Wednesday 26 October 2011
A note on Paranormal Activity 3
I guess I just find creepy ghost thriller films dull. Paranormal Activity's scares just didn't make sense to me. With most of them I didn't understand why people were caught by surprise because it all seemed too slow. And while the first film was good and creepy on its budget, this one felt very tired. Blair Witch Project did the same much better several years ago.
Sunday 23 October 2011
Holy Flying Circus
A TV film, but feature-length nonetheless, this dramatisation of the release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian was uneven and often didn’t pull off what it attempted, as well as being very heavy-handed at the end, but it was charming, entertaining and had some extraordinary performances that may well take some minor actors from comedy shows and make them big names on UK television.
Focusing on the two Pythons who appeared on the famous debate on Friday Night, Saturday Morning, John Cleese and Michael Palin, it follows their lives as they return to London after finishing the filming to a storm of controversy, finding that they will have difficulty getting distributed, that people are vilifying them as individuals, and that it is even affecting their families. This leads to their decision to go on the television show.
But two things make it something different from an average dramatisation – the first is the ‘Pythonesque’ (or ‘sub-Python self-referential bullshit’ as they put it) presentation, while the second is the way the characters were performed. The former largely worked well, with surreal moments and clever asides, but was also hit-and-miss and responsible for the overall uneven tone – for example, it was a stroke of genius to have the Terry Jones actor double as Michael Palin’s wife and Gilliam’s miniature animations were neatly done, but the exaggerated behind-the-scenes BBC meetings were strained and overlong and the way they shoehorned in humour based on speech impediments and male nudity just to mirror the similar (much better) moments in Life of Brian fell flat and really weren’t needed. I didn’t like the flash forwards or knowing references to present-day attitudes, either, and there were a few fart jokes too many – a certain French taunt amidst numerous nonsensical taunts aside, fart jokes weren’t really Python’s thing.
On the other hand, the decision to play the Pythons not as straight impersonations but exaggerated versions of their comic personas was brilliant. Thus it was not really a drama centred on Cleese and Palin so much as on Basil Fawlty and Nisus Wettus, which was excellent – and made me realise how absurdly good a sitcom based on exaggerated Pythons would be. That said, if less time had been given to unfunny Tourette’s character #248923 and irritating BBC ‘head of talk’ Alan Dick, the rest of the Pythons could have been more fleshed out – which would have been especially good as they were all acted so well. Sadly, we got an aloof Chapman going on about being gay every other line, a peripheral Gilliam largely escaping into fantasy, a Jones mostly defined by mispronouncing words and boring people with technical aspects of filmmaking and far worse than all besides, an Eric Idle so mercenary it really seemed like the writers had a vendetta against him, possibly just for putting together Spamalot.
The climax was very well-executed, if a little misleading. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was brilliantly recreated, with superbly nasty performances from the actors playing Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. The show paints the encounter as a scathing, petty attack on the film from two uninformed bullies – Palin leaves furious, feeling defeated, only to go home and be told he has ‘won’, because the religious men were so contemptible the watchers would feel they were not worth listening to. Meanwhile, back in the studio an ‘everyman’ who has until then been opposed to the film confronts the bishop and the satirist and tells them he did not feel they represented him at all, and quite the issue is made of them not having watched the first fifteen minutes of the film, and therefore not understanding it (based on Palin’s account of meeting with one Raymond Johnston).
It would be nice if it had been so pat and simple, but the fact is that it was not. Thankfully, the BBC showed the full episode afterwards (and put it on iPlayer) so that 2011’s audience could judge for themselves. What’s true is that the level of debate was very poor – Muggeridge keeps calling the film ‘tenth rate’ and the Bishop compares it not only with undergraduate comedy but with what the mentally handicapped might produce, and then puts in his famous ‘thirty pieces of silver’ jibe. In fact, the full interview shows Cleese much more eloquent, especially about opposing closed-mindedness and (implicitly) the Church’s discouragement of free thought, and the Bishop much more friendly and personable than he is largely remembered, complimenting the acting and making affectionate jokes. What they Pythons ought to have done is to undercut the playground jibes, emphasise that the subjective opinions and value judgements are no more than that and moot in terms of debate, point out that these men are not critics and hardly likely to share their opinions of film and humour with large percentages of the audience – the young in particular – and so their barbs have no meaning, and raise what the debate should have been about – ie censorship, what exactly is objectionable to the church in the film and whether those who are criticised are the blind followers who do not think for themselves, and why that is.
