"Revenge of the Sith" Review
May. 20th, 2005 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberThat movie was shit.
Like, from a butt.
Lemme say it like this: I saw "Catwoman" in the theaters last year (I had a free pass for it).
"Catwoman" was a far, far better movie than "Revenge of the Sith."
I'm going to clip my spoileriffic review, but know this: I went to "Revenge of the Sith" expecting that I'd see a movie with a crappy plot, crappy acting, and crappy dialog; but some good fights and scenery, and maybe even some neat seduction-to-the-Dark-Side and deaths-of-Jedi.
But everything I listed there was shit (except for the acting and plot, which soared above the rest of the movie, maintaining the steady altitude of "crappy" that they've been holding throughout the prequels), and in addition, the editing and cinematography and special effects were shit. And more.
Basically, what I want out of a movie is for the characters to not act stupidly. What I got here was characters who were not only astoundingly stupid, but also generally loathsome. And the fights weren't even good!
So, honestly, why the fuck didn't Anakin ever think to ask, "Gee, Chancellor, howcome you know so much about the Sith? Did you do a thesis on them?"
Yoda, pretty much every time he opened his mouth I was flipping him off within a sentence or two. And what the hell kind of excuse does he have for not helping the rebellion for 18 years? Was he training Leia, maybe protecting her? Did it occur to him, Hey, I was pretty evenly matched with Darth Sidious alone, I bet me and Obi Wan together... No, the fucking bastard went off and got in touch with his inner ghost and let planets and civilizations be destroyed.
Mace Windu... Gee, you don't trust the guy. So, huh, why not make it obvious to him at every opportunity that you dislike him? I bet he'll have all sorts of impetus to help you out then! (Though it's not like I haven't before seen that sort of "reasoning" applied by characters everyone was supposed to love.) Anyway, I hear Samuel Jackson wanted a graceful death... Graceful is not falling off a fucking skyscraper.
Padme. "Sure, you're the most powerful Force-guy ever and your prophetic deams have been proven true... But it's all in your head this time, you big silly!" Moron. Way to support your life-partner there.
And you know what? I'm fucking pissed that every major Jedi is male. Even the tiny little kids hiding in the council chamber: all male. What. The. Fuck. Every major character except Padme, in fact, is male. I remember the first movie... At least they had some shots of female Jedi. Yaddle, the lady with the things on her head, the lady with the horns on her face like Darth Maul... I think the only female Jedi we saw this entire movie were two getting killed in the 5-second scenes of Jedi deaths. And this ties back to Yoda-the-motherfucker. Luke? Sure, give him a Jedi to watch over him and teach him the ways of the Force. Leia? Fuck that shit. I'll be busy hiding in a swamp for the rest of my life, thankyewverymuch!
And why is it that a Jedi can carve his way through endless numbers of attack droids, but three guys with guns can take him down in three seconds? What, the, fuck?!
And Obi-Wan. I mean, the "Dude, you're a good guy and a good Jedi, hang on and know that I'm your friend" bit was as obvious as "one last mission and then I retire!", but I liked it still. But the death of Anakin. What, the, fuck. Say you set out a mousetrap. When you come back, you find the mouse has been caught by the rear. Its legs and spine are broken, but it still breathes, raggedly, eyes glazed, tongue hanging out.
You fucking kill the mouse! It's called mercy!
The seduction-to-the-Dark-Side was blatantly obvious... More like lap-dance of the Dark Side, with a free blowjob.
The dialog at times had me covering my ears and wincing.
The fights. I mean, if there are times when I can say, "Why don't you cut his stomach open now? He's not doing anything to stop you, you've got your sword..." then the fight coreography has failed utterly. And it did. It was obvious that the only reason people lived or died was plot, and the only reason fights were long or short was plot, and people would fight until Lucas decided they'd fought enough and then one would die for no apparent reason. They were ignoring obvious openings, their left hands were flopping around uselessly, there was no interaction with the environment, they stayed in 2-dimensional planes...
There was a time when Obi Wan patted his lizard (and I admit, I came to enjoy the lizard) and he was obviously patting nothing near it. And CGI always looks like CGI. I long for Muppets. And, correct me if I'm wrong... Lightsabers. Sabers, made of light. They glow, right? I mean, there are these bright white spaces on the screen filled in with the color the "light saber" is supposed to be?
