Only About Three Years Behind

Ok, I saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith on Thursday. Yeah, I know, I'm late to the party. so late, in fact, that I arrived long after everyone else left and the host is dressed in his PJ's, wondering what the hell I'm doing at his door at 3AM with a bowl of French Onion Dip.

On one side, I have my friends who all loved it. But then again, several of them are Fanboys, who would be entertained by Yoda reading names from a phone book for two and a half hours. When I told them in September 2005 that I haddn't gotten arround to seeing it yet, they just looked at me like I had just told them I wasn't toilet trained or something.

Then there's my sister and brother-in-law who HATED IT. As I'm told, everyone they know hate it. It must be a DC/Northern Virginia thing, because they are the only two people I know personally that didnt' like it. Even the Fanboys (and Fangirl) who detested the first two prequels, were more than satisfied with the third.

Here's my impressions, long after anyone cares:

• I couldn't figure out why the first half of the movie was composed fully of these panoramic shots of forests, with the sound of wind blowing through. Then I realized that those trees were just the actors talking, and it was just bad diologue, bad acting, and bad directing.
• Not being a Star Wars guy, I have to ask, is there some kind of symbolism with peoples' hands or limbs in general getting lightsabred off? In the whole series, by my count, Luke gets it, Anikin loses an arm twice (once in Clonewars, once in RotJ) and gets his legs cut off by Obi Wan, Dooku loses both at once, Greivious loses two (but has two to spare), and I know I'm forgetting others.
• Bad Acting? Awful Script? Whatever. Must like the first two, these can all be forgiven with proper light sabre fights and action scenes.
• I know the Dark Side Corrupts your physical body as well as your soul, but why does Darth Sidieous's face go from 'I'm a distinguished gentleman' to 'bag of haggis sitting on my neck' after a few seconds of shooting Force-Lightning? Better question: If could turn yourself fugly to shoot Lightning from your hands, would you do it?
• Sometimes when actors from other famous roles take parts in other important franchises, you start to mix together bits and pieces of both those roles. When Mace Windu finally confronted the Chancellor, I was waiting for him to break out some Ezekiel 25:17 on his ass. See also Hugo Weaving in Lord of the Rings. "The Ring must be destroyed... Deploy the Sentinals!"
• Emotional impact of the extermination of several nameless Jedi: Much Sadness. Emotional Impact of Padame dying of a broken heart? Meh. The protagonists just weren't appealing.
• About the alledged policital commentary in the movie: I think it's much ado about nothing. for the past 7 years, everyone's been looking for signs that BusHitler is cracking down on free speech and human rights or overanalyzing all media looking for pontification on the State Of Things. In either case, sometimes it's there, but not as often as we think it is. If you're jaded to look past those things now, maybe watch it again in 5 years. It was probably (possibly?) in your imagination.

Overall, I rank it as Satisfactory, despite the best efforts of the script writers and director to make it stupid. I'd make a recommenation to see it, but as I said at the beginning, Most of you already have about 3 years ago. Thankfully, Netflix is going to be catching me up on all the important movies I missed in the past 5 years.