The Pythons didn’t manage to steer the debate well. So while the film is right in pointing out that the mudslinging and taunting makes the Christians look bad, I don’t feel the central point this film makes about that debate rings true.
Focusing on the two Pythons who appeared on the famous debate on Friday Night, Saturday Morning, John Cleese and Michael Palin, it follows their lives as they return to London after finishing the filming to a storm of controversy, finding that they will have difficulty getting distributed, that people are vilifying them as individuals, and that it is even affecting their families. This leads to their decision to go on the television show.
But two things make it something different from an average dramatisation – the first is the ‘Pythonesque’ (or ‘sub-Python self-referential bullshit’ as they put it) presentation, while the second is the way the characters were performed. The former largely worked well, with surreal moments and clever asides, but was also hit-and-miss and responsible for the overall uneven tone – for example, it was a stroke of genius to have the Terry Jones actor double as Michael Palin’s wife and Gilliam’s miniature animations were neatly done, but the exaggerated behind-the-scenes BBC meetings were strained and overlong and the way they shoehorned in humour based on speech impediments and male nudity just to mirror the similar (much better) moments in Life of Brian fell flat and really weren’t needed. I didn’t like the flash forwards or knowing references to present-day attitudes, either, and there were a few fart jokes too many – a certain French taunt amidst numerous nonsensical taunts aside, fart jokes weren’t really Python’s thing.
On the other hand, the decision to play the Pythons not as straight impersonations but exaggerated versions of their comic personas was brilliant. Thus it was not really a drama centred on Cleese and Palin so much as on Basil Fawlty and Nisus Wettus, which was excellent – and made me realise how absurdly good a sitcom based on exaggerated Pythons would be. That said, if less time had been given to unfunny Tourette’s character #248923 and irritating BBC ‘head of talk’ Alan Dick, the rest of the Pythons could have been more fleshed out – which would have been especially good as they were all acted so well. Sadly, we got an aloof Chapman going on about being gay every other line, a peripheral Gilliam largely escaping into fantasy, a Jones mostly defined by mispronouncing words and boring people with technical aspects of filmmaking and far worse than all besides, an Eric Idle so mercenary it really seemed like the writers had a vendetta against him, possibly just for putting together Spamalot.
The climax was very well-executed, if a little misleading. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was brilliantly recreated, with superbly nasty performances from the actors playing Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. The show paints the encounter as a scathing, petty attack on the film from two uninformed bullies – Palin leaves furious, feeling defeated, only to go home and be told he has ‘won’, because the religious men were so contemptible the watchers would feel they were not worth listening to. Meanwhile, back in the studio an ‘everyman’ who has until then been opposed to the film confronts the bishop and the satirist and tells them he did not feel they represented him at all, and quite the issue is made of them not having watched the first fifteen minutes of the film, and therefore not understanding it (based on Palin’s account of meeting with one Raymond Johnston).
It would be nice if it had been so pat and simple, but the fact is that it was not. Thankfully, the BBC showed the full episode afterwards (and put it on iPlayer) so that 2011’s audience could judge for themselves. What’s true is that the level of debate was very poor – Muggeridge keeps calling the film ‘tenth rate’ and the Bishop compares it not only with undergraduate comedy but with what the mentally handicapped might produce, and then puts in his famous ‘thirty pieces of silver’ jibe. In fact, the full interview shows Cleese much more eloquent, especially about opposing closed-mindedness and (implicitly) the Church’s discouragement of free thought, and the Bishop much more friendly and personable than he is largely remembered, complimenting the acting and making affectionate jokes. What they Pythons ought to have done is to undercut the playground jibes, emphasise that the subjective opinions and value judgements are no more than that and moot in terms of debate, point out that these men are not critics and hardly likely to share their opinions of film and humour with large percentages of the audience – the young in particular – and so their barbs have no meaning, and raise what the debate should have been about – ie censorship, what exactly is objectionable to the church in the film and whether those who are criticised are the blind followers who do not think for themselves, and why that is.
