Monday, November 21, 2005

Revenge of the Flick

Finished reading the Revenge of the Sith this weekend, and it was a real treat. Very enjoyable, the themes made much more sense than they did in the movie. Lots of background information is provided that could have been conveyed in the movie but for whatever reason was just skipped, modified or plain left out.

I enjoyed the book so much that I went right out and bought a copy of the dvd to try to spread the love back to the flick. I hadn't seen it since the first time in the theater and I was hopeful that perhaps this would become one of those 360 type movies. A movie that you hated the first time you saw it, then slowly you turned around and began to really like it. For me these include: Good Will Hunting (or Rainman gets a Soloflex) and most recently Sideways (or Swingers hits the Wine Country). It didn't happen.

While i had a better understanding perhaps of how the movie could have been better, i still thought it fell flat. Grievous is annoying with this cough thing going on all the time and his bad posture. What's up with Palpatine's make up after he revelas him self as Sidious? He looks like something from the first Star Trek. Did they blow the whole special effects budget on that opening space battle? Here's the pitch Anakin, Join the Sith, have a plastic face!

Plus, it's a big galaxy out there, everything doesn't have to connect! Yoda and Chewbacca are tight? and hey Obi Wan, work on that life after death crap eh?

What else? Why didn't they show Gran Moff Tarkin bouncing a little baby Han Solo on his knee? I can just see him now with a little black vest on.
Did Anakin build the Millenium Falcon too? Is Lando Calrissian Mace Windu's grandson? Are jawas actually jedi younglings in hiding? Come on.

What a drag. The book is really great though. The author uses this device where he writes about "What it's like to be (fill in the blank) right now:". It's cool because he does this with Anakin, Obi Wan, Mace and many others, but the best one is when he steps inside the mind of an Imperial Guard who is being manipulated by the Force. Very funny.

2 comments:

David Alexander said...

I will check it out, thanks for the rec, i haven't heard of that one.

Amy Alexander said...

David didn't mention that the whole "hated Good Will Hunting at the theater" episode almost brought our beautiful at-the-time 6 month old relationship to a close. He actually slept through the film when we went to see it. I was moved to tears (who knows why?). Let's just say that when we came out of the theater and I said "Wow. That was powerful," and he said, "What? I was asleep." I wanted to bop him up side the head. He did a similiar 360 on Campy components and Mac computers. I've now learned it's part of his Libra personality.