"Sith"- isn't that the sound that you make when you blow your nose?
First, apologies to Anthony Lane, whose first line of his latest review of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith I just ripped off in the subject line (the hilarious review can be read in full for free at www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/050523crci_cinema). Second, this Star Wars hoopla is already beginning to make me ill. Certainly, I have an aversion to all things hype in general, but with Star Wars the scope of the marketing and promo is on just on a different planet altogether (har har).
I may have not been alive when Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope first arrived, but I do have reasonably fond memories of the movie at a young age, when I was young and kicking in the early 80s. And I did have the Return of the Jedi children's book, which I remember primarily for those adorable Ewoks. And in the late 90s, I eagerly sought out all three Star Wars rereleases in the theater, which looked fabulous and were true city-wide events for bored high schoolers living in podunk southern Oregon.
But the new ones don't have any of this. I can't help thinking that many of the members of Generation Y like me, and especially Generation X, who were actually alive when Star Wars first came out, are embracing the new movies (Episodes 1, 2, and 3 technically) essentially because of nostalgic reasons, not due to any aesthetic value. Personally, from what I remember trying to watch The Phantom Menace, I found it execrable. Even while ripped, the movie was painful- dope producing an even more endless series of incomprehensible and cliched dialogue punctuated by special effects, which, while admittedly neat at the time, ultimately felt like any other hip new FX flick. I gave up with Attack of the Clones, which I heard was better, but just more of the same ala The Phantom Menace, albeit with better effects and cooler fight scenes. The same, so the word on the street goes, holds true this time around for Revenge of the Sith- the effects are better than Attack of the Clones of course, which means that this is "the best movie" in the second trilogy (the first?) even if George Lucas couldn't write decent dialogue if his life depended on it. I find this amusing- the final movie that Lucas will probably ever do is the best of the worst!
Concurrently, a new ad by MoveOn came out in anticipation of the movie- http://www.moveonpac.org/savetherepublic/?id=5543-3417609-hQVu9Ey6.U_XBlZl9_Pu1Q&t=5. Even for someone who really dislikes Bill Frist, and what he's doing to the Senate in order to appease the religious right nutjobs, this ad made me feel a tad bit sorry for the guy. Not every politician has the luck to be compared to Darth Vader for his actions. Still, it made me smile when I woke up this morning to hear the Republicans on NPR calling this ad "beyond the pale" and "outside the realm of acceptable political discourse." Hah hah!
I may have not been alive when Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope first arrived, but I do have reasonably fond memories of the movie at a young age, when I was young and kicking in the early 80s. And I did have the Return of the Jedi children's book, which I remember primarily for those adorable Ewoks. And in the late 90s, I eagerly sought out all three Star Wars rereleases in the theater, which looked fabulous and were true city-wide events for bored high schoolers living in podunk southern Oregon.
But the new ones don't have any of this. I can't help thinking that many of the members of Generation Y like me, and especially Generation X, who were actually alive when Star Wars first came out, are embracing the new movies (Episodes 1, 2, and 3 technically) essentially because of nostalgic reasons, not due to any aesthetic value. Personally, from what I remember trying to watch The Phantom Menace, I found it execrable. Even while ripped, the movie was painful- dope producing an even more endless series of incomprehensible and cliched dialogue punctuated by special effects, which, while admittedly neat at the time, ultimately felt like any other hip new FX flick. I gave up with Attack of the Clones, which I heard was better, but just more of the same ala The Phantom Menace, albeit with better effects and cooler fight scenes. The same, so the word on the street goes, holds true this time around for Revenge of the Sith- the effects are better than Attack of the Clones of course, which means that this is "the best movie" in the second trilogy (the first?) even if George Lucas couldn't write decent dialogue if his life depended on it. I find this amusing- the final movie that Lucas will probably ever do is the best of the worst!
Concurrently, a new ad by MoveOn came out in anticipation of the movie- http://www.moveonpac.org/savetherepublic/?id=5543-3417609-hQVu9Ey6.U_XBlZl9_Pu1Q&t=5. Even for someone who really dislikes Bill Frist, and what he's doing to the Senate in order to appease the religious right nutjobs, this ad made me feel a tad bit sorry for the guy. Not every politician has the luck to be compared to Darth Vader for his actions. Still, it made me smile when I woke up this morning to hear the Republicans on NPR calling this ad "beyond the pale" and "outside the realm of acceptable political discourse." Hah hah!