The Pythons didn’t manage to steer the debate well. So while the film is right in pointing out that the mudslinging and taunting makes the Christians look bad, I don’t feel the central point this film makes about that debate rings true.
Thursday 20 October 2011
The Three Musketeers in 3D
This film was always only going to succeed if it was bad enough to be enjoyable. Luckily it was, though not bad enough to be a riot or something I’d ever watch again.
It was without doubt the worst adaptation of Dumas I’ve ever seen, or am ever likely to see again. All it had going for it were some lovely visual flights-of-fancy and decent, if largely unnecessary, 3D. What’s amazing about it is how it took well-loved characters known to generations and made them so incredibly unlikeable. In just a few opening scenes, they made Athos look like an easily-led, careless braggart, Porthos an abusive poseur and Aramis a stupid praying Batman parody. And this is before their fall from grace and disillusionment. All three of them let the hidden treasures and inventions of Da Vinci get completely destroyed without comment, and abuse their servant Planchet in a strained, cruel way. Planchet himself was played by James Corden in a horribly forced quasi-Ricky Gervais way, gets no laughs and generally shouldn’t be in the film.
As for D’Artagnan himself, played my unevenly pretty-faced Logan Lerman, who I can’t remember at all from Percy Jackson. He is so detestable that I hope I never have to see him in this sort of property again. His story retains the essence of the book’s story – on the way to become a musketeer, D’Artagnan gets into a scrap with Rochefort, and then in Paris ends up offending all the Three Musketeers in turn and has to duel them all, only to end up their companion when Richelieu’s men try to arrest them. But where it seems like charming impetuousness and bad luck in most adaptations, here D’Artagnan is just a horrible arrogant little twit who brings all the trouble upon himself. And a prick towards women.
The plot then pretty wildly veers from the source, albeit still revolving around retrieving a necklace from Buckingham (Orlando Bloom in Great Yarmouth pantomime mode) in London. Only here, not only is the Queen virtuous and innocent and the necklace stolen by Milady in an absurd razorwire/lasers scene, but the bulk of the plot tension comes from steampunk dirigible/warship hybrids flying about firing at one another’s decks (rather than, y’know, just shooting up at the airbags and putting a swift end to the battle).
There isn’t a single likeable character here, and you can barely say there’s a female character at all, so two-dimensional are they all, and it’s quite strange but true that the most sympathetic character in the piece is the useless comic relief King Louis XIII.
It was without doubt the worst adaptation of Dumas I’ve ever seen, or am ever likely to see again. All it had going for it were some lovely visual flights-of-fancy and decent, if largely unnecessary, 3D. What’s amazing about it is how it took well-loved characters known to generations and made them so incredibly unlikeable. In just a few opening scenes, they made Athos look like an easily-led, careless braggart, Porthos an abusive poseur and Aramis a stupid praying Batman parody. And this is before their fall from grace and disillusionment. All three of them let the hidden treasures and inventions of Da Vinci get completely destroyed without comment, and abuse their servant Planchet in a strained, cruel way. Planchet himself was played by James Corden in a horribly forced quasi-Ricky Gervais way, gets no laughs and generally shouldn’t be in the film.
As for D’Artagnan himself, played my unevenly pretty-faced Logan Lerman, who I can’t remember at all from Percy Jackson. He is so detestable that I hope I never have to see him in this sort of property again. His story retains the essence of the book’s story – on the way to become a musketeer, D’Artagnan gets into a scrap with Rochefort, and then in Paris ends up offending all the Three Musketeers in turn and has to duel them all, only to end up their companion when Richelieu’s men try to arrest them. But where it seems like charming impetuousness and bad luck in most adaptations, here D’Artagnan is just a horrible arrogant little twit who brings all the trouble upon himself. And a prick towards women.
