Just Say "Nooooooo"
Insultingly Stupid Movie Character Development/Plot Progression(assassination)
Synopsis: I'm not a star wars geek. I don't own a single piece of the sectology(? -thinking six part series here). I did love the originals, but I didn't like the first prequel at all (re: Jar Jar Binks, excessive cgi). The Attack of the Clones episode was plodding and dull with the exception of the ending where the action picks up and we see the impending demise of the Galactic Senate with the insurgence of the clone army who are initially under the charge of the Jedi. But I recall imagining Obi Wan's story of Anakin's demise as a slower one than enacted in Episode II. Yoda once said that the dark side of the force was cunning and seductive, so that we are made to think that with the two stories combined about Anakin, someone had to use both of those qualities to get him to betray the dark side slowly over a period of at least some few years. All I noticed in episode II was an Anakin portrayed as an impudent, whiner of a child who was constantly lashing out as if there would be no trip to the mall after the days work was done. Perhaps is pituitary gland was simply too much for even his elevated levels of metachlorines to handle -I actually kept waiting for his voice to crack. The best villains in history from whether fact of fiction have always thought of themselves as doing the right thing, because it's never effective to have a guy who's supposed to be evil while knowingly acting against his own principles. Instead, the villain works best when no one else can see that he is actually becoming a villain, say for instance if Anakin had obeyed orders from Obi Wan without question but internally twisted the meaning of what was meant by those orders and started, by his own veiled evil aspects, to commit sinister acts in the name of what he considers to be good. Such twisted values slowly emerging until fruition would have lent more credence to the term "Dark Side", because darkness creeps upon you, just as the night creeps upon the day. It isn't noon one moment and then pitch black the next without so much as a happy hour, nor twighlight or dusk. But that's the interpretation we saw, and it sucked.
I read the following commentary on a sight published by physicists who maintain that there is simply too much stupidity on the screen for them to watch and enjoy very many movies, mainly because physics is always so badly represented. I understand how that goes, and I'm sure everyone else can too. Think about one thing that you're especially good at and then think of a time when you saw an actor pretending to do it on TV, in a magazine, or in a movie. Odds are they didn't get a thing right and it looked so stupid that you might have lost your ability to suspend disbelief for the sake of the movie experience. That happens to me every time I watch mtv; some poser band gets up there and there's a guy pretending to be passionate about a guitar riff or solo that lab chimp could easily master without so much one squawk uttered in frustration. Well, I borrowed some of what they had to say about episode III, because it was just so damn funny. If you’ve made it this far, you’ll love the rest; read on please!
After the battle, the movie focuses on Anakin Skywalker's (Hayden Christensen) temptation by the Dark Side and transformation into the black helmeted Darth Vader. The main reason for such a complete moral decline: he had a bad dream. For heaven's sake, get the man a teddy bear and tell him to buck up. The last straw comes when Anakin lops off the arm of a fellow Jedi giving soon-to-be evil emperor Palpatine an opening to push with lightning no less the hapless Jedi out the window of a high-rise. The event also plunges Anakin into the depths of moral conflict. What to do? Why, of course, drop to a knee, swear allegiance to the obviously murderous and lying soon-to-be evil emperor, then personally slay all the children in the Jedi temple. This from a person who studied under Yoda? And we're supposed to think he'll eventually be redeemed in Episode VI?
Anakin leaves for further murderous adventures at the edge of the Republic on a lava-covered planet. Obi Wan Kenobi tracks him down intending to put an end to Vader's betrayals, but instead ends up in a seemingly endless fight scene on floating debris in the middle of a lava flow. A lava-covered planet would be a sauna in the best of locations, but in the center of a lava flow, the radiant heat would be enough to ignite clothing. Yet, the two Jedi are able to fight on and on without so much as a sip of Gatorade.
Eventually, Anakin (now called Darth Vader) is grievously injured and lies dying, burnt to a crisp. (Apparently, the radiant heat was enough to ignite one's clothing, but not until one is defeated in combat.) He is rescued by the evil emperor who sensing Vader's travail from afar voyages to the edge of the empire, in minutes, to save his new protégé and outfit him with his trademark black armor. Meanwhile Vader's wife Pad me Amidala (Natalie Portman) dies in childbirth after receiving the finest high-tech medical care available the fatal ailment: a broken heart. Will there ever be a cure for this relentless killer?
Finally we get to the moment we have long awaited: the return of the baddest movie villain ever: the black helmeted Darth Vader and what do we get? "Noooooo!" Okay, we're nerds. For us Star Wars movies are an addiction. We had to see Episode III even though, after Episodes I and II, we expected little. But if heaven forbid Lucas ever does another Star Wars, and we are subsequently lured to watch it by the dark side of our nerdiness, we will muster all our available force to just say, "Noooooo!"