Curses. Just got myself psyched up to pick up my coursework marks, which I believed would include the marks for the project report (a large chunk of grade). They did not, however, containing as they did only the marks for the homeworks, and I've known those for ages!
Anyway, I got to see Revenge of the Sith yesterday, which was nice.
Yeah, SWEIII was good. Not as good as it needed to be to redeem the prequel trilogy, but as good as it needed to be to finish it off adequately.
I do, however, have the following gripes:
* Now, I'm a big fan of epic action sequences, but with many of the battles in sweiii just had too godamn much going on. The chase between Kenobi and Gen Grievous [also see below] was a running lightsabre battle between a jedi master and a ten foot tall cyborg. This would have been enough, but no, it also took place on a mobile gun platform as it barreled down subterranean tunnels past machinery, creatures, and all manner of other distractions. The pudding was entirely over-egged for this and many other sequences, past the point where Exciting Effects just become flashes and bangs.
* Gen Grievous was a cool concept but ultimately a rather pointless distraction. This side plot wasn't necessary, especially considering that there were a few other things to be devoting screen time to. [Also see below]
* As with Episodes I and II, there was a lot of plot to be got through in relatively not much time. One minute people were on Coruscant (Padme not noticably pregnant), then shortly after folks were on opposite sides of the galaxy having high-budget exploits (Padme looking more pregnant), and before long the Republic had colapsed and Anakin was now slightly crispy (Padme ready to drop, apparently). All done at running pace from one bit of exposition to the next, with no real moments of 'and now time passes'. [er, also see below]
* My major gripe is that I do so wish Mr Lucas would credit his audience with an attention span of longer than a minute. There were very few scenes that lasted long enough to settle into a mood before (star wipe!) we were somewhere else following up an entirely different plot thread. Although you might not want to take the route of LotR, by which it can be hours between find out what the other half of the plot is up to, breaking the scenes only every couple of minutes, while it doesn't leave you bored, doesn't help you sink into the film at all. I know little about film-making, but would it not have been better to have longer scenes, in which dialogue and stuff are used to convey whatever needs conveying, rather than making a point and moving on straight away?
* Getting onto niggles now, but I think I muched preffered things when the galaxy was actually rather large, and you couldn't just nip from Kashyyyk to Coruscant inside an hour, or dash from the Capital to the Outer Rim because you think your apprentice is in trouble. Now, I know this sounds like the rantings of a vexed fanboy (which, let's face it, it is), but I don't see how Lucas can want to have done these films for any other reason, besides the vast amounts of money, when he clearly has no love for the world he has built. Sorry, this minor niggle is the tip of a much larger iceberg that, as an old star wars fanboy and someone who appreciates a well thought out, deep, spacially and temporally coherent world, I get saddened by.
* Another niggle, which applies to all of the prequels, is that the sense of dark and brooding that Lucas was trying to create was not helped by things like the sinister droid army going "Roger Roger" and making cute/funny bleeping and squarking noises. Yeah yeah, I know that's all R2D2 ever does, but he's meant to be human-esque, not an inhuman soldier-bot.
* The Padme/Anakin dialogue was still fist-bitingly bad, but that's not really saying much.
All other stuff is probably just things that I would have done differently, or that didn't make much sense in my head (You do not fight space battles at that close range! - you certainly don't do it in low orbit of a planet which is entirely covered by a really high population density! :) ).
Mind you, it wasn't all bad by any means: all the buildings, ships, etc. were very well visualised; Darth Vader ended up looking a lot like charred Sebastian Shaw; and all loose ends were tied up rather well. Also, even after all these years Darth Vader is still cool.
I'm reluctant to pass final judgement on it untill I see it again (which probably won't be til it comes out on dvd) as I made the mistake after Episode II of allowing myself to be wowed by Yoda-fu, but as my current feelings stand, I'd give it a 3/5 (Compared to an It's All Right 2/5 for I and II).
During the trailers, H was shocked and horrified that Batman now features mystic kung fu training on a mountain, but I think she's just put out that they've not got Tim Burton back to do this one.
;)
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