The plot then pretty wildly veers from the source, albeit still revolving around retrieving a necklace from Buckingham (Orlando Bloom in Great Yarmouth pantomime mode) in London. Only here, not only is the Queen virtuous and innocent and the necklace stolen by Milady in an absurd razorwire/lasers scene, but the bulk of the plot tension comes from steampunk dirigible/warship hybrids flying about firing at one another’s decks (rather than, y’know, just shooting up at the airbags and putting a swift end to the battle).
There isn’t a single likeable character here, and you can barely say there’s a female character at all, so two-dimensional are they all, and it’s quite strange but true that the most sympathetic character in the piece is the useless comic relief King Louis XIII.
Thursday 6 October 2011
My Summer of Love
I’m just back from ‘My Summer of Love’, and despite all expectations, I really enjoyed it – in fact, it was one of the better films I’ve seen in months. At the beginning, I had my doubts about the pacing, I had my doubts about the casting, I had my doubts about how exaggerated the characters seemed, but by the end, they were all virtues, not flaws!
The film was a typical pairing, the earnest common one and the imperious, perhaps manipulative posh one, but the broad characterisations were so sweet, and portrayed with so much enthusiasm and belief that it was just wonderful. Predictable, maybe, but that only added to the charm: it was the joy of waiting to see the situations unfold rather than the surprise at new twists that was entertaining, and the characters were wonderfully realised.
I expected little, but was very happily surprised.
The film was a typical pairing, the earnest common one and the imperious, perhaps manipulative posh one, but the broad characterisations were so sweet, and portrayed with so much enthusiasm and belief that it was just wonderful. Predictable, maybe, but that only added to the charm: it was the joy of waiting to see the situations unfold rather than the surprise at new twists that was entertaining, and the characters were wonderfully realised.
I expected little, but was very happily surprised.
The Gold Rush
We just came back from The Gold Rush, which is most definitely a comic classic – and we had the Trinity organ scholar playing along, with some themes from Chaplin’s version and some well-known themes mixed in, which really added to the experience!
Brilliant, brilliant physical comedy from the master; I’m still laughing now about the tipping house and the bread roll dance routine, but what was really great about it was the way there was a story, and there were characters, and there were moments of great pathos, and tension, and the little tramp really is absolutely adorable. Georgia certainly didn’t deserve him!
Also fun to see that even if Christmas/New Year traditions have, comedy certainly hasn’t changed – but then, it’s not as though The Canterbury Tales, or even parts of The One Thousand And One Nights aren’t hilarious.
It’s easy to imagine people of the past as entirely different from us, more austere or simpler than we are – but people are just people, which is why great works from the past remain great, no matter when we turn to them.
Brilliant, brilliant physical comedy from the master; I’m still laughing now about the tipping house and the bread roll dance routine, but what was really great about it was the way there was a story, and there were characters, and there were moments of great pathos, and tension, and the little tramp really is absolutely adorable. Georgia certainly didn’t deserve him!
Also fun to see that even if Christmas/New Year traditions have, comedy certainly hasn’t changed – but then, it’s not as though The Canterbury Tales, or even parts of The One Thousand And One Nights aren’t hilarious.
It’s easy to imagine people of the past as entirely different from us, more austere or simpler than we are – but people are just people, which is why great works from the past remain great, no matter when we turn to them.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
managed to get free tickets to a preview screening of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I wasn’t expecting it to be great, or even close to the book.
It was brilliant.
Absolutely fantastic, and far better than I was expecting. I had seen bits and pieces, and thought that the black Ford was a concession to tokenism, Zaphod’s hidden head was a cop-out, and there would never be the budget to do justice to Adams’ book. How wrong could I have been? The books have never been my very favourites, but they’re funny and witty and clever, and I enjoyed them when I read them, a while back – but if anything, I preferred the film. And it’s not often I say that. I really hope it’s a smash hit.
