Revenge of the Sith!!!!!
It was so good. I saw it twice last night.
The first time, I started crying when Palpatine gave order 66, and sobbed through the whole ending (Poor Obi-Wan! OMG, Luke and Leia! Alderaan! Luke's house! The twin suns! The music!)
The second time, the flaws stood out a bit more. McDiarmid was wonderful until he went all over the top goofy evil. The "romantic" dialogue remained laughable. "She's lost the will to live"??? WTF??? How pathetic and out of character and hello, TWO BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN and you can't think of ANY reason to live? And Vader's "NOOOOOO!" will go down as one of the most embarrassing moments in film history.
But I still loved it. All the ties to the original trilogy, the parallels to RotJ and the lead-ins to ANH. *sigh*
So happy.
I can't really write a real review now because I'm exhausted (I saw it at 8:15 and at midnight, so I didn't get to sleep until 5am). But a few more thoughts, with spoilers:
The aesthetic. It finally LOOKED like a Star Wars movie! Bail Organa's same ship! The fighters that look like TIE fighters and X-Wings, the Imperial ships that look like Star Destroyers! That room that looks like Palpatine's throne room in RotJ!
Anakin's transformation made total sense to me. Probably because I went along with it; I'd have done the same thing, well, minus the killing of children, but I'd have so rejected the Jedi. "Your wife is dying, but who cares, everyone dies"? Who the hell says things like that? Bad Yoda. Those passionless, uncaring asshole Jedis brought about their own downfall. The Dark Side is so much cooler.
The lava fight! So, so cool. My heart completely broke for Obi-Wan. (And Ewan McGregor, amazing job, I completely bought and cared about the character.) The lava was beautiful and so cool. Anakin probably would've won if he hadn't been blinded by arrogance, poor guy; I loved that too. (Oh, and the HoYay! "I loved you." And some really slashy line at the beginning that I forget now.) Anakin's betrayal of Obi-Wan was much worse than his betrayal of Padme.
And I loved the beginning--finally, appropriate humor! I love Artoo. And the fight was so good, engrossing instead of distracting. And the way they established Obi-Wan and Anakin as friends--finally, I actually cared about those two.
The Clones slaughtering the Jedi was so heart-breaking. Made perfect sense, too, to explain how the Jedi could've been so easily wiped out. Anakin killing the kids was awesome; thank you, Lucas, for not sugar-coating.
I loved the parallels to Return of the Jedi--seeing Anakin fail where Luke succeeded. And the moment he makes his big choice to go evil, where he has to decide whether to save Palpatine from Mace Windu, and he chooses Palpatine. It's the perfect parallel to RotJ, where he's in the same situation, Palpatine or Luke, and he chooses to save Luke, his big redemptive choice.
I can't wait to go home and re-watch the original trilogy many more times.
The first time, I started crying when Palpatine gave order 66, and sobbed through the whole ending (Poor Obi-Wan! OMG, Luke and Leia! Alderaan! Luke's house! The twin suns! The music!)
The second time, the flaws stood out a bit more. McDiarmid was wonderful until he went all over the top goofy evil. The "romantic" dialogue remained laughable. "She's lost the will to live"??? WTF??? How pathetic and out of character and hello, TWO BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN and you can't think of ANY reason to live? And Vader's "NOOOOOO!" will go down as one of the most embarrassing moments in film history.
But I still loved it. All the ties to the original trilogy, the parallels to RotJ and the lead-ins to ANH. *sigh*
So happy.
I can't really write a real review now because I'm exhausted (I saw it at 8:15 and at midnight, so I didn't get to sleep until 5am). But a few more thoughts, with spoilers:
The aesthetic. It finally LOOKED like a Star Wars movie! Bail Organa's same ship! The fighters that look like TIE fighters and X-Wings, the Imperial ships that look like Star Destroyers! That room that looks like Palpatine's throne room in RotJ!
Anakin's transformation made total sense to me. Probably because I went along with it; I'd have done the same thing, well, minus the killing of children, but I'd have so rejected the Jedi. "Your wife is dying, but who cares, everyone dies"? Who the hell says things like that? Bad Yoda. Those passionless, uncaring asshole Jedis brought about their own downfall. The Dark Side is so much cooler.
The lava fight! So, so cool. My heart completely broke for Obi-Wan. (And Ewan McGregor, amazing job, I completely bought and cared about the character.) The lava was beautiful and so cool. Anakin probably would've won if he hadn't been blinded by arrogance, poor guy; I loved that too. (Oh, and the HoYay! "I loved you." And some really slashy line at the beginning that I forget now.) Anakin's betrayal of Obi-Wan was much worse than his betrayal of Padme.
And I loved the beginning--finally, appropriate humor! I love Artoo. And the fight was so good, engrossing instead of distracting. And the way they established Obi-Wan and Anakin as friends--finally, I actually cared about those two.
The Clones slaughtering the Jedi was so heart-breaking. Made perfect sense, too, to explain how the Jedi could've been so easily wiped out. Anakin killing the kids was awesome; thank you, Lucas, for not sugar-coating.
I loved the parallels to Return of the Jedi--seeing Anakin fail where Luke succeeded. And the moment he makes his big choice to go evil, where he has to decide whether to save Palpatine from Mace Windu, and he chooses Palpatine. It's the perfect parallel to RotJ, where he's in the same situation, Palpatine or Luke, and he chooses to save Luke, his big redemptive choice.
I can't wait to go home and re-watch the original trilogy many more times.