms in how younglings are trained to ward off the dark arts - but no. They all seemed to shrug... "that's the dark side for you!"
The whole loss to the dark side thing reminded me of how Buffy would approach a former friend-turned-vampire - not much interest in the redemption. Shouldn't the Jedi have some queer healing powers or something?
I think maybe they realize that dark-siders are a lost cause because (as the man said), when you get down to it, Good is Dumb.
The Buffy thing is a thornier issue. Certainly the Spike storyline toward the end of the show implied that vampires could be rehabilitated, creating a pretty big moral question around their continuing slaughter. But sadly Joss never brought this up.
true, true. Spike becoming good(ish) with the healing power of love never really fit into the world Joss had created. It always struck me as a way to keep Spike on the show (which I wholeheartedly supported, but maybe not in that way). Was he less evil than the other vampires?
by the way - seen the Serenity trailer yet?
Man, BtVS and RotS—public discourse has never been better.
But if those in Slytherin are known to become practitioners of the dark arts, why aren't they given particular attention to make sure they don't turn to the side of Voldemort? And why is the house even part of Hogwarts?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
public discourse has never been better.
I know! Between Susan's site and about a million threads on unfogged, the blogosphere has never been better.
And Kanishka completes the trifecta! Yes!
And yes, I just watched the Serenity trailer (link). Looks pretty good -- although maybe not as good as the Batman trailer I saw before Star Wars last night.
I liked everything about that Batman trailer except possibly the presence of Katie Holmes. But that being said... the whole intro with Bruce learning the painful arts on some Himalayan mountaintop was rad. It's how Jon's life might have panned out, had a few key things gone differently.
Man, I liked next to nothing about the Batman trailer. Obviously I'll stand in whatever line is necessary when the time comes, but a cubist Hummer is not the whip I pictured Batman Year 1 cruising through Gotham in.
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