It deserves to be. I was wrong about Ford and Zaphod – they’re brilliantly cast, more interesting than they were in the books, and the two heads work very well. Alan Rickman’s a superb Marvin, Stephen Fry’s voice couldn’t be better suited to the guide itself’s surreal humour, and Bill Nighy’s Slartibartfast was somehow daft yet venerable at once. Best of all, though, were the cameos, the peripheral characters: how they got Helen Mirren to be Deep Thought I’ll never know. Bill Bailey’s whale was one of the film’s highlights (poor thing), and best of all (even better than the cameo from the original Marvin) were the League of Gentlemen’s Vogon extras. ‘He’s got a towel – run away!’ ‘He’s locked it from the other side – we’ll have to go around the other side’…brilliant.
Visually, the CG and puppetry were outstanding, really top-of-the-range stuff, which I didn’t expect. The music was great, too, especially the updated theme. All in all, it couldn’t have been much better.
Hope there’s another. They’ve ruined all the surprises, but I wanna see the restaurant!
It was brilliant.
Absolutely fantastic, and far better than I was expecting. I had seen bits and pieces, and thought that the black Ford was a concession to tokenism, Zaphod’s hidden head was a cop-out, and there would never be the budget to do justice to Adams’ book. How wrong could I have been? The books have never been my very favourites, but they’re funny and witty and clever, and I enjoyed them when I read them, a while back – but if anything, I preferred the film. And it’s not often I say that. I really hope it’s a smash hit.
It deserves to be. I was wrong about Ford and Zaphod – they’re brilliantly cast, more interesting than they were in the books, and the two heads work very well. Alan Rickman’s a superb Marvin, Stephen Fry’s voice couldn’t be better suited to the guide itself’s surreal humour, and Bill Nighy’s Slartibartfast was somehow daft yet venerable at once. Best of all, though, were the cameos, the peripheral characters: how they got Helen Mirren to be Deep Thought I’ll never know. Bill Bailey’s whale was one of the film’s highlights (poor thing), and best of all (even better than the cameo from the original Marvin) were the League of Gentlemen’s Vogon extras. ‘He’s got a towel – run away!’ ‘He’s locked it from the other side – we’ll have to go around the other side’…brilliant.
Visually, the CG and puppetry were outstanding, really top-of-the-range stuff, which I didn’t expect. The music was great, too, especially the updated theme. All in all, it couldn’t have been much better.
Hope there’s another. They’ve ruined all the surprises, but I wanna see the restaurant!
Wednesday 5 October 2011
Lost in Translation
because we kept mentioning going to Japan, someone lent us ‘Lost in Translation’.
To be honest, it wasn’t very impressive. It could have been set anywhere, and been just as bizarre. Plus all that ‘l’ and ‘r’ reversed stuff was painfully forced, when the Japanese version doesn’t sound that much like either. All that is just minor quibbling, though. Japan wasn’t made to look particularly good or particularly bad, which is how it should be. But the story was just so tired and unimaginative.
A bored middle-aged man and a bored young woman, both married, end up isolated together in a place where they don’t speak the language and don’t know the culture. They end up wrapped up in each other, ignoring everything around them and focussing on themselves. The Lonely Planet guide says that you won’t learn anything about Tokyo from it, and that’s about right.
That would be fine if the characters were likeable. But we have a weak, tiresome and uppity middle-aged man who can’t resist having sex with some random woman when he’s frustrated, and just puts his wife and children out of mind, and a girl who we’re supposed to think is justified in cheating on her husband because he’s got an airheaded friend. Well, rather her than the main girl, a stroppy, jealous, self-centred and arrogant cheater. If we were led to dislike this contemptible duo, fine. But trying to give us an uplifting ending by finally having them kiss left me feeling very self-righteous. Which is quite fun, admittedly, but the entertainment content of the film was…sorely lacking.
To be honest, it wasn’t very impressive. It could have been set anywhere, and been just as bizarre. Plus all that ‘l’ and ‘r’ reversed stuff was painfully forced, when the Japanese version doesn’t sound that much like either. All that is just minor quibbling, though. Japan wasn’t made to look particularly good or particularly bad, which is how it should be. But the story was just so tired and unimaginative.
