Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Star Wars - Revenge Of The Sith

The short review:
Why, young Padawan, lack of patience you have! Still if know you must what to do then let me advise you. See the movie, you must. A great event, it is. Now go your way, you can. May the force be with you!

The "fan in me" version:
Go, go to your theatres immediately. Watch the movie make Lucas richer. The movie is great, in fact it is stupendous in its scope of the Star Wars Universe. Well worth the watch. Well worth buying the DVD. So what are you waiting for!!!

The long version:

Story:
Well no great surprises here! The story is exactly as we expect it to be. However there is one problem. At times it feels that the movie could easily have become two movies. Many parts of the movie seem to have been rushed through. Maybe some of it should have been put into Attack Of The Clones. Well! Whatever! The end result is that the story sticks to the canon, is not overtly complicated and is as expected. So it gets a 5/10. {After seeing all the parts I think storywise the best movie seems to be The Empire Strikes Back - especially with it's "I Am Your Father" twist in the tail.}
/////

Technical:
This is where the movie really shines. Were you amazed by Coruscant, the Kamiya system and the Gungans underwater city in the last version? You have not seen anything yet. This time around Coruscant really comes to life. The buildings, the vehicles, the space battles, the opera everything is at a completely different scale this time around. Not to mention the details in which other planets have been rendered. This one factor is the main reason you want to watch the DVD version. Believe me you will never catch all the details without having the ability to playback:) Well done Mr. Lucas, well done. I give this a score of 9/10
//////////

Sound/Music:
As expected the sound is Superlative. The background score is rich as ever. Add to that the climatic sounds and you have a winner. One of the best parts is when Anakin slowly moves to the dark side and you hear the heavy breathing of Vader in the background. Really really spooky. This gets an easy 8/10
////////

Action:
The space battle scenes are very well detailed and executed. Please watch out for the cannons firing on the battleships, reminds you of pirate movies. All the action sequences is a pleasure to watch. Many of the clone squads remind you of the SWAT or the Navy Seal movies. Actionwise I would give it an 8/10
////////

Lightsaber action:
Action scenes of lightsaber duels deserve a rating of its own in any SW movie. This movie has some of the best one-one action sequences. Some of the highlights are the Jedi fights with Count Dooku, Capt. Grievous and Palpatine.
Again one more reason to get the DVD when it comes out as the action is so intense that there is no chance of getting it all in on the first try. Easily takes the rating of 9/10
/////////

Script:
Not the greatest! There are some cool lines for Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi has some humorous stuff but on the whole not the best of scripts. I give it a tepid 5/10.
/////

Acting:

I cringe to write about this. Yoda is cool and Palapatine is great. But that about 90% of the acting right there. Surprising really considering that Lucas had Samuel L Jackson, Ewan McGregor and Jimmy Smits to work with. Granted Ewan has his moments, some of them really funny but he has largely been reduced to an action figure. {The ladies might say that he makes quite the sexy action figure but that is another story. Aside: All the ladies were rooting for Obi Wan Kenobi throughout the movie;)} Also granted that Jimmy Smits really did not have much screen time but what happened to Samuel L Jackson. The only time he seemed to have some life was when he went into his Shaft overdrive to whoop some Sith Ass. Mace Windu's character was a disappointment to me.
However all of the above were still acting. Which brings us to people who weren't? Spot Quiz: What is more boring then watching grass grow? Answer: Watching Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman "act"!!! They were appalling. And considering that the whole movie revolved around them it is a wonder that Lucas managed to captivate us inspite of this. Bad acting by Hayden and the hurried script did cause the move of Anakin to the dark side quite unbelievable to the new entrants to this universe. It took my full mastery of the Force to convince them of the logic behind it all .... I don't think they bought it all. Damn you Anakin and Amidala! Damn you! {Aside: Hayden was quite OK as an action hero and looked positively evil after embracing the dark side}
Of course all is not bad. R2-D2 and C3PO are excellent as always. I must say I have sorely missed a figure like Han Solo in the prequels.

Please check out point 2 in my review of Clone Wars to get a persepctive about the acting.
So for overall acting the movie gets 5/10 thanks largely to the animators of Yoda and to Ian McDermid as Palaptine..
/////

Conclusion:
Despite the bad acting and the hasty script the movie still rocks. As a Star Wars fan(atic) I really love this movie. The defects I point out above does not take away from what the movie is - if it were not there the movie would just have been that much better. If you like Star Wars, if you like Indiana Jones and if you hate George Bush(;)) you will love this movie.

For those of you who are not Star Wars fans, I will still recommend watching the movie. Just make sure you do see it in a good theatre and don't buy tickets in black. Approach it as an action movie and you will not be disappointed.

Now having taken a very measured look as a normal person I can now revert back to the fanatic that I am. How to convince my better half to see the movie once again? Any advices:)

P.S: Don't miss the Harry Potter shot at the end:)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

One good quote i read somewhere:
"Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together."
BTW, the resemblance to Harry Potter's (should i say Episode 1? ;)) start is sure uncanny!
[I knew i could trust you to do an excellent job with the review! :)]
-Anon