So why didn't they cast any fucking light on the faces of the people growling at each other inches away from them? Maybe if you'd actually used a few locations instead of nothing but bluescreens, Lucas, you'd've had the special-effects budget to do the lightsabers right. Like, that portico where Anakin and Padme first meet: was fugly CGI. You can't find a real location with pillars to shoot a minute of film?
Or maybe it was a real location (or really built on a soundstage and just lighted shittily so it looked fake) and it was the camerawork that made it look like ass. I mean, I don't usually notice camerawork, but the editing was such shit this movie that it became obvious. When we never see more than a second from any one shot in a fight, and when every cut is to another shot that looks just about the same, I start to suspect there's no real reason for the cutting besides "this is a crap fight."
And the constant cuts from one part of the universe to the next were just boring. No investment in any particular scene. Boring boring boring attempts at lining everything up.
The Chronicle movie critic was right. The movie was castrated by never showing Anakin doing something truly evil. Marching into the Jedi Temple and then cutting away? Fuck that shit.
Oh, and the Jedi Temple. Ugly bunker without windows or grace... I saw it and I was like, Please tell me that's not the temple of the earth-tone-clad swirly-cloak-wearing style-having Jedi. Oh, crap. It is. They deserve to die. What the hell is with that architecture?!
And the makeup was shit, too. Unless Padme was supposed to look like she'd just started to use makeup and hadn't figured out blush yet.
Oo! And R2! Biggest fucking traitor to his kind of all time, yes? He laughs as his "friend" goes to get his mind wiped! I mean, I kinda liked General Grevious. A lot. He was neat. Was he maybe fighting for droid sovereignity? Why not? What the hell was R2 getting out of aiding the humans?
And why didn't they use the special effects budget or the model shop to make some babies that looked like just-born, premature-ish babies? I'm sick of this 2-month-old shit.
Eh, I'm sinking into quibbles. The first movie: neat scenery. The second movie: Hm. Well, at least it wasn't relentlessly stupid, just mostly stupid. This movie: relentlessly stupid.
Don't pay full price for this movie. I suppose the lava stuff might necessitate you see it in a theater, but actually, ...nah, not so much, really. If there was ever a movie to download from the internet and watch on your computer, this is it.
I say it's the worst of all six Star Wars films.
Like, from a butt.
Lemme say it like this: I saw "Catwoman" in the theaters last year (I had a free pass for it).
"Catwoman" was a far, far better movie than "Revenge of the Sith."
I'm going to clip my spoileriffic review, but know this: I went to "Revenge of the Sith" expecting that I'd see a movie with a crappy plot, crappy acting, and crappy dialog; but some good fights and scenery, and maybe even some neat seduction-to-the-Dark-Side and deaths-of-Jedi.
But everything I listed there was shit (except for the acting and plot, which soared above the rest of the movie, maintaining the steady altitude of "crappy" that they've been holding throughout the prequels), and in addition, the editing and cinematography and special effects were shit. And more.
Basically, what I want out of a movie is for the characters to not act stupidly. What I got here was characters who were not only astoundingly stupid, but also generally loathsome. And the fights weren't even good!
So, honestly, why the fuck didn't Anakin ever think to ask, "Gee, Chancellor, howcome you know so much about the Sith? Did you do a thesis on them?"
Yoda, pretty much every time he opened his mouth I was flipping him off within a sentence or two. And what the hell kind of excuse does he have for not helping the rebellion for 18 years? Was he training Leia, maybe protecting her? Did it occur to him, Hey, I was pretty evenly matched with Darth Sidious alone, I bet me and Obi Wan together... No, the fucking bastard went off and got in touch with his inner ghost and let planets and civilizations be destroyed.
Mace Windu... Gee, you don't trust the guy. So, huh, why not make it obvious to him at every opportunity that you dislike him? I bet he'll have all sorts of impetus to help you out then! (Though it's not like I haven't before seen that sort of "reasoning" applied by characters everyone was supposed to love.) Anyway, I hear Samuel Jackson wanted a graceful death... Graceful is not falling off a fucking skyscraper.
Padme. "Sure, you're the most powerful Force-guy ever and your prophetic deams have been proven true... But it's all in your head this time, you big silly!" Moron. Way to support your life-partner there.