A bored middle-aged man and a bored young woman, both married, end up isolated together in a place where they don’t speak the language and don’t know the culture. They end up wrapped up in each other, ignoring everything around them and focussing on themselves. The Lonely Planet guide says that you won’t learn anything about Tokyo from it, and that’s about right.
That would be fine if the characters were likeable. But we have a weak, tiresome and uppity middle-aged man who can’t resist having sex with some random woman when he’s frustrated, and just puts his wife and children out of mind, and a girl who we’re supposed to think is justified in cheating on her husband because he’s got an airheaded friend. Well, rather her than the main girl, a stroppy, jealous, self-centred and arrogant cheater. If we were led to dislike this contemptible duo, fine. But trying to give us an uplifting ending by finally having them kiss left me feeling very self-righteous. Which is quite fun, admittedly, but the entertainment content of the film was…sorely lacking.
A Good Woman
went to see A Good Woman, a new film adaptation of Lady Windemere’s Fan, updating the story to the glamorous 30s, moving it to the Riviera and dolloping an extra portion of superb sleaze on the clever little story, it was a sparkling, elegant and beautiful reimagining of the classic. Tom Wilkinson and Helen Hunt put were excellent, Scarlet Johansen looked stunning and contributed an interesting, compelling and brave performance and the cinematography was utterly beautiful, all ocre and Mediterranean gentleness. What a shame it won’t reach the audience it deserves.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
It was good. Not as terrible as the bad reviews suggested, not as great as the rave reviews said. Just… pretty good. It started badly, with the rather comical ‘War!’ and probably the dullest and worst thought-out space fight in the series. Things pick up after that, get a little dull in the middle, but coast along nicely to the nicely climactic ending. I actually rather like Lucas’ pompous and overblown dialogue, in much the same way as I enjoy reading Lord of the Rings. Of course, a Han Solo’s cynicism is much missed, but the presentation of the film was not something I disliked: bombastic score, hammy acting and beautiful CG cohered well in the grand gesture of space opera. What was lacking was the story.
First, we are expected to swallow a huge jump in the plot and a new antagonist, the uninteresting coughing android General Grievous. To be honest, his whole plotline should have been cut – and the fact that he’s obviously a far better design than Darth Vader (whose big buttons and Frankenstein walk, along with some terrible lines asking about Padme then going ‘Nooo!’ really didn’t inspire much awe) makes you wonder why they didn’t use the technology to better effect – but then, the same can be asked of super-powered R2. Why, however, they didn’t use Dooku as the main antagonist rather than unceremoniously dispatching him at the beginning I don’t know. Then we get to the meat: why Anakin turns to the dark side. Well,the reason’s pretty half-arsed. He has some premonitions about Padme dying so embraces Palpatine’s teachings in order to save her, but of course becomes so twisted that he ends up being the cause of her death. Pretty flimsy, and the transition is hardly sensitively portrayed, tortured or even very interesting. Lucas even throws in some cute Jedi kiddies for him to butcher, just to show how BAD he is.
At the end of the film, the loose ends are supposed to be tied up. Luke and Leia are born and taken away when Padme dies (leaving the question, of course, of how Leia knows her ‘real mother’ in Return of the Jedi, but I suppose it’s the power of the Force or something). Obi Wan Kinobe goes to watch over Luke, changing his name to Ben Kinobe (’cos no-one would EVER guess!). Yoda fails to kill the Emperor, but for some reason, doesn’t show his Jedi spirit by going back and trying to kill the Sith lord again, but runs off to a swamp. Wimp! We also find out in a throwaway bit of dialogue that dead Qui-Gon found out a way to make Jedi into ghosts, which Kinobe and Yoda must learn in order for the original trilogy to make sense – and find the time to tell Vader, presumably. C3PO’s memory is wiped, for no reason, oh, and Chewbacca seems to be very important in the Wookie hierarchy, of course, because every random character in the original trilogy seems to somehow tie in with the story of the Empire’s ephemeral rise to power, which seems to have been taken up almost entirely by taking two decades to build a Death Star.
