As the originator of this thread, I have waited until now to throw my opinion into the mix. I have done this for two reasons; one, to allow some enough people to see it before venting my spleen and two, to have a chance to see it a second time to be sure of what I saw the first time.
Let me preface my opinion with the following facts:
1) I saw the original Star Wars, 2 days after it opened in '77. I was blown away and I subsequently went back and paid to see it 22 more times.
I know you are saying:
"Were you NUTS!"
But for those of you who were born into this wonderful electronic age, you have no clue how it was back then. We didn't have bit torrent downloads of a new movie available 2 days before it came into the theater. Heck, we didn't even have VCR's for the most part, so you got ONE shot to see a movie and when it went, it was gone until it came on network TV several years later.
2) I am an Empire junkie. From the moment I saw my first Stormtrooper come through the door of Leia's ship, I was hooked. The more of the Empire I saw, the more I started rooting for them to crush the ?'Rebel Scum' that infested such a well organized and run Empire. When the Empire overran the Rebel's Hoth base in the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, I was one of the only ones cheering,
"That's what you get for going toe to toe with the Empire you scumbag weaklings!"
So you can imagine a movie about the start of the Empire and the fall of the ?'Republic' was highest priority on my To See List.
3) I own all the movies out and although I never got into the whole ?'Collectables' craze, I do count myself as somewhat of a Star Wars ?'Geek'.
4) I hated the ?'Phantom Menace'. Hated, hated HATED it. I hated it with the white hot intensity of an exploding sun. I would have rather gone through a root canal done by a blind, sadistic dentist with Tourettes and Parkinsons than ever see that again. (I do own it, but it is still in its plastic wrapper.)
5) I think the only reason that I didn't hate ?'Attack of the Clones' near as much, was because I got to see the ?'birth' of my beloved Stormtroopers.
So having said that, I went into ?'Revenge of the Sith' with very low expectations, assuaged by the fact that I would get to see more of my Stormtroopers in action. I figured that if I got to see a movie where the Stormtroopers were everywhere, the Empire was born, the snotty, stuck up Jedi got their ?'just desserts' it would have to be at least a marginally acceptable movie.
WARNING, THE SPOILER PIRATE SAYS: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD
ARRRRRR!!
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I was WRONG. This movie was painful from the first insipid frame to the last.
The dialogue is so emotionless and poorly written; I could swear that Lucas got a sociopath with dyslexia to write it.
If indeed George Lucas DID write it, we need to send a petition to the Screenwriters Guild, making sure that Lucas is never EVER allowed to pen another love scene for the rest of his life.
The man proved he has the ability write a good adventure yarn. He really needed to stick with what he was good at, writing spaceship scenes, blaster scenes, and action scenes. He has no idea how to write moving, tender dialogue for the young ?'Romeo and Juliet' who are central to this trilogy. The man should have found an out of work ?'chick flick' screenwriter to write the scenes for Padme/Anakin so they would have contained some emotion or at the very least, they wouldn't have been as painful to watch as this was. (My GOD, the man could have hired Jackie Collins for Gods sake, at least there would have been some heat between the two characters.)
Watching great actors like Christopher Lee, Samuel Jackson and Natalie Portman slog through dialogue this bad was as painful as watching my Goddaughters First Grade Christmas play, which her whole class wrote themselves. That is to say, I love the players, (Especially my Goddaughter's
) but I found the story painfully rambling and incoherent.
That being said, the ONLY highlight of this most painful experience, was watching the Jedi get eliminated. I was in a packed movie house and I was one of only two people who cheered every time another Jedi was wasted. (That person and I locked gazes and gave each other a nod as we left the theater with that ?'The next 20 years are OURS' glance) Heck, watching that smug midget Yoda get his ass kicked was the pinnacle of my week.
You are probably asking yourself, why Fedral went to see it twice if he hated it so much the first time. The answer is, much like passing a horrific car wreck, you just have to look at it a second time to believe what you saw in shock the first.
As I said, this is just my opinion. Any resemblance between this post and a coherent movie review are clearly coincidental.