And you know what? I'm fucking pissed that every major Jedi is male. Even the tiny little kids hiding in the council chamber: all male. What. The. Fuck. Every major character except Padme, in fact, is male. I remember the first movie... At least they had some shots of female Jedi. Yaddle, the lady with the things on her head, the lady with the horns on her face like Darth Maul... I think the only female Jedi we saw this entire movie were two getting killed in the 5-second scenes of Jedi deaths. And this ties back to Yoda-the-motherfucker. Luke? Sure, give him a Jedi to watch over him and teach him the ways of the Force. Leia? Fuck that shit. I'll be busy hiding in a swamp for the rest of my life, thankyewverymuch!
And why is it that a Jedi can carve his way through endless numbers of attack droids, but three guys with guns can take him down in three seconds? What, the, fuck?!
And Obi-Wan. I mean, the "Dude, you're a good guy and a good Jedi, hang on and know that I'm your friend" bit was as obvious as "one last mission and then I retire!", but I liked it still. But the death of Anakin. What, the, fuck. Say you set out a mousetrap. When you come back, you find the mouse has been caught by the rear. Its legs and spine are broken, but it still breathes, raggedly, eyes glazed, tongue hanging out.
You fucking kill the mouse! It's called mercy!
The seduction-to-the-Dark-Side was blatantly obvious... More like lap-dance of the Dark Side, with a free blowjob.
The dialog at times had me covering my ears and wincing.
The fights. I mean, if there are times when I can say, "Why don't you cut his stomach open now? He's not doing anything to stop you, you've got your sword..." then the fight coreography has failed utterly. And it did. It was obvious that the only reason people lived or died was plot, and the only reason fights were long or short was plot, and people would fight until Lucas decided they'd fought enough and then one would die for no apparent reason. They were ignoring obvious openings, their left hands were flopping around uselessly, there was no interaction with the environment, they stayed in 2-dimensional planes...
There was a time when Obi Wan patted his lizard (and I admit, I came to enjoy the lizard) and he was obviously patting nothing near it. And CGI always looks like CGI. I long for Muppets. And, correct me if I'm wrong... Lightsabers. Sabers, made of light. They glow, right? I mean, there are these bright white spaces on the screen filled in with the color the "light saber" is supposed to be?
So why didn't they cast any fucking light on the faces of the people growling at each other inches away from them? Maybe if you'd actually used a few locations instead of nothing but bluescreens, Lucas, you'd've had the special-effects budget to do the lightsabers right. Like, that portico where Anakin and Padme first meet: was fugly CGI. You can't find a real location with pillars to shoot a minute of film?
Or maybe it was a real location (or really built on a soundstage and just lighted shittily so it looked fake) and it was the camerawork that made it look like ass. I mean, I don't usually notice camerawork, but the editing was such shit this movie that it became obvious. When we never see more than a second from any one shot in a fight, and when every cut is to another shot that looks just about the same, I start to suspect there's no real reason for the cutting besides "this is a crap fight."
And the constant cuts from one part of the universe to the next were just boring. No investment in any particular scene. Boring boring boring attempts at lining everything up.
The Chronicle movie critic was right. The movie was castrated by never showing Anakin doing something truly evil. Marching into the Jedi Temple and then cutting away? Fuck that shit.
Oh, and the Jedi Temple. Ugly bunker without windows or grace... I saw it and I was like, Please tell me that's not the temple of the earth-tone-clad swirly-cloak-wearing style-having Jedi. Oh, crap. It is. They deserve to die. What the hell is with that architecture?!
And the makeup was shit, too. Unless Padme was supposed to look like she'd just started to use makeup and hadn't figured out blush yet.
Oo! And R2! Biggest fucking traitor to his kind of all time, yes? He laughs as his "friend" goes to get his mind wiped! I mean, I kinda liked General Grevious. A lot. He was neat. Was he maybe fighting for droid sovereignity? Why not? What the hell was R2 getting out of aiding the humans?
And why didn't they use the special effects budget or the model shop to make some babies that looked like just-born, premature-ish babies? I'm sick of this 2-month-old shit.
Eh, I'm sinking into quibbles. The first movie: neat scenery. The second movie: Hm. Well, at least it wasn't relentlessly stupid, just mostly stupid. This movie: relentlessly stupid.
Don't pay full price for this movie. I suppose the lava stuff might necessitate you see it in a theater, but actually, ...nah, not so much, really. If there was ever a movie to download from the internet and watch on your computer, this is it.
I say it's the worst of all six Star Wars films.