The biggest gripe I had was that at a time when Anakin needed to be shown the power of the dark side, Mace Windu overpowered Darth Sidious. Yes, he also needed to act vulnerable so that Anakin would be forced to make the choice to intervene, but frankly, if I was Anakin I’d’ve just thought that the Dark Side was clearly rather pathetic (not like Vader ever learns the lightning trick anyway). It would have worked if Windu and Sidious were well-matched, then Anakin comes in, distracting Sidious and allowing Windu to get the upper hand. As it was, it just seemed that the Dark Side is rather pathetic. And the worst thing is that I’m pretty sure it was only because Samuel L Jackson just wanted to look cool. Dramatically, it just didn’t work as it should have.
For all this, though, it’s a fun action movie and worth seeing for its fireworks and the satisfaction of seeing Yoda casually take out two guards with a sweep of the hand. But really, it is nothing, nothing to Episodes IV and V.
First, we are expected to swallow a huge jump in the plot and a new antagonist, the uninteresting coughing android General Grievous. To be honest, his whole plotline should have been cut – and the fact that he’s obviously a far better design than Darth Vader (whose big buttons and Frankenstein walk, along with some terrible lines asking about Padme then going ‘Nooo!’ really didn’t inspire much awe) makes you wonder why they didn’t use the technology to better effect – but then, the same can be asked of super-powered R2. Why, however, they didn’t use Dooku as the main antagonist rather than unceremoniously dispatching him at the beginning I don’t know. Then we get to the meat: why Anakin turns to the dark side. Well,the reason’s pretty half-arsed. He has some premonitions about Padme dying so embraces Palpatine’s teachings in order to save her, but of course becomes so twisted that he ends up being the cause of her death. Pretty flimsy, and the transition is hardly sensitively portrayed, tortured or even very interesting. Lucas even throws in some cute Jedi kiddies for him to butcher, just to show how BAD he is.
At the end of the film, the loose ends are supposed to be tied up. Luke and Leia are born and taken away when Padme dies (leaving the question, of course, of how Leia knows her ‘real mother’ in Return of the Jedi, but I suppose it’s the power of the Force or something). Obi Wan Kinobe goes to watch over Luke, changing his name to Ben Kinobe (’cos no-one would EVER guess!). Yoda fails to kill the Emperor, but for some reason, doesn’t show his Jedi spirit by going back and trying to kill the Sith lord again, but runs off to a swamp. Wimp! We also find out in a throwaway bit of dialogue that dead Qui-Gon found out a way to make Jedi into ghosts, which Kinobe and Yoda must learn in order for the original trilogy to make sense – and find the time to tell Vader, presumably. C3PO’s memory is wiped, for no reason, oh, and Chewbacca seems to be very important in the Wookie hierarchy, of course, because every random character in the original trilogy seems to somehow tie in with the story of the Empire’s ephemeral rise to power, which seems to have been taken up almost entirely by taking two decades to build a Death Star.
The biggest gripe I had was that at a time when Anakin needed to be shown the power of the dark side, Mace Windu overpowered Darth Sidious. Yes, he also needed to act vulnerable so that Anakin would be forced to make the choice to intervene, but frankly, if I was Anakin I’d’ve just thought that the Dark Side was clearly rather pathetic (not like Vader ever learns the lightning trick anyway). It would have worked if Windu and Sidious were well-matched, then Anakin comes in, distracting Sidious and allowing Windu to get the upper hand. As it was, it just seemed that the Dark Side is rather pathetic. And the worst thing is that I’m pretty sure it was only because Samuel L Jackson just wanted to look cool. Dramatically, it just didn’t work as it should have.
For all this, though, it’s a fun action movie and worth seeing for its fireworks and the satisfaction of seeing Yoda casually take out two guards with a sweep of the hand. But really, it is nothing, nothing to Episodes IV and V.
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